What's new and changed in SDL Web Experience Optimization 8

Product renaming

The product was renamed from SDL SmartTarget to SDL Web Experience Optimization.

Compatibility with SDL Tridion Sites

SDL Web Experience Optimization 8 is a compatibility release that makes the product compatible with version 8, Cumulative Update 1 applied, of SDL Tridion Sites (previously SDL Tridion), and makes full use of the two important architectural changes introduced with that release: management of the publishing framework in Topology Manager, and a new RESTful, service-based setup for Content Delivery.

Regions now managed through Region trigger, not in configuration file

SDL Web Experience Optimization 8 removes the Regions section from the Experience Optimization configuration file, smarttarget_conf.xml, in which it was introduced in SDL SmartTarget 2014. Instead, a Region trigger is automatically created in the Fredhopper trigger types, if not present already.

Publication-independent excluding of Schema Fields

As of SDL Web 8, in the Experience Optimization configuration, you identify the Schemas whose fields you want to exclude by their Schema ID (say, 255) rather than by their Schema Content Manager URI (say, tcm:3-255-8). This enables you to exclude the Schema in all Publications in one go, when previously, you would need to explicitly create Schema sections for all URIs.

To this end, the Schema element in smarttarget_conf.xml now has an Id attribute instead of a Uri attribute. (The old Uri attribute remains supported for backward compatibility reasons, but SDL recommends that existing users migrate to the new attribute.