For the past ten years, we have been implementing various Content Management Systems. We talk to customers who have made multi-million dollar implementations of proprietary software, and faced all kinds of challenges, including vendor lock-in, a rigid code base, and expensive upgrades. At CIGNEX, our focus has been provide value to our customers by using open source alternatives to commercial CMS products.
Alfresco 3 offers true Enterprise Content Management (ECM) by providing an open source alternative to Microsoft SharePoint, Documentum, and Interwoven. It is the most popular Java-based CMS, with over 1.5 million downloads, 50,000 live sites, 74,000 community members, and more than 150 application extensions in Forge.
Unlike most other open source CMSes, which offered only web content management, Alfresco provided a wide range of solutions to Enterprise customers, with an impressive roadmap. Most importantly, it is created using entirely open standards. This excited us a lot, and we started implementing Alfresco in many enterprises. We became the Platinum System Integration partner of Alfresco. As part of an implementation, we also train our customers so that they are equipped with all of the information required to manage their systems. We have trained many users, administrators, and developers in Alfresco. This book distils the hands-on approach of my training courses into a concise, practical book.
This book focuses on business needs rather than technical syntax. We start by showing the reader how to do something—a step by step example. We explain how that process worked. Then, we explain what other options are available, and how they fit into the overall picture. We hope this helps the reader to 'generalize' from such examples. We hope that you take advantage of this book by setting up a flexible enterprise Content Management System for your company and customers.
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This book will take you through the complete cycle of implementing, customizing, and administering your ECM installation. The topics that this book covers are as follows:
Chapter 1 includes an overview of the Alfresco architecture and the key features of the software. It explains various use cases for using Alfresco for your document management, records management, web content management, and collaboration requirements, and also provides a future roadmap.
Chapter 2 provides valuable tips on how to to choose the right installation for you, and also describes installation of the software and how to start using it.
Chapter 3 gives the basic information about Alfresco Explorer and also provides you with various ways of configuring Alfresco, according to your business needs.
Chapter 4 describes working with users and setting up security, including LDAP and Active Directory integration. This chapter also introduces concepts such as "Single Sign-on", and the daisy chaining of multiple membership sources.
Chapter 5 describes how to use Alfresco as a smart document repository, providing automatic version tracking and control, and accessing the repository from the Web, shared network folders, or FTP. It also includes a description of searching and editing documents directly from Microsoft Office Tools.
Chapter 6 teaches you how to automate document management tasks by using business rules and various content transformations.
Chapter 7 explains how to design custom content types.
Chapter 8 teaches you how to automate your business process by using the advanced workflow concepts of Alfresco 3.
Chapter 9 integrates Alfresco with external applications. This chapter also includes examples of integrations with Liferay Portal, iPhone, Facebook, iGoogle, Microsoft Outlook, Adobe Flex, and the Ffmpeg video transcoder.
Chapter 10 explains how to build collaborative web sites by using document libraries, wikis, blogs, forums, calendars, discussions, and social tagging.
Chapter 11 explains how to customize the user interface and create your own dashboard layouts, presenting content in custom ways that are relevant to your business.
Chapter 12 explains how to content easy to find by using search, content categorization and metadata. It also includes a description of Alfresco's Open Search features.
Chapter 13 describes how to collect paper documents and forms, transforming them into accurate, retrievable information, and delivering content into an organization's business applications.
Chapter 14 explains effective administration and the maintenance of the system for efficient performance and high availability. It also explains how administrators can set up Alfresco 3 for multiple business units in a single-instance, multi-tenant environment.