Way too many steps to edit word doc in alfresco!!!!

[invantix]

Please tell me I am doing something wrong!

My CIO is not happy with what it takes to edit a file in alfresco.  "It is too complicated for our users"  He wants to can the trial.  I want to keep going so I need to find a better way.  (Click, edit, save, done)

Here is our experience.

Scenario A
1. find the file in alfresco.
2. click on the title
3. an empty browser window opens as well as the document in word.
2. make changes and click save.
3. Save as dialog opens.
4. He asks "Where am I supposed ot save it?"

Senario B
1. Click on the pencil.
2. Read the instructions and save the file on the desktop.
3. Make changes.
4. Save the file.
5. "How come I don't see the changes in alfresco?"
6. Well sir, you now have to update the file in alfresco.
7. find the space you were in.
8. find the file.
9. click the arrow
10. select update.
11. click browse.
12. find the file you just changed.
13. click open.
14. click update.


Please tell me I am doing something wrong!!

[mkopaczewski]

The problem is with firefox when I am opening doc through firefox it downloads it to temp, when I am doing it using IE works fine

Is it normal that if it is  first time i open the document that it ask me for a password? although i logged in alfresco

[dhalupa]

Can not be used with ff, at least not to my knowledge.. I believe that webdav authentication is required

[tommorris]

This might help:
http://openwebfolder.mozdev.org/index.html

It's a Firefox add-on, so would require a client install.
It's just a pass-through to the same Windows WebDAV functionality that IE uses. Which means Windows only…

[invantix]

Try the microsoft plug-in. It automates all of this stuff via webdav.

Will this work with office 2007?  I see it listed as components for Office 2003 which is 5 years old.

Thanks

[mikeh]

Will this work with office 2007?  I see it listed as components for Office 2003 which is 5 years old.

Thanks

Short answer is yes. More detail here:
http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Microsoft_Office

Office 2003 might be 5 years old (it's not really when you consider service packs), but it's still got *by far* the biggest installed user base.

Thanks,
Mike


P.S. Windows XP is 7 1/2 years old 😉

[dinger]

When I try and open a link via webdav it successfully opens it in word (it is word embedded in IE though). However when I exit or try to save the document it will only save it to a local location. Any idea why it doesn't save it back via webdav?

Rob

[sacco]

When I try and open a link via webdav it successfully opens it in word (it is word embedded in IE though). However when I exit or try to save the document it will only save it to a local location. Any idea why it doesn't save it back via webdav?

This is because IE downloads the document via WebDAV before offering it (the local copy) to Word. 
There are some hints about how to get it IE to give the WebDAV URL to Word upthread, but it will
take significant extra work to make this into a cross-browser solution.  It's also complicated by the
fact that Windows comes with many different implementations of WebDAV, all of them broken in one
way or another: in particular they are also not well integrated with the rest of Windows or with each
other, so that, for example, depending upon the authentication mechanisms you are using it is
likely that you may get a lot of extra requests for passwords (Kereberos-based authentication solutions
are probably the best place to start if you need to mitigate this problem).

[ernest]

Hi
Has anyone found out how to Configure Webdav editing in Firefox, yet? i have done this in IE and it is Working Perfectly,
But when i try in Firefox it does not want to work it take me to Google docs…
Please help!

[sacco]

Hi
Has anyone found out how to Configure Webdav editing in Firefox, yet? i have done this in IE and it is Working Perfectly,
But when i try in Firefox it does not want to work it take me to Google docs…
Please help!

OK.  You have two distinct problems here.

1)  You installation of Firefox is configured to open MS Office documents in Google docs, whereas I suspect that would prefer to open them in MS Office or OpenOffice.  Depending upon your version of Firefox, this is either a Firefox configuration issue, or else it may be related to the File Type registrations under Windows (more recent Firefox should be using the latter, I think).

2)  For in place editing via WebDAV it is currently possible only to use Internet Explorer.  IE can be configured to use proprietary Sharepoint browser extensions to open WebDAV URLs directly in MS Office.  Without some such mechanism, it is not possible to edit in place, as the standard browser action is to first download a local copy of a document, and then to open it in an appropriate application, by which stage it is too late as you are editing a temporary local copy (it shouldn't have been like this, but Web-browsers have long been designed with inadequate consideration of dynamic and interactive scenarios).

The solution to this problem would be to apply a particular class attribute to the edit link from the server action configuration (unfortunately this is not very flexible with respect to adding classes, but it is possible), and then to have a browser plug-in for Firefox which intercepts the action when the link is selected and, rather than downloading the file, instead starts an external application (e.g. Word, preferably configurable according to link type) passing it the WebDAV URL, so that the document is opened directly in the application.

Writing such a plug-in would not be difficult nor a major task (a couple of days, a week at most to have a polished and reasonably flexible version, possibly excluding a user-friendly configuration interface though), but somebody does have to find the time to plough through the documentation of the Firefox API and convert the above sketch into code.  

If I had the time I'd do it myself, but…