So I’m learning about an open source alternative to SharePoint called Alfresco.
Its an Enterprise Content Management software that also has a lot of social networking capabilities, document mangement, record management, etc.
For those of you who, like me, don’t have a clue about what Content Management is, I can tell you that it sounds like a life saver if you’re in charge of maintaining a website.
I guess it is a common scenario: you have read a bit about apache, tinkered with html and javascript a couple of times and setup a couple of pages in your linux machine. Then your boss asks for your help on a little in-house project for a webpage where you and your co-workers can log their time sheets. You download and install a LAMP stack and start coding everything with vi as your IDE. After much labor and consulting manuals and configuring everything to work as you want, you finally come up with a simple webpage and save the day. Your boss is happy and everybody is wowed by your little accolade.
But then your boss starts asking for additional webpages: she wants a calendar where the meetings can be seen. You deliver, but then every time there’s a meeting she sends you an email asking you to update the calendar. And you do it with your trusty vi, editing html directly. Then she asks if the dates of upcoming performance reviews can be uploaded too. And since you’re doing that and it’s just a calendar anyway, can a link be added to each date with the reviews documents? Oh, but they should only be accessed by the employee and her.
Feature creeping, I know. You start regretting you ever opened your mouth and offered help.
That is where I understand that Content Management comes in. Why not give your boss the ability to upload content to the page herself? Let her post memorandums and give only supervisors the privileges to enter employees performance data. Is there an audit coming up? Give special and limited privileges to outside auditors to look at logs and documents for that critical PCI compliance. HR wants to share pictures of new hires? Give them a form to do it themselves.
Not limited to linux world, it can integrate with MS Office and SharePoint itself (i guess they added this feature with migrations in mind ;)). It has workflows, so the proper chain of authorizations can get you a new coffee maker for the office kitchen. Heck, the dang thing can even integrate with facebook and iphone!
Sounds like a really cool tool to learn and if get any chance I’ll try to allocate some time for it and let you know in future posts.
FRamirez 