Recently in Document Management Category

It has been quite a while since I posted here on the Obsessive Collaborator. This has been due primarily to the migration of my server to a new machine (alas, it was not purchased with bailout money). I thought it was time to retire my five-year old server, at least from the front line, and replace it with a new server that would be set up to run virtualized servers. This would allow me to both test many server applications in isolated environments, and allow me to regularly backup and move offsite full functional snapshots of my servers (I am perhaps more obsessed with backup than I am with collaboration).

The process of migrating was fairly slow (mostly due to the fact that I did my work in my spare time). I was able to keep the old server running side by side until the final switch which took about an hour. While there are ways of moving from physical to virtual servers, I didn't think that they were worth the effort. Instead I started from a new CentOS 5.2 image that I created, built up the services I needed and then rsynced over the directories that I needed moved. I also used webmin to migrate settings for many of the services I needed.

The base server is also a CentOS 5.2 bare bones image. I probably could have used something lighter weight, but I now CentOS and stuck with that. Mostly that OS needs to run vmware and lots of backup scripts. I tried some premade backup scripts for vmware images, but they didn't work real well with vmware 2.0. I wound up writing my own script that progressively has each virtual machine suspend, copies the whole directory elsewhere, restarts the server, tars and gzips the directory and erases the backup directory, With a fast eSATA external drive the copying is done fairly quickly.

Vmware server 2.0 itself is quite good. I waited to go live until the official release came out. It is as easy to use as the older vmware server, the major difference from my perspective being that all management is done through a web console. For the most part I like this, making managing servers and even running console sessions quite easy. It will install firefox plugins or activex controls to run the console sessions wherever you'd like. Unless that place is a Mac, which mine often is. So I need to default to a windows or linux host for running those console sessions. I considered the now free Vmware ESX instead of server, but it is very temperamental about the hardware it runs on, and the server I built wasn't up to it (it wouldn't recognize the onboard sata).

Now I'm exploring the world of vmware images, and am disappointed when an app I want to test doesn't have an available appliance. Fortunately there are many to choose from (and I also have a bare bones image that I can build up from, and will also build a new Jeos image to make it even lighter weight for applications I want to keep).

In my search for a Document Management solution, I've looked at Alfresco over several iterations. It is quite capable, but I'm not thrilled with the UI, and the open source version has an unclear relationship with the enterprise version. I have read a lot about KnowledgeTree, and I thought I'd give that a try.

I found a vmware appliance from Rpath. Rpath has quite a number of good vmware appliances. Their documentation is somewhat sparse (as has been discussed in various forums), but most appliances now have a wiki page on their site. I found this wiki page early on, and it gave some basic setup information for Knowledgetree. But it wasn't until I found the separate wiki page over at Knowledgetree that I was able to get everything configured.

Once I got that documentation configuration was better than easy, it was easy and filled with options through a web interface.

I was able to make changes to the appliance itself (like network settings) and configure the major Knowledgetree options that normally involve messing with a config file.

When all was set up, it was a pretty straightforward operation. Log in to the site and you can upload documents, create folders, move documents, provide permissions for documents and send email alerts about documents to others.

One of the things I liked about Knowledgetree was that while it supported advanced features like checkin/checkout, workflows, etc. it also seemed like it could just be a simple document repository. Making it even easier was the ability to map the directory structure to a webdav drive. Once I actually followed the instructions, it was trivial to get the webdav working from a mac and linux clients (I didn't try windows).

I may or may not used Knowledgetree. I haven't decided whether the document management is so much better than other integrated packages I use to warrant it. But I'll keep experimenting.

A few more notes on recent upgrades. Elgg is now at 1.1 and has a lot of community plugins going for it. Opengoo just went 1.0 and looks pretty slick. And I'm looking forward to the upcoming release of Liferay Social Office. On the negative side, I've pretty much given up on Peopleaggregator. Their upgrade cycle fell short and there were too many hacks that I had to apply. Elgg looks like it is filing that open source social networking space just fine.

I've long been waiting for the update to the open source Alfresco. The original product was a very competent document management system. Then late last year they add a new social/collaborative interface to the open source "community" edition. This version was a little rough around the edges interface-wise, but it added things like blogs, wikis, and discussions.

A new version "3.0" was set as a milestone release that would full integrate these features, and a beta of that version was released under what is now known as "Alfresco Labs". From what I can tell, Alfresco Labs is the open source releases of Alfresco (there is also an Enterprise release scheduled for this fall).

Before I get into the details of Alfresco Labs 3.0a, I have to say that it took me some time to wade through the many versions and interfaces even though I've followed Alfresco for some time. It seems like the new version actually comes with two interfaces to the same repository. The old "Alfresco" interface that is quite document and workflow centric, and the newer Share interface that is collaboration centric. You need to log into them separately, but they have common data that can be accessed through either.

The old interface suffered from a complex array of fancy drop-down menus. This allowed savvy users to do things quickly, but novice users just got lost. The new Share interface not only focuses on collaboration, but also provides a much simpler interface. The new interface is reminiscent of the simplicity of Basecamp, and makes it much more feasible to invite outside users into a collaboration space. Share's other big feature is support of the Microsoft Sharepoint protocol. This is great since it can be integrated with MS Office. Sharepoint is the clear target competition for this version.

I actually can't say much about the installation process, as I just picked up the Windows executable full installer. It installed a JRE, tomcat, Alfresco and Open Office (for document conversion). I didn't have to do much, though if I wanted to do anything more than test, I probably should have installed MySQL on my Windows machine, rather than using the built-in Java database.

After install, I logged into the Share interface and was greeted with a simple Dashboard.

I was able to quickly create a new "site" that provided me with the basic Share components - a wiki, blogs, calendar, forums, and the document library.

Each of the components is simple, albeit a little rudimentary at this point. For example the Wiki has a nice clean interface with a small palette and WYSIWYG functionality.

But in order to embed a picture you need to upload it somewhere and provide the URL for the image. Many wikis do this, but it winds up relegating that task to experts, which somewhat defeats the purpose of a simple collaboration site. Similarly, adding links to other pages in the wiki requires some expertise. I am hopeful that these features will be refined in future iterations (this is a beta), but right now they are showstoppers for deploying to basic users.

Alfresco does really excel at document management. Not only can you easily upload, download and version documents...

...but you can also access the repositories via webdav, CIFS, and now Sharepoint. This is really easy and fantastic for document collaboration. I've been using Sharepoint recently on a project and I found Alfresco a lot easier to use.

There are some very basic "social" components to Alfresco, mainly profiles and avatars. But I think that is sufficient for its intended purpose.

There are some shortcomings to this release that made it somewhat painful to use. I couldn't change my password in the Share interface, nor could I add new users. For that and several other activities, I need to log in separately to the old interface. This made it feel a bit more alpha than beta, but I think Share is the interface of the future for Alfresco and I suspect all of this will eventually get rolled in. Then I might look to Alfresco for document centric collaboration, as best of breed.