Getting Started With Document Management

Alfresco 2.
Getting Started with

Document Management
Version 1.0
Version 2.1 Getting Started with Document Management
Copyright (c) 2007 by Alfresco and others.
Information in this document is subject to change without notice. No part of this document may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any
purpose, without the express written permission of Alfresco. The trademarks, service marks,
logos or other intellectual property rights of Alfresco and others used in this documentation
("Trademarks") are the property of Alfresco and their respective owners. The furnishing of this
document does not give you license to these patents, trademarks, copyrights or other intellectual
property except as expressly provided in any written agreement from Alfresco.
The United States export control laws and regulations, including the Export Administration
Regulations of the U.S. Department of Commerce, and other applicable laws and regulations
apply to this documentation which prohibit the export or re-export of content, products, services,
and technology to certain countries and persons. You agree to comply with all export laws,
regulations and restrictions of the United States and any foreign agency or authority and assume
sole responsibility for any such unauthorized exportation.
If you need technical support for this product, contact Customer Support by email at
support@alfresco.com. If you have comments or suggestions about this documentation, contact
us at documentation@alfresco.com.
This edition applies to version 2.1 of the licensed program.
i
Contents
Introduction .......................................................................................................................................1
Important Notes ............................................................................................................................1
Typographic Conventions .................................................................................................................2
Starting with Alfresco ........................................................................................................................3
Toolbar ......................................................................................................................................3
Sidebar ......................................................................................................................................4
Working Area.............................................................................................................................4
Logging In.....................................................................................................................................5
Adding New Users ............................................................................................................................6
Home Spaces ...............................................................................................................................7
Creating Spaces and Content ..........................................................................................................8
Creating a Space..........................................................................................................................8
Creating and Editing Content in a Space ...................................................................................10
Managing Content Item Details ..................................................................................................12
Working with Space Templates ......................................................................................................14
Building Smart Spaces ...................................................................................................................16
Creating Content Rules ..............................................................................................................16
Adding a Content Versioning Rule .............................................................................................17
Setting the Conditions .............................................................................................................18
Defining the Actions ................................................................................................................18
Selecting the Rule Type ..........................................................................................................19
Adding Simple Workflow Rules ..................................................................................................20
Requesting Draft Approval ......................................................................................................20
Publishing the Approved Content............................................................................................21
Moving Content via the Clipboard ..............................................................................................22
Collaborating with Other Users.......................................................................................................23
Editing Content in a Collaborative Space .......................................................................................25
Checking out a content item.......................................................................................................25
Checking in a Content Item ........................................................................................................26
Version History ...........................................................................................................................27
Sending Content for Review...........................................................................................................28
ii
Uploading and Transforming Content.............................................................................................29

Categorizing Content and Advanced Search .................................................................................31
Searching for Categorised Content............................................................................................32
Forums and Discussions ................................................................................................................34
Creating a Forum .......................................................................................................................34
Creating a Topic ......................................................................................................................35
Discussions ................................................................................................................................36
Summary ........................................................................................................................................37
iii
Introduction
This Document Management Product Evaluation Guide is to:
• Introduce the basic concepts of an overview tutorial of the Alfresco™ Document Management
solution to accompany the download of the system available at:
http://dev.alfresco.com/downloads/. You can also access an online demo by going to:
http://www.alfresco.com/products/ecm/tour/’
• Demonstrate how to set up and configure Alfresco for managing your documents
• Showcase a Smart Space, which is a collaborative space that uses rules to simplify the
handling, management and transformation
• Show how to use additional properties and categories to organize and find content
• Create and manage a forum
• Collaborate with your colleagues
Alfresco recommends you download the Alfresco 2.1 release and walk through this guided
product evaluation guide to familiarize yourself with the Document Management features of
Alfresco’s 2.1 ECM platform offering.
Important Notes
Before starting, make sure that your system has been installed properly. The installation is fast
and easy for either Microsoft Windows® or Linux. If you have any issues in the installation, you
can find help in the Alfresco Forums at: http://forums.alfresco.com/
Alfresco also recommends reviewing and keeping up-to-date on the latest around the Document
Management offering on our Developer Wiki. To bookmark this page for easy reference, please
use the following link:
http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/
1
Typographic Conventions
The following typographic conventions are used in this Product Evaluation Guide:
Formatting Convention Type of Information
Bold Navigation, Menu, and Action links in the Alfresco web

client
Blue Italicized Bold Links in the sample website
Italics Filenames and path references in the Alfresco sample
website and source files. Also used for labels within
Alfresco forms.
“Quoted Text” Folder names within the Alfresco web client
Captioned Text Important information to note
2
Starting with Alfresco

When you open your browser to Alfresco for the first time, you are taken to the Guest Home.
This space can be used to hold any content that you would like to be available to anyone who has
access to your Alfresco server.
There are three main areas in the Alfresco user interface:
• Toolbar along the top
• Sidebar at the left
• Working area at the right
Toolbar
The toolbar contains navigation button, depending on who you are. If you are logged in as:
Guest: You have access to Home Space or your My Alfresco Dashboard

User: You also have access to the Company Home and Guest Home
Administrator: You also have access to User Options and the Administration Console
The toolbar also lets you:
• Access the Search and Help capabilities
3
• You can also hide and show the Sidebar using the icon to the left of the Help icon
• View information about Alfresco CMS by clicking on the Alfresco logo.
Sidebar
The Sidebar contains a number of different features to help you navigate, find, and work with
content such as the Navigator, Clipboard, Shortcuts, Recent Spaces, and openSearch.
Working Area
The working area changes depending on what information you are looking at or what task you are
performing. The top of the working area will always have a navigation breadcrumb that allows you
to jump to any part of the breadcrumb path. For information views, there is a summary area along
with actions or alternative views. The details and options also change depending on what you are
looking at and doing, as well as who you are.
4
Logging In
If you want to add and create content you must to log in. When Alfresco is installed, it creates an
administration user called ‘admin’ with a default password of ‘admin’.
Click the Login link to access the Administrator Dashboard and click Company Home in the
toolbar to go to the Company Home.
5
Adding New Users

Before adding some new users and defining their own personal working spaces, you will organize
the repository and where user home spaces live. When Alfresco is installed, a User Home space
is created automatically to contain all user home spaces.
To add a new user, click the icon (Administration Console) on the toolbar. This opens the
Administration Console.
Click Manage System Users and you will be presented with the Manage System Users pane.
Click Show All to list the current users, including the pre-configured ‘admin’ account.
Click Create User in the header to open the New User Wizard.
6
Home Spaces
Specify the person properties, using “Bob Smith” and click Next.
Specify the user properties, using “Bob Smith” again.
Assign the name of the user’s home space and location. For this example, use the default home
space location ‘User Homes’ created during installation and name it “Bob Smith”.
Click Next to see a summary of the details and click Finish. This creates the new user, Bob
Smith and his home space, and displays him in the user list.
Create another user named ‘Joe Bloggs’ for use later on.
7
Creating Spaces and Content

You can now log in as a user. Click Logout from the toolbar and log in using the details for Bob
Smith. You are taken to your My Alfresco Dashboard by default. Click My Home in the sidebar
to create a sub-space and add content.
Creating a Space
Before adding content, organise your home space into categories that meet your business needs
(including collaboration). For this example, create a sub-space called ‘My web documents’ for
HTML files.
Select Create Space from the Create menu in the header. The Create Space pane displays.
Type “My web documents” as the space name. Optionally, you can specify other information and
an icon for more detail about the space.
8
Click Create Space. Your home space displays with the new space listed.
Click the (Refresh) icon next to the Navigator header in the sidebar to synchronise the
navigator bar.
Now you can create web content directly in the browser.
9
Creating and Editing Content in a Space

Open the ‘My web documents’ space (click the icon or the name).
Select Create Content from the Create menu. The Create Content wizard starts.
Type “newfile.htm” as the file name. Note that the remaining general properties are populated by
default. You can modify them.
Click Next to display the Enter Content pane and add the following example web page, including
text formatting and images.
10
Click Next for the summary page.
Note that the Finish button is also active. It becomes active when there is
enough information to complete a task. Any additional steps are optional.
Click Finish. The Modify Content properties page displays, with the full set of properties.
Review the properties and add new ones if you like. These properties vary for different Types and
Smart Spaces.
Click OK to save the properties and return to the ‘My web documents’ space with the new file
displayed. If there are any required properties, OK is not enabled until they have been completed.
11
Managing Content Item Details

You can view the details (properties and meta-data) of a content item at any time.
Click to the right of the content item to display the details.
Click the icon (View Details) in the top right of this pane to display the Details page with the
Properties panel expanded. If you are not sure which icon does what action, hover your mouse
over the icon and a tool tip displays its name.
Click the Modify icon on the top right of the Properties panel.
12
Click the View In Browser link in the Links panel to view or download the through the browser.
You can also download the content to your local disk as a file by selecting the content icon or
name in the space browser.
13
Working with Space Templates

You can use templates that you create or Alfresco provides to accelerate the set up of a space
and for ensuring consistency across multiple spaces.
In this scenario, you will set up a project space with multiple sub-spaces in which you will
collaborate with other team members to create, approve, and publish documents. Part of the
requirements you have for this space are provided by a template.
Navigate to your home space (you can use the breadcrumb or click My Home on the toolbar).
Select Advanced Space Wizard from the Create menu. The Create Space Wizard page
displays.
Select Using a template and click Next. Step Two – Space Options displays which enables you
to select a template for this space.
Select the Software Engineering Project template from the list and click Next to specify the
space details.
Type “Project Voodoo” as the Name.
14
Click Finish to return to the My Home space where the Project Voodoo documentation is now
listed.
15
Building Smart Spaces

One of the key benefits of Alfresco is the ability to define rules that affect content within a space.
These rules can be used to provide creative solutions to automation and management of content.
Rules are applied when content comes in or out of a space and may also apply to content directly
in the space or in sub-spaces.
A rule is made up of three main elements:
• The conditions on the content for the rule to match
• The actions that are performed on the content
• The type of rule it is
Any number of conditions and actions may be defined in a rule.
Creating Content Rules

You are going to create a few rules in the Project Voodoo Documentation space to:
• Add content versioning because multiple authors will collaborate on the documents
• Set up a simple workflow that allows the documents to progress through these spaces
To add a rule, navigate to the Project Voodoo Documentation space. There are four sub-spaces
to contain the documents in different stages of completion, as well as a space with sample
content.
Open the Drafts space, the space where a document will be created.
16
In the space header, select Manage Content Rules from the More Actions menu. The Content
Rules pane appears.
Adding a Content Versioning Rule

In the header, click Create Rule to open the Create Rule Wizard.
17
Setting the Conditions

The first step allows defines the conditions that are applied to the content before the action is
performed.
In the Select Condition list, select All Items so the action is performed on any content added to
the space.
Click Add to List to set the condition. The condition displays in the Summary list.
Defining the Actions

Click Next to define the actions.
Select Add aspect to item from the Select Action list.
Click Set Values and Add.
18
In the Set Actions Values section, select Versionable from list as the required feature and click
OK.
Selecting the Rule Type

Click Next to move to Step Three – Enter Details. This allows you to choose what type of rule it
is, that is to say, when the rule gets tested. The options are:
• Inbound - The action occurs when content is copied, created or added to the space
• Outbound - The action occurs when content is moved or deleted from the space
• Updated - The actions occurs when content is updated in the space.
Select Inbound from the Type menu, type “All versioned” as the title, and optionally, a
description.
Click Next to review the summary.
19
Verify the information you have specified and click Finish and the rule displays on the Content
Rules page.
Adding Simple Workflow Rules

The workflow rules move the content item through the spaces, based on specific criteria. You will
create the following rules.
• Request Approval - Move from ‘Draft’ to ‘Request Approval’ space
• Publish – move from ‘Request Approval’ to ‘Publish’ space
Requesting Draft Approval

You also want to create a rule that applies a simple workflow to content in this space. Click
Create Rule in the header and add a rule using the following information.
1. Select the Condition – All Items.
2. Select the Action – Add simple workflow to item.
3. Specify the Approve Flow Step Name – “Request approval”.
4. Select to Move the item to the ‘Pending Approval’ space.
5. Select No as the Reject Flow step.

6. Specify the type – Inbound.
7. Specify the Title – “Add simple workflow”.
8. Click Finish to complete the wizard.
20
Publishing the Approved Content

Now that you have finished defining rules on the ‘Draft’ space, navigate to the ‘Pending Approval’
space to add the next step in the workflow.
There is no need to add a rule to make all content versioned, since content has moved from the
‘Drafts’ space where it will have already been versioned. Select Manage content rules to define
a simple workflow rule:
Click Create Rule and use the following information:
1. Select the Condition - All items.
2. Select the Action – Add simple workflow to item.
3. Specify the Approve Flow Step Name – “Publish”.
4. Select to Move the item to the ‘Published’ space.
5. Select Yes as the Reject Flow step and name it “Reject”.
6. Select to Move the item back to the ‘Drafts’ space.
7. Specify the type – Inbound.

8. Specify the title – “Add simple workflow”.
To see these rules in action, you need to add some content.
21
Moving Content via the Clipboard

There is a sample software overview document created as part of the template you are using.
Use this document to test the rules.
Navigate to the ‘Samples’ space within the Project Voodoo ‘Documentation’ space
Click the icon (More Actions) associated with the ‘system-overview.html’ document, and
then select Copy from the list. A message displays, indicating that the document was
successfully added to the clipboard.
Click the icon beside the Navigator header in the sidebar and select Shelf to view the
clipboard contents.
Navigate to the ‘Drafts’ space.
Click the icon (More Actions) in the header and select Paste All from the list. This pastes a
new copy of the document in the ‘Drafts’ space and the contents of the clipboard are removed.
If the content is Cut, a reference to it is placed in the clipboard and the content remains in its
original place until you Paste it in the new location. The clipboard contents are not retained over
login sessions, so if you cut some content and then log out, the content stays where it was
originally.
You can also paste items as ‘Links’, which creates an item that points to another space or
content, but can have a different name and description.
22
Collaborating with Other Users

To work with other users on this project, invite them to the ‘Drafts’ space.
Select Manage Space Users from the More Actions menu in this space. This displays users with
permission to work on content in Drafts.
Click Invite on the top right of the header to invite a user to the space. This opens a page to
select the users and the role they can play in the space.
Type “Joe” as the person you want to invite and click Search.
Select “Joe Bloggs” from the results list, select “Consumer” as his role.
23
Click Add to List.

Click Next and you are given the option to send the invited users an email telling them about
being invited. As you haven’t configured email, select No and click Finish.
Click Close to return to the ‘Drafts’ space.
24
Editing Content in a Collaborative

Space
With multiple authors collaborating on the content, you want to ensure that only one person
modifies it at a time by checking it out. This creates a working copy and locks the original. When
you check it in, it overwrites the original item with the working copy and unlocks it.
Checking out a content item

Click the (Check out) icon for ‘system-overview.html’. You are given the choice of checking
out the working copy to the same space as the original, or any other space. Some people like to
work with one space that contains all their current work-in-progress, so may have created a
specific folder in their home space for working copies. You are going to keep the working copy in
the current space.
Click Check Out and you can choose to download the content for editing in some other program.
Click OK to return to a view of the space, now containing two items, with one appended with
(working copy).
25
Checking in a Content Item

The icon (lock) displayed beside the original content item lets you know that it cannot be
modified. The only way you can modify it is to check in or undo the check out on the working
copy. If you are not the person who checked the document out, hover the mouse over the lock
icon on the original item. It displays the author who is currently editing the item.
First you are going to edit the document and add some minor changes to the text. Once saved,
you can check in the content.
Take a copy of the content onto the desktop and work with it offline. Any modifications you make
can be uploaded to the working copy by selecting Update from the icon (More Actions )
associated with the working copy file without the need to check in.
Click the icon (Check In) associated with the content item. You can specify any notes on the
modifications you have made, identify where the updated version of the content is, and click
Check In.
26
Version History
As the content is versioned, previous iterations are available in the version history.
Click the icon (View Details) for ‘system-overview.html’ and expand the Version History pane.
You will also see current version listed.
27
Sending Content for Review

Now that the content has been completed, it can be sent for review. Any workflow steps that are
available for an item of content are shown in its actions, either from the icon (More Actions)
or from the icon (View Details) associated with the content item.
Select Request Approval from the icon (More Actions). This moves the content item to the
‘Pending Approval’ space.
Navigate to the ‘Pending Approval’ space where you can see the ‘system-overview.html’ content.
Another rule could have been defined to send an email alert to the reviewers of
this document.
Click the icon (More Actions) again and you can see the Publish and Reject workflow steps
you created as a rule.
Select Publish to move the content on to the ‘Published’ space.

Alfresco also has integrated Business Process Management (BPM) capability. This goes beyond
the Simple Workflow folder-based method of sending content for review, allowing content to
remain where it is while complex workflows can operate on it. The BPM-based workflow creates
tasks for users to complete, with these showing up in the user’s My Tasks To Do Dashboard
Component.
28
Uploading and Transforming Content

In the following scenario, you want to use some marketing content in a technical document.
However, the marketing content is in PDF format only. To use the text, define a transformation
rule that convert content to a different format.
Navigate to the ‘Drafts’ space in Project Voodoo and select Manage Content Rules from the
More Actions menu.
Click Create Rule and complete it using the following information.
1. Select the Condition – Items which contain a specific value in its name.
2. Set the Condition value - *.pdf.
3. Select the Action – Transform and copy content to a specific space.

4. Select the Action Setting – Plain Text.
5. Select the Destination – Drafts space.
6. Specify the Type – Inbound.

7. Specify the Title – Transform PDFs.
29
Now you can upload a file to exercise the rule.

Click Add Content in Drafts header and browse to the sample .PDF file available in the Alfresco
installation folder.
Click Upload. When the message confirming the upload displays, uncheck Modify all properties
when this dialog closes and click OK. The ‘Drafts’ space now contains two new documents:
The PDF file and the text version of it.
30
Categorizing Content and Advanced

Search
Another Alfresco feature is the ability to assign categories to items. This allows information to be
classified in any number of different ways. With this, you can retrieve items that match
combinations of constraints, including categories. Categories are hierarchical, so searching for an
item in a category will also find anything classified below it. In the following example, you are
going to add some content to a category and then search for it.
The first step is to allow the content to be categorized.
Navigate to the ‘Published’ space and click the icon (View Details) for ‘system-overview.html’
Expand the Category pane and click Allow Categorization.
Click the Change Category icon in the top right corner of the pane.
Click Select then click Click here to select a category.

Click Software Document Classification to view its sub-categories.
Click through the following subcategories:
- Software Descriptions
- Main Software Descriptions
Select Short System Description.
31
Click OK.
Click Add to List and click OK.
Searching for Categorised Content

You can now use the Advanced Search to find this content.
Select Advanced Search from the (Search Options) menu in the toolbar.
The Advanced Search provides multiple criteria, including categories, under which you can
search for a content item.
Expand the Show me results in the categories pane
Select Software Descriptions as the category, ensuring you check Include sub-categories.
32
Click Add to List then click OK.

Click Search. For this example, there is only one document that matches this criteria: ‘system-
overview.html’.
You can also include other options for the search, such as the kind of document
you are looking for, or a range of dates for its creation or modification.
33
Forums and Discussions

Alfresco provides an easy way for people to collaborate using forums and discussions. Forums
contain topics of discussion and topics contain posts from different users.
Creating a Forum
The first step is to create a forum space. A forum space can contain any number of forums, or
even other forum spaces if wanted.
Click My Home on the toolbar.
Select Advanced Space Wizard from the Create menu.
Create a space From scratch and click Next.
Select Forum Space and click Next.
Name the space “Open Source Software” and click Finish.
Open the ‘Open Source Software’ space. You will use a sub forum space to organise your
forums.
Select Create Forum Space from the Create menu.
Name the space “Open Source Content Management”.
Click Create Forum Space.
Open the ‘Open Source Content Management’ forum space.
Select Create Forum from the Create menu and name the forum “Projects”.
Click Create Forum.
34
Creating a Topic
Next, create a topic in the ‘Projects’ forum.
Open the ‘Projects’ forum.
Select the Create Topic from the Create menu.
Create a topic for the forum. You can choose a different icon for the post to highlight the type of
posting.
Click Create Topic.

Once a topic is created, it is always possible to edit and change it, or even delete it (the icons on
a post determine what actions you are allowed to take).
Now any other user with the right permissions will be able to reply to the post (using the green
reply icon). By default, the most recent post is at the top.
35
Discussions
Discussions are like a forum attached to a piece of content. Where ever the document is moved,
the discussion goes with it. They provide an ideal way to record decisions or annotations about a
document without changing the content.
To start a discussion on an item:
Identify the item for which you want to have a discussion and select Start Discussion from its
icon (More Actions).
To view a discussion on an item, click the icon (View Discussions) associated with the
content item.
If you check out a document that has a discussion, the working draft will not have that discussion.
However, if you start a discussion on a working copy, when it is checked in, the discussion is
added to the original item with a date stamp. While content is checked out, the original content is
locked, but discussions can still continue on it.
36
Summary
You have meandered around much of the Alfresco system, with a view to giving you some ideas
about the approaches Alfresco takes to managing content. The functionality of the system is
being expanded continuously, providing an ever growing list of Enterprise Content Management
features.
37

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Uploading and Transforming Content.............................................................................................29

• Create and manage a forum

• Collaborate with your colleagues

Formatting Convention Type of Information

Bold Navigation, Menu, and Action links in the Alfresco web

Captioned Text Important information to note

Starting with Alfresco

There are three main areas in the Alfresco user interface:

• Toolbar along the top

• Sidebar at the left

• Working area at the right

Guest: You have access to Home Space or your My Alfresco Dashboard

• Access the Search and Help capabilities

• View information about Alfresco CMS by clicking on the Alfresco logo.

Adding New Users

Creating Spaces and Content

Creating and Editing Content in a Space

Click Next for the summary page.

Managing Content Item Details

Click to the right of the content item to display the details.

Working with Space Templates

Building Smart Spaces

• The conditions on the content for the rule to match

• The actions that are performed on the content

• The type of rule it is

Any number of conditions and actions may be defined in a rule.

Creating Content Rules

Adding a Content Versioning Rule

Setting the Conditions

Defining the Actions

Click Set Values and Add.

Selecting the Rule Type

• Updated - The actions occurs when content is updated in the space.

Click Next to review the summary.

Adding Simple Workflow Rules

• Request Approval - Move from ‘Draft’ to ‘Request Approval’ space

• Publish – move from ‘Request Approval’ to ‘Publish’ space

Requesting Draft Approval

5. Select No as the Reject Flow step.

Publishing the Approved Content

7. Specify the type – Inbound.

Moving Content via the Clipboard

Navigate to the ‘Drafts’ space.

Collaborating with Other Users

Click Add to List.

Editing Content in a Collaborative

Checking out a content item

Checking in a Content Item

Sending Content for Review

Select Publish to move the content on to the ‘Published’ space.

Uploading and Transforming Content

3. Select the Action – Transform and copy content to a specific space.

6. Specify the Type – Inbound.

Now you can upload a file to exercise the rule.

Categorizing Content and Advanced

Click Select then click Click here to select a category.