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Alfresco Community 3.3 Offers New Content Services Platform for Developers

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Alfresco Software, the leader in open source enterprise content management (ECM), today announced the immediate availability of Alfresco Community Edition 3.3 for download. This release includes a range of content services for developers, including integrations with IBM Lotus Social software and a preview of an upcoming Google Docs(TM) integration. With LGPL licensing and enhancements to document and web content management (WCM) functionality, Community 3.3 is also the first ECM tool to enable developers to deliver content-rich business applications leveraging CMIS 1.0 open source standards.

“From CMIS 1.0-compliance that will ‘future proof’ content application development, to LGPL licensing, Community 3.3 offers a range of new features and functionality that will continue to extend the free distribution and presence of Alfresco open source ECM,” said John Newton, CTO, Alfresco Software. “The enhanced content services in Alfresco Community 3.3 are designed to help organizations better manage web presence with tools designed to simplify the process of building content-rich web applications using CMIS.”

Significant enhancements to Alfresco Community Edition 3.3 include:

Content Services – Providing core content management capabilities, in a free-to-distribute CMIS runtime, which allows developers to easily embed content services in their applications:

  • CMIS 1.0 Compliance – For several years, Alfresco has taken a leading role in the development of open source standards. With the imminent approval of CMIS as an industry standard, Alfresco is the first ECM vendor to launch a fully compliant implementation of CMIS 1.0.
  • Inline Content Editing Services – In-context editing allows non-technical content authors to edit content directly from the web page. Alfresco Community 3.3 also provides a Web Editor Framework (WEF) – a JavaScript client side framework rendering a toolbar and associated controls designed to allow developers to extend any in-context functionality that may be required. The WEF also enables developers to easily create and package plug-ins and extensions for simple management and interoperability.
  • Content Repurposing – Automated content formatting functionality allows developers to build solutions to easily repurpose content for the web. Developers can use automated rules and existing FreeMarker and XSLT templates to format content for multiple delivery channels.
  • Repository Replication & Web Deployment – Alfresco 3.3 builds on current rich deployment facilities with the introduction of the Transfer Service. Developers can utilize the transfer service to build solutions that transfer content between Alfresco repositories, enabling them to maintain rich content structures and relationships between Alfresco environments. This is especially useful to WCM architectures where Alfresco provides both authoring and delivery tier components.

Integrations – Designed to meet the needs of developers looking for industry standard platforms that provide content services, Community 3.3 extends Alfresco support in the following key areas:

  • IBM Lotus – Building on the ‘technology preview’ of the integration between Alfresco and IBM Lotus software products (Lotus QuickrTM, Lotus ConnectionsTM and Lotus NotesTM), this integration provides a more open platform and full-featured solution than Microsoft SharePoint(TM).
  • Google Docs – Alfresco’ s integration with Google Docs provides users with full online editing capabilities, removing the need to use office applications, such as Microsoft Office(TM) to modify or update content.  The integration will be previewed at AIIM Expo and available for download in Alfresco Community in May.

Collaboration – New enhancements to Alfresco’s collaborative content management platform, Alfresco Share, include:

  • Repository-wide content access – Alfresco Share users can now browse the document management (DM) repository as well as project or collaboration sites. New features provide users with full permission control and DM capabilities.
  • Automated Content Rules – Alfresco Share now includes a new rules and actions interface, allowing administrators to automate actions on content such as transform, move, copy, notify and many more. In addition, Alfresco 3.3 enables users to define a library of rules and link these to any space for automatic execution.
  • Collaboration Lists – Provides users with a mechanism for tracking lists of items within the context of a project. Lists can be used for multiple purposes such as tasks, issues, to-dos, and contacts and can be easily extended.
  • Google Like Search – Offers users a familiar Google-like advanced search, which allows fields to be queried alongside text searches, such as finding documents by a given author created since a given date and containing a given text.

Business Friendly Open Source License – With Alfresco Community 3.3, the Alfresco repository has been moved to the LGPL license, allowing developers to embed Alfresco into their solutions without affecting their existing business model or license.

To learn more:

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content services