Checking out question

[ssalvini]

I've been evaluating Doc Management Software now for a few months and this by far has been the best one.

One thing I find unusual though, comparing it to Sharepoint.  When I check out a document, and store a copy within the current workspace I get a working copy.

When I want to edit the working copy, I have to save the file to my system, then browse and update the working copy, then finally check in the working copy.

It seams to add another step in the process of checking out and in a document.

Is there any way to open the working document and save the changes direct to the file with out having to save to the desktop then browse and update?

[rwetherall]

Hi,

There might be a couple of ways of working that might help.

1)  You can use the CIFS interface to edit the working copy.  The CIFS interface makes the Alfresco repository appear as a network drive.  So you can browse the repository using file explorer and edit the files with the appropriate application, eg Word.

2) If appropriate you can make the working copy inline editable (for text, xml, html, etc) this allows you make edits from within the web client, so you don't have to save content to your file system.

3) Check-out the document and save the content, as you currently are, to your file system.  Make the changes, but instead of updating the working copy go straight to the check-in action.  On the check-in dialog check the ' Use copy uploaded from my computer' option on the radio button at the bottom and browse to your updated file.  Now check-in.  This effectively combines the update and check-in into one action, applying the updated content directly to original.

Hope this helps,
Roy

[steve]

Hi,

You can also use WebDAV…

Steve

[csiege]

I know this a old topic, but I want to see if I can revive it. 🙂

I am getting some push back from our internal customers on this also.  They have a strong concern about people having working copies left on their local machine after the checkin process is complete… they would like to have everything done "in the system". 

webdav works well as it auto locks and auto versions (CIFS not so well for this..)

but they have to go to the web site for other things… what are the options for getting them to check out the document (lock it) not having to create a "working copy" and edit inline the word or excel files…?

Thanks for any help on this!

Chris

[gavinc]

We do not have anything currently that allows you to edit word or excel documents inline.

If you know of an open source project that allows this you could always try adding this capability yourself. 1.3 is now a lot easier to customise so it shouldn't be too hard to integrate something like this.

[csiege]

I have actually found that changing the edit link to "webdav" in the config file gets me close to what I need when I have the files auto versioning… 

The only thing I might like to add is something where the use much check out the document explicity to get the edit_icon.gif to appear, there would not be a working copy created and the user would be able to edit the locked file through the webdav edit link since they are a lock holder.

The only thing I would have to try and figure out is how to get the check out process to just lock the file and force creating a working copy.  They allowing the lock holder to edit the working copy.

The whole concept of the working copy seems extraneous.

Thoughts?  Thanks for any info!

Chris