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Jul 2010
Contents
• Alfresco pros/cons
• Document workflow in Ontotext with Alfresco
• Proposal for structure & policy of the DMS
• Next steps
Document Management with Alfresco #2
Jul 2010
Executive Summary
• Satisfies our requirements for a DMS– Open source, web based
– Flexible access control
– Versioning & auditing
– Tagging + hierarchical categorisation
– Very powerful search
– Very powerful business rules functionality
– Comments / discussions
• Plus…– Good documentation (300+ pages, videos, wiki, …)
– Active community & support forums
– MS Office / Open Office integration
Document Management with Alfresco #3
Jul 2010
Contents
Alfresco Pros & Cons
Document Management with Alfresco #4
Jul 2010
Pros
1. Open source, Java, 100% web based
2. Versioning– Locking (offline editing)
– Approval requests
3. Flexible access control– Fine grained (space -> folder -> item level)
– Hierarchical groups (i.e. Ontotext -> CG -> Board Members)
4. Tagging + hierarchical categories– Search on a category will match sub-categories too
Document Management with Alfresco #5
Jul 2010
Dashboard
Document Management with Alfresco #6
Content changes
Site updates (filters + RSS)
Jul 2010
Pros (2)
5. Powerful business rules– On: create/update/delete items, enter/leave folder
– Conditions
• Attribute value (author, date, tag, category)
• Aspects
– Actions
• Send mail, run script, run workflow, transform content, extract metadata, …
6. Powerful search (Lucene)– Google syntax
– Wildcard, proximity, fuzzy, range
– Field/attribute
– Term boosting
Document Management with Alfresco #7
Jul 2010
Document view
Document Management with Alfresco #8
preview
tags
versions
Access control
Direct links
actions
Jul 2010
Search
Document Management with Alfresco #9
Search content (“ЕГН”)
Jul 2010
Pros (3)
7. RSS– On individual folder level, or global updates
– User/pass protected
8. Discussions / comments– On each item
– Discussion forum
9. WYSIWYG wiki/blog editor
10. MS Office 2003 / OpenOffice integration
11. Extensive documentation– 300+ pages, videos, wiki, forums
12. Active user community
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Jul 2010
More extras
13. WebDAV, FTP, SMB/CIFS access– Useful for large files
14. Links– Integration with external RSS feeds
– Manually posted URLs
15. Blog
16. Calendar (only global)
17. Lists templates (meeting agenda, task list, contact list, …)
18. Semi-automated metadata extraction (extensible)
19. In-bound email server– Upload document, workflow interaction
Document Management with Alfresco #12
Jul 2010
More extras (2)
20. In-memory cache (performance)
21. Lots of performance tuning options
22. Option for replication (Sofia -> Varna)
23. Inline create documents– HTML/text
– Google docs
24. Content transformation (extensible)
25. Custom CSS theme
26. LDAP integration
Document Management with Alfresco #13
Jul 2010
Problems and open issues
• Wiki is not very good– (+) It has flexible access control
– (+) WYSIWYG editor
– (-) no integration with the Document Repository, i.e. one has to link to documents by full URL (as external links)
– (-) access control managed from a different (admin) tool
• Lists not integrated with Users but only with document repository
• Calendar is only global (visible to all users)
• Sometimes unstable, some obvious bugs– client & server running on my laptop
• Workflow customisation is not intuitive
Document Management with Alfresco #14
Jul 2010
Contents
Document Workflow in Ontotextwith Alfresco
Document Management with Alfresco #15
Jul 2010
Document Workflow
• HR– Problem
• CVs exchanged as attachment
• difficult to find the right CV in the last minute
• Can’t link to the CV from calendar
• Comments/discussions on the candidate are not preserved
– Proposal
• CVs are stored in the DMS (limited access only to HR team + Project Managers)
• Only links (no attachments) are exchanged by mail, also added in calendar for last minute access
• Opinions are not exchanged by mail but as comments on the DMS item
Document Management with Alfresco #16
Jul 2010
Document Workflow (2)
• Business trips– Problem
• Plans are exchanged as attachment
• Conflicting versions may occur (update from author + minor corrections from Admin office)
• Not too easy to locate an old travel plan
– Proposal
• Plans & Reports are stored in the DMS (no special access control?)
• Versioning provides safe updates
• The “Request approval” action for the document can be used when the author updates travel plan/report to notify Admin office
• Simple reporting
– Categories or tags (project name, conference name, …) can be assigned to travel documents – provide easy way to group and find related documents
– Easy to locate all travel docs for some person within some period
– Easy to locate all travel docs which are still not accounted (category/tag)
Document Management with Alfresco #17
Jul 2010
Document Workflow (3)
• Collaborative editing– E.g. EC reporting, market analysis, etc. that involves not only
technical people
– Problem
• Currently stored on a filesystem (no versioning)
• SVN is always an option but not too convenient for non-programmers
• Difficult to locate the proper files in SVN, cannot search contents
• Collaboration needs some sort of workflow (usually happens by e-mail)
– Proposal
• Everything goes into the DMS (with the proper access control)
• Versioning provides safe updates
• Actions (request for approval, notify) can be specified for the document
Document Management with Alfresco #18
Jul 2010
Contents
DMS Structure & Policy (proposal)
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Jul 2010
Proposed structure
Document Management with Alfresco #20
Full access
Read only
No access
Jul 2010
Proposed policy
• There is only one document repository, everyone from Ontotext has an individual account
• No attachments in mails, only links to the DMS
• Different sections have different access control
• Different groups– Ontotext – everyone else (EE) can read/write
– System Admin, Office Admin – upper level can read/write, EE has read access
– Sales / BizDev – upper levels can read/write, EE has no access
– CG – upper levels can read/write, EE has no access
– Top secret (CIA clearance only ;) – EE has no access
Document Management with Alfresco #21
Jul 2010
Proposed policy (2)
• One “shared” repository for key external partners and Ontotext (same accounts)
• Different sections have different access control (Ontotext has full access)
• Different groups – per project/partner
Document Management with Alfresco #22
Jul 2010
Next steps…
• Set up a test DMS– Populate a small repository
– Access control, users, structure, etc…
• CG & BizDev/Sales start using it – Test for problems & issues
– Are they satisfied with the functionality
– Provide ideas for structure & customisation
• Meanwhile everyone can access…– http://xxxxx:8080/share/page/site/Ontotext/dashboard Full
functionality (xxxxx is my IP for the day, Skype me), user “admin”, pass “admin”
– http://share.alfresco.com/share/page/site/ontotext/dashboardlimited functionality, user “santaclaus”, pass “Tralala123”
Document Management with Alfresco #24