Alfresco Labs 3.2 Preview2 IMAP

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The official documentation is at: http://docs.alfresco.com

Table of Contents

• 1 Note: This page is applicable IMAP support for Alfresco Labs 3.2 Preview2 Only


• 2 Alfresco IMAP Views


• 3 Enabling the IMAP Protocol


• 4 Setting Up Views


• 5 The Virtual View Email Format


• 6 Marking Sites as IMAP favorite

Note: This page is applicable IMAP support for Alfresco Labs 3.2 Preview2 Only

Alfresco Labs 3.2 Preview2 introduces support for the IMAP protocol. The protocol allows email applications that support IMAP (including Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird, etc.) to connect to and interact with Alfresco repositories directly from the mail application.
Please note: This information applies to the capabilities provided in the Preview2 only and is subject to change in later versions.

Important Note: For the Preview2 release, the IMAP client must be configured to use localhost as it's incoming IMAP mail server.

Alfresco IMAP Views

The IMAP integration offers two types of views to the Alfresco Repository.

• EMAIL Archive View - Allows emails to be written to and read from Alfresco by the IMAP client by dragging/dropping, copy/pasting etc from the email client.
  
• Virtualised Repository View - Documents managed by Alfresco may be viewed as 'emails' from the IMAP client. Documents are shown as virtual emails with the ability to view metadata and trigger actions on the document using links included in the email body.
  

Enabling the IMAP Protocol

The IMAP protocol server is disabled by default. To enable the protocol, locate and rename the sample configuration files in the extensions directory as follows:

imap-bootstrap-context.xml.sample rename to imap-bootstrap-context.xml
custom-imap-server-context.xml.sample rename to custom-imap-server-context.xml
custom-imap-server.properties.sample rename to custom-imap-server.properties

Note: You will need to restart your Alfresco server for the new configuration to take effect.

Setting Up Views

Both the EMail Archive View and the Virtualised Repository View can be configured to define which Alfresco folders are exposed via IMAP.
The configuration is defined in /Company Home/Data Dictionary/Imap Configs/imap-config.xml. The following shows the default configuration:

 <alfresco-config>
     <config>
         <imapConfig>
             <imap name='Repository_virtual' mode='virtual'>
                 <store>workspace://SpacesStore</store>
                 <rootPath>/app:company_home</rootPath>
             </imap>
             <imap name='Repository_archive' mode='archive'>
                 <store>workspace://SpacesStore</store>
                 <rootPath>/app:company_home</rootPath>
             </imap>
         </imapConfig>
     </config>
 </alfresco-config>

By default, the content of Company Home is added to both views. The following shows how the default configuration maps to views.

IMAP_Config_Example.PNG

The names and locations of the folders can be changed by updating /Company Home/Data Dictionary/Imap Configs/imap-config.xml

The Virtual View Email Format

The virtualized view uses Presentation Templates to generate the mail body and display document metadata, action links (for download, view, webdav, folder) and Start Workflow form (HTML view only).
The templates are stored in the repository in /Company Home/Data Dictionary/Imap Configs/Templates
There are separate templates provided to generate either a HTML or Plan Text body based on the the format request by the email client. The templates can be customized to change the metadata and actions available in the email body, see [Template Guide] for details on working with templates.

Marking Sites as IMAP favorite

In order to have access to sites via the IMAP Virtual View, the site(s) need to be added to your list of sites using Share IMAP favorites.
The following screenshot shows the Sites folder in the IMAP client before sites have been added as IMAP favorites:

IMAP Sites1.PNG

To add your site(s) to your list of sites available via IMAP, click the 'IMAP Favorites' icon in the Share - My Sites dashlet on your Share - My Dashboard page as illustrated in the screenshot below:

My Sites Dashlet.PNG

Refresh your IMAP view to see the new Site.

IMAP Sites2.PNG

Now you can see the site in the virtual view.
3.2
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