Is there a solution to update the XML content without...

[frenchmac]

Is there a solution to update the XML content without having to dive into the directory structure of a website?

I find your product very interesting. It brings a lot of solutions to the problem of managing the development of web sites. It is also built on top of modern concepts.

After spending several days using it in its current form and now spending some time using the WCM pre-release, I was wondering weither some kind of user interface was planned to allow a user with no computer science background to update the XML data (through XForm) without having to deal with the file system base nature of the Alfresco backoffice organization.

It there a way to create custom menus or a top level directory tree that would directly exposes the XML content to the user in a way that hides the XML side of things.

We developed website for you client and for each website, we need to offer them a backoffice to allow them to update their content. Today, we have our own CMS and plan for the next year to use a standard based CMS.

You product looks really promising in the way it handles its repository of information. It seems also that you have a clear vision of its evolution.

The way it works now makes it a perfect fit for a large organization which integrates the whole process of managing a website (from the development to the content creation).

But a software company like us needs to give to our customers a product that talks their langage. In fact, the Alfresco interface seems perfect for its primary role: document managment. Its file system approach makes the managing of documents a breeze. But for the managing of entities like news, press releases, products which make the information system of the entreprise, the inner working of the storage process need to be hidden from the user view.

Is there a way to customize the user interface of Alfresco?

Have you plan some kind of more entry level CMS user interface in your product? Is it the JSR168 portlet side of thing that is also discussed in your forums that will be the solution to this problem?

Maybe writting a JSP based configurable front end using your POJO API could be a custom solution for us but it seems quiet costly and the primary reason why we are looking for an external solution…

[kvc]

Great question!

There are three enhancements here on our roadmap:

1.  Form dashlet.  This dashlet would provide a list of forms available to
     as user for each website they can access.  The dashlet would allow a
     user to click "Create" and kick off the wizard without having to navigate
     into the website or a particular folder.  This dashlet would also allow
     a user to (a) fetch a list of all available items created by a form
     (essentially a saved search that presents all created items in a list
     regardless of folder location; this would be done via a Freemarker
     template so that you can write your own if desired) and (b) execute
     a content rule that execute a custom Javascript action that would
     auto-generate the name and folder location of the XML and any
     generated asset (so that a user just opens the form, saves, and
     has everything automatically put in the right place with the right
     name without having to know anything - and similarly re-find things
     from the dashlet using a saved search so that they don't have to
     browse the website.

     Your comments are 100% in-line with our line of thinking and
     definately on the to-do list.

2.  Expose this very same dashlet as a JSR-168 portlet, so that you
     can do from our dashboard or the portal of your choice.

3.  Enable in-context editing a page or page item via a form.  This
     means that when browsing the live site you can go into edit mode
     and, if the site is built using our run-time components, have
     direct edit capability for the page or item in the users sandbox with
     appropriate workflows before updating the site.

These enhancements are features that will be enabled in the release
immediately post our December GA release (we are planning on short
2-3 month release cycles through 2007 at present).  I will post a
feature request in our issue tracking system, JIRA, at http://issues.alfresco.com by end of week to track this need.

Kevin

[frenchmac]

Thank you for your answer!

That's exactly what we are looking for!

Will there be a possibility to present these dashlet into a hierachical list (to organize them in the case where there is a lot of different informations)?

I will check this new roadmap…

Roger