We’re pleased to announce that we’ve deployed a new release of Alfresco in the Cloud, which re-introduces a few of your favorite features from Alfresco and also includes a couple of other highly requested features since we launched several weeks ago. In addition to all the new features you’ll see below, we’ve also made significant improvements to the service behind the scenes to improve performance and our service to upgraded Networks who have signed up for our Supported Beta starting this week.
Tasks, People Search & Following:
The header now has some new icons that will really bring to life your Network and content. These popular features were taken out of Alfresco in the Cloud while we addressed some privacy issues with how users could interact with External Users invited into their Network from another organization. We’ve addressed those issues so you can now:
- Create and assign Tasks (workflows) to your documents such as Ad-hoc tasks (‘Please change the header color in this document’) to Review & Approval workflow (‘Please can you review and approve the latest version of this document’).
- Search for people in your Network so you now start a user directory and view user profiles for all the users in your Network and any External Users you are collaborating with in your sites. You can search by name, job title, organization or any other field you want to quickly find who you need in your Network and start collaborating!
- Follow people in your Network so you can keep up to date with what your colleagues are doing across your Network in your activity feed and daily email digest.
Altogether these should really help you and your colleagues get more productive and social on your Alfresco Network.
Invite Public Email User’s to your Sites:
As described in my last FAQ on Alfresco in the Cloud, we don’t allow Public Email addresses (i.e. GMail/Hotmail/Yahoo emails) to sign up directly for Alfresco in the Cloud, as Networks are designed around organizations that share a common email domain. However we are aware that sometimes you want to work with a freelancer or person that doesn’t have their own company email address. In that case we now allow you to invite public email address users into your sites.
While Public Email address users won’t get their own Network to create their own sites and content, they can create an account using their email address and be invited to collaborate on other Network sites as External Users.
What’s Coming Next:
While we have a lot of new features in the pipeline, our focus for the next release is on making it even easier to create and edit documents from Alfresco in the Cloud. This will include WebDav access for upgraded Networks so you can map Alfresco as a drive on your computer to create, browse and edit files, and Google Docs integration so you can quickly create and edit documents collaboratively from Alfresco in your browser.
To keep us informed of your feedback and ideas, please use our GetSatisfaction Forum here.
