When you work for a while in the software you get numbed to “technologies have come and gone…” occasionally though some become commodities and others trend setters. We have seen that with many products like Apache, Tomcat, Lucene, Drupal …etc that have stabilized and matured over the past years with the help of increased development from the open source realm. Wait! Did I mention the word “Open Source” and going to talk about the enterprise content management?

So without any more ado, we have Alfresco- catering to a rapidly increasing demand of the enterprise content management solutions which is built over the open source technologies such as Spring, Hibernate, and Lucene platforms. Having done years of Documentum development and several Alfresco projects of late, I think there are some interesting overlaps and differences of approach that I feel would make the developers get adapted quicker.

With the wiki site overwhelmed with Introduction, API’s, Development, Deployment and the Forums to answer all the questions regarding the issues faced during the project phase, I am here to talk purely from the developers perspective on what’s the key areas that I happen to witness the difference from the Documentum space.

The road map for my next series of blog is going to cover each of the areas mentioned below in more detailed, code abundant and developer centric approach which will answer the questions:

• Does this feature exist in Documentum or Alfresco or both?
• If yes, how different is the approach?

So with that preamble, and in no particular order, I give you my list of the key areas I got hands on and learnt how different Alfresco is:

• Aspects

Custom data model is the core for any enterprise content management solution. The use of “Aspects” as its core is the fundamental concept for content modeling in Alfresco. Although in the form D6, aspects was introduced, how different is the use and approach in Alfresco is something I will take a deep dive in my next blog.

• Web Scripts

Alfresco Web Scripts brings together the world of content repository and the web. Being a Documentum developer earlier ways of interaction with the repository have been either using DFC API’s or DQL. In Alfresco, Web Scripts provide RESTful access to content within the repository and we can build our own interface using java script. A custom move operation is implemented using the Web Scripts and the comparison of the implementation with the Documentum would be a something to be noted.

• Integration

On my last project, we had requirements for the customers to be able to permanently redact Personally Identifiable Information (PII) from existing documents stored in the repository and version the original document upon save. For various reasons, we decided to integrate the 3^rd party tool Daeja ViewOne module to provide this capability. I will discuss the topic as part of this blog series.

I started this series based on my experience implementing Alfresco projects and I invite you to share any of your experiences with any part of the road map wherein you run into interesting twists and turns? Did you drive off the road to get some help? I welcome your feedback as the blog takes its shape. See you all soon in Take 2.

It’s simple.  The new Content I/O Suite.  Armedia’s Content I/O Suite allows users to collect information from all of those billions of sources, migrate it to the centralized repository in the company, and then, if needed, deliver that information to the different web portals that may need to view the information later.  In fact, it can even send the information to multiple repositories all from the same interface.  So what if Human Resources uses Documentum, and Accounting uses Laserfiche, and some departments have their own collaborative eRoom set up, but you just merged with another company who uses SharePoint and FileNet.  What if one user could capture the information coming in from the website, or through email, or through regular snail mail, and deliver it into the appropriate system, without that one user ever having to be trained in each of those systems?  Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?  Check it out at http://armedia.com/products/suite/.

-Kristin Evans

A custom view is a portal that can be attached visually to a space. It is a great way to convey information about a space and it’s contents. A custom view can be attached to any space, but can be particularly effective when used on a company’s division, department or a specific project space.

The templates for Custom Views are found in:

Company Home > Data Dictionary > Presentation Templates

In this example, we are going to use a simple template called “readme.ftl” to convey information about a weekly status call for a fictitious “Phoenix” project.

The template files are <FreeMarker> templates. For more information on FreeMarker see:  http://freemarker.sourceforge.net/

For the purposes of this example, you don’t need to know anything about FreeMarker.
Use an editor of your choice and create a readme.html file. Here is what mine looks like:

<H1>Welcome to The Phoenix Project!</H1>
<p>
This is a reminder that we will have our weekly Status meeting tomorrow, <b>Wednesday April 1st, from 10:00 to 11:00 am</b>.  Please find tomorrow’s agenda, and this week’s reports (OWL, Kudos, & Events) in the <i>Weekly Meeting Materials</i> folder below.  The conference line information is listed below for all of our off-site colleagues:
<p>
<b>Call in #:  1 (888) 990-3160</b>
<br>
<b>Pass code: 39007728</b>
<p>
Thank you,
<br>
Sam Cooke
<br>
Program Assistant, Phoenix Project
<br>
(733)961-1990
<br>
sam.cooke@phoenix.com
<br>
<H4>Progressive Division of American Resource Management</H4>
<br>
The Phoenix Project
<br>
New Out of Old
<p>
<a href=”www.arm.com/phoenix”>www.arm.com/phoenix</a>

Once you are finished creating your readme.html file, import it into the space where you want the message to appear. Like so:

To select the template for your Custom View,  you will want to view the details of your space. Go up one level to the parent space and then select the View Details icon for your space. It’s the icon in the middle that looks like a sheet of paper. This is the View Details screen for our example space:

Once you are on the View Details screen, select the Modify Icon for Customer View. It’s the blue one just to the left of the trash can. Next select the readme.ftl  template like so:

Hit OK and then navigate to your space. Voila!, there is our meeting message. No need to email the information weekly any longer. Now it’s right there in Alfresco along with all the other project documentation. To update the information simply check out and update the readme.html file. When the file is checked back in, the view will automatically update with the new information.

This example is a very simple one. There are a number of presentation templates bundled with Alfresco, or you can create your own template.