SitecoreAI for utility websites: tariffs, outages and Arabic

19 October 2026
Arcsen

A utility’s website publishes content most marketing sites never carry. Tariffs and connection charges must match the bill to the last decimal place. Regulations and customer rights must say the same thing in Arabic and English. And when the power or water goes off, many customers check the website first, so the outage notice has to be there, in both languages, before the call centre queue builds.

SitecoreAI (formerly XM Cloud) gives a utility the workflow, scheduling and fast delivery this needs, and each comes with rules that shape how the content should be built. This guide covers who owns what, how to keep tariff pages exact, how to get outage notices out fast, and what to plan for sustainability content, the customer portal, Arabic and search.

Six kinds of content, six sets of rules

Start by agreeing who owns each kind of content, who approves it and how fast it must go live. This is the map we start from:

Content	Owner and approval	Publishing	Watch for
Tariffs and charges	Pricing or regulatory affairs, then legal	Scheduled for the effective date, both languages together	Rates checked against billing before approval
Regulations and customer rights	Legal	On approval, with the previous version archived	Arabic and English say the same thing
Unplanned outage notices	Duty officer, approved by the duty manager	At once, from a pre-approved template	Live status comes from the outage system
Planned maintenance	Operations	Scheduled, and published when each date starts	Areas, times and restoration updates
Sustainability and efficiency	Sustainability team and marketing	Normal workflow	Every figure has a source and a date
Self-service help	Customer service	Normal workflow	Every task links to the right portal screen

Each row gets its own content model and its own workflow. One workflow for everything is either too slow for outages or too loose for tariffs.

Tariff and regulation pages that must be exact

Model tariffs as data. Each tariff becomes an item with fields for every band, rate, unit and effective date, plus the reference of the decision that approved it, and a component renders the table in both languages. A rate typed into rich text cannot be checked, compared or reused.

Then decide where the numbers live. A Shared field holds one value for every version in every language, which sounds right for a rate that must match in Arabic and English. But Sitecore says workflow and publishing restrictions do not apply to shared fields, so a changed rate would go live at the next publish without approval. Keep rates in versioned fields and let the workflow carry them.

Items become publishable when they reach a workflow state marked Final, so put regulatory and legal approval before that state. A webhook validation action on a workflow command can call an outside service, and if the service does not return a valid response the item stays where it is. Use that step to compare the page’s rates with the billing system’s tariff table before anyone approves it.

Translation needs the same care. SitecoreAI’s AI translation creates language versions of the page and its data sources, and leaves shared fields out. Translations start in the workflow’s initial state unless an editor ticks Keep workflow state, in which case a translation can inherit an approved state and become publishable at once. Leave that box unticked for tariff and regulation pages, and switch off item-level language fallback there, so an Arabic visitor never sees English legal text in place of a missing translation.

Rule of thumb: rates as versioned data, checked against billing before approval, reviewed in both languages and published together.

Outage and maintenance notices that publish fast

Keep live status out of the CMS. The outage map and restoration times belong to the outage management system, served to the site through an API. SitecoreAI holds everything around them: notice templates, area pages, safety advice and planned maintenance. Experience Edge publishes a static snapshot of each item at publish time, its delivery API allows 80 requests per second, and it does not vary its output by user or query string. During an outage peak, the front end should serve cached pages and take live status from the outage system.

For unplanned outages, give the duty team a short workflow: a duty officer fills a pre-approved template in both languages, and a duty manager moves it to the Final state. Commands can send an item directly to any state, so an urgent notice need not wait in a queue. For planned maintenance, editors can schedule when a version is available, and Sitecore notes that you must still publish the page or site when each date starts, and that only one version of a page sits on Experience Edge at a time. Put every scheduled publish on the duty calendar with a named owner.

Ending a notice needs a decision too. Unpublishing removes the page from Experience Edge and may break links to it, and caching outside SitecoreAI can delay its removal. Often the better choice is to keep the page and mark it restored, with the restoration time, which also leaves a record when complaints arrive.

Sustainability content and the hand-off to the portal

Sustainability and efficiency pages are often the ones journalists, investors and AI assistants quote, so treat their figures like tariffs: each figure is a field with an owner, a source report and an as-of date, approved by the sustainability team. Write efficiency tips and incentive programmes as short answers to the questions customers ask, with the date and source beside each figure, so a search engine or an AI assistant can quote them accurately. Our AI visibility service covers how to structure them.

Self-service content ends where the account begins. Experience Edge does not enforce security constraints on content and does not vary output by user, so bills, usage, payments and move-in requests belong to the customer portal. The website explains each task and hands off: one button per task, deep-linked to the right portal screen, in the same language, after sign-in. Keep the help articles in SitecoreAI and serve them to the portal and app through the same delivery API, so customers read one answer everywhere.

Arabic, English and search

Bilingual utility sites drift on terminology: tariff names, programme names, units and the names of authorities. Add them to the Glossary and Localization section of the brand kit, which tells SitecoreAI how specific terms should be handled across languages when pages are translated, including terms that must stay unchanged. Publish Arabic and English together, so a notice or a tariff never goes live in one language only, and check right-to-left layout on phones. Our guide to Arabic-first Sitecore lists the checks.

For search, Sitecore said XM Cloud customers moving to SitecoreAI would receive baseline entitlements for Search, with features rolling out in phases, so check what your tenant includes. Index tariffs, notices, regulations and help in both languages, send account questions such as “my bill” to the portal, and send any search for an outage to the live outage page. Then test with real queries from your contact centre in both languages, including spelling variants and English terms typed in Arabic script.

Where to start

List every regulated statement: each page that states a tariff, charge, deadline or customer right, with its owner and source document.
Rebuild one tariff family as data, with versioned rates, a validation step against billing and a regulatory approval state.
Run an outage drill from template to live page in both languages, and time each step.
Map every self-service task to its portal screen, and test each hand-off in Arabic and English.
Still on Sitecore XP? Build these patterns into the move: Arcsen Ascend is our migration route to SitecoreAI.

Running a utility or energy website on Sitecore? Start with our free Sitecore Health Check. See how our Sitecore practice works with energy and utilities companies, talk to our energy team or send us your RFP.

Frequently asked questions

Can SitecoreAI publish an outage notice immediately?

Yes, once the notice reaches a workflow state marked Final and is published. Use a short workflow with pre-approved templates, and take live outage status from the outage system, because Experience Edge serves a static snapshot taken at publish time.

Should tariff rates sit in Shared fields?

We advise against it. Sitecore says workflow and publishing restrictions do not apply to shared fields, so a changed rate would skip approval. Keep rates in versioned fields and validate them against the billing system.

Can SitecoreAI translate tariff pages into Arabic with AI?

It creates new language versions and leaves shared fields out. If an editor ticks Keep workflow state, a translation can become publishable at once, so leave it unticked for regulated pages and have every Arabic version reviewed.

Can the website show a customer’s bill?

The portal should. Experience Edge does not vary output by user or enforce security on content, so personal data belongs in the portal, with the website handing off through deep links.

Does SitecoreAI include site search?

Sitecore said XM Cloud customers moving to SitecoreAI would receive baseline entitlements for Search, with features rolling out in phases. Check what your tenant includes before you plan.