Developers and managers both struggle at times to pre-plan usage of best practices in projects causing many problems which are best avoided. Providing below some learnings & best practices on using and working with Liferay – Part 1.
Don’t work directly on the Liferay database. Use the groovy script console in CONTROL PANEL or the Liferay User Interface. Use the database at the max as a READ ONLY tool for analysis and debugging – even this is for extreme cases when recommended like for problems in reindexing and such for BackgroundTaskTable or Lock_ as per Help Center articles only. Stick to Liferay APIs (REST or Java / Groovy – based) for right results. Changing anything at database level can have unintended consequences which are best avoided.
If you need a cloud offering, instead of deploying Liferay on AWS / GCP / Azure or similar on your own which can be a valid option, also consider and evaluate one of Liferay DXP Self Hosted, Liferay Experience Cloud Self-Managed or Liferay Experience Cloud. They are built on top of GCP with many advanced features pre-baked like CI/CD depending on the version you select. Liferay’s cloud offering decrease many of the efforts of upgrades, infrastructure, security, patches, CI/CD, monitoring and more depending on which option you select.
Use as many out of the box features as possible, followed by configuration and lastly customization. There are 100s and 1000s of direct and indirect features for Liferay available on it’s documentation site.
Support tickets are for Liferay product issues, reach out to Customer Success for short term engagements up to multi-month configuration, system administration, customization, audits and such areas. Global services is for executing projects, SME engagements to embed a Liferay expert into your team for technical help, team augmentation, custom packages to support upgrades, performance tuning, DevOps/Architecture kickstarts, long- and short-term customization development, etc. on Liferay. Reaching out to the right team maximizes chances of a fast resolution for your request. For support issues, refer this blog: https://liferay.dev/blogs/-/blogs/working-with-liferay-support
Maintain a DevOps / DevSecOps / Repository strategy. Use best practices of code merging, quality and more.
Maintain a list of customizations, custom APIs (REST) and modules that are deployed.
Consider headless if you want extreme performance or a very specific User Interface with a non standard JS library or you want to connect with an external app with Liferay as the engine or want a very high LightHouse score. Even without headless high scores are possible in most areas.
Understand LightHouse and PageSpeed Insights score. There are many hidden things which are NOT OBVIOUS – for example mobile performance scores. Consider investing in parallel into an in-house monitoring tool as well.
Upgrades need preparation and multiple dry runs. Bad data, orphan data and bad customizations create problems in upgrade. So use Liferay in the optimum way as per documentation.
Keep regular watch on End of Life support and premium / extended support phases. Pre-plan your upgrades by at least one+ years.
Lift and shift from in-prem to cloud is not a healthy approach using AMIs. Consider setting up Liferay again via backups if you are shifting to AWS/GCP/Azure from in-prem. Otherwise consider Liferay Experience Cloud, migration would still be needed though.
Search & database server should be monitored and optimized on routine basis.
Search optimization needs to be a regular habit by the Liferay Administrator as the content and documents get updated. Explore concepts like suggestions, boosting, queries, filters, blueprints and more.
SSO, Authentication, Authorization, Login and Security need advance planning and design. These topics vary widely from customer to customer.
There are many inbuilt apps in areas of collaboration, social, workflow, content, process, documents and more. Explore and use them before doing customizations.
Explore Liferay marketplace for technical & functional accelerators / solutions before investing in developing from scratch.
Maintain documentation for your architecture, design, customizations, testing, security, code quality and other areas.
Understand and study portal & system properties, they have many settings which can help in managing various scenarios directly by configuration only.
Explore Liferay University and trainings on it.
Clustered environments are possible in Liferay and consider planning for them right during your architecture, design phase at the start of project rather than later.
Consider usage of Advanced or S3 filestore, Clustering, Headless, Liferay DevStudio, Docker images of Liferay, Virtual instances and similar advanced concepts as need be from early in the project.
Understand Liferay architecture, tooling and internals like Portlets, OSGi, Liferay DevStudio, Configurations, Control Panel, Gogo Shell, Module projects, Dependencies, Modularity and such.
Your important directories and areas in Liferay are: Liferay Home and sub-directories, Filestore / document library – data folder, Custom modules, Configuration files in Liferay Home sub/directories, Search server, Control Panel, Database, Other peripheral configuration areas like load balancer, application server, networking, clustered environments and such.
Learn to use the Liferay forums, Liferay Blogs, Liferay GitHub, Liferay Help Center, Liferay Community site, Customer & Partner portals of Liferay well. Lot of useful information is available there.
There are in-built areas in the same integrated DXP installation from 7.4 onwards for Digital experience, Portal, Commerce with Analytics. Consider using them from DXP platform before doing customizations for features that are available already.
Explore concepts like debug patch, logging per module and overall logging in Liferay.
Reach out to community slack channel which can be a great way to further connect with Liferay resources.
Keep your portal & components updated with relevant patches & upgrades as per advisory from Liferay.
Refer Liferay resources page with case studies & whitepapers. It has useful information on cloud migration, compatibility matrix, benchmarking, what customers are doing with Liferay and more.
There are two parts to search optimization in Liferay. One is the internal search and other is the SEO / Digital Marketing for content. Below, I am sharing concepts and keywords to explore for both areas.
Liferay internal search:
Search BluePrints
Search Insights
Custom Indexers
Tags & Categories
ReIndexing
Facets
Suggestions
Boosting
Sorting
Low level search
Search Options
Similar Results
Queries & Filters
Google Search console / Bing search console / Google Analytics analysis and feedback into internal search
Below are some notes on Java which help us to decipher how it has evolved over time since 1995. This is part 1 of the series. This acts as a mini caselet to understand how a successful ecosystem related to an application programming language has evolved over decades.
Origins: Bytecode, compile once, run anywhere concept via Java Virtual Machine – 1995
Object oriented origins, largely focussed on application programming
Steadily in one of the top choices for programming since origin
Liberal license & forks under TCK/JCK & OpenJava along with paid, enterprise options of Oracle / IBM and more as of 2022
Large open standards, open collaboration & open source influence since the beginning
Automatic memory management
Top languages built on top of JVM: Java, Kotlin, Groovy, Scala, Clojure as of 2022
Associated top products, frameworks, libraries and platforms built on top of Java: Spring, Activiti, jBPM, Drools, Log4j, Kafka, Tomcat, Spark, ElasticSearch and more as of 2022
Multi-threaded
Platform independent & Just in time
Influenced by C/C++
Over time, both Java Spring & Jakarta EE have evolved for enterprise Java
Has developed coding standards
Has a well defined specification ecosystem
Spring ecosystem has support for microservices, reactive programming, cloud, webapps, serverless, events, batch, security and more
JNI is an option to run native code
Thousands of tutorials, blogs, websites, news, videos & technology articles cover Java on routine basis
What could be the outcomes for various departments in an organization in terms of using analytics? Here is part 1 for the same.
Background and context: Most organizations struggle at some point of time in their lifecycle for management outcomes and as per the latest trends try to use analytics to assist in better decision making. With more than 30-50 areas for algorithms / frameworks and knowledge in the quantitative and mathematics fields, where should the focus be? Based on my observations and learnings, focus could be on below areas in terms of outcomes:
Human Resources:
Employee satisfaction
Career advancement
Skills & Knowledge analysis
Compensation & benefits analysis
Leadership pipeline analysis
Scalability analysis
Cost analysis
Finance:
Sustainability in terms of profitability & continued revenue
Local community engagement
Investments for sustainability
Product & services evolution & sustainability
Product team:
Customer satisfaction scores
Revenue trends
Features analysis in terms of usability & adoption
Product support & customer success scores
Marketing:
Customer retention
Net new customer addition
Brand awareness & recall
Cost analysis for digital marketing & customer acquisition
This caselet tries to summarize the evolution of eCommerce in India in the last two decades and lists the phases as observed.
Summary from Wikipedia article here:
Internet user base of 600+ Million in India
Rapid growth in eCommerce but eCommerce penetration as a percentage of internet users is low compared to US, China, France and so on
Cash on delivery is the preferred mode for more than 70% of users
Demand for international products is high
Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal, JioOnline, Multiple grocery vendors and specialized sellers in electronics, gifts, travel and more are the leading eCommerce entities
Open Network for Digital Commerce is under pilot phase in India
Online travel booking, apparel, retail, grocery, electronics, mobile, DTH, warehousing, logistics, food delivery, ride hailing, furniture, luxury, home maintenance & services, gifts, fashion are a large component of eCommerce in India
COVID-19 created lot of upheaval in the models and sales in eCommerce
Evolution into 10-30 minutes delivery, next day delivery and innovative models have seen an uptick in last 3-5 years
Large number of investors have put in money into various entities over the last 10-15 years
Niche players in automobile, apparel, grocery and similar areas have been coming up
String of acquisitions / mergers have happened over the last 10 years especially from large players
B2B eCommerce is growing quickly. Players like Bizongo, Udaan, Medikabazaar, Moglix, Ofbusiness and Inframarket are present.
Major regulation rules include foreign players not allowed to hold inventory
Phases as observed in the last two decades:
Standalone focussed players – early entrants – with less regulation
High growth in number of eCommerce players
Entry of investors
Regulations evolving over time
Shift of smaller sellers (many of them) to marketplaces
Friction between online & offline sellers
Hyper competitive growth with losses to capture market
Enablement of financial ecosystem like UPI, RuPAY, QR, JanDhan, Cash on delivery models and so on
Evolution of 4G and broadband
Specialized and niche sellers
IPOs for many specialized players
Newer models of sales around delivery, bundling of additional facilities and so on
Evolution of local logistics players
Consolidation, closures & M&A across the industry
Brand building, focus shift to a mature mindset and ecosystem
Newer initiatives to standardize eCommerce like ONDC and preparation for 5G
I am starting with mini caselets newsletter (once every month) which is a series of anonymous (real / hypothetical / reality inspired) mini case studies each of maximum 2 pages from my observations of industry happenings – direct / indirect / via news articles / network / friends / problems that people face and such. Intention of each mini caselet is to highlight a set of challenges that are faced both by managers & employees or hypothetically created leading to better leadership and management styles which in turn give better environment for employees or solutions or solution direction.
Think of a situation of an ITES company office in Tier-1 city which is recruiting lot of fresh talent and working on onboarding them to become productive in 2-3 months to deliver good projects.
What can go wrong?
Disagreements between two set of managers who manage the same account / customer in the same shared office space of an extended development center each having competing teams
Uneven knowledge transition to fresh candidates
Silos & lack of functional knowledge for team
Managers deciding how the behaviors of employees should be in terms of which interactions they should have and which to avoid based in older management & leadership principles from 80s/90s command and control structures
Cultural differences in terms of recruitment geographies of candidates leading to differing work styles – For example, somebody studied and lived in a Tier 2 city in India vs. somebody who studied and lived in Tier 1 city in non India region – both will have differing goals and perspectives
Culture of less knowledge sharing and long working hours
Struggle for accommodation, food, entertainment, social circle and more with a very limited salary in year 1 in Tier-1 city
Disengagement of support functions in terms of how work is done on the ground and them differing to managers for every decision
Add to the mix competitive landscape to go onsite, climb the corporate ladder & increase salary quickly
All this in the influence of 1.5/2 year retention contracts for fresh candidates when they can’t leave the firm easily
Now to solve this situation simply flip the scenario and fix each point one by one by interventions / trainings / guidance / discussions / role plays / similar techniques and you have a recipe for a better culture, it’s as simple as that.
Being direct, frank, authentic and natural self is ok but below is not. We should not be normalizing this:
Achieve targets literally at any cost
Repeated bad behaviour in hierarchy
Messing up people’s personal lives
Using words like professionalism & seasoned to avoid doing what needs to be done
Playing mind games with people fresh out of college
Delegate and then take credit for other’s work
Judge people without knowing context
Promote silos, avoid team work and mess up collaboration and creativity
Pay someone less than market rate if we can afford the real salary
Treat people like trash and take advantage of them
Not fix the fixable
Not doing the right thing
Bring personal biases into the organization
Have different set of rules for the same input and output for different groups of people
We are not at war, we are in information technology / services industry
Most people lose their cool or misbehave once in a while or have a bad day once in a while but if that is a habit ingrained in the culture of the organization affecting large parts of the organization then there is a problem that needs a relook
