Paul Hampton

Back in January I posted a blog about how powerful the Aspect feature was in Alfresco. It included two videos – one showing how to apply an aspect and one showing how to search on an aspect. A number of people have asked about getting access to my configuration files so they could try it out themselves. So here are the instructions and sample files.

Overview

These customisations will add a number of new types and one new aspect:

Instructions

The demo configurations consist of 5 files. Copy these to the relevant location within the Alfresco install (note: if you already have some of these files, with local configurations, you will need to merge the changes).

Copy demomodel.properties to
[ALFREASCO]/tomcat/shared/clases/alfresco/web-extension/messages

(note: you will need to create the messages folder)

Copy custom-slingshot-application-context.xml and share-config-custom.xml to
[ALFRESCO]/tomcat/shared/clases/alfresco/web-extension

(note: you will most probably already have a share-config-custom.xml file. This one can replace the default one if you have not modified it)

Copy demo-context.xml and demoModel.xml to
[ALFRESCO]/tomcat/shared/clases/alfresco/extension

Now restart the server. If everything goes right you should now be able to…

Change the type Add an aspect Set the meta data Use the advanced search feature.

• Trialling Alfresco Enterprise?
• Want some sample data to kick-start your evaluation?

Well now you can install the same sample data that is used on the hosted trial system.

For some time now we have been running a hosted trail of Alfresco in the cloud. This has been configured with fictitious users and some sample Share sites. These have been created to make it easy for people to trial Alfresco and see how Alfresco can be used to manage various types of project.

Will Abson has built a number of scripts that allow you to load this same data into your local system. The sample data includes the following sites:

• Marketing: 2010 Company Rebranding Site – A sample site that manages the content associated with rebranding a company
• Marketing: Image Gallery – Used to show how Alfresco can be used to manage images. Makes use of the image preview dashlet
• Marketing: Global User Group Meetings (2010) – This sites makes use of the datalists feature to track actions for hosting a series of user group meetings
• Records Management – An RM site complete with disposition schedules

Note: Each of the sites can be loaded individually.

You can download the Alfresco Enterprise trial here and trial data and instructions here.