Create a custom site

[artemas]

Hi I'm new to alfresco and I wanted to know how I can create a custom site. Currently I am using my Alfresco SDK 3.0. At the moment from what I have researched I know that I need to have a custom-site.xml within my directory: vanilla-alfresco/vanilla-alfresco-platform-jar/src/main/resources/alfresco/module/vanilla-alfresco-platform-jar/bootstrap

My question is, how can I generate this custom-site.xml. What are the steps to generate this file? I have seen examples of other people's custom-site.xml it seems to be a massive xml that must be generated from somewhere. If I know the steps to generate this that would be fantastic.

[afaust]

You may want to look for already existing solutions since bootstrapping a site is something quite a lot of developers need to do. Alfresco itself already contains a mechanism for bootstrapping a site which they use for their default demo site when you install Alfresco. This entails a couple of ACP files for default contents / structures / members, and a Spring bean to actually wire everything together.

I don't know what this custom-site.xml you are mentioning is supposed to be or where you got that info from in your research, but I'd advise to first check if you cannot understand + use what is already there...

[brandart]

Hey, I have to develop a Site for a customer and I need some help getting started. 

I already played around with About the Alfresco Developer Tutorial Series | ECM Architect .

But have you some hints for me, where I can find a tutorial for developing a site? 

Best regards,

Arthur

[jpotts]

Arthur,

Thanks for reading the tutorial. When you say you are "developing a site" can you give some specific examples of what you are trying to do? That phrase is not commonly used when referring to Alfresco so if you could tell us exactly what you need someone might be able to help.

Out-of-the-box, a site provides a place to share files (document library) and a few other tools like calendar, wiki, discussion, and data list. How does what you need differ from that?

Jeff

[brandart]

Hello,

a site like I painted in the picture,

the customer wants a system like JIRA, that can be placed on the dashboard, etc.

Adding tickets to the 'site', with a description, status, member and so on.

Arthur

[jpotts]

I see that you've circled the word "sites", but I'm still not following what you are trying to do. A "site" in Alfresco is not like a custom web app. It is simply a place to share documents with a team.

If the customer wants a system like Jira, why not actually use Jira? Alfresco is not a good starting point for a ticketing system. I cannot count the number of ways that make this true. If you can't or don't want to implement Jira there are so many other open source alternatives for bug/ticket tracking, it would be a shame not to use one.

Once you've done that, if you want to write a dashlet or two that make calls to the ticketing system to summarize some ticket-related data for Alfresco users, that might make sense. Or maybe you want integrate from the ticketing system to allow documents to be attached to tickets but are actually stored in Alfresco. That also should be do-able by customizing the ticketing system and calling the Alfresco REST API.

Alfresco is not a platform for general application development. It's good for uploading documents and sharing documents. That's it. Not trying to be difficult--just don't want you wasting time fighting the natural use case for the system.

[brandart]

The customer already use a add on for the tickets, but this doesn't fit in their business, therefore, as a schoolproject, have to write a add on for them, in eclipse, with the required things.

[jpotts]

Perfect, a failed implementation is an opportunity to correct course and use something more appropriate. Here are some suggestions:

• Redmine
• Bugzilla
• Trac

If you take a look at those and, for some reason you decide you still want to try to implement using Alfresco, you'll need to start by deciding exactly what you need to build. Maybe use Balsamiq (or similar) to rough out some mockups. Then you can come back and share those and maybe someone will help you map what you are trying to build with the right development approach in Alfresco.

At this point you may want to steer clear of a Share-based customization (read why) and instead use the ADF. That will allow you to leverage more widely-known development tools (like Angular) and just use Alfresco as the back-end.

But, again, I strongly recommend against trying to turn Alfresco into a ticketing system and urge you to instead convince your customer to use one of the open source tools listed above developed expressly for that purpose.

[brandart]

We haven't made Mockups jet, but in the next meeting we will create the mockups. However, I can try to describe the add-on for you.

The customer want a little window on the dashboard, with some buttons where he can create a ticket. When he click the button for creating a ticket, he wants a new window, where he can add a description, a priority, a worker, which try to solve the problem in the ticket. He wants to add some wiki links from Alfresco to it.

Furthermore, he wants a own window/site with all the tickets, to search and filter them, he doesn't want a timetracking.

This is a quick overview about the add-on we are trying to implement. 

[brandart]

We have to create a custom datalist for a site

the company use the advanced datalist, but this doesn't fit,

so we have to develop a custom datalist for them