General discussion

[jsauer]

Hi,
I just installed Alfresco Labs Stable 3.0.

I used and implemented the previous version a lot and have authored a
comprehensive end user training manual for one of my customers. Currently
I am reading Jeffs Potts book on Alfresco development.

I do not want to state that I am an expert in Alfresco but I have used the
system for quite a while.

What I wonder now is how Alfresco Share and the classic Web-Frontend
will grow together.

I just played around a little bit with the new share technology and
started to like it, however
there are some obstacles laying around and I do not know if it is
missing knowledge on my side or missing features and integration on
Alfresco side?

Up to know if I wanted to make Spaces available I could always create
links and users could follow the link to enter into the linked space. If I
create a link to a space located in the company home in the documents
section of a Share Site I will see the link in the Share Site but clicking
on it does not have any results. I just stay in the Share Site. How does
integration of SpaceStore and Share work? Up to know it just looks like a
separate thing. No integration at all. I also wonder how I move on in
future? Normally I would rearange (move/copy) content and spaces created
in the Share area to different location within my Alfresco repository. But
then they will disapear from the Share Site?

Next discussions.
I was always wondering why discussions are flat in Alfresco. Meaning, when
I respond to a reply my respones will not be placed under the reply but on
top of the discussion stack. My personal oppinion is that this kind of
implementation was/is far from being usable. Now I discovered I can have
hierarchical discussions in Share. Great I thought until I used Search in
the classic Web-Frontend. It found the discussion I started as expected.
But I am just able to open the node item I found. No way to open the whole
discussion. No way to get from the search result to the Share. At least in
the details page there should be a link to the Share discussion, like
there are links for WebDAV, CIFS etc.

Alfresco: Please do not feel offended, I just wonder what technology to
use in future and how things will develop. At the moment it seems: we have
the classic web frontend which lacks up to date usability.
- just be able to deal with single files/items
- flat discussions
we have Share which provides great features for collaboration but
- can not browse / integrate the space store
- discussions can be found in the classic web-frontend but no way to open
a whole thread just single found items.

I have not played around a lot with the new Share so maybe there is more I
will miss or like, I intend to start a discussion here which: a) points
out things that I am mistaken b) workarounds for the issues mentioned c)
generally gives feadback on Share and classic integration

Response appreciated
Jörg

[mikeh]

Good points, but not something we're immediately going to address.

First of all, remember that Share is currently a V1.x product. It ships as part of Alfresco 3.0 but is still in it's infancy in terms of functionality.

Having said that, the main use case will be for people to use either one client or the other - not both at the same time. Hence the warning across the top of the JSF client when you access space under the Sites root space. Allowing people to be linked all over the Repository we think would prove confusing - how would you display the folder tree, breadcrumb, etc. when you jump out of a Share Site? I agree it would probably be useful to be able to link to documents throughout the Repository, but this is likely to be presented as "Virtual" documents within a Site.

Regarding the JSF client: whilst we're certainly not "end-of-life'ing" it, it's unlikely we'll port all the new Share functionality across, such as nested discussions in your example.

Thanks,
Mike

[raf]

Good discussion.

I have a follow-up based on the OP's question.

We have been using 2.1 for a year or so. We are now looking at upgrading to Alfresco 3 and moving our users to the Share interface. We are impressed with Share and think it represents a real step forward: more intuitive, much lower learning curve, many useful features. Therefore, we plan to implement it as the GUI for all of our users.

We have upgraded 2.1 to 3 on a test server. This moved everything: users, Spaces, content, etc. as expected. But now since the Share interface expects things to be organized under sites, I assume we need to move all of our content into a specific site (or sites?). Is this the correct approach to making all of the content available under Share?

If this is so, then we need to be able to move all of the existing user-generated content (and Spaces) into one or more Share "sites". Unlike the OP, we want to do this migration once and do not require that the content be available using the Explorer interface once we have migrated. Here are our (initial ) questions:

1- can we move all of our content utilizing some kind of batch mechanism? We have a lot of content, so moving manually is not an option.
2- can share be customized so that upon login, a user is automatically taken to a specific Share site?
3- can Share sites contain links (or some other kind of reference) to other Share sites?
4- can content be shared between Share sites? Ex. only one instance of a document that appears in both sites.

Thanks for any guidance,
Martin

[hunter42]

Good discussion,

it reflects a question I posted as well some days ago. I was confused by the interoperability of Share and the Explorer interfaces as well. The statement of Mike makes it a a lot cleare to me, and I think our users would perfectly live with the Share client functionallity only. (Actually I like it a LOT more than the explorer interface.)

Is there any kind of SHARE-specific roadmap ?
Do you plan to include mail functionality (like I asked before). That would IMHO make the Share-solution the perfect solution for our organization.
What about auto-archiving functionality (so documents that pass a given date-line are archived away) ?
What about a ICQ-dashlet ?
What about generating my own tasks or my own calendar entries ?

Sorry for all the questions, but the current Share release looks very promising and I would really like to see more of this…


Michael