Launching Application associated with document in Share

[knixon]

Has anyone looked at developing a script to launch an application associated with a document directly from Share including check/out functionality?

For example we would like to store Autocad drawings in Alfresco to provide version control but there are some issues with this due to maintaining valid Xref links (subject of other discussions).

Our preference is that users could click on a link within the Share Document viewer to launch the application and load the file directly from the repository.

Is this possible?


Karl

[stevegreenbaum]

I haven't seen a script to allow this, except for Office documents (using Edit Online).  I end up using Edit Offline for nonOffice documents to save a working copy of the document to a local or network drive.  Make changes in that version and then Upload New Version.

[david_greenbaum]

My understanding is that when you check out the DWG file, the Xrefs will still point to the same path they had when the DWG file was originally checked in. Most likely, your Xrefs have also been loaded into Alfresco and are no longer in their original locations. Thus, when you check out the DWG, you'll probably have broken links.

Just before  you check in the DWG files, I think you'll want to modify the Xrefs so that they point to the Xrefs in the repository. I believe this can be done manually. I believe LinkFixerPlus can perform the same task in bulk on thousands of files and links.

By the way, this same problem (regarding broken links when files are moved into the repository) exists with Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Acrobat PDF, InDesign, MicroStation and other file types. I believe LinkFixerPlus uses WebDAV to automatically fix the links for most common file types. I don't know if LinkFixerPlus has been explicitly tested with Alfresco. Tech support at http://www.linktek.com/ would probably know more.