automatic archiving possible?

[copymaster]

Hi

I like to know if and how is it possible to automate the dms process.

Say, we like to automatically put EVERY openoffice Document into the DMS and every MS Word and Excel documents.

Do i have implement some code in openoffice or MS WORD/EXCEL to archieve this?

Or is there a possibility that Alfresco looks into a Directory and automatically puts everything into the DMS?

AND another question. If i have a Database, where the METADATA of documents is stored (including document names) is it possible to tell Alfresco to look into this DB where the Metadata is stored and to put the documents into the DMS?
Is it further possible to "call"  a document out of Alfresco from another application, so that the content is displayed in the appropriate Software (Openoffice, MS Word, acrobat) ???


thanx

[rdanner]

Hi

I like to know if and how is it possible to automate the dms process.

Say, we like to automatically put EVERY openoffice Document into the DMS and every MS Word and Excel documents.

Do i have implement some code in openoffice or MS WORD/EXCEL to archieve this?

Or is there a possibility that Alfresco looks into a Directory and automatically puts everything into the DMS?

AND another question. If i have a Database, where the METADATA of documents is stored (including document names) is it possible to tell Alfresco to look into this DB where the Metadata is stored and to put the documents into the DMS?
Is it further possible to "call"  a document out of Alfresco from another application, so that the content is displayed in the appropriate Software (Openoffice, MS Word, acrobat) ???


thanx

If you mean file folder by directory then Yes.  One of the best insights of Alfresco (IMO) was to build a repository that could be exposed by any number of adapters JCR, Web Services and CIFS.  CIFS allows windows and unix machines to mount the repository as if it were just any old shared folder.  When documents are acted on via the CIFS interface the repository can trigger rules just as if the file was managed through the webclient (or any other outward faceing interface.)

Second question:
Do you want to leave the metadata in the database or bring it along into the repository with the document?  I think the short answer anyway is not off the shelf but its not that difficult to make that happen with a little work or your part or the part of an Alfresco SI.  I suspect at some point we will see JCR adapters included in ETL tools (Pentaho… pay attention ) which would make this work cake.

Third question
Yes but I think the way you do that depends on the desired user experince and the application in question.  Alfresco has many "external" interfaces: CIFS, FTP, Alfresco foundation API, PHP API, Web Service API, JCR API, JCR via RMI api and so on.  You can also include artifacts from alfresco in enterprise workflows through JBPM.

Hope this helps

[copymaster]

Thanx for the fast answer.

For your anser on CIFS:
The documentation mentioned that it is not possible to use CIFS writeable, only for reading.
How can someone put files per CIFS into Alfresco (with automatic archiving)?


And: We have the Metadata in a Database (including BARCODE) and if it is possible to use this data, how can someone manage to get this tricky thing going? The Files are all in a specified directory.


But: unfortunately, Alfresco seems not to work (openoffice Konverter) under Ubuntu Edgy. I tried it and the conversion from PDF to .odt didn't work.

But Alfresco is a great tool and i am thinking about to change the server to opensuse for example.

If there is a way to automatically archive

a) files in a folder
or
b) files with metadata in another DB (oracle)

It can be a replacement for our actual DMS.

[copymaster]

IS there a solution for my problem of automatic archiving? please tell me how.

I want to use alfresco as an emailarchive AND as DMS!

Pleas give advice how to use alfresco in the described way.


thanx

[kevinr]

For your anser on CIFS:
The documentation mentioned that it is not possible to use CIFS writeable, only for reading.
How can someone put files per CIFS into Alfresco (with automatic archiving)?

And: We have the Metadata in a Database (including BARCODE) and if it is possible to use this data, how can someone manage to get this tricky thing going? The Files are all in a specified directory.

If there is a way to automatically archive

a) files in a folder
or
b) files with metadata in another DB (oracle)

CIFS is fully writable - you can read/write files as you would a normal directory on your filesystem.

What exactly do you mean by auto-archive in this context? Do you want the files archived outside of Alfresco or in Alfesco into another folder for example?

Alfresco supports CIFS and FTP interfaces - so you should be able to create a system that interfaces to Alfresco using CIFS of FTP to retrieve files as required.

If you want to archive items in Alfresco itself, you can write scheduled actions that execute javascript code that find the appropriate files to archive (using a lucene search by date for instance) and then copy/move those files in your script to another folder. The javascript API in Alfresco is powerful enough to perform all these tasks and more.
http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/JavaScript_API

Thanks,

Kevin

[copymaster]

Thanx,
i didn't notice that cifs is writeable.

well the hole prodedure again:

we have an system where the users work on the hole day. Its the main application. when a letter comes in, the people put a barcode on it and fill in some metadata into the system.
the paper (letters and so on) are then going to the "scanman". he only puts the papers into the KOFAX engine, and the kofax software knows about the BArcode, because its looking into the database and finds the customer dependend on the barcode. The next step is that the engine puts this Document and metadata into a DMS.

there is even the possibillity to create Word documents out of the main application. There is no barcode. But the System gives a unice name to the document and knows automatically the customer because of the context where it was called (same Database). This Document is also automatically archived.

after scanning documents as mentioned before, the document name is written into the db of our main application, and when a user uses the main application, he is able to see the documentname when opening a customer. When he clicks on that name, the relevant application starts to show the content of the ocument (Word, Acrobat, Tiffviewer)

I would like to know if i could replace our existing system with alfresco.

Unfortunately i am no java engineer. so the idea is to configure all applications in one Directory, where Alfresco finds it. Alfresco should then be able to fetch the metadata out of the DB from the main application and archive the content. after that, the document is marked as archived in the main applications db. So when a user clicks on a Documentname, somewhat must happen to open the appropriate application to show the content.


Alfresco is great, i like the automatic converting feature very much (doc in pdf and so on)!

I know DMS systems and before searching and testing for weeks i hope you can give me a short answer.
It seems like i have to learn JAVA to accomplish this.

I hope you can understand my bad english and again thanks for answering my poor questions.

[copymaster]

ok, thanx for your help, i'll try to understand java first….