Document Management System

PCQLinux Document Management Appliance bundles a browser based content management system with easy workflow

Saturday, March 10, 2007

What's more this browser based system called Alfresco allows access to the documents through Windows share as well as WebDav. Alfresco showcases a number of features like smart faces, automatic metadata extraction (from MS Word files), content versioning and an advanced content search, but in this article we focus on a must have feature from a document management system namely – a document workflow. Alfresco makes it a breeze to take documents across a workflow process. But first comes, booting up the PCQLinux Content Management Appliance and starting Alfresco.

Start up Alfresco
Start up the PCQLinux Content Management Appliance and set up its networking (refer to the section on Virtualization with VirtualBox ). To start Alfresco:

cd /var/alfresco
./alf_start.sh

Fire up a web browser (IE or Firefox) from one of the machines on your network and type in the URL: http://192.168.3.16:8080/alfresco/. Substitute 192.168.3.16 with the IP address you assigned to the PCQLinux appliance. Click on “Login (guest)”. You will be redirected to the login page. On the login page, login as admin with the password as admin.

Workflow 1: Here you can see that the author can submit articles to the editors. He can even start discussions with them

A sample scenario
An example to show the easy setup of Alfresco's workflow, we take up the case of an author who upon finishing the article clicks on “Move to edit”. This workflow action moves the article document (say an MS Word document) to a folder (referred to as Space in Alfresco) called Articles. The Editor has view and check out rights to this Space and can hence checkout the article to edit. Once edited, the editor clicks on “Move to publish” action which moves the edited article to a Space called “Ready to publish”.

To achieve this, we first create two groups called editors and authors respectively. We create users corresponding to the editors and authors and add them to the respective groups. Next we create the Spaces (Articles and Edited) and assign logical permissions to these Spaces, for the editor and author group. Finally we create a workflow to achieve the above mentioned flow of an article document.

Create users and groups
Upon login as admin, click on the 'Administration Console' icon (the first icon after the blue band on the top). On the administration console, click on Manage System Users>Create User and follow the wizard. Create users corresponding to authors (say Shekhar Govindarajan) and corresponding to editors (say Rinku Tyagi). Note that the default home folder (as specified in the home space name) of the editors and authors get created while creating users corresponding to them.

We will set the home space name to 'shekhar govindarajan' and rinku tyagi' for the users in our case. In their home space, users have full access to upload, create, delete and edit their documents. Once done with the users' creation, click on Manage User Groups. On the 'Group Management' page, click on Create>Create Group. For the identifier, enter the group name (Authors and Editors in our case).

On the Group Management page, click on the second icon (which has a + symbol) to add users to the group. That is, Shekhar Govindarajan will be added to the Authors group and Rinku Tyagi will be added to the Editors group.

Workflow 2: Using this interface, the editor submits the article for publishing, after editing it

Create Spaces & set permissions
While logged in as admin, click on “My Home”. Click on Create>Create Space (note the menu on the top right). For name enter “Articles”. Fill in other fields (title, description), select an icon for the Space and click on “create space”. Similarly create a Space called “Ready To publish”.

Onto setting the permissions, click on “My Home”. There you will see the two Spaces that you created, amongst some of the existing or default Alfresco Spaces. Click on Articles Space. Click on More Action>Manage Space Users. Click on Invite. Select Groups from the dropdown, type in Author and click on Search. Select Contributor from the role list. Click on Add to list. Similarly add Editor group with the role as 'Editor'. Click on Next and for e-mail invitation, select no. Click on Finish.

Similarly setup the Editor group with the Contributor role for the “Ready to publish” Space.

Setup the workflow
Click on the 'Shekhar Govindarajan' Space. Click on More Action>Manage Content Rules. Click on Create Rule. From the 'Select Condition' dropdown, select 'All Items'. Click on 'Add to list'. Click on Next. For 'Select Action', select 'Add simple workflow to item'. Click on 'Set Values and Add'. For 'Name to Approve', select 'Move to edit'. Select the radio button labeled move (or copy). Click on 'click here to select the destination' and select the Article Space. Select No for reject workflow. Click on Ok and then on Next. On the Enter Details page, select Inbound for Type. For title and description, type in 'Move to edit'. Check the box labeled 'Apply rule to sub spaces'. Click on Finish.Follow the same steps for the Space named 'Rinku Tyagi'. But substitute 'Move to edit' with 'Move to publish'. Select the destination space as 'Ready to publish' on the 'Set action values' page. Also in 'Step 3 – Enter Details', select Update for Type.

See the workflow in action
Now login as Shekhar Govindarajan with the password set during the user creation. Click on My Home and then on 'Add Content'. Follow the wizard to browse and upload a file. Once done, you will see the file (pcqlinux-article.doc in our case) on the My Home page. Click on the icon labeled >> and select 'Move to edit'.

Now login as Rinku Tyagi and click on Company Home. Click on the Article space and you will see the pcqlinux-article.doc lying there. Click on the arrow icon to check out the document. On the check out page, click the radio button labeled 'In the space select' and select the Space named 'Rinku Tyagi'. Click on check out.

Once checked out, you can download the article and edit it. Once the editing is over, right click on the pcqlinux-article.doc icon and click on update. When prompted upload the edited document.

Now when you again right click on the pcqlinux-article.doc you will find the option of Move to publish. Click on it and voila, the article moves to the Space called 'Ready to publish', that is, to its final destiny in our simple workflow. You can check out the 'Ready to publish' space by clicking on Company Home.

There is more to Alfresco's document management, workflow, permissions and there is more to its features. And if you want more details about the software then check out a flash demo at http://tinyurl.com/2b6z3w.

To create categories goto Administration Console and click on Category Management	On the category management page, click on create>add category. Then fill in a category name and description
Click on a Space which has a document or content to categorize. Then click on the 'View Details' icon	Expand the Category section and click on allow categorization. Next, click on the edit icon in the categorization section
On the subsequent page, click on the select button and select a category	You can search the documents by their category using Advanced Search

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