Open Source Talk

Alfresco Labs 3 Final is a milestone release for Alfresco Labs and is what we recommend for all new community members. We also recommend this as a download and upgrade for existing community members.

It is immediately available for download under the open source GPL license at http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Download_Labs.

In this podcast I discuss with Mike Farman, Director of Product Management ECM Products, this new release.

1. What is the major driver behind the latest release of Alfresco Labs 3?
2. Given that the focus is on a content services platform what standards are you  focusing on?
3. Can you review what is new in Web Content Management?
4. Can you review what is new in Collaboration?
5. Can you review what is new in Document Management?
6. Can you review what is new in Email Management?
7. The other critical part of a content platform is scalability. What is new in regard to performance?
8. To scale on the cloud multi-tenant is important. Can you explain how Alfresco has implemented multi-tenant?
9. How can users find out more information?
10. How can a user try out the new version?

Good Listening

ian

Alfresco Labs 3 Final [ 0:01 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (4588)

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 [ 1:06:30 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (3039)

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 [ 21:12 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1057)