Product Roadmap 2013

[resplin]

This product roadmap has been archived!

As an open source company, it is natural for us to share what we are doing; to monitor our real progress you can see the daily code changes in source control!

The roadmap presented here is a rolling view of our plans for the next 12-24 months, and like all roadmaps, it will shift and change. Alfresco will continue to deliver and enrich the same quality software that our 1000s of paying Enterprise Edition customers and Community Edition users are familiar with. However, as new opportunities and challenges for businesses arise, we will extend our reach and range of products. We are currently doing this to take advantage of capabilities in the areas of cloud and mobile. With the depth and breadth of our experience and innovation, we are uniquely placed to exploit these opportunities to the expanding sphere of enterprise content.

The pillars of Alfresco's offerings are: 

• Enterprise and Community - continued evolution of our core on-premise product that companies and organizations rely on for business critical content management,
  
• Cloud - the Alfresco experience available in a public cloud, removing the burden of hosting the software, and allowing teams to work elastically outside the corporate firewall,
  
• Mobile - focusing on the new tablet device workplace that operates with both Enterprise and Cloud,
  
• Platform and Integrations - providing a robust and reliable API, along with a customization framework for Alfresco and its customers and ecosystem to build on.
  

Our cloud offering allows to develop and release new features on a continuous basis. These features will be rolled into the next Enterprise release, with some being made available as add-on modules that can be applied to existing releases of Alfresco.

For features and products released in 2013, see Released 2013. Or look even further back into 2012.

Table of Contents

• 1 Forthcoming Product Releases


• 2 Cloud Feature Release Sequence


• 3 Roadmap Themes


• 4 Administration
  
  
  
  • 4.1 Next 6 Months
    
    
    
    • 4.1.1 Enterprise & Cloud
    
    
    • 4.1.2 Cloud
    
    
  
  
  • 4.2 Next 12 Months
  
  
  • 4.3 Next 18 Months
  
  


• 5 Context and Insight
  
  
  
  • 5.1 Next 6 Months
    
    
    
    • 5.1.1 Enterprise & Cloud
    
    
    • 5.1.2 Cloud
    
    
  
  
  • 5.2 Next 12 Months
    
    
    
    • 5.2.1 Enterprise & Cloud
    
    
    • 5.2.2 Big Data Server
    
    
    • 5.2.3 Alfresco in the Cloud Integration
    
    
  
  
  • 5.3 Next 18 Months
    
    
    
    • 5.3.1 Big Data Server
    
    
  
  


• 6 Process and Organization
  
  
  
  • 6.1 Next 6 Months
    
    
    
    • 6.1.1 Enterprise & Cloud
    
    
    • 6.1.2 Cloud
    
    
    • 6.1.3 Hybrid Business Processes
    
    
  
  
  • 6.2 Next 12 Months
    
    
    
    • 6.2.1 Enterprise & Cloud
    
    
  
  
  • 6.3 Next 18 Months
  
  


• 7 User Experience
  
  
  
  • 7.1 Next 6 Months
    
    
    
    • 7.1.1 Desktop Sync 1.0
    
    
    • 7.1.2 Share Web Client
    
    
  
  
  • 7.2 Next 12 Months
  
  
  • 7.3 Next 18 Months
  
  


• 8 Mobility
  
  
  
  • 8.1 Next 6 Months
    
    
    
    • 8.1.1 Alfresco Hybrid plug-ins
    
    
    • 8.1.2 Alfresco for Symantec Sealed Program
    
    
    • 8.1.3 Alfresco Mobile Android 1.4
    
    
    • 8.1.4 Alfresco Mobile iOS 2.0
    
    
  
  
  • 8.2 Next 12 Months
  
  
  • 8.3 Next 18 Months
  
  


• 9 Solutions
  
  
  
  • 9.1 Next 6 Months
    
    
    
    • 9.1.1 Records Management
    
    
    • 9.1.2 Media Management
    
    
  
  
  • 9.2 Next 12 Months
    
    
    
    • 9.2.1 Media Management
    
    
    • 9.2.2 Imaging / Scanning
    
    
    • 9.2.3 Solutions Platform
    
    
  
  
  • 9.3 Next 18 Months
  
  


• 10 Ecosystem
  
  
  
  • 10.1 Next 6 Months
    
    
    
    • 10.1.1 Google Docs 2.0 and 2.1
    
    
    • 10.1.2 Salesforce 1.0
    
    
    • 10.1.3 Developer Platform
    
    
    • 10.1.4 End-of-life
    
    
  
  
  • 10.2 Next 12 Months
    
    
    
    • 10.2.1 End-of-life
    
    
  
  
  • 10.3 Next 18 Months
    
    
    
    • 10.3.1 End-of-life
    
    
  
  

Forthcoming Product Releases

• Alfresco for Good Mobile iOS 1.0 (1H2013)
  
• Enterprise 4.2 (2H2013)
  
• Records Management Module 2.1 (2H2013)
  

Cloud Feature Release Sequence

Alfresco in the Cloud has a number of novel capabilities but does not provide all the features of Alfresco Enterprise. The following release sequence will show the order of both new and existing Enterprise features that will be introduced to the Cloud.

• Salesforce CRM
  
• Mobile & Android Signup
  
• Discussions
  

Roadmap Themes

The roadmap is organized in functional themes, giving the features that are anticipated across the different products in the future.  The themes are:

• Administration
  
• Context and Insight
  
• Process and Organization
  
• User Experience
  
• Mobility
  
• Solutions
  
• Ecosystem
  

Administration

To ensure the success of a new installation and the continued maintenance of existing Alfresco services, we will continue to add easier administration capabilities to all Alfresco products.
These administration features will help the server administrators run Alfresco more effectively, and allow Alfresco power users to do more without needing developers or IT.

Next 6 Months

Enterprise & Cloud

• Cluster: we will add administration UI to make it easier to set up and manage clusters; allowing an administrator to dynamically add or remove Alfresco nodes from a cluster
  
• Authentication: new administration UI to define authentication chains as well as configure synchronization to LDAP/AD servers
  
• Logging and Monitoring: more logging will be provided to help operational running of servers
  

Cloud

• Capture audit events so Network Administrators can track user access to files in their Network. Allows you to see a history of who viewed or downloaded a file on Alfresco, along with other audit events. Provides rich reports for Network Administrators on activity across Network such as user logins, file uploads, and most active users
  
• Content Model Management: end users with the appropriate rights will be able to define 'property groups' (aspects) through a simple user interface, which can be applied to any content objects
  

Next 12 Months

• Delegated Admin: allow defined users the ability to administer certain areas directly without being system administrators, including areas such as groups and publishing channels.
  
• Remote Content Caching: for high availability and performance in distributed content delivery environments.
  

Next 18 Months

• Repository Dump and Load: for full repository and selective tenant dump and load of all content and configuration
  
• User Rename: administrators tool to manage renames of user names across all content and history
  

Context and Insight

A key benefit of content management systems compared to file-sharing applications is that they provide additional context that allows more intelligent and automated use of documents and content. 
Finding the content you need or discovering and sharing knowledge can only be done with richer information about the content available to you.
Likewise, making informed decisions about what content is useful or not; understanding who produces and who consumes content; and knowing where content goes, are all critical to the efficient management of content.
Features that allow users or services to find, inform and report on content creation and use.

Next 6 Months

Enterprise & Cloud

• Activity controls: provide finer grain control of what activities are raised, such as the option to 'unfollow' sites.
  

Cloud

• Discussions: an add-on module for sites which allows users to start and reply discussions.
  

Next 12 Months

Enterprise & Cloud

• Geo-location: find content based geo-location locating tags
  
• Spellchecking for search terms: suggest alternatives for misspelled words.
  
• Fine-grained controls for email notifications: allow a user to opt in/out by Site; control what event types to notify on; also, on what objects.
  
• Conversations: provide more contextualized views of content and tasks
  
• Email-based commenting: allow comments to be sent via email to Share
  
• @messaging: force notification of commenting using @<username> patterns
  
• Version policies & version pruning: provide more control over what versions are retained in a document's history, such as pruning old minor versions when a new major version is added.
  
• Dynamic Constraints: allow easy integration to computed or external sources of constraint values
  
• Saved Search: provide a means for searches to be saved and used later by the same user, or shared with other users.
  
• Term highlighting in search results: show search term hits in search results
  
• Share Asynchronous Action/Event notifications: provide a means to raise realtime alerts and notifications to a user through Share.
  

Big Data Server

• Content and Usage Analytics
  
• Indexing enhancements for scalability:
  
  • Index Sharding
    
  • Multi-store Indexing (Solr)
    
  • Search Slaves
    
• Auto-summarization, find related content and images
  

Alfresco in the Cloud Integration

Allows you to seamlessly interact with your on-premise systems and Alfresco in the Cloud, including:

• Tasks - View and action cloud task from on-premise system
  
• Activities - View and action cloud activities from on-premise system
  
• Federated Search - Search across both the cloud and on-premise
  

Next 18 Months

Big Data Server

• Semantic analysis of content: for auto-classification and categorization; finding similar content.
  

Process and Organization

Much of the efficiencies and compliance for managing content come from workflows (business processes) that allow best practice to be re-used, or regulated business to be controlled.
Coupled with the organization of people, the groups of which they are members, the links they have

Next 6 Months

Enterprise & Cloud

• Fine-Grained Permissions for Sites - Control access to content based on roles, groups and users
  
• Linking items - Create links to content across sites and folders
  

Cloud

• Metadata-driven, faceted searching
  
• Enable/disable download of a publicly shared document by non-authenticated users
  
• Password protection for publicly shared documents
  
• Link expiry dates for publicly shared documents
  
• New Review & Approval workflow to easily send documents for approval
  
• Review & Approval history UI for document that allows you to see if a document version has been signed off
  

Hybrid Business Processes

In conjunction with the Cloud Sync feature, Hybrid Business Processes allow workflows to transition from on-premise to workflows in the Cloud and back. For example, you can prepare and approve a document prior to engagement with another party, then move the document to the Cloud for collaboration with that party, and finally bring it back within the Private Enterprise for final review and approval.

Next 12 Months

Enterprise & Cloud

• Process Definition (Modeling) GUI - simple process creation via browser UI
  
• New out-of-the-box process definitions (such as distribution lists)
  
• Updated workflow UI components (simplification); backwards compatible
  
• Guest (anonymous) access
  
• Read-tracking
  
• Site Quotas
  

Next 18 Months

• TBD
  

User Experience

New technologies, capabilities and user experience concepts are constantly evolving, and the Alfresco applications will also evolve to better meet end user's expectations.
This can be challenging when users have become familiar with a particular way of working, so we try to make sure that we do not make radical transitions from release to release.

Next 6 Months

Desktop Sync 1.0

• Sync contents of favorite folders to Windows or Mac OS X file systems
  
• Multiple accounts, Cloud, Enterprise and Community
  

Share Web Client

• User Home and Shared folders in Share that allows collaboration and sharing of content without using Sites 
  
• Support online Microsoft Office editing in the repository views
  
• Share UI refresh - new styling and themes, pluggable views; backward compatible
  
• Grid and Mosaic rich media views (Galleries)
  
• Single item and Full Screen Views
  

Next 12 Months

• Folder Templates
  
• Trash can for end users
  
• Non-Flash based alternative for document previews
  
• Site Directories
  
• Drag-n-Drop support for upload new version
  
• Enhanced native content authoring and collaborative content editing
  

Next 18 Months

• TBD
  

Mobility

We will continue to rapidly expand the capabilities of our mobile apps, with particular focus on the tablet as a workplace for today and tomorrow's workers. As well as providing out of the box tablet and phone apps that work with Alfresco in the Cloud or on-premise, we are making Software Development Kits for iOS and Android available as Open Source. We will be working closely with a number of established mobile app vendors to use these SDKs to integrate Alfresco content services into their applications. 

Next 6 Months

Alfresco Hybrid plug-ins

• Alfresco Plug-in for Appcelerator for iOS
  
• Alfresco Plug-in for Appcelerator for Android
  
• Alfresco Plug-in for Phonegap for iOS
  

Alfresco for Symantec Sealed Program

• iOS and Android
  

Alfresco Mobile Android 1.4

• MobileIron MDM
  
• Folder Sync
  

Alfresco Mobile iOS 2.0

• SDK Based
  
• Folder Sync
  
• Document Shortcuts
  
• Improved Interface
  

Next 12 Months

• Matching iOS and Android Releases
  
• Regular Alfresco Mobile SDK Updates to match latest mobile app releases
  
• Alfresco Mobile for Android and iOS major updates including new User Interface
  
• We'll be looking at exciting new features to help drive personal and team productivity when using Alfresco solutions, including:
  
  • Collaboration
    
    • Workflow
      
    • Board Packets
      
  • Personal Productivity
    
    • Rich notes everywhere
      
  • Server Side User administration
    
    • User and Devices
      
    • Policies
      

Next 18 Months

• Alfresco Mobile vertical solutions for select industries
  

Solutions

Content and document management is not just about collaboration, there are a range of information-intensive businesses that use the
technology to provide tailored solutions, including imaging & scanning, case management, forms management and media management.
Alfresco provides a platform for building these tailored application as well as delivering these and business-ready solutions.

Next 6 Months

Records Management

• Transparent (In-place) Records - RM 2.1
  

Media Management

• Image Zoom & Pan
  
• Enhanced HTML5 Video Playback - Dynamic Streaming
  
• Metadata reading/writing
  
• Video Thumbnails & Transformation
  

Next 12 Months

Media Management

• Image Manipulation: Crop, Rotate, Convert, Watermark….
  
• Commenting & Annotation
  
• Media Management Search
  

Imaging / Scanning

• Image OCR
  

Solutions Platform

• Capability and Application Management - UI tools for defining application capabilities
  
• Image OCR
  
• Improved user profile extensibility
  
• Dynamic Folders (query driven)
  

Next 18 Months

Ecosystem

We are constantly striving to ensure the Alfresco Content Management Platform supports productive development of applications, integrations and extensions by partners and developers.

Next 6 Months

Google Docs 2.0 and 2.1

• Enterprise 4.2 (already available in the Alfresco Cloud and Alfresco Community 4.2)
  
• Provides the ability to create and edit documents, presentations, and spreadsheets in the Alfresco document library using the Google Docs editors
  

Salesforce 1.0

• Alfresco Cloud
  
• From within Salesforce, this allows documents to be attached to various items, including Opportunities. The documents are stored in Alfresco along with the Saleforce item's properties.
  

Developer Platform

• CMIS 1.1
  

End-of-life

• AVM
  
• Web Script backed CMIS 1.0 impl (/alfresco/service/cmis) - the Apache Chemistry based CMIS 1.0 implementation (/alfresco/cmisatom) will remain fully supported
  
• Google Docs v1
  

Next 12 Months

End-of-life

• JCR API
  
• CML SOAP API
  
• URL Addressibility API
  

Next 18 Months

End-of-life

• XAM Connector
  

2013 Roadmap