Alfresco CMS becomes more social

Alfresco has embedded social networking capabilities into its open source content management system.

Alfresco Enterprise 3.4's redesigned Share interface adds status updates -- like those of Facebook and Twitter -- to its collaboration and document management platform.

It also features distributed content replication, content activity streams, enhanced search and folder-based actions for basic workflow, Alfresco announced recently.

Executives noted in the recent press release that many business platforms are becoming more social savvy. "Social computing is becoming a more and more prominent part of enterprise apps like Jive and SharePoint, and these critical programs need a platform on which to build social apps."

Version 3.4 also offers a new DocLib portlet that exposes document libraries to standards-based portals such as Liferay or Red Hat's jBoss portal. The platform also uses CMIS to integrate with Drupal and Lotus Quickr, for example.

Alfresco now includes a DocLib portlet to enhance its JSR-168 support, which exposes a document library in standards-based portals like Liferay or Red Hat’s JBoss Portal. And using CMIS, Alfresco continues to integrate with Drupal, Lotus Quickr and an expanding set of social business systems.

• Alfresco’s refreshed Share interface for collaboration and document management now includes status updates (similar to Facebook and Twitter), content activity streams and enhanced search capabilities to make content easier to find.
• Folder-based actions for simple workflow, along with advanced workflow (using jBPM) – Business users can now set-up simple document workflow, such as approvals or content transformations, inside the Share interface. For robust workflow, Alfresco Share now exposes workflows created with standards-based enterprise business process management tools.
• Distributed Content Replication – Native support for content replication allows organizations to run federated content repositories. Key documents can now be replicated to support large geographically dispersed companies, reducing access time, removing single points of failure, and removing the dependency on a single system.
• Collaborative Web Authoring – Alfresco Web Quick Start is a set of best practice templates for building content-rich websites on top of Alfresco Share. Quick Start combines the power of Alfresco Share for web team collaboration, with powerful content process control and publishing services like office-to-web publishing.
• Integration with Enterprise Portals and Social Software – Alfresco now includes a DocLib portlet to enhance its JSR-168 support, which exposes a document library in standards-based portals like Liferay or Red Hat’s JBoss Portal. And using CMIS, Alfresco continues to integrate with Drupal, Lotus Quickr and an expanding set of social business systems.