Now that you have installed Alfresco successfully, it is important to understand the terminology of Alfresco, and configure the Alfresco repository, before we can start using it. This chapter provides you with the basic information about Alfresco Explorer, a web-based client application used to access the repository. The chapter also provides you with various ways of configuring the repository as per your business needs. By the end of this chapter, you will have learned how to:
- Log in to the Alfresco Explorer application
- Use the Administration console to perform system administration tasks
- Use Alfresco for basic document management
- Configure the personal dashboard wizard
- Configure a relational database of your choice
- Configure email and log files
- Configure the file system interface in order to drag-and-drop content into the repository
- Define multi-language support
- Create a blue-print for your application
The Alfresco Enterprise Content Management product is bundled and shipped along with two web-based applications. One is called the Alfresco Explorer, which was formerly known as the "Web Client". In this chapter, we will go through a high-level overview of Alfresco Explorer. The other web-based application is called Alfresco Share, which enables collaboration. Chapter 10 of this book has a detailed description of Alfresco Share.
By using any web browser, you can connect to the Alfresco Explorer application. Using Alfresco Explorer, you will be able to manage users, security, content, business rules, and everything related to your enterprise content stored in Alfresco.
To begin, if Alfresco is installed by using the Tomcat bundle, then we can access the Alfresco Explorer from http://localhost:8080/alfresco. If Alfresco is installed from the JBoss bundle, you may use the same URL as for Tomcat. You can also access the Alfresco Explorer in the portal from http://localhost:8080/portal, navigate to the Alfresco Explorer from the page menu, and then maximize the portlet.
When you start Alfresco for the first time, Alfresco creates the initial database content that is required for managing the data. The first time you use Alfresco, your username and password will both be "admin". You can change the password once you log in. Depending on your installation, you may have a choice of languages in the language drop-down menu. This book assumes that your selected language is English.
Once you log in, you will see the My Alfresco dashboard. You can browse through the Alfresco Explorer by clicking on the Company Home link that is provided on the upper-left of the screen. A typical Alfresco Explorer page is shown in the next screenshot. Let us examine various sections of the Alfresco Explorer layout.
The Tool Bar at the top provides us with the following information:
- Logo
- Links to home spaces, and the My Alfresco dashboard
-
Administration Console icon
to perform system administration functions
-
User Options icon
to change your options and settings
icon to hide or show the shelf
-
Help button
to launch online help
- Raise an Issue link to submit bug reports to Alfresco
- Login and Logout options
- Search box with basic and advanced search options
The Navigator window is used to display the Navigator tree view. It consists of Shelf, OpenSearch, and Categories options, as shown in the following figure:
The Navigator provides a tree view of the entire repository hierarchy, including folders and sub-folders. There is also a Refresh button, as shown in the previous figure, to refresh the navigator tree view with the latest files.
The Shelf includes Clipboard, Recent Spaces, and Shortcuts.
- Clipboard is used to cut or copy content and to paste in multiple spaces. Clipboard also facilitates the creation of links to actual content items or spaces.
- Recent Spaces provides a list of recently visited spaces. Therefore, it is useful if you want to go back to a specific space with one click. The information in the Recent Spaces is refreshed every time you log in to the Alfresco Explorer.
- Shortcuts are similar to favorites. You can create shortcuts to your frequently visited spaces.
The OpenSearch is Alfresco's implementation of an open standards based search API for sharing search results, and extending existing schemas such as ATOM and RSS.
The execution of searches is supported using HTTP requests and responses. For example, the keyword search shown above can also be executed using an HTTP request as given below.
http://localhost:8080/alfresco/service/api/search/keyword?q=alfresco
More details about OpenSearch are provided in Chapter 12 of this book.
Breadcrumbs help you navigate through various spaces. Typically, breadcrumbs provide paths to parent spaces.
The Header screen provides us with information about the current space, number of business rules applied to the current space, options for creating content, menu actions to manage content, and options to use various views to display information about the current space.
The Detail screen provides us with information about the subspaces and content, which are a part of the current space.
You can click on the icon or the title of a space or the content item in the Detail screen to access this information.
Actions are listed as icons for each space or content. Additional action items will be listed if you click on the double arrow icon 
.
The Administration Console in the Alfresco Explorer is useful to perform all of the system administration tasks. You can access the Administration Console by clicking on the administration console icon on the Tool Bar, as shown in the following screenshot. This icon is visible and accessible only to the users with admin privileges. Refer to the following screenshot to view the list of administration functions that can be performed by the system administrator:
You can add and delete users, and update user information, by using the Manage System Users functionality. When you first install Alfresco, there will be two users, namely admin and guest, created by the installer. You can create new users by using the Manage System Users functionality.
The Manage User Groups functionality is useful for creating groups of users and sub groups within the groups. Groups are useful for providing authorization to access the content.
Categorization allows content information to be classified in a number of ways. This aids searching for content. Categories are editable only by the administrator. Categories can have sub-categories and content can be linked to one or more categories.
The Export and Import functionalities are used to extract and load in large amounts, personal or department information and team information, from one location to another within the same repository or to another repository. Import and Export functionality is covered in detail in Chapter 14.
The System Information functionality is used to view session information and the HTTP header information. The content in Alfresco is stored in an industry standard Java Content Repository (JCR), where every folder and file is represented as a Node. The subfolders are represented as branches of a node, and are nodes themselves. Node Browser functionality is useful to navigate through the entire repository through nodes and subnodes.