FlexibleShare updated

FlexibleShare extends FlexibleDashboard (dashboard framework, BI charting, reporting pods) with FlexSpaces doc management pods (Alfresco backend) and adds additional Flex pods for Share collaboration (Alfresco Share backend). All three of these projects are open source. FlexibleShare has been updated to use code from the latest versions of FlexSpaces and FlexibleDashboard, and the Share pods have added site selection drop downs.  Also added an  Alfresco Add-Ons page for FlexibleShare.

The doc management portion now has support for Alfresco 4.0, and a new preferences dialog for easier setup of server domain/port and API key setup of optional semantic auto-tagging with the OpenCalais Integration for Alfresco. The default config in the flexibleShareAirPods.xml just has the combined multi-view FlexSpaces pod shown in the top left. This screenshot also shows the available search, tasks, and local files pods (the all repository doc lib pod is not shown). In the AIR version, files from the local files pod can be copied into a doc lib view via drag/drop. Also in the AIR version, multi-select files can be copied via drag / drop from the desktop into a doc lib view,  copied out via drag/drop, or the native desktop clipboard can be used to copy/paste of files between the desktop and a doc lib   (AIR can do more than the HTML5 drag in available in some browers).

flexibleshareairbld4-33percent.png

The Share collaboration wiki, blog, discussions, doclib Flex pods are now more usable out of the box with added drop-downs to select Share site to work with (instead of setting the share site shortName in the pods xml file). More work is needed to hook up the calendar pod to load Share site calendar info (and an add event dialog is not available yet). Although the calendar pod is able to load iCalendar files, more work is needed to get it to work with the iCalendar data available from the Alfresco “slingshot” /calendar/eventList?site={shortName}&format=calendar webscript.

flexiblesharesharepods2.png

Planned for FlexibleShare:  calendar pod hookup with Share sites,   multiple repository support,  support for CMIS repositories, drag/drop copy between repositories, support for Alfresco Cloud repositories, multi-repository search,  Solr facets search navigation,  support for Apache Stanbol semantic auto-tagging / semantic search,  mobile/touch?, and a port/translation to HTML5 / CSS / JavaScript (FlexSpaces, CMIS Spaces, FlexibleDashboard, FlexibleShare).

Steve Reiner
Integrated Semantics
@stevereiner on twitter

OpenCalais Integration updated for Alfresco 4.0 and added use of new Share config mechanism. Apache Stanbol Plans

The OpenCalais Integration for Alfresco was finally updated for Alfresco 4.0 . Given the shift away from the Alfresco Forge to the Alfresco Add+Ons catalog site, the new home for the OpenCalais integration is now on a  Google Code site pointed to by its add+ons page

For Alfresco 4.0 with Solr enabled, an issue was fixed. (Some code that needed to get to newly added top level semantic tag categories right away needed to change to use a CategoryService API instead of using a search query since there is added delay in indexing. Changing the alfresco.cron  value  in solrcore.properties from 15 secs to 150 secs helped to get something that was intermittent to be reproducible every time.)

The Share Integration (semantic tag cloud dashlet, semantic geo-tagged map dashlet, auto-tag action menu in doc libraries and repository) was updated to use the new doclib action config mechanism added in 4.0 . Its much nicer to put an added action menu in a web-extension/share-config-custom.xml file than to setup the  modified versions of actions-common.get.head.ftl , documentlist.get.config.xml, etc in web-extension.  (Helpful ECM Stuff blog post on Share action config in Alfresco 4.0)

To use the free OpenCalais service, you need to get an API key from  opencalais.com  This allows you to submit 50,000 documents a day. More requests are supported in the non free version called Calais vs. the free (but not open source) service called OpenCalais. Note that document size per submission is to 100k bytes in all versions, the service retains extracted metadata (doesn’t retain content). So its geared more for news articles than large sensitive documents.  Calais has a test page to try out giving it text and seeing what it extracts.

To use the Share auto-tag action menu  (used to do a one time auto-tag on a document) you need a Calais api key setup in module\calais\module-context.xml  (see readme.txt).  Semantic tags will be listed in the properties section of a Share document details page  (not with regular tag UI since a different category content model / custom root category is used for semantic tags). You can also add one or more semantic tag clouds dashlets and a semantic geo-tagged map dashlet to share dashboards (site and/or global) to navigate from semantic tags to documents.   In explorer, doing a one time auto-tag you need to used the run a rule on a doc action and give the Calais key each time in the dialog.   A  rule to auto-tag documents in a folder can be setup in Explorer or Share (using the “Auto-tag with Calais” action, and you need to give the Calais api key as a parameter to this).

FlexSpaces has support for the OpenCalais integration in all its versions (desktop AIR client, Flex in-browser, Mobile AIR).  Like Share it supports semantic tag clouds, a semantic geo-tagged map, and one time auto-tagging like Share. It has additional OpenCalais features: semantic tag suggestion, adding / removing semantic tags on a document.  You can setup a Calais api key (and Alfresco server info) in FlexSpaces preferences dialog that was added in the 2012.02.08 version and avoid having to do this in FlexSpacesConfig.xml . Info entered is sticky and per user on their local machine (stored in a Local Shared Object). So theoretically each user could submit 50,000 documents a day to OpenCalais if they each signed up for a key.  FlexibleShare includes FlexSpaces and its semantic features, but hasn’t been updated with the preferences dialog or other recent FlexSpaces changes yet (update: FlexibleShare 6/28/2012 version now has the preferences dialog and Alfresco 4.0 support too).

FlexSpaces Preferences Dialog

Plan to have an Alfresco integration with Apache Stanbol on the same Semantics4Alfresco Google Code  site with the OpenCalais integration.  Apache Stanbol (derived from the IKS project) is fully open source, is a general stack of frameworks for semantic content management and can do more than content enhancement,  can get around the drawbacks of OpenCalais, and gives you more flexibility to setup customized ontologies vs. the fixed support Calias has. Stanbol can also call other enhancement engines instead of the default OpenNLP or even chain them together. Stanbol has an adapter for OpenCalais. For enhancing news, OpenCalais works better out of the box than OpenNLP.   Zaizi has already done Stanbol integration work, although only a version for an old IKS version is currently open source.  Integrated Semantics will leverage  / extend any newer Stanbol integration that Zaizi makes available open source.  A Stanbol integration could extend Solr facets with semantic facets.

First Test Version and Source of CMIS Spaces Mobile Available

CMIS Spaces is a Flex based RIA Client for CMIS content mgt repositories with Desktop (AIR App, Flex In Browser) and Mobile (Android Mobile AIR App, iOS Mobile AIR App) versions.

The source and first test version of CMIS Spaces Mobile is finally available on the CMIS Spaces Google Code site. Its geared more for Android tablets / iPads than smart phones.

A first test build of CMIS Spaces Mobile for Android is available for download. The iOS version can be built from the common source using Flash Builder 4.6 / Flex 4.6 .

A newer version of FlexSpaces Mobile for Alfresco and newer source is also available on the FlexSpaces Google Code site. CMIS Spaces and FlexSpaces share a good bit code between them. FlexSpaces has support for more features (workflow, etc.) and uses custom web scripts instead of CMIS binding APIs.

A third test build of FlexSpaces Mobile for Android is available for download. FlexSpaces Mobile for iOS can be built from the common FlexSpaces source.

Alfresco Add+Ons Catalog pages:
CMIS Spaces
Flex Spaces

First test version of FlexSpaces Mobile for Android available

The first test version of FlexSpaces Mobile for Android (and Alfresco ECM) is now available for download on the FlexSpaces google code site. A more final version will be available on the Android Market for free. The first test version for iOS will use the “ad-hoc” testing Apple allows until an app is in the app store. For people interested in testing the iOS version (mainly for iPads, will fit on iPhone4 screens), send email to info  at  integratedsemantics.com.   Test versions of CMIS Spaces Mobile for Android and iOS will be available soon too.

flexspacesmobile2.png

Notes:

  • Need to have flexspaces webscripts installed in your Alfresco server
  • Use settings / preferences on the initial login page to enter server domain/protocol/port.
  • Geared for Android tablets, will also fit on high-res smart phones at least 480 pixels wide
  • Geared more for landscape mode when have the navigation tree displayed (turn off in the view menu)
  • App size is larger due to including captive air run-time so you don’t need to install the latest air separately
  • Some features were left out for now (open calais semantic tagging, favorites section, local files panel, wcm)
  • The FlexSpaces mobile project source is not checked into google code yet
  • FlexSpaces in general still needs its start workflow feature fixed for Alfresco 4.0

FlexSpaces Mobile

FlexSpaces (open source Flex / desktop AIR application for Alfresco ECM) has been ported to Flex Mobile.

Here is a video of FlexSpaces Mobile for Alfresco running on an iPad2:

Here is a video of FlexSpaces Mobile for Alfresco running on an Android Tablet (ASUS Transformer):

FlexSpaces Mobile has the full features of desktop FlexSpaces AIR (creation and editing features, not just browsing and viewing).

The cool thing is FlexSpaces Mobile supports multiple mobile platforms from the same codebase (and has mostly the same code-base as the desktop AIR and browser versions).

Used Flash Builder 4.5.1 and Flex 4.5.1. (need to try with Flash Builder 4.6 / Flex 4.6 pre-release ).

All the features work (except favorites which should work if add at least one shortcut through the regular Alfresco client). More work still todo (performance, polish, etc.). Also need to add a preference dialog (for desktop version too) so things that are now in FlexSpacesConfig.xml can  be set without repackaging (or at least be able to set the repository url in the login dialog).

Changes for mobile have not been checked into the FlexSpaces google code project yet. Think FlexSpaces Mobile will be free and open source too. Also should have a commercial license / premium version too.

FlexSpaces doesn’t use CMIS (uses custom webscripts) so it can expose all the capabilities of Alfresco, not just what is in CMIS.

CMIS Spaces Mobile, based on FlexSpaces Mobile, is also up and running on Flex Mobile 4.5.1. This can support all repositories that support CMIS (Alfresco, Nuxeo, Microsoft SharePoint, EMC Documentum, IBM FileNet, OpenText, Adobe ADEP / Day CRX, etc.) Look for a future blog post with videos of CMIS Spaces Mobile in the near future.

These mobile apps are geared to the larger screens found on tablets (and desktops).  Having layouts for smart phones is not planned (some things could be done easily: tree navigation panel can be hidden already, smaller / less toolbar icons could be used. Other things would be more work: dialogs would need smaller layouts, multi-pane sections (version history, workflow attachments, etc.) would need to be done as overlays.