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Alfresco Notification Architecture Options

patquinn
Champ in-the-making
Champ in-the-making
Hi All,

We are building a custom application which needs to be notified when a user saves a document using MS Word.

User Steps:
1. User enters custom application
2. User navigates to a document
3. User opens document in MS Word (using Sharepoint Protocol Integration with Alfresco)
4. User makes edit and saves document (or MS Word auto saves)
5. The custom application back-end is notified of the update event and performs some business logic based on that event

The approach I'm thinking of using is to leverage the rules engine: When "Items are Updated" perform a custom action, which publishes the event onto a JMS queue using something like ActiveMQ.

Is there any experience out there with any other approaches to an Alfresco Notification architecture? Perhaps I'm missing something within Alfresco that can achieve this with configuration and without customisation?

Thanks,
Patrick
4 REPLIES 4

mrogers
Star Contributor
Star Contributor
Alfresco itself already has such queues for various purposes.   It's a valid and proven approach.   Hybrid sync uses it as does the big data server.

There can be some strange behaviour around office saves that will cause problems for example office may move files around or delete and recreate a file when you expect and want to see a clean update.   You can work through the events but it can be problematic.

patquinn
Champ in-the-making
Champ in-the-making
Hi,

Thanks for replying…Are these queues implemented through the Publishing mechanism? http://docs.alfresco.com/4.2/references/RESTful-Publishing.html

Yes, we've had a few dances with the MS Word save Shuffle…such as half saves leaving a doc named .TMP. Most critical issue was, at one point MS Word saves over CIFs were sporadically deleting the working copy…caused us serious issues, hasn't happened since Nov 29th 2013! We still run a script every 20 minutes as a result to try detect when the problem occurs so we can be proactive about restoring the working copy for users.
For others: we found this wiki page useful for understanding the shuffle pattern: http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/File_Server_Rename_Patterns

Thanks,
Patrick

mrogers
Star Contributor
Star Contributor
And normally you would put the logic for your "custom application" within alfresco itself.    Perhaps being orchestrated by workflow?   But as ever it depends upon your requirements.

razor
Champ in-the-making
Champ in-the-making
Gentlemans

one question.

diference being using task activity or task alfresco

and advantage.