Open Source Talk

Alfresco 2.2 has focused on offering content management and collaboration for everyone in the enterprise and has used web 2.0 technologies to bring together content management, collaboration, office and email integration all within one repository.

Many industry leading clients are using Alfresco to provide next generation user experiences, creating communities around their products, and delivering this at dramatically lower cost through the benefit of open source.

These new community oriented product micro-sites need to be highly-scalable with the ability to integrate rich media with user generated content, and support rapid content update for a fresh customer experience, while promoting a consistent brand.

Experience with this next generation of websites has driven the enhancements in Alfresco 2.2 including:

• Web Application Preview and Test – providing the ability to preview in-context changes to any web application, including PHP, Ruby, JSF, Tiles, Struts, Groovy, and .NET
• Web Farm Deployment Configuration – supports advanced deployment rules for scalable, 3-tier web application architectures with partitioned, replicated deployment
• Site Templating and Branching – enabling rapid creation of new sites from existing templates and ability to baseline major site updates by branching existing site
• Asset Reuse – update and sharing of content across web projects

Alfresco has continued its focus on collaboration and management for the whole enterprise in version 2.2 with enhancements delivering the following capabilities:

• Email-based Collaboration – Email directly into the repository and capture all discussions relating to a specific document
• Email Archival – Automatic capture and archival of all attached files and email messages
• JMX-based Server Administration – JSR-160 support offering administrators access to Alfresco via a JMX console

This podcast is a recording of a live webinar discussing and demonstrating Alfresco 2.2. More details can be found at:

http://www.alfresco.com/about/events/ondemand/

There is a new Developer Toolbox in the Content Community that contains starter apps, sample code of web scripts and java-backed web scripts. Nancy discusses this in her blog that can found at:
http://blogs.alfresco.com/nancy/?p=24

This is a great way to learn more about Alfresco 2.2 and prepare for Alfresco 3.0

Have fun

ian

 

 Alfresco 2.2 [66:30m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (251)

This is the first in a series of “How I use Alfresco” podcast’s where we interview leading community members. Today I interview Joachim Pfeiffer. The topics we discuss are:

1. Firstly, tell me a bit about your company and your role there?
2. What was the big driver behind your project?
3. For those of us not familiar with it, what is ISO 9000?
4. What is the traditional approach to ISO 9000?
5. What are the biggest challenges for companies in introducing and maintaining ISO 9000?
6. In your contribution you mention managing documents and records. What were the core parts of Alfresco that you used to manage the lifecycles of the content?
7. What were the key benefits you got from your Alfresco application?
8. What are your plans going forwards?
9. Why did you choose Alfresco?
10. What technical infrastructure did you use?

If you are interested featuring how you have used Alfresco either yourself or within your company please contribute via the Forums in “How I use Alfresco”.

We are also running our first user groups. These will be on:

• Wednesday November 7th in New York
• Thursday November 15th In Paris

Register by going to www.alfresco.com clicking on banner

Good Listening.

ian

 

 Joachim Pfeiffer ISO 9000 [14:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (309)

This is the first in a series of podcasts discussing the key areas of content management and will focus on document management. In this podcast Alfresco staff writer, Hayley Powell, interviews me asking the following questions:

1. Firstly I have to ask why does document management have such strange terms?
2. What are the major trends in document management today?
3. What is the cost to a business of poor document management?
4. So can you relate to me typical things that document management does that most users who use a shared drive can relate to?
5. Documents have more than just content what about things such as properties in Office documents?
6. You raised two common issues - search and when you find document versions. What about search?
7. So the obvious next question is search and versions together. What are the typical problems here?
8. Obviously some documents have to be secure and some are public. What about security?
9. Things like press releases are initially private and then public. How is that managed?
10. How do you manage a released document and prevent it from being changed?
11. So when you bring these things together what do you have?
12. Given that approach to document management how does Alfresco approach it?
13. Can you discuss rules more?
14. Can you discuss Alfresco’s approach to Search?
15. The web is not one website so how does Alfresco search over multiple sites?
16. What client software do you use to access Alfresco?
17. You mentioned the lifecycle of a document. How does Alfresco manage simple workflow?
18. What is new that will make it even simpler for Office users?

A Whitepaper on this subject is available in the Content Community where this is also a recorded webinar and demonstration on this subject. You can access this at:

http://www.alfresco.com/community/register/?source=community

The software mentioned in this podcast can be downloaded at:

http://www.alfresco.com/products/ecm/enttrial/

Good Listening

ian

 

 Really Simple Document Management [21:12m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (89)

Alfresco 2.1 is now available for download at:

http://dev.alfresco.com/downloads/

Alfresco 2.1 has focused on delivering a web-oriented REST style architecture with access to content metadata, user interface components and queries via a simple URL. Utilizing new Web 2.0 integration techniques, Web Scripts enable web sites, portals, blogs, applications and Microsoft Office to access or mashup enterprise content without the need for integration tools and complex programming. New lightweight scripting capabilities simplify the development of sophisticated mashups using proven web technologies that enable massive scalability.
In summary Alfresco 2.1 focuses on extending the suite to provide:

• Simple Access from your Tool of Choice – Office, Portal, Website or Web 2.0 Property as Simply as Accessing a URL
• Simple Access and Mashup internal and External Content – Use of lightweight scripting without the need for complex .NET or Java programming
• Access Via a URL – All Content and Services
• Massive Scalability - Web-oriented REST style architecture

Alfresco 2.1 has new functionality in the areas of:

• New Web-Oriented REST style Architecture
• New Native Office Integration
• New Web 2.0 User Interface
• New Enterprise Portal Integration via Web Scripts
• New Enterprise Content Publishing to WordPress and TypePad
• Enhanced WCM Functionality
• New Community AMP’s

In this live Q&A session I answer questions along with Kevin Cochrane and Mike Farman.

Amongst the questions answered are:

1. What versions of Office and Office programs work with the integration?
2. What about Open Office?
3. What client platforms will work with Alfresco and CIFS?
4. What performance differences are there between CIFS and direct access?
5. Is the Alfresco panel a standalone application or it is an office side panel?
6. When clustering Alfresco what database does it require?
7. What support does Alfresco for XML component management?
8. Will the preview functionality work with JPEG 2000 files?
9. Where can someone get more information and documentation on Alfresco WCM and how to set it up with web portals?
10. Do you have integration tools for integrating with salesforce.com?
11. What is the roadmap for Office integration?
12. What is the status of a Wiki Space for Alfresco?
13. What is the best way to get 2.1 now?
14. When do we expect Alfresco 2.1 to be available?

Good listening and feel free to post more questions in the forums. Also, webinar recordings are available in the Content Community. To join go to:

http://www.alfresco.com/community/register/?source=community

ian

 

 Standard Podcast [16:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (78)