Category: Alfresco

FlexSpaces, CMIS Spaces, and Portlets updates

 FlexSpaces 04 05 2011

FlexSpaces (Flex+AIR, Flex+Browser, portlets) RIA clients for Alfresco ECM

In March, FlexSpaces (Google Code, Alfresco Forge) was finally ported from Flex 3 to Flex 4. A first pass of moving from halo controls to spark controls was made, and it has a new look with the spark theme. In April the “04 05 2011” version of FlexSpaces added the optional capability to use Alfresco Share form xml configurations to configure view/edit mode Flex forms in a new tabbed properties dialog, thus supporting custom types, aspects, etc. See the readme-form-config.txt in the distributions for how to enable and use this configuration capability.  This version also changed to have the advanced search and properties dialogs resizable using skins from flexdevtips.    

In May, the portlets to run FlexSpaces in portals were updated. To keep them from getting outdated as quickly, they are now wrappers that reference a separate install of the “in-browser” non AIR version of FlexSpaces (that can be updated separately). The older FlexSpaces Liferay portlet supported Liferay 5.x, the new one supports Liferay 6.x.  This is available in the Liferay community plugins catalog. The FlexSpaces portlet and gadget for the GateIn portal were both updated. The FlexSpaces portlet for the original JBoss portal was also updated.

CMIS Spaces (Flex+AIR, Flex+Browser, portlet) RIA clients for content servers supporting the CMIS standard (Alfresco, IBM, EMC, Nuxeo, Microsoft SharePoint, Adobe Day CRX, etc.)

In April, CMIS Spaces, based on FlexSpaces, was ported from Flex 3 to Flex 4. CMIS Spaces has both atompub rest binding support (default, with more features hooked up in the UI) and web services SOAP binding support (optional, with only navigation and search features can be used through the UI, although the full featured data access backend code is present). Note that the ActionScript code for all the CMIS SOAP binding APIs was re-generated with FlashBuilder 4 / Flex 4.1 SDK / fiber (and this improved things to not have repeated code for types across the multiple CMIS SOAP web services).

In May, a Liferay 6.x wrapper portlet for using CMIS Spaces in a Liferay portal was introduced. This portlet references a separate install of the “in-browser” version of CMIS Spaces. Having these two parts allows CMIS Spaces, like Flex Spaces, to be updated separately and avoids the portlet getting out of date. The CMIS Spaces portlet is also in the Liferay catalog.

Alfresco OpenCalais Integration Share UI

The Alfresco OpenCalais Integration now has UI (Spring Surf / HTML /JavaScript / YUI)  for Alfresco Share in addition to the support in FlexSpaces (Flex/Flash).  The Share UI has a semantic tag cloud dashlet, a geo-tagged (Google map based) semantic map dashlet, and an auto-tagging action.  The Share UI is for Alfresco 3.3 and 3.4.

share-calais-dashlets-2.png

The dashlets will show semantic tags in all share sites when added to the overall Share dashboard, and show site specific semantic tags when added to site dashboards.  Clicking on a tag in the semantic tag cloud or on a semantic tag map marker will take you to a search results list of documents with the semantic tag.  The semantic tag cloud dashlet can be changed to show semantic tags for a specific category or all categories.

The semantic tag cloud dashlet is based on  Will Abson’s tag cloud dashlet in the Alfresco Share Extras collection. Will now also has a Google map dashlet in this collection showing geo-location of photo files using Tika extracted metadata available in Alfresco 3.4.

share-calais-autotag-action-2.png

The added auto-tag action menu (in more menu and details page) can be used to auto tag the selected document with the OpenCalais service. This action is added to both site document libraries and repository document library page menu.The auto-tagging action can also be setup in a content rule to auto-tag all documents in a folder in the rule UI of Alfresco Explorer or in Share (choose to perfom the action “Auto-tag with Calais”).

Note that semantic tags are implemented with categories with a custom root category. They won’t show up in regular Alfresco tag or category UI.  Currently only the Alfresco Explorer details page will list semantic tags (update 3/30/2011: will now show up the Share doc details page too in the 1.3.1 version of the OpenCalais integration).

FlexSpaces, in addition to having the semantic tag clouds, semantic map, and auto-tag action features in the Share UI, also has support for suggesting semantic tags and for editing what semantic tags are assigned to a document.  See the semantic features in action in this screen-cam of an older version of FlexSpaces.

AIR apps for both Apple iPad and Android tablets

Great news on Apple relaxing iOS development tool restrictions

Now using Flex with coming mobile support and AIR to develop both for Android and iOS (with “Adobe AIR Packager for iPhone”) will be possible.

Supporting FlexSpaces (for Alfresco and for Adobe LiveCycle Content Services ES2), CMIS Spaces (for content servers supporting the CMIS standard), FlexibleDashboard, and FlexibleShare AIR apps on these additional platforms is getting more feasible.

Since these apps are geared to larger screens, targeting iPad and Android tablets makes more sense than the small screens (iPhone, Android mobile phones).

Steve Reiner

Integrated Semantics

on twitter

FlexSpaces for Alfresco updated: less steps editing, new UI

FlexSpaces 0.94

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

FlexSpaces, CMIS Spaces, and FlexibleShare now LGPL, product plans

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