Alfresco vs Sharepoint

[oracolo]

Hi to all community!

I must installing Intranet platform with Microsft Sharepoint when I working.

I want to know if Alfresco have got all function (or similar) of Sharepoint.

Thanks very much

oracolo.ch

[jpfi]

Hi,
Alfresco 3.0 "attacks" Sharepoint. Alfresco likes to be the OS alternative of Sharepoint. Alfresco 3.0 isn't finished yet, but they want to release the 3.0 Community in a few days.
Alfresco 3.0 is going to have a lot of features Sharepoint have and some Sharepoint doesn't have. And of course it will miss some features Sharepoint have.
So in a nutshell Alfresco is becoming a Sharepoint alternative but not a 1:1 copy.
So that's the most objective version of my opinion 😉
Cheers, Jan

[joechavez]

That's what annoyed us. We invested in Alfresco, thinking that it would be an alternative to Documentum. Then, after less than a year, we got this big direction change in v3.0…

[mikeh]

That's what annoyed us. We invested in Alfresco, thinking that it would be an alternative to Documentum. Then, after less than a year, we got this big direction change in v3.0…

You seem to be very stressed about this whole thing! We have thousands of customers with large systems running on the JSF "v2.x" client - it's not going to go away or be shelved in the near future. If you've invested time in the JSF world, it's certainly not wasted - maybe you could contribute back some of your valuable work? 

Thanks,
Mike

[xerox]

Mike,

I don't think that the webclient is his concern.
I think he's(and a lot of other people) concerned about the strategy change of alfresco about document management.
Alfresco spend last months much time in team/project collaboration and less time in document management features,…

I've tested alfresco lab3 and it looks very nice. but indeed it's more about team collaboration(sharepoint) and less about general DM(documentum).

So people are worrying about the document management part.

I hope alfresco will invest again in DM features(and bug fixes).
The challenge is to make a good mix of both(DM and team collaboration).

any comments?

Friendly regards,

Nick

[johnn]

but indeed it's more about team collaboration(sharepoint) and less about general DM(documentum).

Actually Nick, I can't think of anything more related to document management than our emulation of the Microsoft SharePoint protocol. Since Microsoft owns 95% (according to Microsoft) of the Office productivity market, most of document management deals with Microsoft Office documents. Having direct, native hooks inside of Microsoft Office is the best way to manage those documents.

When I participated in AIIM's ODMA (Open Document Management Alliance) in the mid-90s, we had Novell, WordPerfect, Saros (which became FileNet Panagon), PCDocs (became Hummngbird), Corel, Documentum (represented by me), and others trying to create a document management plug-in architecture. The idea was that we would get everyone to build in the ability to talk to document management systems. We got everyone to buy into it other than Microsoft. The end result was that it failed. Microsoft, in turn, probably discovered that there is an opportunity to manage the documents themselves and may have been the genesis of SharePoint.

I think the emulation of the protocol is a huge step forward for document management. It means that no plug-in is required and that Office now works with Alfresco straight out of the box. As a result of releasing the protocol, Microsoft may have finally created that ODMA interface.

[klaas]

Actually Nick, I can't think of anything more related to document management than our emulation of the Microsoft SharePoint protocol.

I don't want to hijack this tread, but emulation of the Sharepoint protocol is indeed a great evolution. I look forward to this feature, but Sharepoint is not Document management. It is collaboration (and don't get me wrong, collaboration is great). Collaboration is working on document for a short period and intensive together. Document management is working together but less intensive, but it's for a longer period (that's why you for example use a tree structure to keep you're documents. You can find the more quickly)

klaas

[xerox]

Actually Nick, I can't think of anything more related to document management than our emulation of the Microsoft SharePoint protocol.

Yes, Johnn, The emulation of the SharePoint protocol is very good for document management. It's a very good way to manage those documents.
What I meant was the team collaboration sites. (Like in SharePoint).
This is a good way to manage content for a short period (just like Klaas said).
Document management also needs management for documents for a longer period, finding them quickly, less intensive,…

It's possible to setup a site for such document management, only include document library and add documents in a hierarchy.
But in my opinion, the presentation layer in share of the document library isn't very intuitive for large repositories (not yet) and lacks a lot of features.
I know the share client is new and will improve in time (especially document management features).
So I’m not very worried about it. But I know a lot of people are worried about this.

As I said, the challenge is to make a good mix of both (DM and team collaboration).

[mikeh]

But in my opinion, the presentation layer in share of the document library isn't very intuitive for large repositories (not yet) and lacks a lot of features.

Hi Nick

Regarding the "intuitive" comment - is there anything specific you think doesn't work, or can be improved?

Many thanks,
Mike

[xerox]

One specific thing I remember:
There are many toolbars.
If I can remember there are 6 "toolbars" above the documents in de document library.
So much of my screen was taken by those toolbars. The simple view helped a bit,because this took less space for each document.
The folder tree also start in de middle(left) of the screen, So I've quikly got a vertical scrollbar.

Friendly regards,

Nick