decision making and starting points

[jogla]

Hi all,
I'm new to alfresco - and tryin' to get the following goals accomplished and to make the decision, if it's the right tool for me as an intranet-webmaster and our organisation. ('hope that's the right forum.)
Could you please provide me the starting points and/or some small answers, respectively.

Our setting:
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The main goal is to show direct supervisor and people from management, that there are better tools out there than our current document management system and our additional intranet system. For this demonstration purpose I decided to use 5.0.a community edition and Alfresco Workdesk. Because the IT-administration staff consists only of 1-2 persons (with almost no Java knowledge) there will be the need for support and therefore we will get enterprise edition for sure.
So I need a demo- or pilot-deployment of an alfresco based intranet with the following key features running:


1) Intranet-Starting page(s) / Homepages:
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There's the need for a usergroup-dependend portal-page which shows content in dependence of the users group membership.
I can see two ways:
   1a) A single predefined starting page/homepage with target-based search results for i.e. the newslist. Dynamic selected content needs to be in a news list, in an event calender or in a textbox with links.
   1b) Separate homepages for each target group - but then there has to be an automated redirecting process before, which leads the user to the correct homepage.
=> Are both implementations possible?
=> Is it possible to define searches based on parameters, so to make them more dynamically?
Suggestion: It would be cool to define several saved searches, so make a repository for the site admin, and then reuse them on several sites.


2) Page/Site-Layout with the following components:
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.) Mega menu (only static) on the top: ie. right beneath the Alfresco menu-bar. A tradeoff will be the integration of this site-navigation into the already existing "Sites"-Menu. .) Use of a news slider .) A menu on the left side (accordion with hierarchically menuitems) .) A news-list
=> How can I change the default layout? Will there be the need for programming in Java?
=> If page layout is changed - what will be the consequences and can I still show some of the standard menu items like "My documents", "Tasks", …?


3) Site templates:
——————-
In our scenario we have 1 to 6 starting- / home-pages (depending on the solution in point 1).
And additionally about 200+ additional pages of about 3 to 5 different types will be deployed.
For example: site for service/administrational departments + sites for production departments + sites for project teams + sites for special issues like a learning-plattform.
=> I found out that it is possible to define so called presets - is this the right way?
=> How can the process of deployment of a news site be automated, semi-automated or scripted?
=> Which are the main steps and tools to create several presets? To deploy the presets? And to adjust them (is it possible to adjust them separately)?


4) Document management / records management:
———————————————
Today we have a web based DMS and I can see the pain in the eyes of our enduser, when they are forced to work 2 hours a day with that plattform.
Alfresco Workdesk seems a really good alternative - because of a specialized UI for a document-information-worker.
I know that there a some prebuild applications like "contract mgt." or "hr".
=> Is there a tutorial / "getting started documentation for admins" or using AND customizing the out of the box workdesk configuration?
=> Can records management functionality also be used in Workdesk?


5) Faceted Search:
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Very, very, very important!
=> What are/will be the main differences in version 4.x compared to 5.x?
=> To me the management of metadata (tags, attributes) is also critical - are there any tools to maintain the metadata-values in or outside of alfresco?


6) Editions and Versions:
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=> If there is time for serveral months: Which version would you recommend to start? When will there be a 5.x.y enterprise version available?


Thank you very much in advance and
best regards!
Joerg Glasauer

[jpotts]

Because you will definitely be using Enterprise Edition, you should get in touch with Alfresco. They can assign someone to your account and start answering these questions and possibly demo some of this stuff for you. In the meantime, here are some fast, high-level opinions…

For your intranet pages, I don't know why you want to use Alfresco for that. What you described sounds like a good job for Drupal or similar. Whatever you use for that can then pull content from Alfresco if it needs to.

Changing layouts will involve FreeMarker at the least. You need to learn more about the Surf framework (pre 5.0) or Aikau (5.0) to understand how pages are created.

Ask your Alfresco rep about Workdesk/RM integration. There has been some movement in this area, I think.

Regarding 5.0, you can download and install 5.0.a community right now to get an idea for how enterprise is shaping up. If you don't want to mess with that, check out this short video I made showing some of the new features, including faceted search: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41AtseLsdqE

There is a tags tool in the admin console. Similar for categories.

For metadata values, if you want to change those in bulk you can use the CMIS API.

On 5.x release dates, see if you can get your rep to tell you. I suspect we'll see something by Alfresco Summit but that something might be a beta. Who knows!

Jeff

[jogla]

Hello Jeff,
just found in one of your recent blogs posts on http://ecmarchitect.com which. It sheds a light on the things we should NOT expect alfresco to be.
Especially the first "anti-pattern" regarding WCM was usefull for me. My thinking: "use the one system -  it's easier than two of them" is apparently wrong. The answer was also in your answer in this thread (Drupal…)
Here's the link to the blog-post in case anyone's stumbling upon this thread.

<a href="http://ecmarchitect.com/archives/2014/06/26/3896">Alfresco Anti-Patterns: When You Probably Shouldn’t Use Alfresco [http://ecmarchitect.com/archives/2014/06/26/3896]</a>

Regards, Joerg

[myunus]

Decision making is always a challenging job however, it's not so easy to do but it needs some quality in personality as well as in academic learning. As a writer i have to think always something different and something new and sometimes it's not so easy to implement a new idea especially when you are trying to write something like scientific!.i am happy to learn a lot in these topic.

[jogla]

(Please excuse my late answer: was on holidays.)
I really appreciate the answers of Jeff and myunus!

I must have been in a very wild dream to have asked for more detailed answers - well to apologize: I just want to make my / our learning curve not so steep.

And here we are at the three important aspects of my loooong question - may be they'll also help myunus in some way:

1st aspect: There are many questions and some of them (randomly or according to importance) <strong>have to be answered on a very deep level</strong>. It is important to examin very exactly in order to say "yes, that will be our system for the next years!". We do not need to check all business cases but the most important ones - and the above was my filtrate.

2nd aspect: How much do we have to learn in order to implement a system for the purpose to make these examinations?  System should be set up AND customized easily, with a perferably shallow learning curve. In Alfresco the installation is easy and for getting started (getting to know how to use the default UI and functions) there are documents in the wiki and documentation pages respectively. The documentation for customizing is also here. <strong>But I think there is lack in between - something like "getting started and examples for customization". It's hard for a newcomer to get into that realm.</strong>

3rd aspect: As I said that in order to get away from an existing system (ie. Sharepoint - only partly implementet) managers must be convinced. As you can guess they don't want to spend much money, when they don't <strong>SEE and FEEL a profit at their fingertips</strong>.

Best regards
Joerg