Can Alfresco function as an archives management system? - alfresco

I am trying to figure out what is the exact difference between a document management system and archives management system? For example, what is the difference between Alfresco and Archivesspace (http://www.archivesspace.org/)?
Can Alfresco function as an archives management tool? What is the difference between the two? I read there is a record management module in Alfresco, is this what is meant by archives management?

Can Alfresco be used as an Archives Management System? Yes, of course. One real world example of this is the New York Philharmonic. They digitized their musical scores and associated artifacts going back to 1842 and then made them available online for researchers. Here is a video about it.
At its heart, Alfresco is a repository that allows you to capture any type of file, secure those files, route those files through workflows, search across the files, and associate metadata with each file. What I've just described are what most people would consider the basic set of functionality present in any worthwhile document management system.
Now, what makes that specific to archival purposes? I'm not an archivist. That's a highly-specialized field. One thing that is missing from my list of functionality above is "capture" or how the artifacts you are archiving will get into the system. This depends on exactly what it is you are archiving. One might use document scanners or high-end photography equipment, for example. None of that is addressed by Alfresco. You'll have to use third-party hardware and software and then integrate it, although many integrations exist between Alfresco and third-party capture vendors.
So I would say, yes, Alfresco can be used for archives management. But perhaps more importantly than considering whether or not a piece of software can be given a label, you should be thinking about how your users will use the software and what it is they need to get done. Then focus on how each of the packages you are evaluating can be used to achieve those goals to try to figure out whether or not each package will be a fit.

The difference is that ArchivesSpace is an 'archives information management system', whereas Alfresco is a full 'content management system', which means that it can manage any type of content.
What ArchivesSpace is:
ArchivesSpace Version 1.0 was completed in August 2013. It includes basic functionality for accessioning, processing, description, digital object description, and authority control workflows for archival material, as well as for searching descriptions and exporting metadata objects such as EAD, MARCXML, MODS, Dublin Core, METS, and CSV.
http://www.archivesspace.org/developmentplan
As for Alfresco:
The Alfresco One platform allows organizations to fully manage any type of content from simple office documents to scanned images, photographs, engineering drawings and even large video files.
http://www.alfresco.com/products/one/aws?utm_expid=11184972-12.IcCW-3j6RMavigPGfjODyw.1&utm_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.alfresco.com%2F
What the difference ultimately comes down to is not what it can store but what functionality you get in addition. ArchivesSpace seems to be a simple implementation of a document storage system that stores documents in collections with associated metadata. Alfresco also offers workflows, custom actions, previews, sites, wikis etc.
If your specific use case is related to archiving off documents specifically and you want something that will already be good at this then go ahead and use ArchivesSpace, if not, or if you want to expand the system out in future, then Alfresco will likely be able to do more but will likely take more effort to configure to your specific use case as you will have to create a custom content model and such.
Alfresco Records Management is for managing documents that will likely have some legal significance, such as court papers, official government department responses etc, and as such their creation and destruction need to be closely managed. As far as I can see this is not something ArchivesSpace can do.
(Full disclosure: I work for an Alfresco partner)

Related

Bonita utility with alfresco

I'm new to Bonita and Alfresco and I want to know the relation between these two plateforms (why I need Bonita while using alfresco)
Bonita is an open source BPM platform, and is not a part of Alfresco in any way.
If you want BPM capabilities you could use it, but have a look at Activiti first (BPM platform which is bundled with Alfresco) to determine if you really need it.
You could also check out Flowable (done by former Activiti guys), Camunda (which started as an earlier Activiti) fork and JBPM.
Alfresco is a Open source Enterprise Content Management System, developed using JAVA technology for Microsoft Windows and UNIX like operating system. It allows managing different type of content like simple office documents, images, photographs, engineering drawings and even large audio/video files.
Document management: Can store and track all type of documents.
Web content management: Allow users with little knowledge of web programming languages or markup languages to create and manage website content with relative ease
Image management: Can capture, store and reprint images.
Workflow: In Alfresco a workflow is a sequence of connected tasks applied to a document or other item of content. Each task can be performed by a person, a group, or automatically. There are a number of tools you get to design, execute, and monitor your workflows.
Content repository: The content repository is comparable to a database, except that it holds more than data. The binary streams of content are stored in the repository and the associated full-text indexes are maintained by the Lucene indexes.
You can found more description of BONITA using this link http://documentation.bonitasoft.com/6.x-7.2/bonita-bpm-overview
you can find tutorial on github for Bonita-connector-alfresco
https://github.com/bonitasoft/bonita-connector-alfresco

Is there a CMS similar to Drupal with a rule engine editor and workflow task manager included?

I'm looking to develop a website that collects information that a user provides about their company, analyzes it based on industry trends I've saved into the system, and does something based on the information received (i.e. make recommendations, creates reports, sends out emails, and/or asks the user additional questions) using my industry knowledge. In addition to needing a rule engine to to provide information back to a user, I also will need to initiate workflow tasks that are assigned to my employees, vendors, or back to the user based on the rule engine logic.
I understand the business logic behind my idea, and how to use content management systems such as drupal. However, I'm not sure how to integrate my business logic, rules based on external market trends, and workflow technology into a content management system I can update as things change. I am looking for a solution that has a user interface to allow me to update the questions required (such as editing content types in Drupal), update my consultative knowledge database, and update the rules on how to apply them without having to hire a programmer when the business landscape changes.
In my research, I understand drupal rules module is not a true rete rules engine - so I don't believe I can use.
The concept of combining Drupal's content types (for collecting user information and editing fields), Jboss Drools' rule engine (for creating rules), and salesforce.com's workflow editor (for creating and assigning workflow tasks) is what I'm looking for. Is there anything out there that brings all of this together, in one web based user/admin solution that can be set up and used similar to Drupal's UI experience? In addition, am I even on the right track as far as the best way accomplish?
The Rules module is the de-facto standard Drupal rule engine. Could you elaborate about how it is not fit for your tasks.
A lot of contrib module supports it out of the box (ie. they provide new actions, event types, etc.). The Maestro module provides a generic workflow engine, with support for various tasks.

Choose between Alfresco and Activiti for workflow solutions?

We are going to build custom workflow solution to our clients and most of the time we need to integrate it to their existing system predominately using Microsoft technologies e.g. Exchange Server and SharePoint.
Clients are expecting use workflow to computerize tasks from HR processes, product inventory management. They may or may not have their own CRM but some of them may already using Sharepoint for some processes and they are willing to move away if we can offer a more robust, flexible and economical solution.
I found Alfresco and Activiti very promising but not sure which should I adopt. From my research Alfresco is a full blown CRM with Cloud and workflow (using Activiti as engine) whereas Activiti is the engine on its own.
How should I judge when to go for Alfresco and likewise for Activiti?
TIA
Alfresco is, first and foremost, a repository. If you need a place to store files (either end-users storing files or applications storing files) you should consider using Alfresco as your repository for those files.
As you point out, Alfresco has embedded the Activiti workflow engine. This includes an abstracted service layer that wraps the engine so that, for many operations, when working with Java or server-side JavaScript, you don't need to know much about Activiti. (Obviously you do need to know how to define BPMN 2.0 process definitions to create the workflow).
So if you need to store files and you need to route those files in a business process, Alfresco's embedded workflow engine makes it very easy to do that.
If your primary use case is more general than that (ie, you don't always need to route files in a business process) then you may want to consider a standalone workflow engine. Alfresco can still participate in those workflows, of course, but if your primary use case isn't about files, why go to the trouble of setting up and maintaining a document repository?
In the end, there is no hard and fast rule here. The beauty is that both Alfresco and Activiti are open source. You can try them out, dig into the details, and decide for yourself what is the best fit.

"Mark as read" functionality in Plone 4.1.4

Using Plone as a Document Management System for a Quality Management Program (capitalized buzzwords for added effect...), we are looking for "Reading list" functionality.
This should provide two functions:
Show the end-users which new documents have been updated that they haven't read yet
Show the Quality manager who hasn't read certain updated documents
Added thoughts, preferably the status of the document in the workflow should stay the same (we thought about adding a "pending reading"-state but decided against it).
Together with some of my previous questions answered here of Stackoverflow, we would then be just about ready to roll out what seems to be a ISO9001-compliant document management system, in Plone, open-source, practically all through the web - I can't say I expected this three weeks ago...
Does anybody know of such a product?
I think this can only be done with a custom product.
The way I would do this is by registering a viewlet (or a portlet) associated with the content-type of the document, providing a button.
The button, when clicked, will write the user-id and the content-id somewhere, perhaps in an annotation or in an external database (Redis, MySQL). Additional views, viewlets, and portlets will be needed to provide information to End-users and Managers about what has been read or not.

Embeddable Enterprise Collaboration (Microblogging) Engine

Short Version (tl;dr):
Is there an open source or commercial engine that provides embeddable collaboration and microblogging functionality?
Long Version:
I am creating a niche application that has need of this functionality and do not want to reinvent the wheel. The following are must have requirements:
Data API only. My application is SaaS, and I want to build the functionality around the data. This eliminates most of the offerings out there (facebook, salesforce chatter, yammer, present.ly, teambox)
Does not require use of a built-in front end. I really just want an engine that will take care of the storage and events, and gives me a means of querying. Requiring the use of a specific front end renders it useless for embedding into my app. This eliminates everything else I have found (status.net, Yonkly, Jaiku)
Beyond standard updates and replies, can handle custom events. For example, if I were embedding this into an logistics application, I could have the engine handle events like "shipped", "received", and "cancelled".
Beyond this, there are several nice to have features that a framework would have:
Should not require a specific platform or server technology to run (i.e. something like a RESTful API would be nice)
Should be message based so that commands that affect its state can come from any source
Should encapsulate its own storage so that external resources are not necessary (i.e. no database needed)
Should have pluggable extendable UI components/widgets for web, mobile, and desktop clients
Should have search and retrieval APIs available for many languages/platforms
It seems that someone out there should have this already, or at least be in progress with it. Please point me in the right direction.
Since nobody had any answers and continued research did not find anything, I created a solution on my own called Collabinate. Updates can be found on Twitter, and the project itself is hosted on GitHub.

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