WCM-8 A Tale of Two Web Quick Start Implementations

A Tale of Two WQS Implementations!

About Me

!   President and CTO of Tribloom Inc.
!   Customizing Alfresco since 2008
!   Many website and customized Share
implementations on Alfresco
!   Would like to share my experiences with WQS

!   Twitter: MMcCarthy01
!   Blog: www.tribloom.comblogsmichael

11/3/11 © Tribloom, Inc. 2011 2

What are we talking about?

!   Background
!   Web Quick Start
!   Website
!   Intranet
!   Demo
!   Q&A

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Background

Client Seeking:
!   Document management
!   Website
!   Intranet
Leading To:
!   Increased process automation
!   Reduced operating costs
The Answer?
!   Alfresco

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Document Management – High Level

Goals:
!   Replace existing shared drive infrastructure
!   Each department has its own folder on shared drive
!   Some documents on shared drive are shared on
company intranet
Implementation:
!   Use company AD server for SSO
!   Create Share site templates for departmental sites
!   Bulk load some content
!   Custom versioning scheme
!   UI customizations
!   Content modeling
11/3/11
!   Advanced Workflow © Tribloom, Inc. 2011 5

Website- High Level

Goals:
!   Simple, professional, website for marketing and
information
!   Content for website should be managed outside of IT
department
!   Outside company produced website design
Implementation:
!   Create company theme in WQS
!   Custom pages, templates, and components
!   Incorporate Lightbox for “image gallery”

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Intranet – High Level

Goals:
!   Display links to content from departmental sites
!   Display area for company links and applications
!   Provide FAQ functionality
!   Departments responsible for their own content
!   Site search should find content in departmental sites
Implementation:
!   Tie Share site content to Web Quick Start site using
aspects, associations, and behaviors
!   FAQs articles are tagged to allow sorting
!   Modify search query to return all content

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Web Quick Start

!   Why Web Quick Start
!   How do you customize WQS (Surf)
!   How do you customize WQS (WQS API)

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Why Web Quick Start?

Speed
!   Quick implementation, about 5 weeks each
Ease of Use
!   The end user can easily maintain existing content
and add new content without any technical skills
Ease of Implementation
!   Easy integration with Alfresco repository
!   WQS uses technologies we already know from
Alfresco (CMIS, Surf, Webscripts)

11/3/11 © Tribloom, Inc. 2011 9

How Do You Customize WQS? (Surf)

!   Sample finance and government sites are Spring Surf
!   Similar to Share, overwrite or add “web” assets such
as JS, CSS, and images in webapps/wcmqs
!  js
!  css
!  images
!   Recommended method is to create directories under
webapps/wcmqs/WEB-INF/classes/surf
!  site/pages – for XML files
!  site/templates – for XML files
!  Templates – for Freemarker files
!  Webscripts – for webscript files

11/3/11 © Tribloom, Inc. 2011 10

Surf Override File Structure

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Surf Override File Structure (cont)

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How Do You Customize WQS? (WQS API)

WQS API
!   The WQS API is written in Java and uses Spring
!   Create subclasses as necessary and load them using
Spring
!  Subclass:

!  Spring bean:

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How Do You Customize WQS? (WQS API)

!   Can build against WQS client API jar
!  /webapps/wcmqs/WEB-INF/lib/*
!   May need to download the WQS source code and
modify classes for extension
!  Before:

!  After:

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The Website

!   Platform
!   The good
!   The bad
!  Publishing
!   Customization details
!  Theme
!  Pages, Templates,
& Components
!  Webscripts
!  Information schema
!  Image gallery

11/3/11 © Tribloom, Inc. 2011 15

The Platform

!   SUSE Linux 11.1
!   MySQL 5.5.8
!   Tomcat 6.0.29
!   Java 1.6.0_24
!   Alfresco 3.4.2 initially, later Alfresco 3.4.3
!  There is a CMIS bug in 3.4.2

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WQS Implementation #1 – The Website

Old New

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The Website

The Best Of Times
!   OOTB Finance and Government sites easy to modify
!   Very little customization
!   Most work was creating theme from static designs

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The Website

The Worst Of Times
!   Download documents does not work OOTB (in IE)
(this has been fixed in later versions)
!   Publishing from editorial to live is not cross server
OOTB, only simple single server publishing is
supported OOTB without customization

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Single Server Publishing

Supported OOTB
!   Transfer Service used
internally for Editorial to
Live publishing

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Two Server Publishing

Not Supported OOTB
!   Option 1: Replicate
Editorial to Delivery
and republish from
Editorial to Live there
!   Option 2: Publish on
Editorial and transfer
from Editorial to
Delivery
!  Use
onEndInboundTransfer
policy to hook into
Editorial Editorial to Live
transfer and begin
transfer to Delivery Live
11/3/11 © Tribloom, Inc. 2011 21

Website Customization Details

!   Theme
!  Duplicate existing theme and modify CSS and
images /webapps/wcmqs/css/<theme>/*
!  styles.css
!  Some image files
!  Create custom pages, templates, components and
webscripts

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Surf Page

!   Surf page XML binds to a URI
!   Defines template instance
!   Defines components

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Surf Template and Template Instance

!   Defines template
!   Defines components

!   Binds components to regions

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Webscript

!   Descriptor

!   Controller

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Webscript (cont)

!   View

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Website Customization Details (cont)

!   WQS Share site information schema
!  Create folders and collections (i.e. for image
collections on the side of each page)

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Website Customization Details (cont)

!   Image Gallery
!  WQS already uses LightBox, incorporated it into
site to allow image gallery functionality

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The Intranet

!   The good
!   The bad
!   Customization details
!  Non WQS content
!  Content model
!  Object diagram
!  Policies
!  API extenstions
!  Pages, Templates,
& Components
!  Searcy query
!  Information Schema

11/3/11 © Tribloom, Inc. 2011 29

The Intranet

The Best of Times
!   It is easy to use the WQS API to access properties of
content that are not directly exposed via the API
!   It is easy to override the search query

11/3/11 © Tribloom, Inc. 2011 31

The Intranet

The Worst of Times
!   The WQS API needed some changes in order to
usefully extend the core classes (this has been fixed
in later versions)
!   The Editorial to Live process does not work well with
outside associations on WQS content, we needed to
modify the process to re-create the association at
the end of the transfer (this process is very similar to
how you would create a two server publishing
scheme)

11/3/11 © Tribloom, Inc. 2011 32

Intranet Customization Details

!   Biggest customization to display non-WQS content
!  Content model changes
!  New aspects (internal/external links)
!  Custom WQS article subclass with association to Share
site content

11/3/11 © Tribloom, Inc. 2011 33

Object Diagram

ws:article

fni:intranetContent fni:article fni:site

ws:image
fni:intranetExternalLink

fni:app

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Intranet Customization Details

!  Behaviors (Policies)
!  Automatically create content in WQS when aspect added,
move when renamed or moved (need to move not
rename for QName path to be accurate)
!  onAddAspect
!  onMoveNode
!  Automatically delete content from WQS when aspect
removed or deleted
!  onRemoveAspect
!  beforeDeleteNode
!  Extensions to WQS API to handle non-WQS
content
!  AssetFactoryWebscriptImpl
!  AssetImpl

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Intranet Customization Details (cont)

!  Custom components and webscripts to display
!  Search modifications (updated query to include
associated non-WQS content)
!  Duplicate
org.alfresco.module.org_alfresco_module_wcmquickstar
t.webscript.AssetSearch with corresponding descriptor
!   Other customizations
!  Custom components and webscripts for “Apps”,
“Corporate Sites”, and FAQ
!  Create folders and collections to easily maintain

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Conclusion

!   Building websites is quick and relatively painless
using WQS
!   Since WQS uses Surf for a front end OOTB, it is easy
to learn and requires little coding to create a custom
feeling website
!   WQS provides easy management of website content
for end users

11/3/11 © Tribloom, Inc. 2011 37

WCM-8 A Tale of Two Web Quick Start Implementations

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