Verify and use the Siteimprove Sitecore plugin

Summary

This article explains how to verify that the Siteimprove Sitecore Plugin is installed correctly and how to use it inside Sitecore to access Siteimprove checks, reports, and recheck options for published pages. The plugin lets users review Siteimprove insights directly in the Sitecore editing workflow.

Overview

The Siteimprove Sitecore Plugin allows content teams to view Siteimprove information from within Sitecore, including accessibility, SEO, content quality, broken links, spelling, readability, and related optimization insights depending on enabled services. Users can confirm the plugin is available by checking for the Siteimprove overlay, ribbon tab, or command in Sitecore, then use the plugin to sign in, review page-level results, and recheck published pages after updates.

Verification

Verify CSP configuration

1. Open browser DevTools on “/sitecore.”
2. Go to Content Editor and open your site home page.
3. Open the browser DevTools Console and verify there are no CSP/CORS violations and no blocked requests to required Siteimprove domains.

Validate plugin UI in Content Editor and Experience Editor

The overlay box should float to the right by default. It will show the option to login if not already logged in with your Siteimprove Credentials.

The Siteimprove tab and Pre publish check and (re)check commands should appear in the ribbon. 

Screenshot of Plugin in Experience Editor:

Screenshot of Plugin in Content Editor:

Siteimprove will only be enabled on items with layout assigned.

Verify plugin appears only for users with required role membership

Verify Plugin expected behavior

The overlay box allows a user to log in to Siteimprove with a username and password.

When a user is logged in, the overlay box will expand larger and display different tools and reports that are available for the selected published page from the Siteimprove Platform.

If the item has not been published yet, the “Live Page” tab will not show data until the page is published and checked in the Siteimprove platform.

If you have the Prepublish feature (available with a Siteimprove subscription to Prepublish), under the Prepublish view tab you can check the content with the Prepublish check option prior to being published. If not, you can publish the page and wait for the next scheduled full site crawl or, for more immediate results, perform a Single Page Check within the Siteimprove platform of the page.

The (re)check command allows users to recheck already scanned page within the Siteimprove platform to update the Siteimprove report for the selected item only for pages that have previously been checked within the Siteimprove platform.

Confirm generated URLs match expected live domains, language behavior, and virtual folder behavior.

To verify that the module is using the correct site settings item, the browser console displays, in debug mode, the data sent to Siteimprove, including the item URL. To view the URLs, enable verbose-level messages.

Verify each mapping site item independently in multi-site setups.

Prepublish Checks (Optional)

Prepublish checks are an optional feature of the plugin. If enabled, the feature allows you to check draft content before being published live. This feature requires a Subscription to the Prepublish. If you are unsure about your subscription status, check with your Customer Success Executive.

To enable Prepublish checks:

1. Set up an API user and API key to be used for the integration, following the steps here: How to connect to the Siteimprove API.
2. Enter the API username and API key under the Siteimprove Setting item under the settings path: /sitecore/system/Modules/Siteimprove/Siteimprove setting

To perform a Prepublish check:

1. To check a page before publishing, use the Siteimprove menu item 1 in Sitecore and choose the Pre-publish check option 2.
   
2. This initiates the check and opens a preview of the page as it will appear when published. When the checks have completed, the plugin will have the results, and items can be highlighted in the preview window.