Professional Documents
Culture Documents
By : Yashjit Teotia
Agenda
Introduction User Interface The Basics Spaces and Content Creating and Editing Content Permissions Searching Collaboration Versioning Check in/out Forums and Discussions Automating Tasks Rules and Actions Simple Workflow Demonstration Further Information Q and A
What is Alfresco?
Alfresco is the Open Source Alternative to Enterprise Content Management (ECM)
Document Management
Records Management
Collaboration
Feature Overview
Web Client
Java and SOAP API Virtual File Server
Site 2 Site 1
Site 3
Transformations
Rules Engine
LDAP Directory
Database
Community or Enterprise?
Community Development Version Experimental; Minimal Testing Functionally Equivalent
No SLA
Rigorous QA and Fixes Production Quality Regular Maintenance Releases Officially Supported
Self Contained Bundles alfresco-community-tomcat2.0.0.zip alfresco-community-tomcat2.0.0.tar.gz Includes: Alfresco, Tomcat and Database (HSQL DB) Download JDK, OpenOffice (Optional) Separately
30 Days Followed by 30 days read only Email Support: support@alfresco.com 30 Days All Clients Same bundles as Community Email Support: support@alfresco.com
What is a Space?
Just like a folder, but capable of more Can hold any type of content Give a description and choose an icon Add sub-spaces and content View/Modify details about a space Smart Spaces Rules Work with other users Map to Windows network folder
What is Content?
Often can be thought of as a file or document Made of two main elements The content itself Information about the content (meta-data) Content Anything: documents, video, audio, images, XML, HTML
Translations Different formats (e.g. PDF, HTML, Text) OCRd text of scanned image
Searching Content
Combined search of both contents and properties Full-text search Any words in content, regardless of format Best-match based on number of matched words Property constraints By category Between dates Custom properties Path constraints Only content below a given space
OpenSearch
Standard Interface Client IE7 and Firefox Server Alfresco Repositories 3rd Party Applications Shelf and My Alfresco Dashlet One Interface for all Searches Google eBay Wikipedia Alfresco Auto-Discovery Language Aware For setup details see:
http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/OpenSearch Alfresco as an OpenSearch Server Alfresco as an OpenSearch Client
Using Versioning
Allows a history of previous versions of an item to be kept A new version is created when content is saved, by default An item needs to be versionable for versions to be kept Individually, via smart spaces, by type or globally An example of an aspect Can look at version history, view previous versions of content future, revert to version Content id always points to the most recent version
Simple Workflow
Special case of a Rule Applies automated management of document lifecycles Moves / Copies content based on user actions
Space Templates
Re-useable templates of spaces and content Create a library of standard projects Different types of projects have different structures Standardized documents Standardized management Create a template in the same way as a space Add sub-spaces and content Create spaces based on other spaces
Alfresco WCM
Add-on Module to Alfresco Content Repository All DM and WCM capabilities available within a single repository Complementary Content and Web Content services Community and Enterprise Versions Community - Free to use
Limited QA NO support Use at your own risk! Production Ready Service Level Agreement Warranty and Indemnity
See Alfresco in an Hour in the Content Community for more information on core repository services.
Production Model
Alice submits her changes (change set) to workflow, they are approved and promoted to staging
Deployment In a Nutshell
Alfresco Runtimes
Runtime Repository (in production) Can be used: As the search engine for the web site (applicable for both dynamic and static web sites) As a runtime content store that can be queried by a dynamic web application.
Web Scripts REST (HTTP) Based Technology Independent Data Access API HTML, XML, Text, JSON, Atom, RSS..... Supports cached results Authentication Can be used to provide: Search Navigation Dynamic Page Assembly
A Hybrid Model?
Hybrid Mix Static and Dynamic Page Composition Options Inside Out Each page is dynamic and includes all page components dynamically (regardless of whether those components are static or dynamic) Outside In
Each page is static HTML with static components already embedded, but dynamic components included via an inclusion mechanism (eg. server side includes)
Note: The tradeoff between these two models is management complexity vs runtime performance.
Sites
Teams or projects maintain their own collaboration site Collaboration sites are websites
Sites and site pages are bookmarkable Configurable by business users from a library of UI components
Site Components
Site Dashboards, DocLibrary, Wiki, Blog, Discussions (Forums), Calendar
Share Sites
Sites
Collaboration areas for extranets, new products, communities of interest/practice and more Set of themed, templated collaboration sites
Site Dashboard
Configurable by Site Manager Layout Templates Dashlets
Site Components
Library of Web-script-based GUI components Add/remove components
Personal Dashboard
Activities Rich profile management avatars, contact info
Wiki
WYSIWYG editing and Simple Wiki Markup Version History Comments Publish MediaWiki
e.g copy/move
Blog
WYSIWYG editing Publish to WordPress & TypePad
Discussions
Threaded Commenting
Calendar
Day/Week/Month and Agenda views
iCal support
Site and Personal Rollups consolidate view from all my calendars Events automatically posted by actions in other components E.g add document, edit document, new calendar event etc
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Share Services
Activities Exposed via Dashlets and Feeds Tagging Searching, Filtering Thumbnail Automatic Previews Site Creating, invites, membership, management
Share APIs
Standardised Public API
REST based Language independent Developer productivity
Examples:
Create site Invite Members Create blog post Create calendar event ...
Further Information
Content Community http://www.alfresco.com AMPs, Documentation, Tutorial, Tech Tips Alfresco Wiki Technical information on configuration, administration and customisation http://wiki.alfresco.com Alfresco Forums Community Postings Alfresco Staff http://forums.alfresco.com Alfresco Forge Contributions from the community
Alfresco
Yashjit Teotia Software Engineer