Share vs Explorer

[bcoulson]

All

So I have been evaluating Alfresco for about a month and am beginning to get my head around it and how to configure/customize/extend it. However, the one piece that I am really struggling with is the difference between Alfresco Share and Alfresco Explorer. Why is there a distinction between these two web applications? When is it appropriate to add content to the Explorer and when is it appropriate to use Share? We are looking to replace an existing content management and workflow system with Alfresco and as such, will be doing quite a lot of heavy customization. We have a complex workflow model for creating, reviewing, editing and disseminating documents.

Any insight as to the difference between these two interfaces would be invaluable.

I am using Community Edition 3.4c
Regards
Brenda

[mrogers]

They are two different user interfaces for the alfresco repository so its probably unhelpful to think about "adding content to "Explorer".

The main difference is technology stack and the fact that share is a remote interface whereas Explorer is embedded into the alfresco war.

If you are starting out with a new project I'd suggest you look at Share first.

[bcoulson]

Thank you for your quick reply. I am still slightly confused then. So, if I shouldn't think about adding content to the Alfresco respository through Explorer, what is the purpose of Explorer? Also - I do not entirely understand what you mean by Share is a remote interface whereas Explorer is embedded in Alfresco war. Are you referring to the fact that Share has the ability to access documents in the repository via SharePoint protocol? Thank you again for your help in clarifying this. It definitely seems as if Share is more geared towards the end-user whereas Explorer is geared towards and administrator.

[mikeh]

The piece of background information you might be missing is that Explorer existed from Day One of Alfresco. Share is a more recent addition (introduced in v3.0).

Thanks,
Mike

[mrogers]

What I mean by "Share is a remote interface" is that you can have one or more instances of Share talking to an alfresco repository, you may want to do that for performance or management reasons.   With Explorer the user interface is embedded within the alfresco application so you can't don't have that option.

You are getting confused between the difference between a user interface and the repository.   You can use whatever user interface you want including rolling your own.   Alfresco Share is one user interface, Alfresco Explorer is another user interface and there are other third party interfaces  like Fred and Flex.

In addition and you have already mentioned accessing alfresco via SPP so you can also access alfresco from MS Office.

[excitedbynoise]

I've just started to get into Alfresco and CMS in general and I am asking myself similar questions. I'm trying to discover more about how to best utilize the platform and how to best utilize it for my company. We don't have the budget for developing custom solutions and we need out of the box functionality. We are a small company and we are utilizing alot of community software. However, we look for platforms that have the potential to grow if we grow.

Alfresco Share utilizes the repository, but it seems to be it's own product in many regards and focused around collaboration. It peaked my interest because it was easy to access through Liferay via the DocLib portlet. We had been using Liferay in limited capacity for collaboration, but it's built in document library worked poorly in my opinion. I wanted to leverage Alfresco share's document library, but utilize Liferay for everything else.

Traditionally we were trying to use the Liferay document library for all purposes. Document collaboration, document libraries, records management, etc. It seems with the addition of Share, Alfresco has given options to the users on how utilize the repository. This is where my question comes in: Which UI is best suited to handle the different CMS needs? I basically have two needs: storing financial, HR, and company documentation and also providing collaborative areas for projects, proposals, and business development.

I know the answer isn't probably straight forward. I'm trying to research CMS and Alfresco some more just wrap my head around how to best utilize it. Right now we have windows shares and I want to establish a content management system for our company to grow on.

[mrogers]

The answer will be dependent upon your needs so there's no easy answer I can give.

And Liferay + Alfresco is another good combination.

But perhaps the easiest first step is just to replace your "windows shares" with alfresco.

[janvg]

The confusion came with the introduction of the concept of sites, which where not part of the normal repository structure (which at first was not accessible in Share at all)

Sites also had a weird and different use of roles/groups and users. Enabling a site results in the creation of specific site groups. When you work with a Active Directory/LDAP bases usermanagement, you loose control.

In my opinion Share would have been much more usable if 'Alfresco Spaces'  could be upgraded to sites, keeping them in the logical repository structure and respecting the heritage of the companies ACL

For us sites are very difficult to manage, which means we don't use them, which means we can not use the Share features (like lists, wiki, …) This is a pitty !

[bcoulson]

Thank you for clarification on the difference between Share and Explorer in terms of Share being a remote interface. I was not aware that you could have multiple instances of Share running against the same repository. I did think they were both just two separate user interfaces. So, just to be perfectly clear, I can basically take the Share webapp and deploy it in another application server and have it point back to my Alfresco repository. However, I can NOT do this with Alfresco Explorer. Correct?

[mrogers]

Yes correct.