Alfresco In An Hour - Document Management, Web Content Management, and Collaboration (Alfresco Share)

Alfresco in an Hour Jared Ottley Solutions Engineer www.alfresco.com

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 Web Content Management Collaboration Records Management

What does it do? Facilitates the collaborative creation and organization of all content. Manages content lifecycle and track changes. Includes email notifications, RSS, personalized dashboards and more… Accessible – Alfresco Web Client, FTP, WebDAV, CIFS (network share), MS Office Add-in. Alfresco Web Content Management Authoring, Virtualisation, Staging and Deployment for Web Site Management

Feature Overview Alfresco Virtual Machine Java and SOAP API Alfresco ECM Repository Versioning Virtual File Server LDAP Directory Database Workflow Security Modeling Search Scripting Templates X-Forms Web Client Document Management Multi-Channel Web Content Management Filesystem Interface FTP, WebDAV, CIFS Metadata Modeling BPM-Based Workflow Multiple APIs Java, JSR-170 (JCR), SOAP (.NET, PHP, Ruby, Java) Broad Platform Support Transformations Rules Engine Site 1 Site 2 Site 3

Community or Enterprise? Community Development Version Experimental; Minimal Testing Functionally Equivalent Same Code Base Nightly builds available. Support via Wiki and Forums No SLA Enterprise Functionally Equivalent Same Code Base Rigorous QA and Fixes Production Quality Regular Maintenance Releases Officially Supported Guaranteed SLA Email Telephone Developer Support (Optional) Certified SI Partners Alfresco Connect for Enterprise (ACE)* * Available Q3 07

Where do I get it? Community Links from www.alfresco.com SourceForge Downloads Enterprise Register at www.alfresco.com Hosted Trial 30 Days Followed by 30 days read only Email Support: [email_address] Downloadable Enterprise Trial 30 Days All Clients Same bundles as Community Email Support: [email_address] Installers for Windows & Linux AlfrescoCommunity-2.0-Setup.exe AlfrescoCommunity-2.0-Linux-x86-Install Includes: Alfresco, Tomcat, JDK, Database (HSQL DB) and OpenOffice Self Contained Bundles alfresco-community-tomcat-2.0.0.zip alfresco-community-tomcat-2.0.0.tar.gz Includes: Alfresco, Tomcat and Database (HSQL DB) Download JDK, OpenOffice (Optional) Separately

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 Properties Format, language, creator, dates Classifications Links to related content Translations Different formats (e.g. PDF, HTML, Text) OCR’d text of scanned image

Creating and Editing Content HTML or plain Text created and edited in-line WYSIWYG editor in the browser Upload content Select file from user computer in the browser Network folders, FTP and WebDAV Download from Alfresco to user computer Standard browser feature, choose where to save Network folders, FTP and WebDAV Update documents by uploading changed file Edit Microsoft Office documents directly

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 3 rd 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

Forums and Discussions Forum spaces may be defined to contain Forums Using Advanced Space Wizard ‘From Scratch’ Forums may also be associated with spaces and content items Using the “Start Discussion” action Discussions move with the item Forums contain Topics which contain Posts Posts may have Replies Searchable

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

Check In and Check Out Check Out locks the item and creates a working copy which can be edited (content and details) Everyone else can just view the item Check In replaces the original item with the working copy and releases the lock

Rules and Actions - Conditions Rules are applied to a ‘Space’ Rules make a space ‘Smart’ Rules are triggered by an Event Inbound - content arriving into a space Outbound – content leaving a space, moved, deleted Update – content being modified Rules are filtered based on conditions All Items (no filter) Items with a specific MIME Type (e.g. .pdf) Specific Content Type Applied to a specific aspect File name pattern (e.g. *-context.xml) Falls within a Category (e.g. Region, Language) Rule filter can be applied to ‘NOT’ e.g. not in MIME Type *.pdf No limit on the number of conditions that can be applied to each rule

Rules and Actions - Actions Items that successfully meet the rule conditions have an ‘Action’ applied to them Actions can triggered to run manually No limit on the number of Actions per rule Rules are used to organise, structure, enrich content in the repository Used in conjunction with: Alfresco Web Client FTP WebDAV CIFS (Shared Network Folder) Web Services API Use your imagination

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

Accessing Content Without The Alfresco Client CIFS Root URL: \\<machine name>_A\Alfresco Same as a network share folder Can mount as a share drive Drag and Drop files into Alfresco Edit content directly with other programs Network folders can be smart spaces Provides user with a link to the same space in the web client FTP/WebDAV/CIFS All rules are applied All permissions are enforced If versioning is enabled, then content will be versioned

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! Enterprise - No license fees, annual support subscription Production Ready Service Level Agreement Warranty and Indemnity See Alfresco in an Hour in the Content Community for more information on core repository services.

Alfresco’s Model for WCM Content Production Production Model Sandboxes Transparent Layers Workflow Roles Content Modelling Versioning Virtualisation Filesystem Projection Content Delivery Static v’s Dynamic Runtimes Alfresco Runtimes Deployment

Alfresco’s Model for WCM Low traffic Read / write Alfresco focuses on: Ease of content entry Content QA (workflow / approval) Version control / rollback High traffic Read mostly Alfresco focuses on: Deployment Flexibility Technology agnosticism Performance / scalability

Production Model – Transparent Layers No changes yet made

Production Model – Transparent Layers Alice creates a new page called "products.html"

Production Model – Transparent Layers Alice edits "index.html" to add a link to her new page

Production Model – Transparent Layers Alice submits her changes (change set) to workflow, they are approved and promoted to staging

What kind of sites can Alfresco manage? Static – HTML, Images Dynamic - JSP, ASP, Coldfusion, PHP….. Static or Dynamic or Both . Delivery technology Page compositing Deployment mechanism Personalization Performance Application developer skill-sets Static Web servers Submission time Filesystem Limited Ultimate Freemarker, XSLT, XSLT-FO Dynamic Application servers Request time Alfresco Runtime Unlimited Less than static Any web technology

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.

Share Core Concepts New Collaboration Application Document Management Collaboration Social Networking 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 Activities Service Personal Dashboards 17/07/08

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 17/07/08

Share Page Components DocLibrary Multi-file upload Multi-select operations e.g copy/move Commenting Social Tagging Filters Thumbnails Flash Previews 17/07/08 Wiki WYSIWYG editing and Simple Wiki Markup Version History Comments Publish MediaWiki Blog WYSIWYG editing Publish to WordPress & TypePad Discussions Threaded Commenting Calendar Day/Week/Month and Agenda views iCal support

Share Site and Personal Dashboards Drag n’ Drop Configuration Dashlets Calendar Site and Personal Rollups – consolidate view from all my calendars Activities Events automatically posted by actions in other components E.g add document, edit document, new calendar event etc People Finder Site Finder RSS Feeds 17/07/08

17/07/08 Flash Document Viewer Automatic Generation of Flash Renditions including: Word, PowerPoint, Excel OpenOffice And more … Pluggable Rendition Engine Flash Video/Audio Reduced Bandwidth High Performance Viewing Remove Client Application Dependencies

Share Services Activities Exposed via Dashlets and Feeds Tagging Searching, Filtering Thumbnail Automatic Previews Site Creating, invites, membership, management 17/07/08

Share APIs Standardised Public API REST based Language independent Developer productivity Examples: Create site Invite Members Create blog post Create calendar event ... See http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/3.0_REST_API for full details 17/07/08

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 E.g. Metadata extractors, transformations …. http://forge.alfresco.com

Alfresco in an Hour Jared Ottley Solutions Engineer www.alfresco.com Thank you for Attending

Alfresco In An Hour - Document Management, Web Content Management, and Collaboration (Alfresco Share)

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