Managing Aspects

[xanterra2012]

In laymen's terms would someone be able to identify each of the Alfresco Aspects available?  I can not find a definition for each of the aspects and want to provide that detail for some internal training.

Thanks in advance.

[jpotts]

Here is a description of the aspects visible in the Alfresco 4.0.d Community Share user interface.

Classifiable

Makes it so that you can apply one or more "categories" to the document. Categories are arranged in a hierarchy and are managed by an administrator. An example might be "/Food/Frozen Food/Fish Sticks".

Dublin Core

Adds a set of properties defined by a standards body called the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative.

Effectivity

Adds an "Effective From" and an "Effective To" date to the document.

Summarizable

Adds a "Summary" field to the document.

Versionable

Makes it so that you can track multiple versions of a document. This currently happens automatically in Share when you use "Upload New Version".

Templatable

This aspect is added to the document when Alfresco Explorer users apply a document-level template to the document. This functionality doesn't yet exist in Alfresco Share. It probably does not make sense for Alfresco Share users to add this manually.

Emailed

The emailed aspect is a collection of properties that are populated if Alfresco ever emails this document. The properties are not editable, so this is another aspect that probably wouldn't be added manually by an Alfresco Share user.

Aliasable (Email)

This aspect is used to give any object in the repository a human-friendly email alias. For example, suppose you want to have a folder that Sales people can email contracts to. You can add this aspect and set the alias to "sales-contract-dropbox". Then, assuming the Alfresco Administrator has inbound email configured, and assuming the sender is in the Email Contributors group, the sales team can send documents to "sales-contract-dropbox@yourAlfrescoServer.YourCompany.com" and the contracts (and any other attachments) will be placed in the folder, along with the email.

I noticed that this property does not show up as editable in Alfresco Share 4.0.d but you can edit it using Alfresco Explorer.

Taggable

Adding this aspect to a document gives users the ability to associate one or more tags with the document. Unlike categories, tags are free-form with no hierarchy. Non-administrative users are free to create whatever tags they want.

Google Docs Editable

Adding this aspect to an office document gives users the ability to check the document out to Google Docs, edit it there, and then check it back in to Alfresco.

Geographic

This aspect adds latitude and longitude properties to a document. After it is added, you'll see a new "View on Google Maps" action added to the Document Actions list in Share. Some Alfresco Add-Ons provide additional functionality such as viewing all of the documents in the document library with this aspect on a map or viewing a specific document's location on a map within the document's properties page.

EXIF

EXIF stands for Exchangeable Image File Format. It's a standard for storing properties on digital image files. That includes basic stuff like height and width but also things like resolution, ISO speed, exposure, and model of camera used to take the picture.

When you import digital image files that contain this metadata, Alfresco will try to extract it and then add this aspect to the file with these properties populated.

Audio

This aspect adds a set of properties you'd use if you were adding metadata to an audio file like an MP3. It's stuff like Album, Artist, Composer, Track Number, and Sample Rate.

Index Control

This aspect lets you decide whether or not you want to see the document in search results. You can use the checkboxes it adds to the document to tell it to exclude the document's metadata, content, or both from search results.

Complianceable

This aspect adds a "remove after" date and makes sure that the "auditable" aspect is applied. I'm not sure whether or not there is a scheduled job that will actually delete the content when the date has passed or not.