Thursday, April 15, 2010

Preview: Alfresco Share Rules

Here's a followup from my previous post that previewed Data Lists in Alfresco Share.

This time I give a demonstration of the rules capability in the Alfresco Share 3.3 Community release. Rules are not new to Alfresco. They've been in the Explorer client for some time. But being able to specify them from Share is new. And the UI for managing them is a nice improvement over the JSF-based screens of Explorer.

While there's a 3.3 release downloadable now, as of this writing, bug fixes for rules in Share seems to be quite active. What I show here was made with a build from the latest source code in the SVN Head area that I made this morning.



Transcript for the video can be downloaded here.
A high resolution version of this demonstration can be seen here.
The Alfresco 3.3 Community release can be downloaded here.

The Alfresco Share 3.3 version is certainly shaping up. And the new rules capability in it really add to the usability of the product.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Preview: Alfresco Share Data Lists

If you don't have the time to download and setup the newly released Alfresco Share 3.3 Community version, here's a video that previews one of the new features in that release: Data Lists.



Transcript for the video can be downloaded here.
A high resolution version of this demonstration can be seen here.
The Alfresco 3.3 Community release can be downloaded here.


The video doesn't get into how the lists are defined using the Alfresco Content model. It's possible to create new Data List types or to modify the columns of the existing To Do List.

The To-Do List example that ships with Alfresco Share is shown in the video and the content model definition can be found in a file in the Alfresco war under models called datalistModel.xml.

<type name="dl:todoList">
         <title>To Do List</title>
         <parent>dl:dataListItem</parent>
         <properties>
            <property name="dl:todoTitle">
               <title>Title</title>
               <type>d:text</type>
               <mandatory>true</mandatory>
            </property>
            <property name="dl:todoDueDate">
               <title>Due Date</title>
               <type>d:datetime</type>
               <mandatory>false</mandatory>
            </property>
            <property name="dl:todoPriority">
               <title>Priority</title>
               <type>d:int</type>
               <mandatory>false</mandatory>
            </property>
            <property name="dl:todoNotes">
               <title>Notes</title>
               <type>d:text</type>
               <mandatory>false</mandatory>
            </property>
         </properties>
         <associations>
            <association name="dl:assignee">
               <title>Assignee</title>
               <source>
                  <mandatory>false</mandatory>
                  <many>true</many>
               </source>
               <target>
                  <class>cm:person</class>
                  <mandatory>false</mandatory>
                  <many>false</many>
               </target>
            </association>
            <association name="dl:attachments">
               <title>Attachments</title>
               <source>
                  <mandatory>false</mandatory>
                  <many>true</many>
               </source>
               <target>
                  <class>cm:cmobject</class>
                  <mandatory>false</mandatory>
                  <many>true</many>
               </target>
            </association>
         </associations>
      </type>

The to-do list form is defined in the file share-form-config.xml:
<!-- dl:todoList type -->
   <config evaluator="model-type" condition="dl:todoList">
      <forms>
         <!-- Create item form -->
         <form>
            <field-visibility>
               <show id="dl:todoTitle" />
               <show id="dl:todoDueDate" />
               <show id="dl:todoPriority" />
               <show id="dl:todoNotes" />
               <show id="dl:assignee" />
               <show id="dl:attachments" />
            </field-visibility>
            <create-form template="../data-lists/forms/row-new.ftl" />
            <appearance>
               <field id="dl:todoNotes">
                  <control template="/org/alfresco/components/form/controls/textarea.ftl" />
               </field>
            </appearance>
         </form>

         <!-- Data Grid view -->
         <form id="datagrid">
            <field-visibility>
               <show id="dl:todoTitle" />
               <show id="dl:todoDueDate" />
               <show id="dl:todoPriority" />
               <show id="dl:assignee" />
               <show id="dl:attachments" />
            </field-visibility>
         </form>
      </forms>
   </config>

   <!-- dl_todoList type (existing nodes) -->
   <config evaluator="node-type" condition="dl:todoList">
      <forms>
         <!-- Data List pop-up edit form -->
         <form>
            <field-visibility>
               <show id="dl:todoTitle" />
               <show id="dl:todoDueDate" />
               <show id="dl:todoPriority" />
               <show id="dl:todoNotes" />
               <show id="dl:assignee" />
               <show id="dl:attachments" />
            </field-visibility>
            <edit-form template="../data-lists/forms/row-edit.ftl" />
            <appearance>
               <field id="dl:todoNotes">
                  <control template="/org/alfresco/components/form/controls/textarea.ftl" />
               </field>
            </appearance>
         </form>
      </forms>
   </config>

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Alfresco Records Management Demonstration

April has traditionally been celebrated as Records and Information Management Month (RIMM). So no better time than to give a look at Alfresco's recently released Records Management module. Alfresco Records Management is certified for the DoD 5015.2 Standard. Below is a video with an overview of the RM module as used in Alfresco Share.




Note: A high-resolution (1504x738) version of this video can be viewed here.
A slightly bigger version of the video (640x379) can be seen here.
A complete transcript of this video can be downloaded here.



More Information

  • A 20-page White Paper describing Records Management Best Practices can be downloaded here.
  • The Alfresco Share Records Management Data Sheet can be downloaded here.
  • The Formtek Web Site.
  • The Alfresco Web Site.