Alfresco Books by CIGNEX Datamatics

Easy Configurations from Alfresco Share book

2012-06-08T01:52:00.001-07:00

Many of the readers are wondering that if book is for Business users why there is a chapter of "Configuring Share". Indeed this is included to make users feel how easy it is to customize Share and technical expertise is not required for customizations. Even Non-Technical user can make some of essential configurations and can be benefitted by customizing Share on their own. Exposure of XML is required to get most out of this chapter. Alfresco Share can be easily configured and customized. You can configure various aspects of Alfresco share application like creating custom content, managing more aspects, editing metadata, customizing forms, configuring workflows, working on Share documents through Google Docs , managing number of actions on Document Library, defining new status indicators for the document ,configuring separate Alfresco share server for quicker restart etc. All such configurations can be found in chapter 'Configuring Share' of the book.
The default value for share configuration properties are defined in share-config.xml located at <install-application> | tomcat | webapps | share | WEB-INF | classes | alfresco. But the custom configuration files should be provided as extension and can be placed inside <install-application> | <tomcat> | shared | classes |alfresco | web-extension folder. The entire configuration related details could be added/modified in share-config-custom.xml.There is already share-config-custom.xml.sample file is placed in the web-extension folder ,which can be considered for reference and can prove advantageous for the customizations.
Through this article, you will learn how you can configure custom properties:
Rename the file 'share-config-custom.xml.sample' by removing the '.sample' from the extension. We have used the case study of a marketing site throughout the book. This case study is the basis of various concepts. The marketing site stores all sort of marketing materials like brochure, presentation, banners etc. in the Alfresco repository. For e.g while creating different banners for a site you want to store custom properties like color of banner , border or positioning of each banner .
Follow simple steps to create Banner with custom Properties:

Create and register Content Model in Alfresco repository that defines properties of Banner.
Configure Share to add banner and its properties by adding small code snippet in share-config-custom.xml.
Refresh the changes by hitting the URL http://<server-name>/share/service/index and clicking "Refresh Web Scripts" Button

The details about the steps can be finding in "Configuring
Share" chapter. This is just one example of Share Configuration of various business needs. You will find many such examples in the book.

2012-06-07T05:05:00.002-07:00

Alfresco Share on PacktPub ,A new book, worldwide service, 10% discount.

Workflows in Alfresco Share

2012-06-07T01:44:00.000-07:00

For any Business or Organization, the most important aspect is following a set of activities performed by relevant roles to achieve common business goal. These activities can be categorized into Business Process. Automation of these processes would help in managing business effectively and timely. This need can be achieved through one of the prominent feature of Alfresco called as Workflow.

In this article you will learn about various workflow capabilities including start workflow, view task details , view workflow details , reassign task , save and close and filtering of task.

New Inbox Dashlet

When you logged in, the first thing that is displayed is User dashboard. The dashboard is user configurable that contains many dashlet. If you don’t find My Tasks Dashlet, you can add dashlet using Customize Dashboard. In the below screen you may notice the new task listed in the My Tasks window. You can filter tasks on the basis of high priority, due tasks, overdue tasks, pooled tasks, assigned tasks. Additionally you can start workflow from this dashlet, can view details of task and can edit task.

You can also click on All Tasks to look in a more detailed page. In the below screen you may notice additional filters for Due date like filter on the basis of today, tomorrow, Next 7 Days, No date. You can also view workflow detail for a particular task.

View Workflow Detail Page

When you click on workflow details link, you can get information about the all tasks associated with that instance, you will know history of tasks, who all are reviewers for this document, what is the approval percentage, previous review comments, and most recently completed task. Additionally, you can edit task from here as well.

Reassign Task

For various business reasons you can reassign the task by clicking the Reassign Task button as shown below. Once you click the Reassign Task button, you will see the Reassign Task window as shown below. You can search for the users and reassign the task to an appropriate user.

Save And Close

At times it becomes important to save the changes as you may not have time or with any other reason you are not able to complete information in one go. In this case you can save the changes of the workflow by clicking the Save And Close button. Next time when you open task details page you will find your changes. Suppose you don’t want to work on task at present, you can cancel the task by clicking the Cancel button. These two buttons are available in Task detail page.

Workflow Information in the Document Details Page

For a specific document in your space, you can find out the workflow details by clicking the document itself. You will be able to view Details page of the document.

The document's details page list down metadata, actions, version history, permissions and workflow details as shown below. If you click on those links, you will find workflow details associated with this document for your reference.

Summary

In this article, you have learned how to:

How to start workflow and view task details
View Workflow Detail Page
Reassign Task
View workflow information from Document Detail Page
Use of Save and Close , Cancel button.

New Book "Alfresco Share" for Collaboration

2012-06-07T01:18:00.000-07:00

For a while now, we have been hearing a lot about collaboration in Enterprise space. We speak day in and day out to our customers who have recognized the need to have a tool for use within the organization for better and efficient collaboration. The fundamental concept behind collaboration is that groups can achieve more than individuals. Collaboration allows individuals with complementary areas of expertise to create better results faster than before.

Alfresco Share has since evolved and has become a competent tool for collaboration functions within an enterprise. The impressive road map which Alfresco provides promises an exciting possibility it is created using completely open standards. Share is focused on Collaboration tasks and includes integration with popular Blogging, Wiki, and Forum/Discussion products out of the box. It provides great interface into more traditional document management library With Share, users modify work spaces to fit their collaborative requirements inside or outside the organization. Peers can be invited to share and collaborate around the project and its content. Share offers users, developers and administrators a list of features. The simple and intuitive dashboard of Alfresco Share gives the users a bird’s eye view of what to expect. Site activities, site and user profile, calendars, RSS feeds etc. are available to the users.

This book is a beginners guide and explain how Alfresco Share is useful for collaboration. .Reading a book will help you in taking various strategic decisions for the Business.It also explains how Share can be customized according to Business need through configurations and provides user an idea of how Alfresco Share is built using Spring Surf Framework.Using this book one can learn features of Alfresco Share and a way to customize Alfresco Share easily. This book is must for readers who want to explore Alfresco Share capabilities and also act as base for performing heavy customization in Alfresco Share.

This book will take you to following features:

Understanding the architecture of Share will help in extending and configuring Share. You will learn about how content is stored in Alfresco repository and is fetch using Web Scripts.
Managing Users and Groups through Alfresco Share. Implementing and Understanding the underlying framework behind the Alfresco security model. The Alfresco security model is flexible and allows you to choose either its built-in security or an external security model defined by your organization, by using systems such as LDAP and Active Directory.
Site in a Share is a way to collaborate within the team or specific project or some tasks. Learn about managing and configuring site will help you set up environment similar to various teams working in various project and collaborating within each other.
Understanding of collaboration tools that come as a standard built-in capabilities of Alfresco Share like wikis, blogs, data list entries, manage calendar, link and discussion.
Managing content through Document Library is possible. How Documents are stored in a hierarchical folder structure and can be versioned and associated with metadata. Users are able to comment on and apply tags to documents to categorize and organize them.
Implementing workflows for simple approval process or a complex business process management. Also, Business rules can be applied to documents within the document library to automate the movement of documents through business processes.
You will learn how various components of Share that can be configured and various deployment approaches to be used for customization.

Congratulations to JavaRanch Alfresco3 ECM Book Winners

2009-08-22T11:55:00.000-07:00

This week, all the authors of the book (Munwar Shariff, Vinita Choudhary, Amita Bhandari, and Pallika Majumdar) were on JavaRanch to promote the book "Alfresco 3 Enterprise Content Management".

This promotion was held in the EJB and other JEE Technologies forum which can be found here: http://www.coderanch.com/forums/f-11/EJB-Other-Java-EE-Technologies
The winners who received a free copy of the book are:
Jessica Sant (21685)
Paras Jain (93558)
Navin Porwal (213234)
Alaa Nassef (164104)

Congratulations to the winners.
More details can be found at:http://www.coderanch.com/t/459352/EJB-Other-Java-EE-Technologies/java/Winners-Alfresco-Enterprise-Content-Management
----
Alfresco 3 ECM Implementation on PacktPub.com A new book, worldwide service, 10% discount.

A New Book on Alfresco 3 Share is released

2009-07-15T12:01:00.000-07:00

Packt and CIGNEX are pleased to announce a new book that guides readers to customize, use, and administer websites using the Alfresco CMS platform. Written by a team of four Content Management experts from CIGNEX, Alfresco 3 Enterprise Content Management Implementation gives users a clear understanding about how to integrate external applications such as Liferay Portal, Adobe Flex, iPhone, iGoogle, and Facebook to meet their Content Management needs.

Alfresco is one of the most popular Java-based Content Management System. Alfresco 3 is its upgraded version which includes Alfresco Surf, a new N-Tier Architecture, which delivers scalability and accommodates more users on existing hardware resources. Alfresco 3 offers true Enterprise Content Management (ECM) by providing an Open Source alternative to Microsoft SharePoint, Documentum, and Interwoven.

This book guides users through creating smart, collaborative content repositories and shows how to use Alfresco 3 to create more elegant document sharing, better collaborative working, and reliable automated workflow processes. The book explains how administrators can set up Alfresco 3 for multiple business units as a single-instance multi-tenant environment.

Readers will learn to work and co-ordinate with membership accounts, including LDAP integration and single sign-on. Using Alfresco 3, readers will be able to automate version tracking and share network folders. They will also be able to manage business documents with version control, library services, content organization, and advanced search. Though this book is not a developer guide, various examples in the book will help developers to extend Alfresco functionality and to integrate Alfresco with external systems.

This book is designed for system administrators, experienced users, and business owners who want to install and use Alfresco in their teams or businesses. It assumes a degree of technical confidence and does not require specialist system administration or developer skills to get a basic system up and running. This book is out now and available from Packt. For more information, please visit: book website.

----
Alfresco 3 ECM Implementation on PacktPub.com A new book, worldwide service, 10% discount.

It's time to UPDATE the Alfresco ECM Book

2009-02-10T10:46:00.000-08:00

For the past 25 months (since the first version of this book is released), the open source content management software has entered into mainstream business.

The adoption of Alfresco has grown exponentially with over 1.5 million downloads of the software, with over 50,000 live sites and with over 150 applications in Alfresco Forge to download.

The book was written for the version 1.4 and since then the software is upgraded many times. The Alfresco product is matured and improved with lots of new and exciting features. The current version 3.0.1 and the upcoming version 3.1 offer new concepts which are very significant to the end users.

I think it is a high time to upgrade this book.

We (at CIGNEX) implemented Alfresco at many large enterprises such as Activision, Sesame Street, Medco, Electronic Arts and Cross Country Healthcare. Some of these Alfresco deployments serve over 10 TB of data to millions of users in a clustered and high-availability environment. We have integrated many 3rd party applications with Alfresco.

Documenting our experience & expertise on Alfresco implementations will be a great value addition to the book.

We will provide updates about the upcoming book...VERY SOON.

--
Alfresco Enterprise CMS Implementation on PacktPub.com First Alfresco book, worldwide service, 10% discount.

Alfresco WCM article on Packt website

2007-08-15T14:12:00.001-07:00

A nice article about Alfresco's WCM features is at:
http://www.packtpub.com/article/alfresco-web-content-management-2-0-part1

Alfresco 2.1 (the new release) includes many enhancements to Web Content Management module.
--
Alfresco Enterprise CMS Implementation on PacktPub.com First Alfresco book, worldwide service, 10% discount.

Alfresco Book Review by EMC Documentum expert

2007-08-15T14:04:00.000-07:00

Pawan Kumar, Principal @ doQuent, and the author of "Documentum Content Management Foundations: EMC Proven Professional Certification Exam E20-120 Study Guide" has done a review of Alfresco Book.

Summary of the Review:

This book is definitely a must-have for anyone implementing a solution using Alfresco. It is a handy reference for performing various tasks on the Alfresco platform. If you are new to content management in general then you may need additional resources to make effective use of the information available in this book.

I liked the changes he had suggested in his review. I will follow them in the next update.

Read the complete review at:
http://doquent.wordpress.com/2007/07/27/book-review-alfresco-by-munwar-shariff/

--
Alfresco Enterprise CMS Implementation on PacktPub.com First Alfresco book, worldwide service, 10% discount.

Alfresco Case Study - Presto

2007-04-11T00:29:00.000-07:00

Presto's unique digital delivery system is a combination of Presto Service and the HP Printing Mailbox. It allows users to receive email, photos, and newsletters from a variety of well-known publishers without the need for a computer or an Internet connection.

CIGNEX Created a Flexible, Easy-to-Use Content Management System to power newsletters for Presto's printing mailbox service. The Presto CMS is developed on top of Alfresco, an Open Source enterprise content management platform. The architecture supports high availability, high performance, and replication support across multiple servers.

Read the case study at http://www.cignex.com/site/resources/library/case_studies

--
Alfresco Enterprise CMS Implementation on PacktPub.com First Alfresco book, worldwide service, 10% discount.

Learn, Customize and Use Alfresco ECM in 60 minutes

2007-03-19T14:31:00.000-07:00

It’s happening! The Open Source Content Management System (OSCMS) Summit is being sponsored by Yahoo! The OSCMS summit takes place on March 22nd and 23rd in Yahoo Campus in Sunnyvale, California.

As an Author of the book Alfresco Enterprise Content Management Implementation, I am presenting a 60 minute packed session covering the complete cycle of planning, implementing and customizing your ECM installation. My colleague at CIGNEX, Harish Ramachandran is helping me out with the live Demo.

Our presentation is on this Thursday (March 22nd, 2007) from 1:45pm to 2:45pm.

Alfresco offers true Open Source Enterprise Content Management (ECM) - Document Management, Collaboration, Records Management, Knowledge Management, Web Content Management and Imaging. Unlike most other open source CMS which offer only the web content management, Alfresco provides a wide range of solutions to Enterprise customers with an impressive roadmap.

The topics which are going to be covered are:

Working with users and membership accounts
Using Alfresco as a Smart document repository; working with automatic version tracking and control, and accessing the repository from the Web, shared network folders, or CIFS
Making content easy to find using search, content categorization, and metadata
Automating document management tasks with business rules and complete workflows
Working together using Alfresco’s collaboration and syndication features to create effective working groups
Customizing the user interface, creating your own dashboard layouts; presenting content in custom ways relevant to your business
Implementing Imaging and Forms Processing

With real-life examples from CIGNEX project implementations.
If you are attending the conference, hope to see you in the conference.

--
Alfresco Enterprise CMS Implementation on PacktPub.com First Alfresco book, worldwide service, 10% discount.

Alfresco Book Code Download

2007-02-20T19:14:00.000-08:00

If you have already purchased the Alfresco Book, please check if you have downloaded the code samples and files from the Book's download page.

There are about 60+ hands on exercises illustrated in the book and it is going to more convenient for you if you have access to the sample code and the example files.

The entire code bundle with sample files is a 6.5 MB ZIP file. It contains two folders:

1. chapter_downloads
2. full_downloads_alf14

1. chapter_downloads

Contains various sample scripts, images and content files are used in each chapter of the Alfresco Book. In some of the chapters you will also find information to edit various configuration files. The "chapter_downloads" folder contains sub-folders for individual chapters containing all the required files. Read the individual README.txt file present in each sub-folder to get more details.

2. full_downloads_alf14

This folder contains all the files required to bring up the complete DEMO site as per the Alfresco Book. Read "README.txt" file in this folder for more details. The demo files present in this folder are applicable ONLY to Alfresco 1.4 Release.

Hope you enjoy the samples provided in the book.

--
Alfresco Enterprise CMS Implementation on PacktPub.com First Alfresco book, worldwide service, 10% discount.

JavaRanch Promotion Winners

2007-02-12T15:52:00.000-08:00

We recently had "Alfresco Book" promotion week in JavaRanch website (Feb 6 - 9, 2007).

JavaRanch is a friendly place for Java greenhorns. This is the place where all the JavaRanchers go to replenish their inventory, and learn a few new tricks. Not only are there all the answers to frequently asked questions, but also further links to WhereYouCanGetStuff you don't find here. There is also a list of JavaEvents, and JavaRanchInTheNews, they put the newspaper cutouts on the wall.

I really enjoyed answering to questions related to Alfresco technology in the Forum. At the end of the week there were 4 winners who received free copies of the recently published Alfresco Book.

If you are a serious Java Developer, I recommend you to visit this cool website.

--
Alfresco Enterprise CMS Implementation on PacktPub.com First Alfresco book, worldwide service, 10% discount.

How flexible is Alfresco workflow?

2007-02-07T02:12:00.000-08:00

Alfresco includes two types of workflows out of the box. One is the Simple Workflow which is content-oriented and the other one is the Advanced Workflow which is task-oriented.

The simple workflow features of Alfresco enables you to define a simple approve- reject workflow for your documents. The email templates and notification business rules are helpful to notify all the concerned people involved in the workflow process. You can also implement complex workflows by chaining the spaces with multiple approve and reject steps.

The complex task-oriented workflow requirements can be handled by Advanced Workflow features. You can create a task, attach multiple documents and send it to multiple people for review. Using the dashboard views, you can view all the tasks assigned to you and all the tasks you have assigned to others. You can track the tasks to closure using the web client user interface.

There is a dedicated Chapter in the book titled "Chapter 9. Workflow", which explains you the concepts such as :

· Enable simple workflow on documents
· Create email templates and set email notifications
· Extend workflow with multiple approval steps
· Implement a complex workflow scenario for digital asset management
· Start an advanced workflow from the list of predefined workflows
· Assign priority, due date, reviewer, and documents to the workflow
· Take ownership of a task
· Reassign a task
· Change the workflow state
· List tasks assigned to you and tasks completed by you
· Cancel or abort the workflows you have started
· Create your own custom advanced workflow

--
Alfresco Enterprise CMS Implementation on PacktPub.com First Alfresco book, worldwide service, 10% discount.

Selecting a CMS is very important for the upcoming websites

2007-02-07T02:02:00.000-08:00

Some one asked me a question in JavaRanch about Alfresco, whether it is a good choice for upcoming websites (starting small and grow over a period of time).

Alfresco is for upcoming web sites as well. For all the websites which are going to evolve over a period of time, you should seriously consider the following things:

1> How easy it is to scale the functionality?

2> How simple, cheaper and seamless it is to upgrade to newer versions of the software?

3> Does it provide a strong and impressive roadmap for the CMS product so that you can leverage the features as and when available?

4> Can you get enough SUPPORT (help) when required?

Alfresco scores 100% in all above aspects.

--
Alfresco Enterprise CMS Implementation on PacktPub.com First Alfresco book, worldwide service, 10% discount.

ECM implementation fails due to lack of planning

2007-02-05T15:34:00.000-08:00

Kshipra Singh of Packt publishing asked me the following question about my recent book Alfresco Enterprise CMS Implementation,

In Chapter 3: Planning, you talk about Follow Best Practices to implement a project using open-source software. Give us a sneak preview about it.

Most of the Enterprise Content Management projects fail not because of technology, but because of lack of proper planning.

Planning is the most critical phase of any implementation project. During this phase, most of the decisions are made to customize specific features in a particular way. You define the security framework, custom-content types, folder structure, categories, workflow, reporting, business rules, and collaboration. During planning phase, you will scope your implementation, prioritize the requirements, and finalize the project plan. This chapter provides you information required for your planning exercise before implementing your system using Alfresco.

Click here to read the complete interview.

--
Alfresco Enterprise CMS Implementation on PacktPub.com First Alfresco book, worldwide service, 10% discount.

Open Source Imaging Solution

2007-01-24T15:48:00.000-08:00

You can extend the value of your ECM investment by implementing imaging and automated forms processing solutions, as per your organizational requirements. Increasingly, electronic document images have the same legal status as a paper document.

Alfresco integrates with various image capturing systems to provide flexible and intelligent form processing. This results in greater control and management of crucial information and documents, within and outside the firewall. These joint solutions enable you to include forms and the captured data as content types that can be version controlled, repurposed, and integrated into workflows, and managed by the ECM environment. This simplifies compliance with enhanced archiving, and audit capabilities. You can also reduce costs of printing, storing, and distributing paper forms.

You can implement various solutions by leveraging the Alfresco's content management and business process management features. Some are listed below for your reference:

Order fulfillment
Claims processing
Underwriting
Loan origination
Contracts management
Accounts payable managing checks and invoices

More information about the solution is covered in Chapter 13, Implementing Imaging and Forms processing of the recent Alfresco book.

This chapter helps you to implement an end-to-end solution by collecting the paper documents, and forms; transforming them into accurate, retrievable information; and delivered into an organization's business applications. The information then, is full-text searchable, and goes through the various approval workflows, based on the organization's defined business process management.

By the end of this chapter you will have learned how to:

Connect scanner to network drive, and map it to the Alfresco's space
Specify a business rule to automatically extract metadata from the scanned document
Define and execute a workflow process for scanned documents
Bulk upload scanned documents into the Alfresco repository
Integrate OCR utilities into Alfresco
Integrate and use Kofax Ascent Capture
Integrate Alfresco with eCopy-enabled scanners

It is nice to know that we have an open source based, Enterprise Quality, Feature Rich and Highly Scalable imaging solution available at cheaper price.

--
Alfresco Enterprise CMS Implementation on PacktPub.com First Alfresco book, worldwide service, 10% discount.

Alfresco Top Brass on UK National Radio

2007-01-15T03:16:00.000-08:00

John Powell and John Newton, the founders of Alfresco, discussed open source in general -- and their project in particular -- on BBC's Radio 4 yesterday evening.

NEW WAVE COMPUTING

Peter Day talks to some of the rising stars of the new revolution and finds out how the computer industry is changing yet again.

The world’s biggest computer companies are being threatened by a host of new start-ups powered by open-source software, strings of inexpensive computers,and ‘mash-up’ websites which combine information in innovative ways.

Other projects discussed: Zimbra, Platial, Open-Xchange, ActiveGrid.

You can read more about the program, and listen to it (until Thursday) on the BBC web site here.

--
Alfresco Enterprise CMS Implementation on PacktPub.com First Alfresco book, worldwide service, 10% discount.

3 Ways for Alfresco ECM and BPM to work together

2007-01-10T05:12:00.000-08:00

Ishmael Ghalimi at IT|Redux posts about methods for integrating ECM systems with BPM systems, and cites three main ways in which they can usefully work together.

1. Use the CMS features to manage document life cycles that form part of process instances. You could manage document lifecycle in the BPMS, but a CMS will be simpler, more elegant, more flexible.

2. Use a CMS to store the process model artifacts. Programmers might say CVS is better, but for the business managers who see these artifacts as documents and want them treated as such (and pay the bills), a CMS is better.

3. Use a BPMS process design tool to take care of advanced processes involving CMS documents.

Ishmael cites Intalio as already working on the first two with Alfresco, but doesn't mention the 3rd. Perhaps Alfresco's built in workflow tools already negate number 3!

Source

--
Alfresco Enterprise CMS Implementation on PacktPub.com First Alfresco book, worldwide service, 10% discount.

Book Out Now! Alfresco Enterprise Content Management Implementation

2007-01-10T02:25:00.000-08:00

The very first copy of Alfresco Enterprise Content Management Implementation arrived in the Packt office yesterday. We are now shipping copies to everybody who pre-ordered.

From now on, orders will be shipped within a day or two of being placed. So buy your copy now.

There is also a PDF ebook version available, which is cheaper and available for download immediately after ordering.

Buy on PacktPub.com worldwide service, 10% discount.

Here are some blurry pictures of me holding the proof copy.

Alfresco Document Management in Pictures, Part I

2006-11-21T04:44:00.000-08:00

Alfresco makes a great Document Management system. If you're struggling with network folders and the problems they bring, check out this pictures with commentary. If they don't convince you to try Alfresco, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Spaces: Your Smart Folders in Alfresco

In Alfresco we have "spaces" taking the place of folders. Like folders, you can create deep hierarchies, add short cuts, copy and paste things around. You can even treat them as network folders, letting users familiar with shared folders browse them as if nothing had changed.

But underneath, they are much more powerful. Let's see some of the things they can do.

Space Details: A galaxy of possibilities!

There's a lot of familiar stuff here... copying, deleting, renaming, different views (Icon, Details, Browse... similar to Windows) but a lot more besides.

Dashboard view: choose your own user interface options for displaying spaces with loads of content in a simple way.

Categorization: folder hierarchies are limited, and Spaces gets around this with categories. Lots of times you'll have a folder for a client -- say -- but the subfolders for that will be pretty standard: invoices, letters, incoming mail, or whatever. An accountant might only be interested in the Invoices folders for a load of clients. He won't want to browse through each individual client looking for invoices. Using categories means that you can easily group spaces of a similar type -- regardless of the hierarchy they might be in.

RSS: what if your staff need to know when particular folders are updated? You don't want them checking the folder every day, do you? But you don't want them to forget about it either. Let your staff subscribe to an RSS feed for the space... and they'll always know when the latest version of the email usage guidelines, or whatever, have been updated.

All the cool options in the right hand column: have a look at it. A lot of them are the same old thing familiar to any Windows user, but there's plenty of new ones too. For example you can email all users of a space in one go... perfect for announcing important changes. Or you can associate a discussion with a space... so talk about a project can occur right where the essential project files are stored.

Create HTML Right In Alfresco

Do all your documents need to be hefty Word files? For simple internal documents such as help files and the old favorite guidelines, lightweight HTML means you can view and edit content right in the browser. Just create a new HTML document and edit away...

Adding Word, Excel, and other files... the meat of document management

Of course, you won't want to do everything with HTML. I know what you really want... a better way to organize those often dull but always essential business documents. Here's how you add content into Alfresco.

In the next post, I'll show you what you can do once you've added it. So be sure to subscribe and come back later.

Want to learn exactly how to get the most from Alfresco for document management and much more? Then buy the book Alfresco Enterprise Content Management Implementation, by Munwar Shariff.

What?! Another Open Source CMS?

2006-10-26T15:24:00.000-07:00

When I talk to people about Alfresco, I can tell what they're thinking: how on earth can the world need another free open source CMS?

I can understand why, but here's what they're missing. Just about every CMS you've seen before is a web CMS. They are there to manage web content. Whether you're using it for a web site or your intranet, they're all for building content-driven web sites. Joomla, Drupal, Typo3, Ez Publish are all primarily about web pages: news, profiles, forums, and so on.

Alfresco is completely different. As an enterprise CMS, it exists to manage enterprise content.

Think of the enterprise content you use every day. At Packt, I'm working with sales records, book proposal documents, chapter drafts, guideline documents, and contracts every single day.

And boy is it awkward. It's all in shared folders. Shared files and folders are extremely hard to work with. The fact is that most of us can't manage our own My Documents folder and Desktops properly... much less store files in a place that will make sense to anybody else.

Something needs to manage this content, and if I'm stuck with shared folders it's not going to be me!

Alfresco, and Enterprise Content Management Systems in general, provide a solution to this.

When I was reading Munwar's drafts, I was overwhelmed by how useful Alfresco could be in Packt... and in any business that relies on sharing documents and files between staff members.

Here are just a few of the things I saw covered in the book (relatively early too... it gets much more powerful towards the end):

Make shared folders smart drop files into a big catch all folder, and have Alfresco figure out the best place to put it... based on rules that you can define
Smart versioning... never worry about manually backing up a shared file every time you make a tiny change. Alfresco can keep track of versions automatically, allowing you to look back at earlier versions whenever you want.
Search content... so you can find the stuff you need, wherever it is.

So this is not just another variant on Joomla!, Drupal, or Typo3. It's a completely new beast. And it's one you should seriously consider learning about, if you or your clients struggle to keep their shared digital content organized, findable, and managed.

PS With Alfresco 1.4 (which our book covers), Alfresco can act as a web CMS as well as an enterprise CMS. So maybe it is another Joomla!, but Java. Check out samaxes' description of Alfresco, much more in depth than mine.

Alfresco vs. Documentum... Alfresco on the up

2006-10-26T09:05:00.000-07:00

It looks like Alfresco could be beating Documentum in terms of search volume by the end of 2007. Here's the current results on Google Trends (Documentum is boring blue, Alfresco is firey red!):

Maybe Alfresco will be in the lead in time for the book's publication in December!