News of the week via twitter

Hello everybody !

It's time to share some news finding on twitter. Did i mention Twitter is THE genial tools to find informations about ECM ? Yes ...? Ok! Let's begin.

eXo Portal & JBoss Portal : Happy Union !
First important news of this week is the union of eXo Portal and JBoss Portal project.

• Business Wire : eXo Platform Merges Portal Software Development into JBoss Community
• Reuters : eXo PlatformMerges Portal Software Development into JBoss Community
• J.Boye : eXo Portal and JBoss Portal join forces
• eXoPlatform Blog : Julien Viet Post
• Red Hat : JBoss.org Community Grows
• JBoss Portal Blog : Welcome eXo !
  
• JBoss FAQ : http://www.jboss.org/community/wiki/JBossPortal-eXoPortalFAQ
• CMSWatch : http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1615-eXo-JBoss-Merger
  

Twitter Source :

• Tugdual Grall : http://twitter.com/tgrall
• Julien Viet : http://twitter.com/julienviet
  
• Benjamin Mestrallet : http://twitter.com/benjmestrallet

New version of KnowledgeTree
KnowledgeTree Releases New Version of Its Commercial Open Source Solution as well as a Microsoft® Office Add-In.

This release focuses on helping companies ease the burden of compliance, provides improved usability and ensures increased interoperability between KnowledgeTree and other productivity tools. Significant new features and enhancements include:

· Document Type Alerts make it possible to manage document retention policies, contracts and other time-based events with less effort by applying alerts to groups of documents.

· Configurable Electronic Signatures ensure accountability and compliance with regulations such as the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Title 21 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 11, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and others by requiring a user to re-authenticate when changing a document.

“KnowledgeTree can significantly ease the compliance burden for smaller companies,” said Daniel Chalef, CEO of KnowledgeTree. “The combination of electronic signatures with a complete audit trail fulfills regulatory requirements, while the affordable price appeals to decision-makers.”

Also featured prominently in this release is the Microsoft Office Add-in, which integrates KnowledgeTree seamlessly with the entire Office suite. Microsoft users can open, edit, save and email documents that reside in the KnowledgeTree repository from within Office applications, exactly as they would if that document was located on a shared drive. In addition, a powerful built-in search makes it even easier to find documents in the repository from within Office applications.

“The Microsoft Office Add-in allows users to enjoy the benefits of collaboration and version control afforded by KnowledgeTree without changing the way they work,” noted Philip Arkcoll, product manager at KnowledgeTree. “Customers using this feature report enhanced productivity as a result of the streamlined process.”

For more informations visit KT website : http://www.knowledgetree.com/

Other Links

• CMSWire : KnowledgeTree Updates Open Source ECM, Adds Key Enterprise Features
• Read Write Web : KnowledgeTree Makes Upgrades to its Open Source Document Manager

Twitter source :

• KnowledgeTree : http://twitter.com/knowledgetreesw
• Daniel Chalef : http://twitter.com/danielchalef
  

PS : If you are curious and want to know who are behind technology and sales in KnowledgeTree, let's take a look at this 2 posts :

• http://www.knowledgetree.com/blog/sales-marketing-hires
• http://www.knowledgetree.com/blog/engineer-hires

New Alfresco Book
If you search a book to learn how to customize, use, and administer Alfresco, I think the last new book : "Alfresco 3 Enterprise Content Management Implementation" is the best one !

For further information visit Packtpub : http://www.packtpub.com/alfresco-3-enterprise-content-management-implementation/book

Twitter source :

• DRB : http://twitter.com/DRB

Bunch of links

• 8 Things Vendors Need To Know About Selling Document Management to Small Businesses
• Is Drupal Over-hyped?

Twitter List : Capgemini & Sogeti

After my ECM Twitter list, I'm going to create a Capgemini (official account) Twitter List :

Capgemini

• Capgemini : http://twitter.com/Capgemini
  
• Capgemini North America (Us/Canada) : http://twitter.com/CapgeminiNA
• Capgemini Cloud, Global Center of Excellence : http://twitter.com/Capgemini_cloud
  
• Capgemini Outsourcing : http://twitter.com/CapgeminiOS
• Capgemini Espagna : http://twitter.com/capgemini_es
• Capgemini Espagna : http://twitter.com/capgemini_rrhh
  
• Capgemini OutSourcing UK : http://twitter.com/osukcto
• Capgemini Norway : http://twitter.com/CapgeminiNorge
• Capgemini FR ADC Toulouse : http://twitter.com/ADC_Toulouse
• Capgemini UK Public Relation : http://twitter.com/CapgeminiUKPR
• Capgemini Netherlands Global Services : http://twitter.com/CapgeminiGSCAPS
• Capgemini RMG team : http://twitter.com/capgeminijobs
  

Capgemini Group
If you work @ capgemini, don't hesitate to join us at :

• http://twittgroups.com/group/capgemini
• http://www.yammer.com

Sogeti

• Sogeti France : http://twitter.com/sogeti_fr
• Sogeti NetherLands : http://twitter.com/sogeti_nl
• Sogeti NetherLands High Tech : http://twitter.com/sogeti_nl_ht
  
• Sogeti USA : http://twitter.com/sogeti_usa
• Sogeti Seattle Sogeti : http://twitter.com/SeattleSogeti
• Sogeti Espagna : http://twitter.com/sogeti_es
  
• Sogeti SAP Ireland : http://twitter.com/SAP_IN_IRELAND

Of course this listing is not thorough and extra hands are always welcome to complete this list!

Finally, if you want to follow me ?

http://twitter.com/jeanmariepascal

Happy One Year !

Hello Readers !

Today it's a special day.
Today I celebrate the first year of this blog !

Happy One Year !

Licence Creative Commons (Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic) :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/smcgee/264384675/

For this event, I want to share some stats about this blog :

• 74 posts
  
• Number of visits : > 9800
• Number of unique visitors : > 6900
  
• Number of viewed pages : >15000
• Visits duration : 2 min (approx)
  
• Country Stats and Repartition (USA, France India, Spain UK...)
  

For all of this result, I have just 2 words

Licence Creative Commons
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vernhart/1574355646/

Thank you for your visit !
Thank you for your share !
Thank you for everything !

And of course,
don't hesitate to come on the road to an Open Source ECM World !

Evolution of Content Management : Thoughts and Ideas

Today I would like to share one of my recent philosophical... technical... functionnal... reflections in content management world. Particularly I want to speak about content creation ...

Today's theme (if you wish) is focus on the evolution of content creation best practices ... To be more explicit, I'll use a comparison with the world of software development (yes ... I will talk about code! ^^)

So if I had to ask a question:
to draw one's inspiration from.

How content production can draw inspiration from software code's production ?
Does content production should take the same path and adopt the same principles?

First, an observation
In non-structured information world (ie in the functionnal world generally...)

• Users enjoy the use of desktop tools (MS Office, Open Office ...) to create the vast majority of content (Report, documentation, manual, form ...) inside the company.
• They store information locally on their computer (hard drive).
• They share content via network shares (shared hard drives in a network) or via an e-mail attachment.
• Sometimes content will be grouped, merged with other content to form for example a multilingual advertising campaign, a response to prospect, a manual for mounting a furniture, a booklet, a catalog ...
• One of the best practices in content creation is to create a template to re-use it. In general we want to re-use the style of the document (PowerPoint template), or content (word document template ...)
• To share these models, we publish the file in a shared directory or website

In technical information world (eg software development)

• Developers enjoy the use of development tools (Eclipse, Visual Studio ...) to create the vast majority of code file (.java, .c, .html ....).
• They store files locally on their computer (hard drive)
• They share code via a management system version (SVN, Hg, CVS ...).
• With all code, developers create a project which will be compiled using automated environments (Maven, Continuous Integration...) to produce a program (software solution)
• When code can be reused, developers include this code in a library(.NET, Java, Spring ...) This library can then be used in new code.
• To share libraries, they publish it in a system directory or a website.

Now it's game time ! Let's spot the difference ! ... ie try to find the differences between the two worlds. You have 5 minutes!


Ok... let's forge ahead ...

My vision

I think best practices and principles acquired through development (or other) will be increasingly used in content creation.

It's time to explain ...

As you can see, there are differences in how to create / share / edit content between functional and technical domain.

In software development world, we assist in last few decades :

• Local code
• Shared code
• Shared code in a version management system
• Shared code in a standardized code management system

In content creation world, we assist :

• Local file
• Shared file
• File in a content management system
• File in a component management system

In other words, content management will know (and already knows... I have to be precise ! ) the same changes than development with programming had with object-oriented approach and continuous integration !

We try to apply to content the well-known principles :

• Write Once, Deploy Everywhere
• Stop Reinventing the Wheel
  

This new idea tries to create and use tools like :

• A management tool for configuring multi-dimensional content (how to manage versioned content composed by other versioned content which are composed by other versioned content)
  
• A generation platform
  
• An editor (integrated in office tools or not)
  
• A coherent system to rule them all !
  

What are benefits of this approach?

Take the example of "response to a call for tender" (Sorry if it's the wrong term...)

For those who are not familiar here is the principle.

A call for tender is a procedure by which a potential buyer requests different suppliers to make a commercial proposition to the detailed formulation (specification) of buyer's need (product or service). Of course all communication between the parties is usually done with documents in office format (printed or not). Response to a call for tenders is the technical proposal and commercial office format.

Let's explore the difference between a company called A which owns a component management tool and a company called B which have no tool.

Company A has made an habit of creating components. That's why it has a catalog of

• Client references
• Architecture and methodology
• Proposals
• Resources
• Stylesheets

User, who are reponsible for the response, will simply assemble major components (up to 80% of the document) in a few clicks and work on the last 20% (the heart of the response...)

Company B does not have such a system. User must seek in his old one example the one that will serve as start model. It should then do a lot of copying and pasting, checking the different information, may update or ask to update ...
And usually, this person finds few hours before the deadline he had forgotten to take the right stylesheet or the last reference ...

To conclude, according to this quick example, the gains are many:

• Gain of time
• Gain of money (because time is money!)
• Gain of modularity
• Gain of efficiency ...

What's this system?

I do not know if there is still a true acronym, but the term CCMS for Component Content Management System (CCMS) is the one who is closest!
So don't hesitate to inquire about it! (And me too at the same time ....)

And future term may be ECCMS (Enterprise Component Content Management System) ...


Special Thanks to Componize.com (and staff cf. [FR] Interview of Herve Quiroz ) which help me to understand Component Content Management and don't hesitate to try their CCM solution !


Note
The only problem I find with CCM adoption would still the graphical interfaces and user experience. The man (and woman) still remain the key and most important variable...


Thanks to everyone and don't hesitate to post a comment !

Alfresco Meetup Paris : Review and Feedbacks

Hello everyone!

On Thursday 30.04 I was in Paris at the Alfresco Meetup.

First the planning : the day was divided into 2 parts.
Part 1 : Alfresco "Crew" (Morning)
Part 2 : Alfresco Partners (afternoon).

Alfresco Morning
The first presentation session was devoted to ...........? Alfresco of course!

Submitted by Denis Dorval Vice President EMEA Alfresco, the session was about Alfresco, ECM and the ECM market in general.

I noted some interesting key points like :

• A person who uses Alfresco is called: "Alfrescan(s)" (I didn't know I had this name too...)
• Alfresco community represents 90 000 people worldwide.
• France is the 2nd community after the USA.
• Alfresco won 270 customers, 90 partners and 18 OEM 2008.
• 2009 is the year of open source acceptation.
• 2009 is a consolidation year for the software market.
• More than a dozen clients manage more than 10 million documents with Alfresco.
• Adobe (with acrobat.com) manages the largest number of documents with Alfresco: over 120 million documents.
• Alfresco want to test its application to cover one billion of documents.

If you want more informations : Support Alfresco

Then I attended a case study entitled: "EADS (Astrium & EPS) paperless HR solution or UBIC project (Atol CD / Astrium)".
During this presentation, we discovered how it's possible to dematerialize all HR processes of a large company such Astrium (and EADS in the future).

Interesting points were :

• 2008 : Project Initiation
• 600,000 : Number of documents managed in a first step,
• 10 million : Number of documents managed in a near future.
• Alfresco 2.2E, GWT, Red Hat Linux, Oracle 10g, JBPM, WebDav, Webscripts: Main components of architecture and implementation.

For more information, you can see a screencast of the application at this url : http://www.atolcd.com/ubic-demo-flash.html

At the end, UBIC will become a plug-in that can be added in Alfresco for HR document management. This project will also be supported by Astrium and Atol CD.

To learn more about UBIC project: http://www.atolcd.com/btn-ll/alfresco-ecm-ged/personnalisation-avancee.html


To conclude morning sessions, Mike Farman, Director of Product Management at Alfresco presented Alfresco Roadmap, Vision and Strategy.
Important points were :

• Record Management: DOD5015.2 Certification in September 2009
• Managing and archiving e-mails. (MUST-SEE!)
• IMAP Implementation and creation of Virtualized Repository (MUST-SEE!)
• Alfresco SURF means .... NOTHING! (always good to know ...)
• Admin tools for Alfresco Enterprise subscribers (Enterprise Only Capabilities: clustering, monitoring ...)
• Share Service Forms
• Web Delivery Runtime
• Alfresco Query Language (based on CMIS + Alfresco Extensions)
• Index Consistency Check
• Alfresco Mobile (Example:iPhone integration)

If I had to summarize, Alfresco continues to spread its perimeter on corporate documents life cycle. Next targets are e-mails and legal archiving. These 2 aspects are strongly expected by functional people. To support inevitable and unavoidable document spread, Enterprise customers will benefit tools for managing Alfresco clusters !
Did you say Alfresco continue its evolution ?


Partners Afternoon
The afternoon was devoted to technical presentations from Alfresco partners. Overview :

NB: "Alfresco Partner of the Year" to Sopra Group: http://www.sopragroup.fr/

Componize and XML document management solution.
As a neighbor(Marseille, France), I finally discovered Componize solution! It is based on components principle. Indeed when we create office or technical documents by default we create documents by components without realizing it.
A paragraph is a component of a chapter.
A chapter is a component of a book.
A book is a component of a library
etc ...

And often, we realize these components are the same in a lot of documents!
and what happend when we decide to modify one ? We have to go back over ALL the documents having this component! Lost time guarantee!
To optimize document management, we have to use a tool like Componize!

For more information: http://www.componize.com/overview/overview-home.html

Xenit and Castor integration .
Firstly if you do not know what is CAStor Caringo, let's have a look at : http://www.caringo.com/products_castor.html
Now try to make links with document management system like Alfresco. Next, use an addon developped by Xenit...
You have a solution that can easily manage millions of documents with high-scalability and high performance guaranteed!
Impressive!

For more information on Xenit: http://www.xenit.eu/

Openwide and data migration with ETL (Talend)
Generally, when we start an ECM project, there are always existing documents. So, we have to find a way to transfer this documentation to Alfresco.
How? With an ETL (Talend in our case) and a component developed by Openwide. This one allows you to create and integrate content within Alfresco through "jobs" (automated).

For more information on Openwide: http://www.openwide.fr/


Atol CD and SURF applications :
JSF is dead, long live REST! It's the main idea or slogan of this presentation which explains how to create a new user experience with Alfresco.

For more information about this presentation : http://www.atolcd.com/fileadmin/Publications/Alfresco_Meetup_RIA_et_SURF.pdf
and Atol CD: http://www.atolcd.com/


Workflow conception with BlueXML
How is it possible to generate 1200 lines of code to create and setup a workflow in Alfresco in a few minutes?
The answer is simple: You have to user BlueXMl Alfresco Generator !
This tool, based on Eclipse, allows via drag & drop (and forms) to create all necessary files for setting up a workflow Alfresco.
The dream of every developer!

For more information on BlueXML: http://www.bluexml.com/v2/alfresco-generator/


Finally

First as its logo suggests, Alfresco can be compared to a flower that has evolved in its ecosystem (content management).
In this ecosystem, it met

• Bees (OEM) who have created their miels (solution) from the pollen of the flower (Alfresco. ..)
• Florists (OEMs) who used the flower (Alfresco. ..) to create compositions (specific solutions)
• Horticulturalists (Partners / Integrator / Community) who took the flower to make it evolve (Alfresco. ..) and make it even stronger.
• Enthusiasts (Communitu) who think this flower is beautiful.

Then, if you want to live happy, you have to live hidden. This idea is THE fundamental trend of Alfresco, integrators and partners.
They are abandoning more and more history JSF interface to more responsive and more 2.0 interfaces. Goodbye Java, Hello Java... script! (I am exaggerating but the idea is here ...)

Finally Alfresco continues to integrate its application seamlessly with tools that the user knows and uses every day!
Yesterday CIFS for sharing documents in a Windows folder. Today Windows Office suite via Sharepoint Protocol integration. Tomorrow IMAP for sharing and managing emails in Microsoft Outlook ...


And me ?

For my first participation in an event Alfresco (my second for an ECM community event), I think I have to improve "networking" between sessions :o)
It is important that I improve my "commercial" side.

Then I totally confirms my interest for integration and information (content) systems.
Indeed, if you have read all of this article you can:

• Manage your documents and e-mails (Alfresco ECM)
• Collaborate (Alfresco Share)
• Create and manage websites (Alfresco WCM)
• Manage technical documentation and XML (Componize)
• Divide your data in high availability (Castor - Xenit) with tools (Enterprise Capabilities Only)
• Integrate existing data via ETL (Talend - Openwide)
• Create rich interfaces (Alfresco SURF) for specific business needs
• Create workflows in a simple and intuitive way (BlueXML)
• Archive everything (Alfresco RM)

And who are the people with this kind of abilities ?

Integrators (like me ...)!!!

Finally, when I was young I loved playing with Lego ... I think I'll continue on this path ...

As you can see, the road is still long.

Thank you for everything. And see you soon!


PS: You can find some pictures I took during the event at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/36931301@N03/sets/72157617655796047/

Open Source ECM : This is my way...

JM.PASCAL - This is my way...

View more presentations from Pascal Jean marie.

Twitter - ECM Links of the week

Hello,

In addition to my technical focus and post, I will try resume different information that I found with Twitter.

In fact if you want to follow me: http://twitter.com/jeanmariepascal


CMIS
iECM CMIS Demonstrator

• http://aiim-iecm.org/CMISDemoE

Alfresco
CMIS Presentation :

• http://www.slideshare.net/johnnewton/cmis-and-interoperability-aiim-2009

Alfresco 3.1 Enterprise :

• http://www.alfresco.com/media/releases/2009/03/ent3-1/

John Newton Blog :

• http://newton.typepad.com/content/2009/03/building-a-stronger-open-source-product.html

Fujitsu Scanner integration with Alfresco built with CMIS video demo :

• http://s3.alfrescodemo.com/video/AlfrescoFujitsuScanSnapDemo.mp4

KnowledgeTree
Sucess Story :

• http://writepoint.com/blog/?p=583

KnowledgeTree Office Add-in 1.0 Release Candidate 2 available

• http://ff.im/-1RD5S

Jahia
Jahia v6 :

• http://www.jahia.com/jahia/Jahia/Home/products/download/eap

Community WebSite :

• http://jahia-howto.blogspot.com/

JSR 283

• http://jcp.org/aboutJava/communityprocess/pfd/jsr283/index.html

Humor

• http://www.cmswatch.com/About/Press/0409-ECM-AIIM/

Optaros

Evaluating Social Software? Don't Underestimate Open Source

• http://www.optaros.com/blogs/evaluating-social-software-dont-underestimate-open-source
  

CMS Meme John On Tech
Celebrity CMS DeathMatch

• http://jonontech.com/2009/03/25/celebrity-cms-deathmatch-part-3/

Enjoy it !