Co-authoring support?

[sscbrian]

Is there any support for co-authoring (instead of checking out documents individually)?  I see SharePoint has the "Google Docs" style co-authoring where multiple people can work on a document at the same time (and see real-time changes).  I've got users asking for that functionality and am unsure if Alfresco supports it.  If so, how do I access it?

[afaust]

Hello,

I am not aware of any out-of-the-box co-authoring support except maybe for the option of editing files in Google Docs. In Alfresco Community 5.1 the SharePoint connector will be switched to a new technology platform (Alfresco Office Services - already available for Alfresco Enterprise 5.0), so maybe there could be a change there. In the past there have been some demonstrators in the community / partner ecosystem of co-authoring support via various third-party integrations, i.e. Etherpad and the like.

Features like this are constantly on the product roadmap but from my own experience changing / proprietary APIs of available platforms make it hard to come up with a "works for 80% of users" solution.

Regards
Axel

[sscbrian]

Ah, thank you!  The Google Docs method *might* work for us.  Checking with management to see if trying it out would be allowed!

[atamim002]

Hi ,

Is there any update on it? I found out that etherpad add-on is no longer supported by alfresco. Are there any other alternatives for collaborative editing?

Regards, 

Tamim

[afaust]

No update as far as I know. I looked into suporting Office 365 this year, but the Microsoft process for integration with that service is only suitable for cloud providers, not someone hosting an Alfresco for company-use only.