Drag and drop functionality effect on Offline Edit

[michaeljensen]

Hello everyone.

My company is currently installing Alfresco 4.0 Enterprise version and we are trying to get a full understanding of Alfresco Shares features.

Can anyone explain the effect of drag and drop functionality on the offline edit concept?

I am trying to conceptually understand how it should work!

When performing an "Offline edit" action a working copy version is created in the Alfresco repository and a link between the working copy and original is created (based on the naming I presume?). It is always possible to perform a "Cancel editing" action. The document is downloaded to your local PC (or where you choose) and you can edit all you want!

So far so good. But when wanting to "check"in the document I cannot understand what the Alfresco engineers want the user to do?

When wanting to "checkIn" the working copy I would expect it to be possible to drag and drop the edited working copy into the folder in Alfresco were the working copy is placed. The drag and drop works as expected = the version of the working copy in Alfresco repository is increased. Unfortunately there is no "CheckIn" action???? How do I transform the working copy in the Alfresco repository into the original but with a new version?

I know that "Upload a new version" is possible and that this cancels the current working copy but the users are irritated of the tedious way of first finding the correct document -> pressing upload -> find the document locally -> select major/minor version…

Is there an easier way to use the upload new version? (I know it is possible to use CIFS and there is an checkIn/checkOut action but I would like to restrict the users to the Share Interface)..

The last resort is to customize a "checkIn" action…

Paths for solving this are appreciated.

Best Regards
Michael
Alfresco Project Manager

[jpotts]

I agree that this is confusing. I will look at older versions–I think we may have gone backwards a little bit here in terms of usability. I suspect we were trying to reduce/eliminate the checkin/checkout terminology as part of the streamlining for Team.

The confusing thing is that the working copy isn't clearly identified as the working copy and the "checkin" action is missing. So, if you do a drag-and-drop to update the working copy, as you point out, it doesn't do you any good because there is no way to check in the working copy.

It shouldn't be a big deal to add a checkin action that would display only for working copies, and then have that action do a checkin on the node.

Jeff