Add-ons and Records

[peterbrooks]

Alfresco in the cloud looks like a nice, inexpensive, easy to use option, but I'm concerned that it might be a bit limiting - but I've only just started to look at it, so I might be misunderstanding. Any help gratefully received:

- I see that there are a lot of useful add-ons. How can one access these with the cloud option?

- I'd like to keep track of records as well as just files - is this possible?

- The workflow seems quite limited. Can't I set things to happen at a particular time, or to trigger on other events (like an e-mail, or SMS)?

- I can't seem to find the version history. It's great to have the versioning, but I'd need to know who changed what when - an audit trail. It'd be good to have the ability to compare version and roll back - as in a wiki.

If I'm better off installing it all from scratch and running it on my machine or a hosted server, that's fine, I just need to understand whether or not this is an option.

[#2]

A part of my recent question on this forum raised to management asking where they see the competition to Alfresco Cloud is because of some of the limitations you are seeing. These limitations are not so important when Alfresco Cloud is linked to Alfresco Enterprise.

To answer your questions;

- The existing add-ons that require installation (effectively all of them) are not able to be used with Alfresco in the Cloud. Developers are expected to re-write their add-ons to work through the Cloud API. This will likely require the add-on developer to provide their own service in the cloud too.

- I am not sure what Records are but I think Alfresco Cloud only handles files.

- The workflow is currently very limited. There have been requests for enhancements to the functionality but this is up to Alfresco managers and developers to implement, if ever.

- The version history for a file is accessible when you open any document in Alfresco Cloud web interface. From there you are able to see who uploaded each version, download any version or revert to any version. A request has been made to allow a version to be deleted from the version history too but again no idea when or if this will change.