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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

Records
Management

Collaboration

Web
Content
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
Web Client
Java and SOAP
API

Virtual File Server

Site
Site 11
Site
Site 22

Alfresco
Virtual Machine

Alfresco ECM Repository

Site
Site 33

Document Management
Multi-Channel Web Content

Versioning

Workflow

Security

Modeling

Management
Filesystem Interface

Search

Scripting

Transformations

Templates

X-Forms

Rules Engine

FTP, WebDAV, CIFS

Metadata Modeling
BPM-Based Workflow
Multiple APIs

LDAP Directory

Database

Java, JSR-170 (JCR), SOAP (.NET,


PHP, Ruby, Java)

Broad Platform Support

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

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)

OCRd 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
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

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

Enterprise - No license fees, annual support subscription

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.

Alfrescos Model for WCM

Content Production
Production Model

Sandboxes

Transparent Layers

Workflow
Roles
Content Modelling
Versioning
Virtualisation
Filesystem Projection

Content Delivery
Static vs Dynamic Runtimes
Alfresco Runtimes
Deployment

Alfrescos Model for WCM

Low traffic

High traffic

Read / write

Read mostly

Alfresco focuses on:

Alfresco focuses on:

Ease of content entry


Content QA (workflow /
approval)
Version control / rollback

Deployment Flexibility
Technology agnosticism
Performance / scalability

Production Model

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

Alfrescos Model for WCM

Deployment In a Nutshell

What kind of sites can


Alfresco manage?
Static or Dynamic or Both

Static HTML, Images


Dynamic - JSP, ASP, Coldfusion, PHP..

Static

Dynamic

Delivery technology

Web servers

Application servers

Page compositing

Submission time

Request time

Deployment mechanism

Filesystem

Alfresco Runtime

Personalization

Limited

Unlimited

Performance

Ultimate

Less than static

Application developer
skill-sets

Freemarker, XSLT, XSLTFO

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

Activities

17/07/08

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

People Finder
Site Finder
RSS Feeds

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

17/07/08

38

Share
Services
Activities

Exposed via Dashlets and Feeds

Tagging

Searching, Filtering

Thumbnail

Automatic Previews

Site

17/07/08

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
...
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

Thank you for Attending

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

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