Hello all,

We just installed LifeRay and Alfresco. Using the CMIS hook, we put documents from LifeRay into Alfresco. Though that works, we're quite disappointed.

The way the files are stored in Alfresco make them unusable from Alfresco (we perhaps could live with the strange way this all is organized, but the fact the files are renamed and stripped from their original extension, that's just awful).

The other way around doesn't work either: when storing files with Alfresco in the LifeRay repository, LifeRay can't handle the file.

From an architectural point of view I can see why this was done, but this is something one cannot explain to end-users. They expect a more tight integration (and quite frankly, so would I).

Is anybody else struggling with this issue (a nicer integration between Alfresco and LifeRay)? Any thoughts?

Best, Raj.

Hi Raj,

Thanks for the input. I myself don't know a ton about Alfresco or our integration, but could you share what version/bundle you're on? If you have time, it would also be nice if you could file an improvement ticket for the issue. I can get the right people to look at it, so that it gets improved in the future for you.

Warm regards,
Sam

Hello Sam,

Thanks for the prompt response.

We're using LifeRay 6.0.4 (CE) and Alfresco 3.3 (CE). The repository is configured as described in http://www.liferay.com/web/jonas.yuan/blog/-/blogs/alfresco-3-3-delivers-cmis-support-integration-with-liferay-6.

I'll file the ticket.

Best, Raj

Thanks Raj,

When you're done filing, you can post the LPS here and I will see that the right people look at it and move it to the product backlog

Thanks! Here you go: http://issues.liferay.com/browse/LPS-12127

Hey Raj,

Turns out this has actually been on the product roadmap, and is getting worked on for 6.1

So right now, what we do is use Alfresco kind of like a Database. But that means you shouldn't touch your files from Alfresco if you're using Liferay to hook into it. The reason for this is that Liferay needs to keep track of the files, and it has it's own versioning system.

In the future, we plan on writing some sort of wrapper that accesses Alfresco through Alfresco, and doesn't even store any kind of information about Alfresco's files, thus avoiding this problem. That way you can use Liferay and Alfresco simultaneously for a set of files, rather than "one or the other."

Thanks for bringing this up

Warm regards,
Sam

Hi Sam,

Thanks for the insight, sounds good to me.

Just wondering: will this allow real two-way communication between Alfresco and LifeRay? Accessing LifeRay's stored documents from Alfresco would be a huge improvement, but adding content to LifeRay through Alfresco would even be better...

Best, Raj

Hi Raj,

So the way it will work is this. Liferay will use Alfresco as a document store if you want it to, like we do now, except that instead of setting everything to the way we do things, it will use Alfresco's stuff (e.g versioning scheme) to manipulate the files. So when you're in Alfresco, you can add files, access files, and do whatever. When you're in Liferay you can access the same files, add files, and do whatever. So basically, it's two-way interaction between Liferay and Alfresco, acting on the same set of data.

So you will be able to add something to the document manager via alfresco, and if it's hooked into Liferay, you can access the same document from Liferay. And vice versa.

Right now, if you use Alfresco with Liferay, you can only modify files using Liferay. If you use Alfresco it will screw things up. Basically Liferay only integrates with Alfresco using it as a file datastore. It doesn't do anything further...yet

Hope this answers your question!

Warm regards,
Sam