topic Re: Way too many steps to edit word doc in alfresco!!!! in Alfresco Archive

Way too many steps to edit word doc in alfresco!!!!

invantix — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 18:06:45 GMT

Please tell me I am doing something wrong!My CIO is not happy with what it takes to edit a file in alfresco. "It is too complicated for our users" He wants to can the trial. I want to keep going so I need to find a better way. (Click, edit, save, done)Here is our experience.Scenario A1. find the

Re: Way too many steps to edit word doc in alfresco!!!!

loftux — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 18:26:00 GMT

I don't think it is you, it is your CIO that is doing something wrong :wink:

Have you tried using CIFS?
See http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/File_Server_Configuration
This is by far the easiest way of editing document, just map the folder and open the document as your CIO is used to. And then save as he is used to.

If he wants more gui there is an office plugin available, just download from where you downloaded the other stuff.

Tell your CIO that you most likely will not find any ECM software that allows for more easy editing. I've worked with Documentum, Hummingbird, Open Text Livelink, and Alfresco beats them all!

Peter LÃƒÂ¶fgren

Re: Way too many steps to edit word doc in alfresco!!!!

dhalupa — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 19:43:48 GMT

Please tell me I am doing something wrong!

Please tell me I am doing something wrong!!

There is a possibility to make a small customization which will render edit link (small pencil) as webdav link. In that case (if CIO is using Internet explorer) the editing scenario would be as follows

1. Click on pencil
2. Word is started and document is opened
3. Make changes
4 Save document

To acheive this you have to edit web-client-config.xml and change content of edit-link-type to webdav

Hope this helps,

Denis

Re: Way too many steps to edit word doc in alfresco!!!!

dhalupa — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 20:00:51 GMT

I don't think it is you, it is your CIO that is doing something wrong :wink:

Tell your CIO that you most likely will not find any ECM software that allows for more easy editing. I've worked with Documentum, Hummingbird, Open Text Livelink, and Alfresco beats them all!

You were working as a developer or as a user?

I have only been working with Documentum and from developer perspective it is much more fun to work with Alfresco. WDK and DFC were always kind of awkward to me.

But, from user perspective, I think that webtop is still more intuitive due to the fact that you do not have to take care of downloading working versions and uploading back after editing

Kind regards,

Denis

Re: Way too many steps to edit word doc in alfresco!!!!

tonytony — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 20:09:29 GMT

Try the microsoft plug-in. It automates all of this stuff via webdav.

Re: Way too many steps to edit word doc in alfresco!!!!

loftux — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 07:33:41 GMT

You were working as a developer or as a user?

Mostly developer and architect. But my statement comes from the fact that I've been very windows client oriented and mostly working with Hummingbird. So even if the initial post was talking about web, I still tend to think of windows clients only. And that is where Alfresco is so easy to use, when there is no need for a separate client and new ways to work. With the Hummingbird DM client the user had to fill in the 'Profile' card, a not to hard task. But then the document got saved mysteriously in cyberspace, the users actually wants to navigate a structure and that gives them a feeling of control that the file is actually saved.

So for the Alfresco web client, there is room for improvement. And to admit, the Open Text LiveLink web client has some nice features, like switching to WebDav view and edit files directly.

Regards,

Peter LÃƒÂ¶fgren

Re: Way too many steps to edit word doc in alfresco!!!!

dhalupa — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 08:48:35 GMT

Mostly developer and architect. But my statement comes from the fact that I've been very windows client oriented and mostly working with Hummingbird. So even if the initial post was talking about web, I still tend to think of windows clients only. And that is where Alfresco is so easy to use, when there is no need for a separate client and new ways to work. With the Hummingbird DM client the user had to fill in the 'Profile' card, a not to hard task. But then the document got saved mysteriously in cyberspace, the users actually wants to navigate a structure and that gives them a feeling of control that the file is actually saved.
So for the Alfresco web client, there is room for improvement. And to admit, the Open Text LiveLink web client has some nice features, like switching to WebDav view and edit files directly.

I do agree that accessing Alfresco with windows client is very easy and intuitive for a typical windows user. I am just hoping that Alfresco will take a step back from social computing and other advanced stuff and will try to fix some rather basic things on web client.
These are, for example, implement save of scrolling position, implement tabbed layout instead of expandable panels, implement normal date input on property sheet component like the one they have implemented on recently introduced calendar view.. In my experience, these are things that average customer will first notice when you let him play a bit with Alfresco web client.

Kind regards,

Denis

Re: Way too many steps to edit word doc in alfresco!!!!

dmatejka — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 10:53:11 GMT

..yes you are right. and they know about it,…

http://forums.alfresco.com/viewtopic.php?p=36148#36148

:wink:

Re: Way too many steps to edit word doc in alfresco!!!!

mkopaczewski — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 13:22:19 GMT

Re: Way too many steps to edit word doc in alfresco!!!!

dhalupa — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 13:37:14 GMT

Check the following

Open word document from alfresco with pencil link, when word app opens click on File->Properties . Location should be something like

http://yourserv/alfresco/webadav…

Re: Way too many steps to edit word doc in alfresco!!!!

mkopaczewski — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 14:25:50 GMT

The problem is with firefox when I am opening doc through firefox it downloads it to temp, when I am doing it using IE works fine

Is it normal that if it is first time i open the document that it ask me for a password? although i logged in alfresco

Re: Way too many steps to edit word doc in alfresco!!!!

dhalupa — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 14:34:34 GMT

Can not be used with ff, at least not to my knowledge.. I believe that webdav authentication is required

Re: Way too many steps to edit word doc in alfresco!!!!

tommorris — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 15:31:29 GMT

This might help:
http://openwebfolder.mozdev.org/index.html

It's a Firefox add-on, so would require a client install.
It's just a pass-through to the same Windows WebDAV functionality that IE uses. Which means Windows only…

Re: Way too many steps to edit word doc in alfresco!!!!

invantix — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 22:08:28 GMT

Try the microsoft plug-in. It automates all of this stuff via webdav.

Will this work with office 2007? I see it listed as components for Office 2003 which is 5 years old.

Thanks

Re: Way too many steps to edit word doc in alfresco!!!!

mikeh — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 23:17:50 GMT

Will this work with office 2007? I see it listed as components for Office 2003 which is 5 years old.

Thanks

Short answer is yes. More detail here:
http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Microsoft_Office

Office 2003 might be 5 years old (it's not really when you consider service packs), but it's still got *by far* the biggest installed user base.

Thanks,
Mike

P.S. Windows XP is 7 1/2 years old 😉

Re: Way too many steps to edit word doc in alfresco!!!!

dinger — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:30:16 GMT

When I try and open a link via webdav it successfully opens it in word (it is word embedded in IE though). However when I exit or try to save the document it will only save it to a local location. Any idea why it doesn't save it back via webdav?

Rob

Re: Way too many steps to edit word doc in alfresco!!!!

sacco — Wed, 21 May 2008 01:03:03 GMT

When I try and open a link via webdav it successfully opens it in word (it is word embedded in IE though). However when I exit or try to save the document it will only save it to a local location. Any idea why it doesn't save it back via webdav?

This is because IE downloads the document via WebDAV before offering it (the local copy) to Word.
There are some hints about how to get it IE to give the WebDAV URL to Word upthread, but it will
take significant extra work to make this into a cross-browser solution. It's also complicated by the
fact that Windows comes with many different implementations of WebDAV, all of them broken in one
way or another: in particular they are also not well integrated with the rest of Windows or with each
other, so that, for example, depending upon the authentication mechanisms you are using it is
likely that you may get a lot of extra requests for passwords (Kereberos-based authentication solutions
are probably the best place to start if you need to mitigate this problem).

Re: Way too many steps to edit word doc in alfresco!!!!

ernest — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 13:57:23 GMT

Hi
Has anyone found out how to Configure Webdav editing in Firefox, yet? i have done this in IE and it is Working Perfectly,
But when i try in Firefox it does not want to work it take me to Google docs…
Please help!

Re: Way too many steps to edit word doc in alfresco!!!!

sacco — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 17:39:47 GMT

Hi
Has anyone found out how to Configure Webdav editing in Firefox, yet? i have done this in IE and it is Working Perfectly,
But when i try in Firefox it does not want to work it take me to Google docs…
Please help!

OK. You have two distinct problems here.

1) You installation of Firefox is configured to open MS Office documents in Google docs, whereas I suspect that would prefer to open them in MS Office or OpenOffice. Depending upon your version of Firefox, this is either a Firefox configuration issue, or else it may be related to the File Type registrations under Windows (more recent Firefox should be using the latter, I think).

2) For in place editing via WebDAV it is currently possible only to use Internet Explorer. IE can be configured to use proprietary Sharepoint browser extensions to open WebDAV URLs directly in MS Office. Without some such mechanism, it is not possible to edit in place, as the standard browser action is to first download a local copy of a document, and then to open it in an appropriate application, by which stage it is too late as you are editing a temporary local copy (it shouldn't have been like this, but Web-browsers have long been designed with inadequate consideration of dynamic and interactive scenarios).

The solution to this problem would be to apply a particular class attribute to the edit link from the server action configuration (unfortunately this is not very flexible with respect to adding classes, but it is possible), and then to have a browser plug-in for Firefox which intercepts the action when the link is selected and, rather than downloading the file, instead starts an external application (e.g. Word, preferably configurable according to link type) passing it the WebDAV URL, so that the document is opened directly in the application.

Writing such a plug-in would not be difficult nor a major task (a couple of days, a week at most to have a polished and reasonably flexible version, possibly excluding a user-friendly configuration interface though), but somebody does have to find the time to plough through the documentation of the Firefox API and convert the above sketch into code.

If I had the time I'd do it myself, but…