Some doubts about Alfresco

[cristianfrog]

Hi all,

I'm a new user consumer of the Alfresco content management software. I successfully installed on my server Alfresco Community Edition and configured it according to my needs.

Afterwards I read about accessing Alfresco through Mobile Devices and in particular IPAD and IPHONE. I was very excited about this, and searched the application on the App Store. Initially I found this one (Alfresco Mobile
https://itunes.apple.com/it/app/alfresco/id459242610?mt=8

I've tried it, so I configured my server with its settings in the "manager accounts" providing username,password, server address and port (no HTTPS for now). It works well, but after some minutes, after looking at my documents a red error popup appears saying:
"A connection failure occured
Alfresco Mobile did not connect to (myserver.com). Either your settings are incorrect, or you are not connected to the internet. You may still access your synced favorites and downloads in offline mode."

This error DOES NOT disappear neither if I try to disconnect or apply this "patch" on the spring-webscripts-config-custom.xml file (I don't even know if it is a solution), exlplained here:
https://issues.alfresco.com/jira/browse/MOBILE-42

I also did some attempts modifying the "service document" and using the IP like "server address" in the "manager accounts" section of the app.

Little frustrated, searching a solution, I've found OTHER app on the APP STORE… called: Alfresco Mobile WORKDESK
https://itunes.apple.com/it/app/alfresco-mobile-workdesk/id611118416?mt=8

After downloading and configuring with my server proprieties (like the other app, alfresco mobile) I didn't see that error at all… It seems that Alfresco Mobile gives that error but Workdesk doesn't !! Perhaps the first one is just a demo for using the Alfresco Cloud instead the Workdesk version is for consulting servers??

Can someone help me explaining me the differences between these 2 applications and maybe give a solution for that error??

Thanks in advance, Cristian.

[mikeh]

The two apps are quite separate: Alfresco Mobile is the main app that lets you access content, optionally sync it to your device for offline access, perform simple workflow tasks, etc. The Mobile Workdesk app works alongside the <a href="http://www.alfresco.com/products/workdesk">Alfresco Workdesk</a> solution.

Regarding the error you're seeing - the best thing to do is see if anything is in your log files on the server. You don't say which version of Alfresco Community you're using - if it's the latest nightly build, it's possible there's a CMIS issue there currently.

Thanks,
Mike

[cristianfrog]

First of all thank you for the reply.

The thing I can't understand is why Alfresco Mobile is giving that error instead Alfresco Workdesk doesn't… I even tried Fresh Docs from ziadev and it works well too… And yes I have the latest version of Alfresco (4.2.c). Regarding the logs, I looked at alfresco.log, catalina logs and other files in the /logs/ folder but didn't find anything about this (probably I don't understand which error might be)

I'm quite disappointed about this error, Alfresco Mobile was a nice solution for my needs… but because I don't give up easily, I tried also re-compiling the application from its source from ziadev:
https://bitbucket.org/ziadev/alfresco-mobile/wiki/Home
But when selecting Alfresco > iOS 5.1 Simulator in the XCODE IDE the build stops giving me 13 errors

Any idea about building a custom version or solve that red popup error?
I would not like to down-grade my alfresco community from 4.2 to 4.0

[mikeh]

The Alfresco Mobile app has moved on quite significantly from both FreshDocs and Mobile Workdesk and hence uses more REST APIs on the Repository. It's possible something is tripping the app up, but I'd expect it to be logged on the server. We don't have any open JIRA issues in this area so I'm not sure where your problem lies exactly.

Regarding building from source: make sure the target is "Alfresco" and not "FreshDocs" as both are present in the project file and Xcode tends to default to the latter.

Thanks,
Mike