CMS for 2500 users - 150 departments

[rtacconi]

Hello,

I am pretty new to Alfresco. I would like to know if it is possible to divide Alfresco into 150 sections, mapped to 150 department, where each section has its own editor, in charge of document management, article creation, user management, polls and web pools creation… everything self contained in its category, department. The "super administrators" about 2/3 peoples, should be able to manage the CMS and help di other moderator (managers of the departments/categories).

Plus the CMS should provide a web-app for booking/authorization of the holidays. This should be developed as a module. Each department should see a table with a summary of the employee holidays, a "specialized" calendar. I am a PHP programmer, with a University Java knowledge and I should develop the holiday booking and install the CMS, port the design from a PHP CMS to Alfresco.

I would like to know:

1. Is it possible to implement the over mentioned architecture?
2.  The development of the holiday system is it difficult for a very Junior JSP programmer?

Any comment and advice will be highly appriciated.

Regards,

Riccardo.

[rtacconi]

Any reply?

[mrogers]

Yes Alfresco will do your first paragraph.

Your holiday hooking system should be fairly easy and if you may be able to do your holiday system in PHP rather than learning a new language.  (Of course you can also use Java or Java Script - i'm just pointing out that Alfresco has some support for PHP as well.)
Your first need will be to understand Alfresco and its architecture rather than worrying about programming languages.

[rtacconi]

I now Java but only a little bit JSP and Servlets. I use Eclipse even for PHP.

Yes, I need to understand the architecture, in first instance. I saw that the content's contributors can use a share drive to send the content. I should have about 150, where each department could publish its own  content.

[mrogers]

You have several options to consider.

You could have the equivalent of "150" shared drives.   But that's becoming un-wieldy to administer and if you have many users who are in more than one department or have many people who look over other departments then it may become a bit fiddly.

You could also consider having a "space" for each department.    Each space can have its own permissions.

If you are using the new share interface you may also have a "site" for each department, as well as having a few sites which are shared by everyone.  

These are just some of the options available, and there's nothing to stop you mixing and matching approaches to suit your requirements.

[rtacconi]

Yes, I need a web site per each department, browsable from anyone, but some content will be restricted per user, group or department. I am very disoriented when I connect to Alfresco's home page: it seems more a file manager than a CMS. I have aspected to see some articles ordered by date, not a lsort of web-app.

You have several options to consider.

You could have the equivalent of "150" shared drives. But that's becoming un-wieldy to administer and if you have many users who are in more than one department or have many people who look over other departments then it may become a bit fiddly.

You could also consider having a "space" for each department. Each space can have its own permissions.

If you are using the new share interface you may also have a "site" for each department, as well as having a few sites which are shared by everyone.

These are just some of the options available, and there's nothing to stop you mixing and matching approaches to suit your requirements.