Alfresco 3.4 Integration

BPA has extensive experience in building ECM solutions on open source enterprise content management. Alfresco is one of the leading open-source ECM. BPA is a Gold Partner of Alfresco.

BPA implemented various Alfresco related customizations. BPA also integrated Alfresco with few prominent 3rd party tools that hold a vital role in ECM.

Image Management Solution, is one of such implementations executed by BPA, The need for scanning software is very essential for this kind of a solution.

Kofax Capture was chosen by the client as scanning software that had to be integrated with Alfresco. Kofax Capture, formerly Ascent Capture, scans documents into accurate, retrievable information, and delivers them as PDF documents into a content management system.

Kofax can be integrated with Alfresco in the following ways:

• By using the Alfresco Release Script.
• Using the CIFS protocol.

Both these approaches have some challenges to meet.

BPA was able to overcome these challenges efficiently and thus provided the client a unique solution.

Some of the details are as follows:

• Scan the documents using any scanner.
• Zone the primary key (eg Job Id #)
• Full Text OCR (If you need it)
• Save the scanned documents into the Network Drive (using CIFS), that was mapped to an Alfresco Space; say “Watch Folder” is the name of the space.
• Use a Business Rule to read the Job Id # and set all the other related meta-data which is already stored in Alfresco.
• Use the same Business Rule, to move this scanned document from the “Watch Folder” to the respective folder, to which this document belongs to.

Click here for the Power Point Presentation on the CIFS based Image Management Solution.

Knowing more about Alfresco:

What is Alfresco?

Alfresco is an open source enterprise content management.

Alfresco can be used to implement the following:

• Document Management
• Web Content Management
• Collaboration Services

Document Management: Alfresco Document Management captures, shares and retains content, enabling users to version, search and simply build their own content applications - all with the tools they use today.

Web Content Management: Alfresco WCM engages customers through next-generation sites enabling mass contributions from internal and external users, simple configuration via reusable Web Scripts and low cost massive scalability that uses commodity software and hardware.

Collaboration Services: Share is built on the Alfresco enterprise-class document repository and delivers out-of-the-box collaborative content management. It simplifies capturing, sharing and retrieval of information across virtual teams. Team or project members can rapidly find relevant content, experts, look at past or similar projects and keep on top of any relevant changes to make them more efficient.

Features and benefits of Alfresco:

• Content Management that Real People, Teams and Customers want to use
• Simple to use, integrate and rollout for enterprise adoption
• With the Cost Savings of Open Source
• 1/10th of the cost of traditional ECM with the added cost saving of an OSS stack
• And the Scalability and High Availability of Java
• 5 Times faster and no proprietary tie-in
• Virtual File System
• Replace shared drives and offer the same interface
• Email-Like Rules
• Configure plug-in rules to automate manual processing and offer out-of-sight compliance
  
• Google-like Search
• Search directly from Firefox or IE7
• Yahoo-like Browsing
• Automatic meta-data extraction and categorization
• SmartSpaces
• Best practice collaboration spaces
• Transparent Lifecycle support