Jul 2010

Document Management with

first impressions

Jul 2010

Contents

• Alfresco pros/cons

• Document workflow in Ontotext with Alfresco

• Proposal for structure & policy of the DMS

• Next steps

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Executive Summary

• Satisfies our requirements for a DMS– Open source, web based

– Flexible access control

– Versioning & auditing

– Tagging + hierarchical categorisation

– Very powerful search

– Very powerful business rules functionality

– Comments / discussions

• Plus…– Good documentation (300+ pages, videos, wiki, …)

– Active community & support forums

– MS Office / Open Office integration

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Contents

Alfresco Pros & Cons

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Pros

1. Open source, Java, 100% web based

2. Versioning– Locking (offline editing)

– Approval requests

3. Flexible access control– Fine grained (space -> folder -> item level)

– Hierarchical groups (i.e. Ontotext -> CG -> Board Members)

4. Tagging + hierarchical categories– Search on a category will match sub-categories too

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Dashboard

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Content changes

Site updates (filters + RSS)

Jul 2010

Pros (2)

5. Powerful business rules– On: create/update/delete items, enter/leave folder

– Conditions

• Attribute value (author, date, tag, category)

• Aspects

– Actions

• Send mail, run script, run workflow, transform content, extract metadata, …

6. Powerful search (Lucene)– Google syntax

– Wildcard, proximity, fuzzy, range

– Field/attribute

– Term boosting

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Document view

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preview

tags

versions

Access control

Direct links

actions

Jul 2010

Search

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Search content (“ЕГН”)

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Search (2)

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preview

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Pros (3)

7. RSS– On individual folder level, or global updates

– User/pass protected

8. Discussions / comments– On each item

– Discussion forum

9. WYSIWYG wiki/blog editor

10. MS Office 2003 / OpenOffice integration

11. Extensive documentation– 300+ pages, videos, wiki, forums

12. Active user community

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More extras

13. WebDAV, FTP, SMB/CIFS access– Useful for large files

14. Links– Integration with external RSS feeds

– Manually posted URLs

15. Blog

16. Calendar (only global)

17. Lists templates (meeting agenda, task list, contact list, …)

18. Semi-automated metadata extraction (extensible)

19. In-bound email server– Upload document, workflow interaction

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More extras (2)

20. In-memory cache (performance)

21. Lots of performance tuning options

22. Option for replication (Sofia -> Varna)

23. Inline create documents– HTML/text

– Google docs

24. Content transformation (extensible)

25. Custom CSS theme

26. LDAP integration

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Problems and open issues

• Wiki is not very good– (+) It has flexible access control

– (+) WYSIWYG editor

– (-) no integration with the Document Repository, i.e. one has to link to documents by full URL (as external links)

– (-) access control managed from a different (admin) tool

• Lists not integrated with Users but only with document repository

• Calendar is only global (visible to all users)

• Sometimes unstable, some obvious bugs– client & server running on my laptop

• Workflow customisation is not intuitive

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Contents

Document Workflow in Ontotextwith Alfresco

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Document Workflow

• HR– Problem

• CVs exchanged as attachment

• difficult to find the right CV in the last minute

• Can’t link to the CV from calendar

• Comments/discussions on the candidate are not preserved

– Proposal

• CVs are stored in the DMS (limited access only to HR team + Project Managers)

• Only links (no attachments) are exchanged by mail, also added in calendar for last minute access

• Opinions are not exchanged by mail but as comments on the DMS item

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Document Workflow (2)

• Business trips– Problem

• Plans are exchanged as attachment

• Conflicting versions may occur (update from author + minor corrections from Admin office)

• Not too easy to locate an old travel plan

– Proposal

• Plans & Reports are stored in the DMS (no special access control?)

• Versioning provides safe updates

• The “Request approval” action for the document can be used when the author updates travel plan/report to notify Admin office

• Simple reporting

– Categories or tags (project name, conference name, …) can be assigned to travel documents – provide easy way to group and find related documents

– Easy to locate all travel docs for some person within some period

– Easy to locate all travel docs which are still not accounted (category/tag)

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Document Workflow (3)

• Collaborative editing– E.g. EC reporting, market analysis, etc. that involves not only

technical people

– Problem

• Currently stored on a filesystem (no versioning)

• SVN is always an option but not too convenient for non-programmers

• Difficult to locate the proper files in SVN, cannot search contents

• Collaboration needs some sort of workflow (usually happens by e-mail)

– Proposal

• Everything goes into the DMS (with the proper access control)

• Versioning provides safe updates

• Actions (request for approval, notify) can be specified for the document

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Contents

DMS Structure & Policy (proposal)

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Proposed structure

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Full access

Read only

No access

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Proposed policy

• There is only one document repository, everyone from Ontotext has an individual account

• No attachments in mails, only links to the DMS

• Different sections have different access control

• Different groups– Ontotext – everyone else (EE) can read/write

– System Admin, Office Admin – upper level can read/write, EE has read access

– Sales / BizDev – upper levels can read/write, EE has no access

– CG – upper levels can read/write, EE has no access

– Top secret (CIA clearance only ;) – EE has no access

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Proposed policy (2)

• One “shared” repository for key external partners and Ontotext (same accounts)

• Different sections have different access control (Ontotext has full access)

• Different groups – per project/partner

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Contents

Next steps

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Next steps…

• Set up a test DMS– Populate a small repository

– Access control, users, structure, etc…

• CG & BizDev/Sales start using it – Test for problems & issues

– Are they satisfied with the functionality

– Provide ideas for structure & customisation

• Meanwhile everyone can access…– http://xxxxx:8080/share/page/site/Ontotext/dashboard Full

functionality (xxxxx is my IP for the day, Skype me), user “admin”, pass “admin”

– http://share.alfresco.com/share/page/site/ontotext/dashboardlimited functionality, user “santaclaus”, pass “Tralala123”

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Q & A

Questions?

Document Management with Alfresco #25