We just published a new case study on one of our projects in the public education sector. The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) does great work for advancing public education goals at the US Federal and State levels, and open source portals and content management from Liferay and Alfresco help them collaborate, find, and share critical information in support of many of their projects.

Learn more from our new Case Study: CCSSO Increases Project Efficiency Through Open Source Content Management and Collaboration.

Our latest white paper on Open Source Document Management is now available.

Register for it here.

In it, we talk about how open source ECM and portal software can help with fundamental document management requirements including:

• Rules based repository that can replace shared network drives
• Effective search and retrieval
• Standards based interfaces, including WebDAV, FTP, CIFS
• Library services
• Forums and other ways to facilitate team collaboration beyond email
• Workflow
• Scanning and document imaging support
• Records management
• Security

Unstructured information represents 80% of the content within today’s enterprises and government organizations, and the amount of it is growing rapidly. The reasons for controlling and managing this information are myriad, ranging from employee productivity to consistent branding to customer service to legal compliance.

The components of “enterprise content management” that address these areas include document management, records management, image management, web content management, digital asset management, email management, collaboration, and a few others. The broad range of these technical areas have helped put the “enterprise” into ECM. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that an entire enterprise can benefit from ECM.

Due to the high cost of traditional ECM software, its rollout across a typical enterprise has been stunted. Generally, we find that ECM technology is utilized by only 20% of an enterprise.

So we have a large gap: 100% of employees generate/update/utilize enterprise content, but ECM technologies reach only 20% of those employees. A majority of enterprise content is thus unmanaged, negatively impacting productivity, customer loyalty, compliance, etc.

Enter open source, with its fundamental cost advantages.

But can an open source approach really address the broad range of “enterprise” content management? To date, most open source content management software has focused on web content — leading examples include Joomla, eZ publish, Plone, Drupal, and Typo3 (relatedy, almost a quarter of the web is powered by an open source cms). And a few, including Alfresco and Magnolia, provide robust collaborative document management capabilities.

But until just a few days ago, it was near impossible to craft open source solutions for records management, business process management, and scanned document image management.

Enter Alfresco’s preview release of version 1.4, which includes basic support for records management:

Alfresco Launches First Open Source Records Management Solution

and for business process management, complex workflow, and scanned document management:

Alfresco Extends Leadership With Production Ready Open Source Business Process Management

Bottom line: an open source approach to full “E”CM is looking more and more feasible.

We’re looking forward to the upcoming release of the Kofax integration with Alfresco. The project is led by our friends at Aarden Ringcroft, who just gave me a demo of the latest version.

More details are on the Alfresco wiki. Here are some excerpts:

“Integrating Kofax and Alfresco provides complete Content Management support including capture, management and publishing of Content. Kofax captures content from all kinds of sources usually via scanning & OCR. The captured information is then “released” to Alfresco, for it to be managed in an ad-hoc manner or via pre-defined business processes.”

and…

“The following information will be captured via a UI Dialog allowing configuration of the Release script.

1. Alfresco Server Connection Details (username, password, repository instance)
2. Destination Alfresco Folder where Kofax captured information should be placed
3. Mapping of Kofax captured information (meta-data, tiff, ocr and pdf renditions) to Alfresco Content Model
   • Kofax Document Class -> Alfresco Content Type (Content or sub-type of Content)
   • Kofax Index Value (as extracted from document by Kofax) -> Alfresco Property (of appropriate data type)
   • Kofax Tiff, OCR or PDF document -> Alfresco Property (of binary data type)”

In other words, scan your documents, forms, etc., with one of the leading scanning platforms, automatically recognize the contents (typed characters, check marks, hand writing, etc.), assign relevant meta-data, and automatically insert the image, meta-data, and converted text into a corresponding content item within the Alfresco repository.

Once in the repository, the document and its contents are available for enterprise search using Alfresco’s built-in search engine, where searches may be performed on the full-text and/or on the meta-data fields. Other benefits of managing your scanned documents within Alfresco include: secure access, records management/archiving for compliance purposes, seamless integration with other enterprise applications (e.g., via an enterprise portal), improved workflow and business process management, among others.

Stay tuned for an upcoming webcast that we will have on this topic, including a demo of the Kofax/Alfresco integration.

Congrats to the Alfresco team for their latest release just announced this morning.

In my view, the major highlights in this release are:

• Enhanced team collaboration support with full email-based support for workflow, enabling users to invoke “accept” and “reject” steps simply by clicking on an autogenerated URL in an email. Before 1.3, workflow actions were invoked through the Alfresco web client. Now, it can be done via email — a nice improvement toward seamlessness and ease-of-use
• Improved records management support with activitation of repository rules based on a schedule or a content update, along with DOD 5015.2 content type definititions– representing another important capability to help companies manage/control/retain/archive their business records and achieve 100% compliance. The records that are top of mind in the companies we talk with include those generated by email and messaging, in addition to the standard business records (financial, etc.) that enterprises must control.
• CIFS Kerboros and LDAP Support — further enhancing the seamless support for Microsoft’s file share protocol (CIFS) for enterprise deployments
• Improved support for client and server side customizations, through Javascript support in the server and a pluggable UI in the client

Here’s the full summary from the Alfresco announcement:

Release 1.3 has increased functionality in the areas of:

• Architecture – Benchmark Certification
• Administration – Zero-Time Upgrade for Development Extensions, Full Export
• Customization – Simple Action/Rule Extensions through JavaScript, Simple Extensible UI Dialog Wizard Framework, Meta-data Constraint Management
• Library Services – Document/Folder Cross Linking
• Team Collaboration – Simple Email based Workflow
• Records Management - Rule Activation on Update and Schedule, Soft Delete
• Other – Development SDK

Architecture

• Benchmark Certification – Significant scalability enhancements and benchmark certification representing real customer environments with a focus on multiple cores and processors

Administration

• Zero-Time Upgrade for Development Extensions – Client and server extension framework externalization
• Full Export – Export of whole Repository including types and users. This allows for the duplication of repositories for deployment and offers alternatives for backup and recovery.

Customization

• Server Customization – The primary area to simplify extending the server is in the use of JavaScript to build aspect and action extensions rather than just Java. This makes it possible for even novice programmers to add powerful business logic into the repository for reuse across all clients These can be invoked from rules, through a time based schedule or via a URL
• Client Customization – Open Pluggable UI Framework to dramatically simplify client configuration making possible new application components and AJAX-based interfaces
• Simple Extensible User Interface Dialog Wizard Framework – A type-based dispatcher allows pages, dialogs and wizards to be over-ridden on a content type basis
• Simple Configurable Menu Types and Items - Externalized menu and dialog configuration through XML file configuration. Originally, menus were defined in JSP pages
• Space/Folder Actions – Actions on Spaces/Folders allowing workflows to be performed on folders - which is particularly important for case-based workflow
• Meta-Data Constraint Management – Meta-Data constraints based on values or links to external RDBMS tables
• Dashboard/Template Space Binding – Persistent linking of a template to a space or document

Library Services

• Document Cross Linking – A document, or folder, can be linked to another content object or folder across multiple spaces. A change to a document is reflected across all spaces – Virtual Folders.

Data Management and Transformation Engine

• Configuration of New Content Transformers
• Configure/Extend new Transform Types

Content Contribution

• CIFS Kerberos and LDAP support – Kerberos for authentication token support and LDAP for user and group support

Team Collaboration

• Customizable Email Templates
• Simple Email based Workflow – Embedded URL selection in email for “approve”/”reject” using customized email templates
• Extended email support for changes to documents, records or folders that can be sent to groups

Records Management

Alfresco has added a number of features to manage electronic records to the basic repository functionality. Our intention is to get to the DOD 5015.2 certification later 2006/early 2007. 1.3 adds some critical features:

• Extended Rule Activation – Schedule, content and metadata change based activation. Important for managing retention dates and managing document lifecycles
• Retention and Archival Policies – Soft delete and purge
• DOD 5015.2 Type Definitions
• Fileplan Support – Fileplan, file name and the management of records categories is supported through JavaScript

Click here for pdf version: Alfresco ECM 1.3

We just published a new white paper:

"Seven Keys to Radically Improve Document Management and Team Collaboration with Open Source Solutions"

Get it by clicking here.