Alfresco WCM in an Hour

Michael
Farman
www.alfresco.com
 Agenda
● Introduction
● Alfresco's Model for WCM ● Tracking Updates
● Production Model
● Deployment
● Deployment
● Demonstration
● What type of uses are supported?
● Further Information
● User Roles
● Q and A
● Authoring Content
● Previewing Updates
● Reviewing and Approving Updates
 Alfresco WCM
● Add-on Module to Alfresco Content Repository
● All DM and WCM capabilities available within a single repository
● Complementary Content and Web Content services

● Community and Enterprise Versions

● Community - Free to use
• Limited QA
• NO support
• Use at your own risk!
● Enterprise - No license fees, annual support subscription
• Production Ready
• Service Level Agreement
• Warranty and Indemnity

● See Alfresco in an Hour in the Content Community for more information on

core repository services.
 Alfresco’s Model for WCM
● Content Production ● Content Delivery
● Production Model ● Static v’s Dynamic Runtimes
• Sandboxes ● Alfresco Runtimes
• Transparent Layers ● Deployment
● Workflow
● Roles
● Content Modelling
● Versioning
● Virtualisation
● Filesystem Projection
 Alfresco’s Model for WCM

● Low traffic ● High traffic

● Read / write
● Alfresco focuses on:
● Ease of content entry
● Content QA (workflow /
approval)
● Version control / rollback
● Read mostly
● Alfresco focuses on:
● Deployment Flexibility
● Technology agnosticism
● Performance / scalability
Production Model
 Production Model –
Transparent Layers

● No changes yet made

 Production Model –
Transparent Layers

● Alice creates a new page called "products.html"

 Production Model –
Transparent Layers

● Alice edits "index.html" to add a link to her new page

 Production Model –
Transparent Layers

● Alice submits her changes (change set) to workflow, they are

approved and promoted to staging
Alfresco’s Model for WCM
Deployment In a Nutshell

?
 What kind of sites can
Alfresco manage?
● Static or Dynamic or Both
● Static – HTML, Images
● Dynamic - JSP, ASP, Coldfusion, PHP…..

. S tatic Dynamic

D elivery technology Web s ervers Application servers

P age compositing S ubmission time R eques t time

D eployment mechanism Filesys tem Alfresco R untime

P ers onalization Limited Unlimited

P erformance Ultimate Less than static

Application developer s kill- Freemarker, X S LT, X S LT-FO Any web technology

sets

Runtime Repository (in
production) Can be used:
 As the search engine for
the web site (applicable for
both dynamic and static
web sites)
 As a runtime content store
that can be queried by a
dynamic web application.
Alfresco Runtimes
 Web Scripts
 REST (HTTP) Based –
Technology Independent
 Data Access API
 HTML, XML, Text, JSON,
Atom, RSS.....
 Supports cached results
 Authentication
● Can be used to provide:
• Search
• Navigation
• Dynamic Page Assembly
 A Hybrid Model?
 Hybrid – Mix Static and Dynamic
 Page Composition Options
“Inside Out”
• Each page is dynamic and includes all page components
dynamically (regardless of whether those components are static or
dynamic)
“Outside In”
• Each page is static HTML with static components already
embedded, but dynamic components included via an inclusion
mechanism (eg. server side includes)
Note: The tradeoff between these two models is management complexity vs
runtime performance.
Deployment –
Static
Deployment
– Dynamic
Deployment
– Hybrid
 What types of users
are supported?
● Web Designers / Developers
● Support any tool for authoring, development
● Support any number, type of website
● Integrated staging, preview, and deployment
● Application Developers
● Code versioning, testing, staging
● Content Managers / Web Publishers
● XML-based publishing, transformation,
preview
● Content Reviewers
● Email-based task notification, management
● Content Contributors
● Drag-and-drop Word document
● Automatic transformation, publishing to Web
 What types of users
are supported?
● WCM Roles
● Content Manager
● Content Publisher
Editorial Power
● Content Contributor
● Content Reviewer

Role Relative User Population

Content Manager Few
Content Publisher Some
Content Contributor Many
Content Reviewer Implementation Dependent

● WCM Roles
● Content Manager
● Build Import content into the
staging sandbox
● Invite users to the Web Project
● Perform any action in any user
sandbox
● Content Publisher
● Create/Edit/Delete Content
from within their own sandbox
● Submit to the Staging area
What types of users are
supported?
● Content Contributor
● Create/Edit content within their
sandbox
● Submit content from within
their sandbox to the Staging
area
● Content Reviewer
● Edit content in their own
sandbox
● Submit content from within
their sandbox to the Staging
area
● Note: Cannot create new
content
 Authoring Content
● Web Forms
● XML Schema
● XForms
● Form Library and Form Configuration
● Templates (XSLT, Freemarker, XSL-FO, Custom)
● Multi-channel output (renditions)
● Support for wizard-driven content authoring
● Enforce rules for content authoring
● Enable complex authoring
● Enforce rules for content generation
 Authoring Content
● Web Forms
 Authoring Content -
Web Forms
● Web Forms ● Template Processing
● Simple Wizard based content ● 1 – Many Formatting
authoring Templates
● XSLT, XSLT-FO and
● Form Definition Freemarker
● XML Schema • Multiple output
• W YS IW YG editor with formatting
options, Text area, C heckbox, S lider
• Generate HTML, Text, PDF,
control, Time picker, R adio buttons, JSP……
dropdown, As set picker and more

1) Generate XML 2) Generate assets

- content - presentation
 Authoring Content -
Web Forms
Alfresco uses XML Schema to define web content entry forms. For this
purpose it uses the Chiba forms engine, an open source
implementation of the XForms standard.
 Authoring Content -
Template Processing
Alfresco provides 3 server-side templating languages: XSLT, XSLT-FO
and Freemarker. After a content item (XML file) is created, each
template configured for that content type is executed, producing an
output file per template.

Typical output formats include HTML, JSP, PDF etc.

 Web Forms Are Content Too!
Managed in the repository
Web Forms and their associated output templates are global to an
Alfresco installation and must be associated to a Web Project before
they can be used within that Web Project.
You can view all configured Web Forms by navigating to:
Company Home > Data Dictionary > Web Forms
 Authoring Content -
File System Access
● Filesystem Projection
● CIFS projection provides:
● Access to all available sandboxes (HEAD)
● Access to all available layers (preview, review)
● Access to all available snapshots
Contained in special top-level VERSIONS directory
Available as read-only views
● Access to all available file metadata
Contained in special top-level METADATA directory
Accessed as normal files
Metadata file names, dir structure mimic regular site
 Authoring Content -
File System Access
● Filesystem Projection
 Previewing Updates
● Virtualisation
● Isolated preview environment for every user sandbox and the
staging sandbox
• No physical servers required
• Users only see their changes
● Supports preview of modified content & code (JSP pages, class
files, jars)
● Minimizes in-memory footprint
● User Sandbox
● Preview, undo, check links for individual updates and sites
● Staging Sandbox
● Preview all approved updates
● Review snapshots (previous versions)
● Revert to previous
Previewing Updates -
User Sandbox

Preview All Updates

Preview Individual Updates

Undo Updates
 Reviewing and
Approving Updates
● Change Sets and Workflows
● Tasks
Contain an entire change set
Includes deleted files and folders
XML and generated output always associated within context of a task
Cannot promote an XML or a generated without promoting the other associated
assets
● Review Layers
Any change set associated with a task isolated in own review layer within user’s
sandbox
Reviewers see in-context view of user’s changes against current site
User’s can continue to work in sandbox without breaking the reviewer’s context

● Workflow configuration
● Workflows can be configured for each form or for any arbitrary
set of non-form assets
● Sample n-reviewer serial and parallel review configurable OOTB
Includes email notification and email-based task management
 Reviewing and
Approving Updates
● Submit Content
● Submission details
● Change Set

● Check Links
● Link Validation Report
• href, src, includes

● Workflow - Review, Approve and

Publish
● Serial/Parallel
● Email integration

● Content Launch/Expiry
● Date & Time – Auto review
● Change set/individual assets

● List of submitted assets

 Tracking Updates
● Versioning
● File versioning
● Directory versioning
● Snapshoting
● Rollback
● Automatic support for site snapshots, rollback to any snapshot
● Each submission versions each file & parent directories
● Each submission snapshots staging sandbox
● Each snapshot available for rollback
Recovers deletions, moves, renames, etc.
Allows website to rollback to any point in time
 Tracking Updates -
Staging Sandbox Snapshots

Site Snapshots
- Rollback to any previous
version of the site
 Deploying Updates
Manual or Automatic
● Deploy Staging to 1 or more:
● Remote File Servers
● Alfresco runtime servers
● Can also deploy any snapshots
● Monitoring and logging
● Transactional
● Incremental
Alfresco WCM In Action

Demo
 Further Information
● WCM Evaluation Guide
● Link from http://wiki.alfresco.com

● Content Community
● http://www.alfresco.com
● AMPs, Documentation, Tutorial, Tech Tips

● Alfresco Wiki
● Detailed technical information on configuration, administration and
customisation
● http://wiki.alfresco.com

● Alfresco Forums
● Community Postings
● Alfresco Staff
● http://forums.alfresco.com

● Alfresco Forge
● Contributions from the community
• E.g. Metadata extractors, transformations ….
• http://forge.alfresco.com
 Q and A

Alfresco WCM in an Hour

 Thank you for Attending

Alfresco WCM in an Hour

Michael
Farman
www.alfresco.com
Alfresco WCM in an Hour

Michael
Farman
www.alfresco.com