So far in Part – 1 and Part – 2 of this series, the Sitecore Publishing Service up & running in Azure PaaS and the Sitecore Publishing module is installed & configured.

This last part will trying to address few additional scenarios with publishing service. Scenarios like, the Sitecore databases are hosted in Azure SQL and Sitecore implementation have multiple publishing targets.

Sitecore database in Azure(Azure SQL)

If publishing service hosted on Azure web app and the databases are also in Azure SQL Database, there are few additional configurations needed for the service to work seamlessly with bigger publishing payload.

Follow below steps to configure publishing service for Azure Environment

• Navigate to \configurations\system.webServer\aspNetCore node in wwwRoot\web.config file of publishing service in app service.
• replace the arguments attribute with the following

arguments=" --environment azure"

• Save the web.config
• Stop and start app service

By default Sitecore publishing service is running under the “production” environment and that patches the configurations for production. After above change, service will start with Azure environment and it will patch azure environment specific configurations.

• Navigate to wwwroot/config/azure
• rename file sc.publishing.sqlazure.connections.xml.example to sc.publishing.sqlazure.connections.xml. Remove .example extension and make sure it has .xml extension.

New publishing target…!!!???

If other than default Internet publishing target is being used in CMS, there are few additional configurations needs to be made. So lets have a look at those.

I am assuming the additional publishing target also linked to additional database other than default web database. If so, the new connection string also needs to be added to publishing service.

New connection string

In this scenario, will take example of new web database in Azure SQL US region and need to add new target to publish content to web database to this US region.

• Add new connection string to Publishing service. lets name it web_us

Sitecore.Framework.Publishing.Host configuration setconnectionstring web_us "<US web database connection string>"

/config/sitecore/publishing/sc.publishing.xml

Open above file and follow below steps:

• navigate to Settings\Sitecore\Publishing\Services\DefaultConnectionFactory\Options\Connections
• Search for the child node Internet, duplicate the whole node along with children. For example, name it InternetUS
• Within that InternetUS node navigate to child node ConnectionString and change the value of the node to following to match the name of the connection sting in steps above.

${Sitecore:Publishing:ConnectionStrings:web_us}

• Navigate to Settings\Sitecore\Publishing\Services\StoreFactory\Options\Stores\Targets
• Search for the child node Internet, duplicate the whole node along with children. For example, name it InternetUS
• Change the value of the ConnectionName to InternetUs. This must match the name of the name of the new node name under Settings\Sitecore\Publishing\Services\DefaultConnectionFactory\Options\Connections. Created in one of the step above.
• Set the id of new Publishing Target item in Sitecore CMS. For example,

<Id>46FDC9AF-3F00-4D55-BDB8-86ED13F82E00</Id>

• Set the value of child node ScDatabase to newly added databsae name. In our example it would be web_us.
• Save the file

wwwroot/config/azure/sc.publishing.sqlazure.connections.xml

Note

This step is optional if the service is not using databases on Azure SQL.

• Navigate to Settings\Sitecore\Publishing\Services\DefaultConnectionFactory\options\Connections\
• Search for Internet node in child nodes and duplicate that node with name InternetUS along with child nodes
• Save File

Bonus

Log level changing for debugging

Nothing can beat detailed level logging while debugging application/service. Default publishing service have two filters one sitecore and anther is default.

For sitecore filter the default log level is set to Information and default log level is set to Warning. See below xml for the same.

<Filters>
    <Sitecore>Information</Sitecore>
    <Default>Warning</Default>
</Filters>

One can select log filter level to one of the following:

• Trace : The most detailed log messages, may contain sensitive application data. These messages are disabled by default and should never be enabled in a production environment.
• Debug : Logs that are used for interactive investigation during development should use the Debug level. These logs should primarily contain information useful for debugging and have no long-term value.
• Information : Track the general flow of the application using logs at the Information level. These logs should have value in the long term.
• Warning : Warnings should highlight an abnormal or unexpected event in the application flow. This event does not cause the application execution to stop, but can signify sub-optimal performance or a potential problem for the future.
• Error : An error should be logged when the current flow of execution is stopped due to a failure. These should indicate a failure in the current activity, not an application-wide failure. These will mainly be unhandled exceptions and recoverable failures.
• Critical : A critical log should describe an unrecoverable application or system crash, or a catastrophic failure that requires immediate attention.

To overwrite these default log level filters, use wwwroot/config/sitecore/sc.logging.xml file.

Note

The Development environment mode sets the Sitecore log level filter to Debug. So the service can be run under Development Environment for more detailed logging.

After all these configuration changes restart the publishing service.

Have a happy performing Sitecore publishing…!!!!