Explorer or Share

[inocka]

Hello,
I'm new to alfresco. At this moment I have to decide which interface suites all the requirements. I need:

- advanced workflow
- automatic workflow start
- rules on folders
- tasks search and documents search
- custom tasks list dashlets
- open document on one click
- users synchronization with LDAP

I'm planning to use community edition 3.3 version.
All post I found were about earlier realizes, so I decided to post this topic.
I'll appreciate any help.

In one of post I found that Alfresco isn't planning to develop explorer any more. Is it true?

Thanks for help

[invictus9]

Share is a different user interface to the underlying repository. It uses a different set of tools to get access to the Alfresco information and to display it. Hence, you don't really have to chose one over the other.

That being said, all of your list can be handled in Alfresco Explorer, but it may require some customization of the UI to get it just so. Also, Explorer provides a more detailed level of control over information than does Share. For that reason, you might want to consider providing Share sites to most of your users, the consumer grade, while anybody doing behind-the-scenes work would use Explorer to set up workflows, etc.

The third option is to roll your own interface. The Alfresco Share interface is composed in Spring Surf, a dynamic page layout tool that uses portlets and other presentation tools to provide a standardized interface. You can compose your own set of interface pages using Surf to present a custom web application for most of your users to use.

[darryl_staflund]

Hi there,

We have recently had to make a similar decision in our organization.  Although we don't have a need for lists at the present time, we do have a need for rules, categorization, and advanced workflows.  Although we'd prefer to work with Share because of its collaborative and usability features, at the end we chose Explorer because Share does not currently support advanced workflows – though it is planned to in the near future.  By developing our workflows in Explorer right now, we can meet the needs of our employees right now, and at the same time position ourselves for moving to Share once its workflow features are complete.

Darryl

[inocka]

Thanks for quick reply,
The main reason why I opened this question is that I need both the advanced workflow functionality (as I understand now available only in Alfresco explorer) and open documents such as .docx directly in browser (it is possible in Alfresco share only).
May be you could suggest something?
I really don't want to use both interfaces, because I think it's really inconvenient to switch between them.

[mikeh]

What you need to do is work out what your users will need on a day-to-day basis. We find it's unlikely they'll need access to the whole Advanced Workflow UI in Explorer and are able to get by with a few customisations to Share (e.g. add custom workflows to the choices in the Document Library). We also hear complaints that Advanced Search and Rules administration are "vital" functions for all users; again experience has shown this isn't always true. Whilst those interfaces are important for administrators and higher-level users, it's rare that an office worker will need to understand those functions.

So, until Share mirrors Explorer's functionality (which involves creating remote REST-based APIs for all the services) you might find that your users are happy with Share, but the administrator might need to use Explorer now and again.

It's true we're not adding new functionality to the Explorer client at this time.

Thanks,
Mike

[inocka]

Thanks for the answer Mike,
The main users work will be processing tasks which in most cases will be created automatically using predefined workflow.
May be it will be more about tasks management then the document management. Document is the reason to start first task.
Users will need to search for those document (with custom parameters) and tasks; have dashlets there tasks are displayed assigned for current user, his group tasks,  subordinate users tasks. Also, they modify documents metadata and add additional documents to the task. In some cases start custom (advanced) workflow.

What I already read about Share it's more about site creation and collaboration. Am I wrong?