RIA for Enterprise 3.0

FlexSpaces in Alfresco Forge ,  FlexSpaces Google Code Project   (open source community version is LGPL)

The new version of FlexSpaces (0.94)  has the following new features:

• The AIR version can offline a file in the repository and launch the default application for the file type on the offline copy with one click of the edit button in FlexSpaces. (This can be turned on by setting useLessStepsEdit to true in FlexSpacesConfig.xml).  With this feature, the user avoids getting file browse dialog to choose a download location and then having to navigate through their file system to launch the file in an editing application.
• The AIR version can automatically update the online file when the user saves in applications while editing an offlined file launched from the edit button.   (This can be turned on by setting both useLessStepsEditing to true and autoUpdateOnlineOnAppSave to true in FlexSpacesConfig.xml) (The online file will be versioned if it has the versionable aspect.)   With this feature, you avoid having to go back to the content management client, choose update, and pick the file to update with from a file browse dialog.
• Basically these two features together give you the simpler editing you get with WebDAV or with CIFS, but with the full features of FlexSpaces. With WebDAV your editing application may need to support direct WebDAV URLs.  Also you don’t have to worry as you do with WebDAV or CIFS,  if it works with a  particular client OS version or needs a client OS patch.
• The toolbar of FlexSpaces now has bigger, labeled toolbar buttons. Hopefully this will make figuring out what to do easier.
• A navigation panel was added combining the existing Company Home tree, an added User / My Home tree,  and Categories / Tag Cloud / Semantic Tag Clouds/Map / Favorites moved from the search view.
• Added displaying “Logged in as:” user name
• Fixes for LiveCycle Content Services ES2 version of Alfresco

CMIS Spaces and FlexibleShare were also updated to have these new FlexSpaces features:

CMIS Spaces in Alfresco Forge ,  CMIS Spaces Google Code Project

FlexibleShare in Alfresco Forge ,  FlexibleShare Google Code Project

The community versions of FlexSpaces, FlexSpaces portlets, CMIS Spaces, and CMIS Spaces portlets (coming) are now LGPL instead of GPL. FlexSpaces supports both Alfresco and Adobe LiveCycle Content Services ES2.  LiveCycle Mosaic ES2 tiles for FlexSpaces and CMIS Spaces are also planned. The community version of FlexSpaces has very full featured support for doc management, search,  start workflow, task list (Alfresco only), and some wcm (Alfresco only). It even supports semantic auto-tagging using Calais.

An enterprise version of  FlexSpaces (including portlets, tiles) with a commercial license, support, and additional features will also be available.  An expanded enterprise version of CMIS Spaces (including portlets, tiles) is also in the works.

FlexibleShare is now LGPL instead of GPL.  FlexibleDashboard and FlexibleLiferay have been LGPL for awhile. These are in the early stages, experimental. FlexibleShare adds a Flex portal interface around FlexSpaces doc management pods, Flex UI pods for Alfresco share collaboration, and some sample BI/reporting pods. Plan to also add pods for CMIS Spaces into FlexibleShare. FlexibleShare and its base project FlexibleDashboard need to have modularity support added (loading of modules). They need to be flexible.  FlexibleLiferay, a Flex+AIR front end to Liferay, gets its modularity support already from Liferay with each portlet (pure Flex or regular portlet) being a separate war file. FlexibleDashboard needs to have its BI/reporting support expanded beyond samples.

FlexSpaces Alfresco Forge , FlexSpaces Google Code

CMIS Spaces Alfresco Forge , CMIS Spaces Google Code

FlexibleShare Alfresco Forge , FlexibleShare Google Code

FlexibleDashboard Google Code

FlexibleLiferay Google Code

Steve
integratedsemantics.com
twitter.com/stevereiner

After reading about the iPhone app for LiveCycle Workspace ES2 (product page, blog article), I thought I would get something to work with LiveCycle ContentServices ES2. Dr. Yong Qu, who works at Alfresco, created a  sample web script based  Alfresco web app for the iPhone. I got this web app to work with LiveCycle ContentServices ES2. The navigation works, display of some properties works, viewing files works (after one change to a webscript for contentspace), and search works.  (Alfresco 3.2 has an iPhone web app UI for Share. Getting this to work on ES2 would be more involved.)

Two zip files are needed from Yong’s blog page
iui.zip
iphone-navigator.zip

Webscript file changed (in iphone-navigator.zip and rezipped)
on line 362 of org/alfresco/demo/iphone/iPhoneNavigation.get.html.ftl (the line with “Read Document”) change /alfresco to /contentspace

Different steps to install on LC Content Services vs. steps for Alfresco
1. stop “JBoss for Adobe LiveCycle ES2″ service
2. I already had c:\Adobe\Adobe LiveCycle ES2\jboss\server\lc_turnkey\deploy\adobe-contentservices.ear and the contentservices.war inside it exploded
3. copy iui folder (nested in iui folder in iui.zip) to adobe-contentservices.ear\contentservices.war\
4. start “JBoss for Adobe LiveCycle ES2″ service
5. start Contentspace, login as administrator
6. same step as Alfresco to import iphone-navigator.zip file into Data Dictionary/Web Script Extensions/ folder
7. button to refresh webscripts is on http://localhost:8080/contentspace/service/ page
8. You can now run http://localhost:8080/contentspace/service/iphone/navigation in a regular or mobile browser

Notes:
1. This is not iPhone specific so it would work with other smartphones with browsers
2. I used the LC ES2 M3 R3 beta turnkey deploy JBoss / Windows 64 bit
3. Should work with LC Content Services ES (8.2.1). The deploy dir would be different.
4. I used it with an iPod Touch (not an iPhone). Also used with testiphone.com in a regular browser in the screenshot.

Steve

FlexibleDashboard (new google code project)
1. Has both Flex+Browser and Flex+AIR versions
2. Based on the non doc mgt code from FlexibleShare
3. Based on esria dashboard / adobe flex devnet dashboard sample with added flexmdi cascade/tile (esria pod drag/drop in tile mode)
4. Flex+Browser pods: line, bar, pie charts, form, todo list, JasperReports viewer, Pentaho dashboard, BlazeDS samples, external Flex app SWFLoader, calendar, iframe html (iframe has not hiding issues)
5. Flex+AIR additional pods: webkit HTML, web browser, Google gadgets, Liferay portlets, local files browser

FlexibleShare
1. Now has Flex+Browser in addition to Flex+AIR
2. Adds Alfresco, Alfresco Share, LiveCycle Content Services features to FlexibleDashboard

FlexibleLiferay (new google code project)
(Flex+AIR based portal container application for Liferay)
1. Can display regular Liferay portlets (JSR-168, JSR-286, HTML/Ajax etc.)
2. All of Liferay backend, standards it supports can be leveraged
3. Can display Flex portlets (swfs) without html wrapper (no need for special handling of restarting when resize portlet) from within a portlet war
4. Leverage Liferay app catalog to also manage Flex portlets
5. Leverage Liferay security / authentication (ldap, sso, etc.) to also manage Flex portlets
6. Flex portlets can take advantage of AIR specific features (native desktop file drag / drop, native clipboard, local files, offline db)
7. No Flex+Browser version yet due to iframe issues

FlexibleLiferay Implementation:
1. Uses BlazeDS to remote to some Java Apis added via Liferay Ext environment (used Liferay 5.2.3)
2. Built on top of FlexibleDashboard

FlexibleLiferay Implemented:
1. Sign in (Login dialog), Sign out
2. My Places menu
3. Display of tabs for pages in selected place
4. Display of a Liferay pod (uses HTML with Liferay widget) for each portlet in selected page

I recently added both a FlexSpaces/Alfresco Gadget (Google) and a Portlet for the new GateIn (eXo+JBoss) Portal. See Alfresco Forge for downloads, Google Code  for source.  See previous posts on other portlets ( Liferay Portal portlet ,  JBoss Portal portlet).

The gadget and the portlet  work on both app server versions (Tomcat, JBoss AS) of the GateIn beta1. (I had to add a tld file to get the portlet to work on JBoss).

The gadget can be used on dashboard layouts. The portlet can be used in other layouts. In the screenshot, the FlexSpaces gadget is maximized, so it doesn’t look like the usual gadget layout. The beta1 seemed to not allow saving an edit to change from a 3 column to a 1 or 2 column. (FlexSpaces can made to take up less space by setting the show header area preference to false, and hiding the tree with the show / tree menu). Also the beta1 didn’t display default values for the FlexSpaces gadget when the edit UI mode is used, so editng the gadget xml is easier (This is only on gadgets, regular portet preferences UI edit mode was fine).

See the readmes in the flexspaces-gadget.zip file and the flexspacesGateInPortlet.zip file for setup instructions.

In addition to a Liferay portlet, I recently added a JBoss Portal portlet for FlexSpaces (Alfresco Forge, Google Code).  See previous post about the Liferay portlet since some of the same things apply (setting up two app servers, pointers to SSO info, etc.).

How to setup:
1. Install Alfresco community or enterprise (I used Alfresco 3.2 community bundled with Tomcat)
2. Start alfresco user admin pw admin, install flexspaces 0.91+ webscripts, see readmeWebScripts.txt
3. shutdown Alfresco
4. Install a JBoss Portal community or enterprise (I used 2.7.2 community bundled with a 4.2.3 JBoss app server)
5. Change port 8080 to 9080 and port 8009 to 9009 in jboss-portal-2.7.2/server/default/deploy/jboss-web.deployer/server.xml
to not conflict with ports in alfresco running in a separate app server
6. Copy flexspaces-jboss-portlet.war to jboss-portal-2.7.2/server/default/deploy/
7. start jboss portal with jboss-portal-2.7.2\bin\run.bat
8. run http://localhost:9080/portal and log in with admin/admin (so portlet edit UI will be enabled)
9. startup alfresco
10. in jboss portal switch to FlexSpaces tab, click on “Edit” on the flexspaces portlet and setup alfresco url  if needed and other options and click update.
11. log into FlexSpaces portlet (admin/admin or other user/pw)

JBoss+eXo GateIn Portal (See GateIn website)
I tried the FlexSpaces JBoss portlet with the beta1 of GateIn and it didn’t work. I am looking into creating a FlexSpaces portlet and a gadget for this new portal)

Steve

FlexSpaces 0.93 was recent released (Alfresco Forge, Google Code).  This now includes a Liferay portlet (runs FlexSpaces inside a portlet), fixes progress bar color in new styling/skinning from 0.92, adds short-term state save for portlet resize / browser refresh (config only enabled in portlet pkg), adds additional parms/flashvars to support config in portlet preferences dialogs, adds parms to enable adding sso.  A JBoss Portal portlet will be available later. Also will have portlets for CMIS Spaces.

The Liferay portlet is also available from the Liferay website community plugins download area and also from within Liferay itself: Add Application / Install More Applications (use refresh button at bottom to refresh plugin list)  (Note: installing the integratedsemantics.zip web scripts in Alfresco is still required, see readmeWebScripts.txt)

The FlexSpaces Liferay portlet configuration UI allows setting what views to show (doclib, search, tasks, wcm) and the Alfresco web script URL.

This portlet was developed/tested with Liferay 5.2.3 and Alfresco 3.2 running in separate Tomcats. Running Liferay and Alfresco in separate Tomcats is recommended (easier, can switch to new versions independently, and is more scalable). To adapt the FlexSpaces portlet to Liferay 5.1.x, etc. look at the source inside the Liferay Flash portlet war for your version of Liferay and adapt the jsps (different dtds) and  maybe the java file of the FlexSpaces portlet.

How to setup:
1. Install Alfresco enterprise or community
2. Start alfresco user admin pw admin, install flexspaces 0.91+ webscripts, see readmeWebScripts.txt
3. Install a separate Liferay 5.2.x tomcat bundle from liferay.com
4. I changed all the ports in <liferay>/<tomcat>/conf/server.xml to start with 9 instead of 8 (8005->9005, 8080->9080 twice, 8009->9009) to not conflict with tomcat running alfresco
5. Start liferay tomcat and login bruno@7cogs.com (password: bruno)
6. Within Liferay install the FlexSpaces portlet: Add Application / Install More Applications (use refresh button at bottom to refresh plugin list) and click add on FlexSpaces item from the Alfresco or Flex category
7. Configure the portlet in its configuration UI to have the views wanted and for your Alfresco web script URL (may need different host,port), and save.
8. Login to the FlexSpaces portlet (user: admin, pw: admin)
9. The FlexSpaces portlet also works with LiveCycle Content Services ES:
a. in the portlet configuration UI set the Alfresco webscript URL in to http://localhost:8080/contentspace/service and set show tasks to false
b. in FlexSpacesConfig.xml set is LiveCycleContentServices to true, serverVersion to 2.1 for LC 8.2.1, and set useSessionData to false (need to do some more work to get the short term state save to work with LC CS, and avoid the re-login on portlet resize)

Haven’t tried using SSO approaches yet:
1. Rivet Logic STAr (Secure Token Authentication rivet amp for Alfresco) used with AWPr
2. Jonas Yuan / Cignex LDAP ADS and SSO CAS  and also blog post on a combined install
3. Sourcesense Alfresco OpenSSO integration
Other references
1. Luis Sala’s portlet dev wiki page and blog
2. Jeff Pott’s blog

Steve

I released new builds of FlexSpaces, CMIS Spaces,  and FlexibleShare. These have a new ‘look” (with added skinning of menus/tabs,  and expanded/changed style files):

FlexSpaces+AIR 0.92 ( Alfresco Forge , Google Code )  (Tested with Alfresco 3.2, Adobe LiveCycle Content Services ES 8.2.1)

CMIS Spaces +AIR build 8 ( Alfresco Forge , Google Code ) (Tested with Alfresco 3.2)
Note: CMIS Spaces build 8 is for the CMIS 0.61 spec. I will do a new build soon for the CMIS 0.62 spec.

FlexibleShare +AIR build 2 ( Alfresco Forge , Google Code ) (Tested with Alfresco 3.2, Adobe LiveCycle Content Services ES 8.2.1)

Alfresco Announces Winners of Annual Partner & Community Awards

Thanks Alfresco for the International Contributor (Community) of the Year Award!

Steve Reiner
Integrated Semantics
www.integratedsemantics.org
www.integratedsemantics.com
www.twitter.com/stevereiner

A first build and source for FlexibleShare+AIR, an open source, Flex based dashboard/portal container focused on document management (Alfresco, Adobe LiveCycle Content Services ES), collaboration (Alfresco Share),  and BI/charting/reporting, is now available on the Alfresco Forge and on Google Code.

As a Flex based dashboard for FlexSpaces view pods (doc mgt, wcm, search, workflow tasks), its further along. (Note that the WCM pod is commented out in data/pods.xml).

The Flex based pods (blog, wiki, discussions, doclib, calendar) for Share back-end are prototypes. No commenting/reply feature yet. The calendar doesn’t hook into the Share backend yet. The Share dashboard html pod runs the Share overall dashboard (no pods for individual Surf dashlets yet).  (Note that you need to confgure Share pods with the correct site short url name in the siteUrlName attributes in pods.xml)

The Charting, Pentaho charting, JasperReports report viewer pods are samples only (additional BI/reporting capabilities to come). Liferay html pod runs the full Liferay portal (no pods for individual Liferay portlets yet).

FlexibleShare uses the Esria dashboard sample. I still need to look into leveraging the  Anvil project to provide more modular support for loading Flex portlets. (Note see previous blog post with more details on FlexibleShare)

Do to use of AIR, you can drag desktop files into FlexibleShare folder views. Regular AIR drag / drop also allows you to drag files from the local files pod to folder view pods and between folder view pods. Calais semantic auto-tagging, tag suggesting can be used in Doclib pods and in the search pod (switch from having the “simplesearch” pod to the “search” pod in pods.xml), and setup the Calais key / set enableCalais in FlexSpacesConfig.xml

To get FlexibleShare to run on LiveCycle Content Services (8.2.1), FlexSpacesConfig.xml needs to be changed following its LiveCycle comments (different setting for alfresoUrlPart, set isLiveCycleContentService value to true, and set serverVersion to 2.1 to reflect its embedded Alfreso. Also in data/pods.xml comment out the tasks pod, and remove the pods in Share section. Note: for FlexibleShare on LiveCycle on non localhost, currently need to recompile with service-config.xml changed.

FlexibleShare Document Management (WCM pod not shown) screenshot (click on for larger):

FlexibleShare Collaboration screenshot (click on for larger):