Note to future self. RTFM and use the packages you are told to install. Recently in my haste to upgrade some SIF scripts and an older implementation to 10.2 (JSS & SXA), I downloaded all the relevant resource packages from the Sitecore download pages & SPE from Github and got to installing. All looked to be well, but noticed that some of the SXA features appeared to be missing, such as the SXA Site manager.

Somehow the items got mangled during the install and just weren’t where they should be. A bit of googling lead me to this stack exchange post indicating the order of install may be the issue, but I was definitely scripting the SPE installs first. That did get me thinking though about how and when the SXA database items were getting installed….and as of 10.2….they’re not. SXA 10.2 is now taking advantage of Items As Resources (IAR), which is great, however does mean that Sitecore Powershell Extensions needs to be installed with the IAR package too. The package that is listed on the Sitecore SXA download page. Not the non-IAR one I installed from the Sitecore Powershell Extensions Github 🤦‍♂️.

After installing the packages provided on Sitecore’s download page, all was well.

Lesson learned. Sitecore.PowerShell.Extensions-6.3 – IAR.scwdp.zip != Sitecore.PowerShell.Extensions-6.3.scwdp.zip