Alfresco WCM article on Packt website

A nice article about Alfresco's WCM features is at:
http://www.packtpub.com/article/alfresco-web-content-management-2-0-part1

Alfresco 2.1 (the new release) includes many enhancements to Web Content Management module.
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Alfresco Enterprise CMS Implementation on PacktPub.com First Alfresco book, worldwide service, 10% discount.

Alfresco Book Review by EMC Documentum expert

Pawan Kumar, Principal @ doQuent, and the author of "Documentum Content Management Foundations: EMC Proven Professional Certification Exam E20-120 Study Guide" has done a review of Alfresco Book.

Summary of the Review:

This book is definitely a must-have for anyone implementing a solution using Alfresco. It is a handy reference for performing various tasks on the Alfresco platform. If you are new to content management in general then you may need additional resources to make effective use of the information available in this book.

I liked the changes he had suggested in his review. I will follow them in the next update.

Read the complete review at:
http://doquent.wordpress.com/2007/07/27/book-review-alfresco-by-munwar-shariff/

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Alfresco Enterprise CMS Implementation on PacktPub.com First Alfresco book, worldwide service, 10% discount.

Alfresco Case Study - Presto

Presto's unique digital delivery system is a combination of Presto Service and the HP Printing Mailbox. It allows users to receive email, photos, and newsletters from a variety of well-known publishers without the need for a computer or an Internet connection.

CIGNEX Created a Flexible, Easy-to-Use Content Management System to power newsletters for Presto's printing mailbox service. The Presto CMS is developed on top of Alfresco, an Open Source enterprise content management platform. The architecture supports high availability, high performance, and replication support across multiple servers.

Read the case study at http://www.cignex.com/site/resources/library/case_studies

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Alfresco Enterprise CMS Implementation on PacktPub.com First Alfresco book, worldwide service, 10% discount.

Learn, Customize and Use Alfresco ECM in 60 minutes

It’s happening! The Open Source Content Management System (OSCMS) Summit is being sponsored by Yahoo! The OSCMS summit takes place on March 22nd and 23rd in Yahoo Campus in Sunnyvale, California.

As an Author of the book Alfresco Enterprise Content Management Implementation, I am presenting a 60 minute packed session covering the complete cycle of planning, implementing and customizing your ECM installation. My colleague at CIGNEX, Harish Ramachandran is helping me out with the live Demo.

Our presentation is on this Thursday (March 22nd, 2007) from 1:45pm to 2:45pm.

Alfresco offers true Open Source Enterprise Content Management (ECM) - Document Management, Collaboration, Records Management, Knowledge Management, Web Content Management and Imaging. Unlike most other open source CMS which offer only the web content management, Alfresco provides a wide range of solutions to Enterprise customers with an impressive roadmap.

The topics which are going to be covered are:

• Working with users and membership accounts
• Using Alfresco as a Smart document repository; working with automatic version tracking and control, and accessing the repository from the Web, shared network folders, or CIFS
• Making content easy to find using search, content categorization, and metadata
• Automating document management tasks with business rules and complete workflows
• Working together using Alfresco’s collaboration and syndication features to create effective working groups
• Customizing the user interface, creating your own dashboard layouts; presenting content in custom ways relevant to your business
• Implementing Imaging and Forms Processing

With real-life examples from CIGNEX project implementations.
If you are attending the conference, hope to see you in the conference.

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Alfresco Enterprise CMS Implementation on PacktPub.com First Alfresco book, worldwide service, 10% discount.

Alfresco Book Code Download

If you have already purchased the Alfresco Book, please check if you have downloaded the code samples and files from the Book's download page.

There are about 60+ hands on exercises illustrated in the book and it is going to more convenient for you if you have access to the sample code and the example files.

The entire code bundle with sample files is a 6.5 MB ZIP file. It contains two folders:

1. chapter_downloads
2. full_downloads_alf14

1. chapter_downloads

Contains various sample scripts, images and content files are used in each chapter of the Alfresco Book. In some of the chapters you will also find information to edit various configuration files. The "chapter_downloads" folder contains sub-folders for individual chapters containing all the required files. Read the individual README.txt file present in each sub-folder to get more details.

2. full_downloads_alf14

This folder contains all the files required to bring up the complete DEMO site as per the Alfresco Book. Read "README.txt" file in this folder for more details. The demo files present in this folder are applicable ONLY to Alfresco 1.4 Release.

Hope you enjoy the samples provided in the book.

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Alfresco Enterprise CMS Implementation on PacktPub.com First Alfresco book, worldwide service, 10% discount.

JavaRanch Promotion Winners

We recently had "Alfresco Book" promotion week in JavaRanch website (Feb 6 - 9, 2007).

JavaRanch is a friendly place for Java greenhorns. This is the place where all the JavaRanchers go to replenish their inventory, and learn a few new tricks. Not only are there all the answers to frequently asked questions, but also further links to WhereYouCanGetStuff you don't find here. There is also a list of JavaEvents, and JavaRanchInTheNews, they put the newspaper cutouts on the wall.

I really enjoyed answering to questions related to Alfresco technology in the Forum. At the end of the week there were 4 winners who received free copies of the recently published Alfresco Book.

If you are a serious Java Developer, I recommend you to visit this cool website.

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Alfresco Enterprise CMS Implementation on PacktPub.com First Alfresco book, worldwide service, 10% discount.

How flexible is Alfresco workflow?

Alfresco includes two types of workflows out of the box. One is the Simple Workflow which is content-oriented and the other one is the Advanced Workflow which is task-oriented.

The simple workflow features of Alfresco enables you to define a simple approve- reject workflow for your documents. The email templates and notification business rules are helpful to notify all the concerned people involved in the workflow process. You can also implement complex workflows by chaining the spaces with multiple approve and reject steps.

The complex task-oriented workflow requirements can be handled by Advanced Workflow features. You can create a task, attach multiple documents and send it to multiple people for review. Using the dashboard views, you can view all the tasks assigned to you and all the tasks you have assigned to others. You can track the tasks to closure using the web client user interface.

There is a dedicated Chapter in the book titled "Chapter 9. Workflow", which explains you the concepts such as :

· Enable simple workflow on documents
· Create email templates and set email notifications
· Extend workflow with multiple approval steps
· Implement a complex workflow scenario for digital asset management
· Start an advanced workflow from the list of predefined workflows
· Assign priority, due date, reviewer, and documents to the workflow
· Take ownership of a task
· Reassign a task
· Change the workflow state
· List tasks assigned to you and tasks completed by you
· Cancel or abort the workflows you have started
· Create your own custom advanced workflow


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Alfresco Enterprise CMS Implementation on PacktPub.com First Alfresco book, worldwide service, 10% discount.