RIA for Enterprise 3.0

The first test version of FlexSpaces Mobile for Android (and Alfresco ECM) is now available for download on the FlexSpaces google code site. A more final version will be available on the Android Market for free. The first test version for iOS will use the “ad-hoc” testing Apple allows until an app is in the app store. For people interested in testing the iOS version (mainly for iPads, will fit on iPhone4 screens), email me (stevereiner at  integratedsemantics.com) your device uuid.   Test versions of CMIS Spaces Mobile for Android and iOS will be available soon too.

Notes:

• Need to have flexspaces webscripts installed in your Alfresco server
• Use settings / preferences on the initial login page to enter server domain/protocol/port.
• Geared for Android tablets, will also fit on high-res smart phones at least 480 pixels wide
• Geared more for landscape mode when have the navigation tree displayed (turn off in the view menu)
• App size is larger due to including captive air run-time so you don’t need to install the latest air separately
• Some features were left out for now (open calais semantic tagging, favorites section, local files panel, wcm)
• The FlexSpaces mobile project source is not checked into google code yet
• FlexSpaces in general still needs its start workflow feature fixed for Alfresco 4.0

FlexSpaces (open source Flex / desktop AIR application for Alfresco ECM) has been ported to Flex Mobile.

Here is a video of FlexSpaces Mobile for Alfresco running on an iPad2:

Here is a video of FlexSpaces Mobile for Alfresco running on an Android Tablet (ASUS Transformer):

FlexSpaces Mobile has the full features of desktop FlexSpaces AIR (creation and editing features, not just browsing and viewing).

The cool thing is FlexSpaces Mobile supports multiple mobile platforms from the same codebase (and has mostly the same code-base as the desktop AIR and browser versions).

Used Flash Builder 4.5.1 and Flex 4.5.1. (need to try with Flash Builder 4.6 / Flex 4.6 pre-release ).

All the features work (except favorites which should work if add at least one shortcut through the regular Alfresco client). More work still todo (performance, polish, etc.). Also need to add a preference dialog (for desktop version too) so things that are now in FlexSpacesConfig.xml can  be set without repackaging (or at least be able to set the repository url in the login dialog).

Changes for mobile have not been checked into the FlexSpaces google code project yet. Think FlexSpaces Mobile will be free and open source too. Also should have a commercial license / premium version too.

FlexSpaces doesn’t use CMIS (uses custom webscripts) so it can expose all the capabilities of Alfresco, not just what is in CMIS.

CMIS Spaces Mobile, based on FlexSpaces Mobile, is also up and running on Flex Mobile 4.5.1. This can support all repositories that support CMIS (Alfresco, Nuxeo, Microsoft SharePoint, EMC Documentum, IBM FileNet, OpenText, Adobe ADEP / Day CRX, etc.) Look for a future blog post with videos of CMIS Spaces Mobile in the near future.

These mobile apps are geared to the larger screens found on tablets (and desktops).  Having layouts for smart phones is not planned (some things could be done easily: tree navigation panel can be hidden already, smaller / less toolbar icons could be used. Other things would be more work: dialogs would need smaller layouts, multi-pane sections (version history, workflow attachments, etc.) would need to be done as overlays.

FlexSpaces (Flex+AIR, Flex+Browser, portlets) RIA clients for Alfresco ECM

In March, FlexSpaces (Google Code, Alfresco Forge) was finally ported from Flex 3 to Flex 4. A first pass of moving from halo controls to spark controls was made, and it has a new look with the spark theme. In April the “04 05 2011” version of FlexSpaces added the optional capability to use Alfresco Share form xml configurations to configure view/edit mode Flex forms in a new tabbed properties dialog, thus supporting custom types, aspects, etc. See the readme-form-config.txt in the distributions for how to enable and use this configuration capability.  This version also changed to have the advanced search and properties dialogs resizable using skins from flexdevtips.    

In May, the portlets to run FlexSpaces in portals were updated. To keep them from getting outdated as quickly, they are now wrappers that reference a separate install of the “in-browser” non AIR version of FlexSpaces (that can be updated separately). The older FlexSpaces Liferay portlet supported Liferay 5.x, the new one supports Liferay 6.x.  This is available in the Liferay community plugins catalog. The FlexSpaces portlet and gadget for the GateIn portal were both updated. The FlexSpaces portlet for the original JBoss portal was also updated.

CMIS Spaces (Flex+AIR, Flex+Browser, portlet) RIA clients for content servers supporting the CMIS standard (Alfresco, IBM, EMC, Nuxeo, Microsoft SharePoint, Adobe Day CRX, etc.)

In April, CMIS Spaces, based on FlexSpaces, was ported from Flex 3 to Flex 4. CMIS Spaces has both atompub rest binding support (default, with more features hooked up in the UI) and web services SOAP binding support (optional, with only navigation and search features can be used through the UI, although the full featured data access backend code is present). Note that the ActionScript code for all the CMIS SOAP binding APIs was re-generated with FlashBuilder 4 / Flex 4.1 SDK / fiber (and this improved things to not have repeated code for types across the multiple CMIS SOAP web services).

In May, a Liferay 6.x wrapper portlet for using CMIS Spaces in a Liferay portal was introduced. This portlet references a separate install of the “in-browser” version of CMIS Spaces. Having these two parts allows CMIS Spaces, like Flex Spaces, to be updated separately and avoids the portlet getting out of date. The CMIS Spaces portlet is also in the Liferay catalog.

The Alfresco OpenCalais Integration now has UI (Spring Surf / HTML /JavaScript / YUI)  for Alfresco Share in addition to the support in FlexSpaces (Flex/Flash).  The Share UI has a semantic tag cloud dashlet, a geo-tagged (Google map based) semantic map dashlet, and an auto-tagging action.  The Share UI is for Alfresco 3.3 and 3.4.

The dashlets will show semantic tags in all share sites when added to the overall Share dashboard, and show site specific semantic tags when added to site dashboards.  Clicking on a tag in the semantic tag cloud or on a semantic tag map marker will take you to a search results list of documents with the semantic tag.  The semantic tag cloud dashlet can be changed to show semantic tags for a specific category or all categories.

The semantic tag cloud dashlet is based on  Will Abson’s tag cloud dashlet in the Alfresco Share Extras collection. Will now also has a Google map dashlet in this collection showing geo-location of photo files using Tika extracted metadata available in Alfresco 3.4.

The added auto-tag action menu (in more menu and details page) can be used to auto tag the selected document with the OpenCalais service. This action is added to both site document libraries and repository document library page menu.The auto-tagging action can also be setup in a content rule to auto-tag all documents in a folder in the rule UI of Alfresco Explorer or in Share (choose to perfom the action “Auto-tag with Calais”).

Note that semantic tags are implemented with categories with a custom root category. They won’t show up in regular Alfresco tag or category UI.  Currently only the Alfresco Explorer details page will list semantic tags (update 3/30/2011: will now show up the Share doc details page too in the 1.3.1 version of the OpenCalais integration).

FlexSpaces, in addition to having the semantic tag clouds, semantic map, and auto-tag action features in the Share UI, also has support for suggesting semantic tags and for editing what semantic tags are assigned to a document.  See the semantic features in action in this screen-cam of an older version of FlexSpaces.

FlexSpaces 0.95  (for Alfresco and for Adobe LiveCycle Content Services ES2)

• Added AIR multi-file drag out to desktop (in addition to existing multi-file drag in)
• Calais semantic tag clouds and Calais semantic tag / Google Map are back in (in addition to auto tagging and tag suggest) (if configured in FlexSpaces with free Calais / Google Map keys, and have Calais Alfresco Integration installed)
• FlexSpaces on Google Code
• FlexSpaces on Alfresco Forge
• Calais Alfresco Integration on Alfresco Forge
  

CMIS Spaces (based on FlexSpaces, for content servers supporting the CMIS standard)

• Build 17 Added multi-file drag out to desktop in AIR version (in addition to existing multi-file drag in)
• Build 16 Added fixes to get navigation/browsing and upload to work on Day Software CRX 2.1 + CMIS package (issues remaining with Day CRX: upload doesn’t show up, 0 search results).
• Tested with Alfresco 3.3g and Day CRX 2.1. Previously have tested with Alfresco 3.2/3.3, EMC Documentum, IBM FileNet, Nuxeo. Haven’t tried with new CMIS support for SharePoint Microsoft has.
• CMIS Spaces on Google Code
• CMIS Spaces on Alfresco Forge

FlexibleDashboard

• Build 2:  Added BIRT report viewer pod
• Build 2: Added pivotable OLAP grid with XMLA datasource support (Mondrian, Pentaho, etc.)
• FlexibleDashboard on Google Code