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Alfresco Labs 3: Report from the trenches

mabayona

I´ve just installed the new Alfresco 3.0a and read the FAQ and the forums and here some comments:

1) Alfresco JSF: good to read in the FAQ that all 2.x functionality is in, including 2.9. Tested some of it and it seems so. No time yet to do an upgrade of an existing 2.9 test installation to see if it upgrades nicely.

2) Alfresco Share: good idea. Seems a little bit basic still. However, no hints about what to come. Here some of my suggestions:

- UI: more drag-and-drop please. I would expect to be able to drag and drop around windows in the dashboard (as per Liferay, Google, …). Even, I would include the functionality (its all JS boys and it is open and readily available in e.g. Liferay) to close, expand, configure each dashboard window. This makes the user experience of using the dashboards VERY valuable and flexible. This is what joe user expects from a web 2.0 interface. One could think of even making each dashboard window a portlet by default! (3.1?

.

- UI: drag-and-drop of files in the document libraries. Again, this is VERY useful and what is to be expected from 2.0. Optimal would be to be able to do D&D between the File Manager and Share´s Document Library. Real productive and efficient way of loading and moving files around.

- UI: Real state. Make a site nice and useful with more that 3 or 4 documents. Now due to the size and design of the different graphic components, each document, blog entry, …takes too much space in the UI. Make the components smaller in order to get a UI with LOTS of information possible.

- Sharepoint interface: needed for enterprise usage. Experience shows that once Sharepoint is installed in a Company, there is no way of getting other software on board that is not M$. Good and bold move. Allows the coexistence and survival of ECM OSS solutions in a M$ ecosystem.

3) OSS model: Lots of discussions. It all boils down to whether there is a win-win situation between Alfresco and its Community. My take is that as long as the Community gets access to ALL the patches on reasonable time, then there is an incentive to report problems, bugs and feature requests. Alfresco should maybe be clearer in this aspect. My impression is that even Alfresco is still thinking about it and therefore no clear stance. On the other side, given the pricing model of >10K per CPU, Alfresco has decided to go for the big guys (probably for the Documentum et al. which are used to pay >100K). If this is the case, some solution should be given for the small companies which cannot afford those prices. There is the 25-licenses pack from RH. However, it seems that this is not a very popular option. On the other side, if one compares with the license prices paid for e.g. M$, Oracle, SAP, … maybe, then Alfresco is not that expensive after all. Another point of friction is the view and differences of "Free": "gratis vs open". There is no easy middle point, since the money has to come from somewhere. Sample Business Models to consider are: Liferay, Jira, Apache, Openbravo and MySQL. I think that Alfresco is somehow between Openbravo and Jira. Some users would like to have it closer to MySQL or Liferay. My impression is that Alfresco understands the OSS model and the importance and competitive advantage of having an active Community around. The GPL move was a bold and valid move in this direction. Without an active Community Alfresco would loose momentum and without a profitable business model, Alfresco would have to go slower. Not an easy decision but vital and critical for Alfresco future.

4) Data exchange between Share and JSF: ABSOLUTELY critical to keep the door open. It seems that Share uses an hybrid store model to allow for it AND not to stop innovation. Also critical to communicate clearly what the migration plan is and what the options are.

5) Share as cooperation platform: there is lot to be said about it. My experience is that the pattern of being able of creating a "site" a-la-carte to support a project and the data exchange between the site members is very powerful. However, what is offered should be competitive. Blogs and wikis are very important and well known, therefore, the functionality should be comparable. The blog and wiki offered in share are a little bit too basic to be considered of any use. Hope new versions close the gap. I would personally recommend to increase the importance of the wiki and include GENERAL ADDRESABILITY between the different site components: documents to wiki entries to blog entries, to actions, to news. Also I would include a kind of dashboard that could be created using the wiki and could be entirely made up of cross references in the site AND with other sites as well.

6) BPM-Advanced workflow support: Very important for team coordination and for supporting company´s business processes

7) Forms support: 2.9 included some form support that is not complete nor very usable. Plans for 3.0 identified it as important. No very much progress visible in this area. Note that a big amount of coordination tasks in a company (e.g. invoices processing, CRM support, reporting, expenses,to-do lists, pending tasks, …) are just the combination of Advanced Workflow plus flexible Forms Handling.

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Comments

mrintegrity

I can't find any flaws (except spelling errors

in this post. I think the Alfresco organisation needs to be a lot more open with releases with regular patches etc. At the moment the community/labs release is nothing but a demo as it cannot reliably be used in a production environment. It's just not reliable / up to date with patches.

alexr

Totally agree with the remark(s) on the web2.0 feel of the dashlets/windows of this beta Share version. First of all the Alfresco 3.0 Labs beta Share has a crisp/clean look-and-feel (I like the
file drag&drop and the thumbnail preview) and I know a lot of work has been done to get it ready (and still work is being done). However I was also missing the web2.0 drag-and-drop feel in manipulating the windows/dashlets in both dashboard and created "site". It feels a bit "static" like the dashboard in the MyAlfresco view in the Alfresco client. Nothing wrong with the initial configuration drag and drop
of the "dashlets", but once in place one should be able to drag them arround, rearranging the dasboard (or perhaps even the site-components) on the fly.
I know it is still a "beta" version and the definitive release in September has a different look (and feel) as posted/blogged. However I would really hope that the definitive version
of Alfresco will incorporate the drag/drop/collapse/resize functionality of dashlets/windows within Share that probably more people expect, since it is indeed in place in many other portal-applications.
Then again you guys have probably tons of work to do (including the Atom stuff), but if you could get this done before the release in September it would be great.

So please take these remarks as a positive advice to improve Alfresco Share. Should we add this as a feature request to Jira?

Keep up the good works

mikeh

Hi guys

First of all, many thanks for this feedback on the 3.0 Beta - much appreciated.

I'll comment on a few of these:

1 - Drag and Drop (dashlets)
We actually took a conscious decision not to support drag and drop of dashlets outside the customisation view. Although I agree this is the Web 2.0 Way, I know I'm not alone in having accidentally reorganised my iGoogle/Netvibes/whatever UI because it's always running in edit mode. In UI design terms, it's all about the frequency of performing certain actions - how many times do you actually need to swap the dashboard around on a daily basis?

2 - Drag and Drop (files)
Moving/copying files around within the same Document Library is probably something we'll add in the future - i.e. dropping one or more files onto a folder in the list or the tree view.
Dragging and dropping from the desktop is, of course, not possible without native client software. We do have some ideas in mind for this, as it is something we'd like to add - possibly for 3.1.

3 - UI real estate
A fair point - and we are doing CSS sweeps at the moment. However, we didn't want to design an interface where all the navigation and common actions are hidden away under menus. In terms of the Document Library specifically, we could probably save one line of toolbar by making the breadcrumb optional/hideable, but we'd rather not have a very dense UI. Look at a typical Scribd group for a similar look and feel. We think we've struck a good balance between that kind of Web 2.0 UI and a much denser one like Google Docs.

4 - Data exchange
Very easy between the JSF client and Share, as the storage repository is now one-and-the-same. Use the JSF client (or FTP/WebDAV/CIFS) to copy documents into Share sites. Or use the Copy-To action from the Document Library to copy Share-based documents to another site or arbitrary repository space.

5 - Cross-component addressability
Some good suggestions here - we'll take them into consideration.

6 - Workflow
Being addressed as we speak.

Thanks again for taking the time to put constructive feedback like this together - it really helps with product development.

Mike

jeffgus

5) Share as cooperation platform: there is lot to be said about it. My experience is that the pattern of being able of creating a "site" a-la-carte to support a project and the data exchange between the site members is very powerful. However, what is offered should be competitive. Blogs and wikis are very important and well known, therefore, the functionality should be comparable. The blog and wiki offered in share are a little bit too basic to be considered of any use. Hope new versions close the gap.

I am also hoping that these functions will gain increased functionality soon. It looks like work on the Share interface is moving at a fairly fast clip, so I hope things are going to get better soon.

I would personally recommend to increase the importance of the wiki and include GENERAL ADDRESABILITY between the different site components: documents to wiki entries to blog entries, to actions, to news. Also I would include a kind of dashboard that could be created using the wiki and could be entirely made up of cross references in the site AND with other sites as well.

Yes, yes! I would love to see this in Alfresco. It seems to me, that a system that can combine wiki and documents in a seamless way will be huge! No more having to choose one system for more formal documentation and files and another for the more dynamic wiki. I really hope to see Alfresco take the lead in this area.

The biggest thing that Share is missing that my SharePoint users need is the contact list and events objects that can tie into Outlook. Right now Share has events, but no contant list that can be associated with a project. As far as document systems go, this seem minor, but to people that use Sharepoint, these things are missing.

mabayona

MikeH wrote:

6 - Workflow
Being addressed as we speak.

Just a few ideas about it. Nothing new, but maybe of interest:

Alfresco support for BPM is very important feature that is differential with other CMS/ECMs. For many companies, the selection of a system to commit their Business Processes to is of capital importance. For these companies, the fact that Alfresco includes a mature BPM system (jBPM & Advanced Workflows) is what makes the difference (make it or break it). BPM support is enough to select Alfresco as a "enterprise" tool and to use it as an internal standard system for both ECM & BPM.

The JSF client includes support for Business Processes by means of the Advanced Workflow feature. It includes:

- Declarative BPs. No programing needed.
- Workflow management console (command line oriented)
- Easy to add Business Logic by means of JS or Java
- Dynamic loading of new/updated versioned workflows (2.9)
- Declarative default Forms for the different workflow tasks with support for user defined transitions and custom fields
- User and group permission support
- Pending tasks (user and group) dashlet

It has some shortcomings (e.g. task no form direct addressability, not easy to extend task forms, no BAM & no graphic console), but in general is enough to quick and easy support the implementation and evolution of complex Business Processes in a company.

In my opinion, support for similar functionality would be of capital importance for the introduction, success and acceptance of Share in the enterprise. Since it is not easy to re-implement all this functionality, maybe a stepwise approach is to be considered. This could be along the following lines:

- Create an extra option of a site for "workflows/tasks/to-do lists" (as now is available for docs, blog, wiki, …) (as in Basecamp, Trac and other "project cooperation" tools)
- Start for out-of-the-box support for pending tasks/to-do lists
- Provide a default form for each task and allow to extend it with extra options or a "custom form" (of course JS/REST based)
- Allow to associate a workflow to a document/space in the Documents/library (as partially available in JSF client)
- Allow to associate several workflow types to a site (i.e. each site has its "available workflows" library)
- Release it in 3.0 frametime and wait for good comments and awards

kayan

Hi Mike,

Dragging and dropping from the desktop is, of course, not possible without native client software. We do have some ideas in mind for this, as it is something we'd like to add - possibly for 3.1

.

Just bit curious to know, is this item still in the list for 3.1?

Thanks
Kayan

mikeh

Hi Mike,
Dragging and dropping from the desktop is, of course, not possible without native client software. We do have some ideas in mind for this, as it is something we'd like to add - possibly for 3.1
.

Just bit curious to know, is this item still in the list for 3.1?

Thanks
Kayan

Unfortunately not. You can see the 2009 roadmap here (although it's still very likely to change over time): http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/2009_Roadmap

Mike

kayan

Thanks Mike for conformation and also for the '09 roadmap.

Thanks
Kayan