Deploying to filesystem

[kseal]

The ability to deploy from an alfresco content repository to remote filesystems was touted for WCM 2.1 but I can't find any sign of it anywhere!
I've looked through these forums and found only a few related posts, but no guidance or solution.

I'm relatively comfortable using alfresco to create my site structure and apply basic workflow to it. Once all the content is in the staging sandbox I need to publish it to a user-selectable set of remote filesystems (ie, publish onto preview server or publish onto production servers). Publishing to a remote alfresco repository is definitely not the requirement, neither is pointing my servers to various locations in CIFS. This still seems to align with one of the use cases described in the WCM overview (publishing a static site) but I'm totally stumped as to how to achieve it.

I'd be very grateful for any pointers that anyone can provide. Thanks in advance.

[kvc]

Yes, the FS receiver code is part of the 2.1 source.  For Community RC1, we do not yet have the following:

(a) Installer / installation instructions for the remote receiver
(b) Remote server specification in GUI (checked in today; not in RC1)
© Config file for specifying:
     -  Directories to include / exclude in deployment
     -  Remote server path mount
     -  Remote server script / program execution

These three items will be part of an updated Community build in the next two weeks.  The current version in RC1 without (a), (b), and © is noted as BETA on the main WCM wiki page.

You can find the receiver components in our source at:

/projects/deployment/source/java/org/alfresco/deployment


Glad to hear you will be able to take advantage of this capabilty.  If you'd like to submit any details on your intended deployment use case so that we can use as a validation point before we finalize RC2, just email to kevinc@alfresco.com.  Would love to review that with the team, who in turn would like to see this capability used.

Kevin

[kseal]

Thanks for the swift response! I'm glad to hear that remote deployment is planned for the near future and I'll definitely keep an eye out for the next release.

In response to your request for more information I don't think what I'm looking for is particularly exotic - primarily the ability to deploy files to remote filesystems from the alfresco user interface.
Perhaps the only unusual thing is that I would like to group the filesystems and deploy to groups of them, for example:

preview environment
   123.45.67.89:1234
production environment
   223.45.67.89:1234
   323.45.67.89:1234

The intent is to use WCM to create the content but not necessarily preview it (the content is highly reliant on being hosted in the correct environment) - a manual deployment from staging sandbox to the preview environment will suffice for workflow before deployment to production.
Perhaps this can be better met by having a "preview sandbox" (that deploys to the preview filesystems) and a "production sandbox" (deploying to the production filesystems) for purposes of permissioning and workflow? I'd appreciate any thoughts the experts might have on this.

Thanks again.

[kvc]

Exactly.  That's what I'd recommend. 

Make a copy of the default WCM workflow, and then extend to add a remote file-server deployment step from the preview sandbox.  Further, I'd modify the task dialog for reviewer's so that the preview link is redirected to your custom web app for each of the items listed in the task list.

As an add, you may also want to generate email notification to prevent your reviewers from needing to go to a task dialog at all.  You can generates links to your preview server to embed in the email, and, using webscripts, have URLs to enable approve or reject.

We should include an example of this as well.  Something for us to consider once we stabilize Community and ship Enterprise. 

Good use case.

Kevin