ALFRESCO: Where to put user doc files?

I haven't read much of the Alfresco docs yet, so I may be missing something
obvious about how to organise a folder structure for storing the user doc
files. I assume they should be under Company Home somewhere (though drafts
could be in my User Home space, which is a subset of Company Home). This
note is going to be a bit of a ramble as I write down my thoughts.

Under Company Home there are Spaces (including User Homes, Sites, and Web
Projects, among others), and there can be Content Items directly under
Company Home. Dumping all the user guide docs into Company Home as Content
Items doesn't seem like a good idea, especially if there will be several
languages on the site. It seems to me that, at a minimum, we should collect
the files into groups (folders, whatever) for specific books.

It looks like one approach might be to create new Spaces, either one for
each book, or one for each language with second-level Spaces for each book,
or something similar. Since I have Admin access, I don't know if this
function is available to others with ordinary user access, but it's probably
best done by admins anyway.

Does anyone know enough about this thing to offer some insight, instead of
me just blathering away with speculations? I plan to go away and do some
reading to try to answer my own questions about how. Or I suppose I could go
ahead and create a Space and see what I can do with it. Looks like they can
be deleted if they don't fly, so I might not break David's site too badly.
:wink:

Hal

Hi Hal, :slight_smile:

I think the first thing to do would be to read the documentation. :wink:
I'm going to do a bit of that myself right now. :wink:

David Nelson

I have Getting Started with Alfresco Explorer Document Management for
Community Edition
3.3<http://wiki.alfresco.com/w/images/c/ce/Getting_Started_with_Explorer_DM_for_Alfresco_Community_Edition_3_3.pdf>
which I got from this page:
http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Community_Edition_3.3_Tutorials

The first thing it talks about is creating a space, then creating and
editing content in a space. I think I'm on the right track. :wink:

Hal

Hi Hal, :slight_smile:

I'm reading the same... :wink:

David Nelson

But it talks about doing this in one's Home Space, not the Company Space.
This seems odd to me, but perhaps that's because Alfresco is designed for
use by multiple teams working on different projects within one organisation?

So, the "how" seems reasonably straightforward, but the answers to "where"
and "why choose place X instead of place Y" are the ones I'm particularly
unsure of.

Hal

My insight would be for you to make a Space called LibreOffice-Docs

And within it sub folders with the Docs we are to work in and then delegate
to every chief of a translation team to open a space of his own so people
could work the translations ...

If this is even rmoteley possible :wink:

Rogerio

Hi Hal, Rogerio, :slight_smile:

Thanks for working on this. I can't really stop to help much because
we need to get the work on libreoffice.org finished urgently... :frowning:

Rogerio, you're on the right track. If you want, maybe Hal can give
you admin rights, and then you can get actively involved if you have
the time.

David Nelson

I can't figure out how to give someone admin rights. Guess I'd better go
back to reading the Alfresco documentation. :wink:

Hal

Hi, :slight_smile:

If you want, maybe Hal can give
you admin rights, and then you can get actively involved if you have
the time.

Done. :wink:

David Nelson

I am interested in admin rights also. In the process of reading the
documentation now.

My initial feeling about the system has been negative due to an
inability to actually 'do' anything except upload a file into a
folder, however if we can explore the back end without the expectation
that we 'will use' this install, ie. we are allowed to break stuff, I
think we might be able to look into creating a more flexible system.

Just one quick question. Has anyone had the experience with setting up
a Alfresco in a way that might suit our needs as a (hopefully)
exponentially growing community?
I am just worried if we rush into using this as a live tool we may end
up with a system which is quite basic and largely reliant on manual
intervention for workflow management, as OOoAuthors has experienced.

I think a lot of these concerns will be addressed if I can see the
back end of the system, but we do need to take our time in assessing
the tool.

Michael Wheatland

Guys I would love to be admin, but there are 2 things you should bare in
mind:

1st - I am a MD, so I don't FIX computers, I brake them :wink: -- I fix people
(hopefully)

2nd - My time is rather limited, I am good at finding solutions, but not
that good at IMPLEMENTING them :wink:

But I could call some guys at BrOffice's magazine that DO implementation
(will give the people who implemented our excelent workflow a call, see what
their view is)

Rogerio

Hi Rogerio, Michael, :slight_smile:

@Rogerio: OK, sure, I understand perfectly. :wink: So I made you a user
again for the moment, and hope you'll be willing to take part in work
that I plan to organize and humbly offer to the team sometime soon
after Jan 10. If you know people with experience in workflow
implementation, it would be really great if you could put us in
contact. TIA if so. :slight_smile:

@Michael: I'm happy for you to be able to explore the back end of
Alfresco. On the other hand, I definitely do not want anything broken,
insofar as possible, and this Alfresco installation *will* be used -
either by the docs team, if there is uptake, or by me personally for
my own professional work if not. :wink:

So the idea would definitely be to:

1) *RTFM* before doing stuff,
2) discuss ideas on the list and get agreement from fellow admins
before implementing any ideas,
3) report back with details about what you do, if you do any reconfiguration.

If, notwithstanding our goodwill and best efforts, something does get
broken, I can get it fixed quickly via paid support. But, as you can
probably understand, I am hoping we can avoid that. :wink:

How does that sound? :wink:

David Nelson

Ok for me ...

Will get your pvt e-mail to the guy that set up our workflow on the BrOffice
Magazine

Thanks for understanding ...

Rogerio

I can help with configuring Alfresco. I use it at my company.
If we really use Alfresco for libO documents, the project would benefit from
:-

   1. versioning
   2. create -> review -> publish workflow
   3. using Alfresco Share sites for collaboration, discussion
   4. full text search for all documents store in Alfresco
   5. fine-grain permission
   6. rules to automate tasks, e.g. email to nofity of new versions
   7. automatic transformation, e.g. to PDF
   8. web preview w/o downloading
   9. possible to let users use the Alfresco UI to find the documents

Hi Samphan, :slight_smile:

If you would be willing to help out with configuring a workflow and,
hopefully, providing us with just a little documentation/writing-up of
what you configure, your help would be *most gratefully* received, and
the docs team could envision starting some useful work with Alfresco.

Should I add you as admin?

David Nelson