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.

Alfresco today released a preview of the latest version of its open source ECM platform, which includes important new features for workflow and records management.

Here’s the scoop:

Alfresco Preview Release 1.4 – Business Process and Lifecycle Management

The focus of Alfresco has always been to deliver a broad-based Enterprise Content Management System. In our first major release we chose to focus on document management and collaboration since very little existed in the open source world in comparison to the commercial world. Alfresco 1.4 focuses on delivering the following:

• Business Process and Lifecycle Management
• Full Auditing
• Records Management
• Image Capture Integration
• Performance

Release 1.4 has increased functionality in the areas of:

• Scalability – Large repository optimization
• Administration – Personal administration dashboard
• Standards – ODF and RSS
• Customization – JavaScript custom actions, URL “REST” style architecture
• Team Collaboration – Space Notes, Team Email, Workflow Task Management Dashboard
• Integrated Workflow – jBPM integration
• User Interface – MyAlfresco dashboard, Custom Space Portal View
• Records Management
• Image Capture Integration

Scalability

• Large Repository Optimization in multi-million document/asset environments
• Load Optimization
• Folder Management for large numbers of documents
• Lucene Index Optimization, Query Optimization

Administration

• Personal Administration Dashboard – Start Screen, Update password, name and email
• Rules Management – Ordering, ignore inherited and disable

Standards Support

• Open Document Format (ODF) – ODF Virtual File System
• RSS – Drag-and-Drop RSS

Customization

Custom Actions – JavaScript support for custom actions with

• Simple menu integration
• URL Access to all Actions – “REST” style architecture
• Extended JavaScript capabilities – Including checkin/out, transformation, template rendering

Content Contribution

• CIFS and FTP Performance – Unique name optimization moved to database

Team Collaboration

• Email Space Team – Simple Team email distribution
• Space Note – Custom View Space Description

Integrated Workflow

• jBPM Integration – Complex workflow support. JavaScript action integration for lifecycle management support
• Integrated MyTasks View – Dynamic data collection
• Full Audit Control

User Interface

• MyAlfresco Personal Dashboard – Wizard support to personalize default view though selection of Dashboard components
• Dashboard Component Support – Freemarker, JSP and URL
• Custom View – Custom Space Portal view

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. 1.4 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
• Full Auditing – Audit of every service invocation to a database table with dashboard access. E.g. Execute Action, Checkout, Rename, Enable Rule, Create Authentication, Set Permission

Image Capture Integration

• Kofax Integration – Kofax release script support

Other Features

• AJAX Infrastructure and examples

 

Download Alfresco

• Download Alfresco 1.4 Preview Release
  

Please note that downloads may not be available on all Sourceforge mirror sites immediately. Alfresco Customers recieve immediate access to downloads via the customer portal.

 

Fast Facts

Operating System

• Linux
• MacOS
• Unix
• Windows

Database

• Any Database Supported by Hibernate including:
• MySQL
• Oracle
• SQL Server

Application Server

• JBoss Application Server
• Apache Tomcat
• J2SE 5.0 (JRE 5.0)

Browser

• Firefox
• Internet Explorer

Portal

• JBoss Portal
• Liferay Portal
• JSR-168

Languages

• Wide variety including:
• Chinese
• Dutch
• English
• French
• German
• Italian
• Russian
• Spanish

Technologies Used

• Java
• Spring Aspect-Oriented Framework
• ACEGI – Aspect-Oriented Security Framework
• MyFaces JSF Implementation
• Hibernate ORM Persistence
• Lucene Text Search Engine
• JLAN
• JBoss Application Server
• JBoss Portal
• JBoss jBPM
• POI File Format Conversion
• PDFBox – PDF Conversion
• OpenOffice
• MySQL

Supported Interfaces

• CIFS/SMB Microsoft File Share Protocol
• JSR-168 Portlet Specification
• JSR-127 Java Server Faces
• FTP
• WebDAV
• Web Services