Using Alfresco while offline: My findings

[nicolasraoul]

Hello all,

For users who take the plane/train/subway often, WebDAV is not a solution.
How to view/edit Alfresco documents when offline, and ensure easy synchronization?

I have researched this for a client, and here are my findings:
http://aegif-labo.blogspot.jp/2012/04/alfresco-how-to-keep-working-even-when.html

Your critical feedback is very welcome 🙂
If you know any other way to keep in sync with an Alfresco repo, be sure to let me know!

Excerpt:

=== 1) CmisSync ===
Very similar to the Dropbox client, lets you sync with any Alfresco content.
Free, Open Source.
.NET/Mono, Linux/Mac port not finished yet.

=== 2) Alfresco Desktop Sync ===
Official Alfresco offline client. Let's you sync any Share Site or directory within a site.
Free.
Java, Linux/Mac/Windows.
Not to be confused with an older project that has the same name and comes up first on Google, hosted on addons.alfresco.com and SourceForge.

=== 3) FTPBOX ===
If you like DropBox, you will love FTPbox.
The user interface is the same, with tray icon and almost no configuration needed.
Forget about 2GB limits and the security risk associated with externally-hosted data: you now have an unlimited DropBox for free, and the files are straight from your smart Alfresco repository!

The bad news: FTPbox is not compatible with Mac/Linux.
The good news: FTPbox is open source, so porting to Mac/Linux is a matter of motivation.

=== 4) OFS ===
UNIX users will know that FUSE allows to easily mount/unmount any kind of filesystem.
OFS (Offline FileSystem) allows you to maintain an offline copy of any remote filesystem.
It can take advantage of Alfresco's NFS interface.

Unfortunately, this solution is not usable on Windows until Windows allows userspace filesystems.
http://superuser.com/questions/179436/is-it-possible-to-use-fuse-with-windows

=== 5) WEBDAV SYNC ===
WebDAV Sync is a command-line tool that can synchronize documents using Alfresco's WebDAV interface.
Programmers love command-line tools, but it is not for office users…
WebDAV Sync is portable (Java) and open source, so it is a great choice for integration with existing client-side software (for instance if your company has a custom VoIP/chat/PIM app)

=== CONCLUSION ===
I was hoping that version 3 of Adobe Drive (which supports CMIS) would offer an option to cache documents for offline use, but unfortunately it does not.

For now, CmisSync and Alfresco Desktop Sync are by far the most usable.

[taimui0101]

Hi, Nicholas..
I tried to download Alfresco Desktop Sync, I don't know whether i've installed it successfully. when i started to use it, i need to have java runtime environment. i've done with that.
Now, i need to login to the alfresco but it always failed and there's a message said "there was an error connecting to Alfresco. Please check your login settings and try again."

i tried to login many times, and always failed

Please help.