Alfresco Community 5.0.a

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Alfresco Community 5.0.a

kevinr1
Established Member
0 33 64.3K

I am very happy to announce another Alfresco Community release is planned within the next few days. This will be the Alfresco Community 5.0.a release and is based on very latest public community code-line. This is the same code base that our Alfresco Cloud release is built on. This release represents an early preview of the features and look of Alfresco 5.0! There is more to come as we progress towards the 5.0 Enterprise release of Alfresco.

Alfresco 5.0 is now entirely built with maven. All artifacts are available on the Alfresco nexus. This is the first release we have built entirely with maven so please bear with us if there are any minor teething troubles!

Here are some of the exciting new features and improvements that you will find in 5.0.a.

Search Improvements

Search is an area we are striving to improve greatly in Alfresco 5.0. There are already two big functional improvements that enhance the findability of results, exploratory search and usability of the search user interface. The first is a complete rewrite of the Search page to use filters (facets) and allow inline user actions and browser history. The second is a feature giving instant results within the search box itself for a number of common search entities; documents, people and Share sites.

Before going into details, it is first worth mentioning a small but important improvement for search generally. The default search operator for a multi-term search has changed from OR to AND. This is a seemingly minor change but actually makes a huge difference to the search result relevance to the user and in turn reduces server-load. Generally smaller result sets are returned to the user and these results tend to be more specific which also reduces the number of additional searches required by the user to find relevant results.

Filtered Search Results

Like many modern search interfaces including ones you will be familiar with like Amazon and eBay, the Alfresco search interface now uses filters (also known as facets) to provide a fast, interactive way to reduce a large number of results to a smaller number and help the user to find the specific item they want. Out-of-the box Alfresco provides a number of filters for File Type (mimetype), Creator, Modifier, Created and Modified Date and Size.

More filter types are possible, and configuration screens for this feature will be coming for a future 5.0 release. Custom facet controls can be created using the flexible Aikau framework. Developers may be interested to know that this page is the first complete Share page to be written in 100% Aikau framework - all from reusable, highly extendable web components.

Filtered Search

Inline actions - the user may now perform useful work within the search results page itself, without being forced to navigate away from the results list to a document details page. More actions will be coming in a future 5.0 release. We also intend to add a full inline previewer of a selected document, again to reduce the need to navigate away from the search results just to read a document.

URL fragment history - the user entered search terms, selected search filters and sort settings are made part of the URL history to aid in navigation to/from the search results and easy bookmarking of a useful search.

Infinite scroll - rather than paging we are using infinite scroll to present long result lists. Feedback on this and any other UX feature is welcome!

Instant Search Results

live_search1

The instant results feature (called Live Search) provide near real-time search results for Documents, Sites and People immediately as the user is typing in the search box. Combined with optimized search APIs and the change to AND multiple terms by default, this is a great interactive way to explore search results and find items from any screen in Share.

live_search_all1

Note that improvements to correctly deal with or filter other entity types such as Wiki, Blog and Discussions pages are in development.

HTML5 pdf.js Previewer

Alfresco Share has always had a powerful preview component capable of displaying virtually any document type as a preview, from images to text to Word and Powerpoint. However most of the more complex document types required the 3rd party Flash plugin to enable this. For Alfresco 5.0 we added a pure HTML5 based document previewer with better browser support, faster performance and no reliance on 3rd party plugins.

pdf_viewer

The viewer is based on the buoyant pdf.js open-source project originally contributed by Mozilla. It is high performance PDF viewer that can display complex multi-page PDF documents in any HTML5 compatible browser - including desktop browsers and mobile devices. Developers from Mozilla, Opera and many other individuals are contributing to improve the technology at a rapid pace.

Alfresco has taken advantage of its flexible transformation pipeline that can transform virtually any document type into PDF - this is then displayed inline in the browser. The viewer is based on the Mozilla example viewer and we have added a full screen maximized view, document search, search highlighting and the ability to generate a link to any page of the document. We should thank Community contributor Peter Löfgren and Alfresco engineer Will Abson for their collaboration on the Share Extras project this viewer was originally developed in.

Multiple pages can be displayed on screen, with an optional mini summary view and linked table of contents.

pdf_viewer_maximized

This brings usable multi-page document previews to mobile devices including iPad. Users who do not have a compatible browser such as IE8 will still see the original Flash based preview - the improvement is seamless for supported HTML5 browsers.

Developers and Alfresco Administrators may be interested to know that this change should also improve server performance and stability as it actually removes a step in the most common transformation pipeline 'office doc -> PDF via OpenOffice -> SWF via pdf2swf.exe' the pdf2swf step is no longer needed! This step was also the most common problem area with transforming documents for preview - the HTML5 previewer can cope with all the documents we have tested that potentially cause crashes or hangs with the pdf2swf external process. Also as the pdf.js project moves forward with additional compatibility and performance improvements we can take advantage of that effort.

The version of pdf.js used is 1.0.277.

TinyMCE4 Editor

The inline HTML editor used to edit .html content, comments, wiki, blog and discussion pages in Alfresco has been upgraded to TinyMCE4. This provides a more modern looking editing experience with various minor improvements.

TinyMCE4 Editor

TinyMCE4 features an improved menu driven interface to hide a lot of UI clutter. Plus a nice 'distraction free' full screen editing mode.

Site Administration

The new Sites Manager feature in Share Admin Tools enables an Administrator to control access and delete sites from a single admin screen.
Site Management

SpringSurf - Aikau framework

The SpringSurf web-framework underpinning the Alfresco Share web-application continues to improve. Surf now has support for LESS CSS pre-processing and WebScript localization import support. Many more Aikau framework widgets are available and the Filtered Search screen and all inline actions it uses are a good example of those components in action. The header and title menu area of all pages are also built using Aikau widgets.

Miscellaneous

    • Previews and thumbnails now generated for OpenOffice ODG drawing format.
    • Dependent libraries have been updated to more recent versions; including PDFBox, Apache Commons, Tikka etc.
    • UI tweaks and improvements - with more coming in future 5.0 Community releases.

Installed 3rd party components

Java 1.7.0_60, Tomcat 7.0.53, PostgreSQL 9.2.4, ImageMagick 6.8.6

Translations

As usual the Share translations have been improved and updated. Translations include: French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Dutch, Russian, Norwegian, Simplified Chinese and new Brazilian Portuguese.

Bugs

Lots of bugs have been fixed as usual. See the list of fixed bugs since the 4.2.e release.

In Summary

We hope you enjoy this Alfresco Community release! Please leave feedback on the forums as usual and raise bugs in JIRA.

33 Comments
blog_commenter
Active Member
Hi Team,



Why any reporting tool is not integrated with Alfresco till now?



Can we save search result in pdf or doc format?



Thanks,

Mohammad
blog_commenter
Active Member
[…] you saw that Alfresco 5.0.a Community Edition was released last week. Kevin Roast did a nice write-up on a few of the new features. I created a screencast based on his write-up. It is embedded below or […]
blog_commenter
Active Member
[…] Kev’s Blog: Übersicht zu den Neuerungen in Alfresco Community 5.0.a […]
blog_commenter
Active Member
Nice new features! Is there any guide to upgrade from 4.2.c Community to this 5.0.a?

Thank you Kevin
kevinr1
Established Member
>Why any reporting tool is not integrated with Alfresco till now?

3rd party integrations exists as developed by some of our partners and community members, but now we are integrating a reporting into Alfresco for the final 5.0. Yes it has taken a while but we will have it Smiley Happy



>Nice new features! Is there any guide to upgrade from 4.2.c Community to this 5.0.a?

There are a couple of options. It depends how happy you are either moving files around or updating the alfresco/share/solr WAR files in place for a 4.2 installation.



You can either: upgrade the individual components in 4.2 to the latest (e.g. java7u60) and then drop in the newer .war files from 5.0 into your old 4.2 installation - alfresco will take case of the DB/index upgrade (running patches etc.) for you automatically. OR you can repoint your 5.0 installation at the 4.2 DB and SOLR indexes - e.g. alfresco-global.properties settings. OR you can copy the indexes from 4.2 over to a clean 5.0, and dump/load your DB instance from 4.2 into 5.0 DB, then again alfresco will take care of the upgrade process when you restart it. OK, that's not a detailed explanation but a summary Smiley Happy you can ask for more details on the alfresco forums from our community. Of course you should take backups before doing any of this to ensure you can try again if a mistake it made, also you should stop all services before doing any steps or taking the backup copy.
blog_commenter
Active Member
Congrats to all team mebers of Alfresco Community 5.0.a.

Nice featuers
blog_commenter
Active Member
Hi Kevin,



which version of Solr is used in Alfresco 5?



Regards,

Ronny
kevinr1
Established Member
Ronny,

Version 1.4 is used currently, with SOLR4 coming before the Alfresco 5.0 Enterprise release - so a future Community 5.0 build will have SOLR4 also.
blog_commenter
Active Member
[…] Potentere Suche Als erstes fällt in der Version 5.0a die Erweiterung der Suchfunktion um eine Facettierung der Ergebnisse auf. Indem sich die Suchergebnisse nach verschiedenen Kriterien filtern lassen, können Anwender noch schneller finden, was sie suchen. Auch die Instant-Search, also die Anzeige von Suchergebnissen noch während des Eintippens, oder die Möglichkeit, sinnvolle Suchergebnisse zu bookmarken, vereinfachen die Arbeit mit Alfresco weiter. Und mit der verbesserten Dokumentenvorschau werden Dokumente nun unabhängig von ihrem Ausgangsformat direkt in der Vorschau durchsuchbar, ohne dass der Nutzer sie erst öffnen muss. Dies sind nur einige Highlights, mehr Einzelheiten über die Neuerungen finden Sie in diesem ausführlichen Blogbeitrag von Alfresco. […]
blog_commenter
Active Member
[…] Alfresco Community 5.0.a is out and it’s fully built with Maven. Took about 5 years, but we made it, so get finally ready for a fully orchestrated ecosystem here […]
blog_commenter
Active Member
Hi Kevin,



I have seen community 5.a having solr version 1.4.1  not  4.0. When should we expect it ?

We expect solr 4.x.
kevinr1
Established Member
It will be present in a future 5.0 Community build and of course in the 5.0 Enterprise edition.
blog_commenter
Active Member
Thanks Kevin for reply,

When could we expect next build of community or Enterprise 5.0 ? Any estimated date of release ?
blog_commenter
Active Member
Hi ,

Some of the features like site administration and document previewer it's improved lot in 5.0.a.



Thanks,

Jayachender
blog_commenter
Active Member
I second this request.  We already use Alf 4 for another external project, and I'm thinking about using Alf 5 for internal needs but to be honest the lack of movement and updates on Alf community doesn't build confidence.  It seems that v5 took a while to come out so when will the bugfix releases be out so it's stable enough for a production implementation?



Thanks,

Dave
blog_commenter
Active Member
[…] Kev’s Blog at Alfresco […]
blog_commenter
Active Member
hi, i use the bitnami alfresco community 5.0.a,but i cannot see the filter search, any problem i've got??
blog_commenter
Active Member
Hi Kevin,



Thanks for your post!



I recently setup alfresco 5.0.a using Alfresco SDK 2.0.0-beta4 following the instructions given by Ole in this video (http://mindthegab.com/2014/09/10/alfresco-sdk-2-0-beta-4-released-in-maven-central/). However, I've noticed that under Admin Tools, I could see lot of options including 'Sites Manager' at LHS, however, nothing is shown at RHS if you click on any option. Is this a bug? how to get if fix?



Thanks,

Maqsood
kevinr1
Established Member
I don't know, but I have asked Gab if he can reply to you question.
kevinr1
Established Member
>hi, i use the bitnami alfresco community 5.0.a,but i cannot see the filter search, any problem i’ve got??

Not sure - any exceptions in the log? It should work out-of-the-box if you haven't changed anything.
kevinr1
Established Member
>When could we expect next build of community or Enterprise 5.0 ? Any estimated date of release

Yes, Community 5.0b is coming shortly (within 2 wks, very probably less)
kevinr1
Established Member
- to answer your question, this is a known issue with Debug mode in Share and displaying the Share Admin Console page - it is not the SDK at fault.
blog_commenter
Active Member
Good day my fellow alfrescans:

I’ve been using alfresco for quite some time now and have been trying to figure out some stuff on my own,   however I’m stuck.  I’ve searched almost the entire google.

I’ve upgraded to alfresco community 5.0.a on Windows 7 64 bits.  What I’m trying to accomplish are the following and if I can get some help from you brainiacs it will be superb.   

PDFtoolbox add-on has been installed into alfresco and works great: however when an image is loaded into document library and converted to pdf, how can I have it delete the file after processing is done as there is no delete rules that I can find.

Samples and detailed guides will be appreciated. 

1. Been trying to configure custom properties for Document library contents instead of the out of the box configuration (Author, name etc.) just need to add my own fields and edit fields to suit my needs.  Ps … will also like to know if and how Alfresco saves & creates fields & data in database.

2. I have integrated Tesseract OCR : installed amp files,  but it does not seem to work as I have uploaded Jpeg with (pictures & text) , did search in alfresco for these text but search comes up empty.  Would like it that another pc does the ocr on pdf’s  & does the processing of documents automatically  as users upload.  



These are most important at the moment,   any help will be appreciated.





Alfresco rules!
blog_commenter
Active Member
[…] in 5.0.b. Many of these features have improved since 5.0.a, so it is recommended you read the Alfresco Community 5.0.a post first if you have not already done […]
blog_commenter
Active Member
Kevin, Thanks for your reply!

Appreciate if you can provide any pointer to fix it.
blog_commenter
Active Member
[…] if Alfresco 5.0.a is certified with Java1.7U60, we use Java1.7U67 (nothing serious will happen). You can download the package from Oracle Java SE […]
blog_commenter
Active Member
[…] in 5.0.b. Many of these features have improved since 5.0.a, so it is recommended you read the Alfresco Community 5.0.a post first if you have not already done […]
blog_commenter
Active Member
Hi,,



Any plans for UI based custom data list creation in version  5.0 ?
kevinr1
Established Member
There is not sorry.
blog_commenter
Active Member
[…] if Alfresco 5.0.a is certified with Java1.7U60, we use Java1.7U67 (nothing serious will happen). You can download the package from Oracle Java SE […]
blog_commenter
Active Member
Some more detail can be found here:

https://issues.alfresco.com/jira/browse/ALF-21181



You can change share-amp/src/test/resources/alfresco/web-extension/share-config-custom.xml and set the webframework to production in order to make the console available, but obviously this might have some non desirable side effects.
blog_commenter
Active Member
Hi,



Is it possible to integrate record management with alfresco 5.0.c.

If possible, please let me know any document related to this and also from where i can download record management amps.
kevinr1
Established Member