We have worked extensively in past couple projects on how to extend xConnect facet, add fun properties to it as needed and tuck it away nicely for later use on all touch down points. Now, this whole process has become second nature. I still remember my first trial at this and I missed various things which wasted more than half a day. 🙂 I do not do rookie mistakes any more. lol
So, traditionally if you need an xConnect facet, you do most common steps on your local or a simple upper environment. This is well documented every where, so, I will not repeat myself on what this process is. Here is one of my blog posts you can refer back to.
Now, what if your upper environment is Sitecore Managed Cloud? Steps are going to be different in this case. So, it is important we know the drill when this is the case:
This link (Sitecore Documentation) helped me quite a bit actually. I would recommend referring this first and then follow the steps below I have as well as additional reference to get you rolling with custom xConnect data.
Steps to actually get it to work:
Deploy your JSON model to all xConnect Collection roles on your resource group
Also, ensure you deploy your JSON on Index worker web job which is usually under xc-search App Service role on your resource group
Drop JSON also on Marketing ops App service.
Ensure the dll that has your custom facet defined and config patch is deployed to all core roles – CM, CD and Processing role App services.
Restart all the xc roles where you dropped JSON and also all core roles to ensure they are reading from all the right places
I would also recommend stopping and starting web job if you are not confident it did not restart when you restarted the app service (xc-search)
And that is it, it should all work fine now. You should be able to ship the information to xConnect extended facet fields as needed. Hope this helps some one who is unsure how to deploy custom extended facet to Managed Cloud!
Remember the feeling when you know you saw a similar error before, but, can not recollect what was done to resolve that? I spent more than half my day battling something very similar that I had seen before, but, no matter what I did from re-collection it did not work. Let me take you through what happened.
Alright, I am trying to set up Azure pipeline to use TDS Web Deploy for very first time. Already first time things, I am usually extra cautious, skeptical and may be not as confident as normal. To top that off, when I struggle to solve something very familiar, it does something to me, I feel like *****. I was burnt out by the end of it, but, good news is that this issue is squashed and I am on to next step.
Okay, here is the story! I was being a good girl and following the steps noted here to get Web Deploy TDS done right via Azure Devops to build and generate artifacts from solution hosted on Azure Devops. I thought I was doing well, until the install of Hedgehog TDS Development Nuget package. So, I opened up Package Manager Console -> selected source as nuget.org and then selected the project to which I need to install the package. It did its thing and seemed alright. For my sanity, I wanted to rebuild the project to which I had done changes and boom, I get a huuuuuge error message which is the error you might have seen at some point of time working with TDS. Full error block below:
The "VerifyTDSVersion" task failed unexpectedly.
System.IO.FileLoadException: API restriction: The assembly 'file:///C:\Users\deepthi.katta\source\repos\project\packages\HedgehogDevelopment.TDS.6.0.0.18\build\HedgehogDevelopment.SitecoreProject.Tasks.dll' has already loaded from a different location. It cannot be loaded from a new location within the same appdomain.
at System.Reflection.RuntimeAssembly._nLoad(AssemblyName fileName, String codeBase, Evidence assemblySecurity, RuntimeAssembly locationHint, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, IntPtr pPrivHostBinder, Boolean throwOnFileNotFound, Boolean forIntrospection, Boolean suppressSecurityChecks)
at System.Reflection.RuntimeAssembly.nLoad(AssemblyName fileName, String codeBase, Evidence assemblySecurity, RuntimeAssembly locationHint, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, IntPtr pPrivHostBinder, Boolean throwOnFileNotFound, Boolean forIntrospection, Boolean suppressSecurityChecks)
at System.Reflection.RuntimeAssembly.InternalLoadAssemblyName(AssemblyName assemblyRef, Evidence assemblySecurity, RuntimeAssembly reqAssembly, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, IntPtr pPrivHostBinder, Boolean throwOnFileNotFound, Boolean forIntrospection, Boolean suppressSecurityChecks)
at System.Reflection.RuntimeAssembly.InternalLoadFrom(String assemblyFile, Evidence securityEvidence, Byte[] hashValue, AssemblyHashAlgorithm hashAlgorithm, Boolean forIntrospection, Boolean suppressSecurityChecks, StackCrawlMark& stackMark)
at System.Reflection.Assembly.ReflectionOnlyLoadFrom(String assemblyFile)
at HedgehogDevelopment.SitecoreProject.Tasks.VerifyTDSVersion.Execute()
at Microsoft.Build.BackEnd.TaskExecutionHost.Microsoft.Build.BackEnd.ITaskExecutionHost.Execute()
at Microsoft.Build.BackEnd.TaskBuilder.<ExecuteInstantiatedTask>d__26.MoveNext() Website.Deploy.TDS C:\Users\deepthi.katta\source\repos\project\packages\HedgehogDevelopment.TDS.6.0.0.18\build\HedgehogDevelopment.TDS.targets 187
I can bet my life, I have seen this before. So, I tried re-collecting what I did and also looked up online to find out what I can do to remove this error:
Reloaded the project of concern after unloading it .
Reloaded whole visual studio thinking that would do the magic.
Ensured I matched the Nuget package version to TDS I have on my local. I faintly remembered that could also cause similar error due to conflicting versions.
Removed a new line that got added to project after I installed the package which is below. I know I should not, but, wanted to try it. This worked!!
But, I can not remove it though, build on Azure will yell at me and I actually tried it and it literally did yell at me. So, even if the above worked, I can not go with that. I looked at something else on *.csproj file that caught my attention. See below:
I went to the local path and could actually see the HedgehogDevelopment.SitecoreProject.Tasks.dll located in the path noted on import. A quick screenshot below:
This gave me nice clue in right direction. I quickly gathered my patience and did the following in order. Do note that you have to start below on singleton TDS project which does not have internal references to other projects, that should be saved for last. I applied my theory on bundle TDS project and lost hope at first. But, something told me I need to try it again on simple TDS project.
Installed Nuget package via running below command on all TDS projects I have on solution Install-Package HedgehogDevelopment.TDS -Version 6.0.0.18
Removed existing import that was loading location above for HedgehogDevelopment.SitecoreProject.targets, I would not need that now that I have all those dll’s loading from Nuget.
Note that #1 and #2 need to be done in specific order. Otherwise, you will get other pesky errors as TDS is thrown off if you remove references before adding one more.
Reload whole Visual studio. Do note that simply reload of project would not help and you will have same error again and again. In my case, I knew I was on right path, but, it did tire me since I tried building as soon as I did above steps.
Rebuild solution and this time you should have successful build if all is well.
After I checked in the above changes, my azure pipeline was a happy camper and was able to generate the artifacts I was after. Yayyyyy!! Moving to next step and I am sure I will face more roadblocks and have to tear them apart. But, this made me real happy on a Friday!!!!
Hope this helps some one save their half day or more!
