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 Having these two parts allows CMIS Spaces, like Flex Spaces, to be updated separately and avoids the portlet getting out of date.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, CMIS Spaces, and FlexibleDashboard updates

FlexSpaces 0.95  (for Alfresco and for Adobe LiveCycle Content Services ES2)

CMIS Spaces (based on FlexSpaces, for content servers supporting the CMIS standard)

  • Build 17 Added multi-file drag out to desktop in AIR version (in addition to existing multi-file drag in)
  • Build 16 Added fixes to get navigation/browsing and upload to work on Day Software CRX 2.1 + CMIS package (issues remaining with Day CRX: upload doesn’t show up, 0 search results).
  • Tested with Alfresco 3.3g and Day CRX 2.1. Previously have tested with Alfresco 3.2/3.3, EMC Documentum, IBM FileNet, Nuxeo. Haven’t tried with new CMIS support for SharePoint Microsoft has.
  • CMIS Spaces on Google Code
  • CMIS Spaces on Alfresco Forge

FlexibleDashboard

  • Build 2:  Added BIRT report viewer pod
  • Build 2: Added pivotable OLAP grid with XMLA datasource support (Mondrian, Pentaho, etc.)
  • FlexibleDashboard on Google Code

FlexSpaces 0.94 for Adobe LiveCycle Content Services ES2

FlexSpaces for LiveCycle

FlexSpaces Google Code Project   (open source community version is LGPL)

In the new version of FlexSpaces (0.94),  there is now also a special build “FlexSpaces for LiveCycle” that is preconfigured for LiveCycle Content Services ES2 instead of regular Alfresco. The flexspaces-0.94-LiveCycleES2.zip download has both an AIR version and an in-browser version.

This has the new features added in FlexSpaces 0.94 (less steps editing in AIR version, navigation panel, new bigger labeled toolbar icons,  show logged in as).  This version also takes advantage of some things added in Content Services ES2 to avoid getting some initial extra authentication prompts. (FlexSpaces for LiveCycle now requires ES2 and doesn’t support ES1). Also the setup for FlexSpaces with LiveCycle is easier than in the past. Just install the integratedsemantics.zip webscripts and set host name in FlexSpacesConfig.xml as described in the readmeLC.txt in the zip.

Calais Integration

Note that the Calais Integration in the Alfresco Forge works fine with LiveCycle Content Services ES2 and  FlexSpaces has UI for it (auto semantic tagging, tag suggestion, tag clouds, google map displaying geo-tags). The ES2 installer allows you to include custom AMP files such as the CalaisIntegration.amp. I used the turnkey install, selected the custom option when the Configuration Manager ran.  I had the calaisIntegration.amp release 1.1  in c:\amps.  When the config mgr is deploying content services, check the include custom amps checkbox, and browse to choose c:\amps.  For instructions on adding an amp to an existing install see Dr Flex & Dr LiveCycle (although the paths are different in ES2).

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