Open Source ECM software

[unisys12]

Anyone out there every played with any of this stuff? Actually, I have never set-up any sorta ECM software, so... But if things slow down for me this summer, or sooner, I am going to play around with an open source platform I have been eyeing recently.

It's called Open Source Enterprise Content Management System (CMS) by Alfresco and the version I will be playing with is Alfresco Labs 3 - AlfrescoWiki. The Labs version, once known as the community version, is the free open source version with no direct support from the company. If you would like support, you can pay upwards of 15k a year for support services from the company. No Thank You!!

Anyway, for those that don't know anything about it... this software is essentially the open source version of MS Share Point. Almost everything about was designed to model Share Point I think. There might even be laws against how close it models itself, but I'm still a little unfamiliar with it.

Anyone out there looking or playing with this stuff?

[fausto1981]

WOW this look REALLY cool and you were right it kind of looks just like sharepoint... I will definitely check it out if I have some free time...

[unisys12]

I was really hoping that I was already playing with it, but things are pretty busy. I finally got our new eAutomate server going this afternoon, after everyone went home. That has been a project that has drug out longer than a drunken guitar solo.

I was talking to one of our owners today and he said that he really wanted me to start working on this as soon as I could, but understands that I've had my hands full here recently. We purchased a nice NAS, hoping it would suffice, for now, but although we scan to it thorugh FTP... we cannot log into the appliance and view the documents. We have to download them. And since there is no way to monitor version history or anything like that, we figure that in the long run, it will just turn into a bigger mess than what we have now. But instead of beening spread across a bunch of different PC's, the mess will be concerntrated on this appliance. So, it seems as though we will just be using it for server back-ups, documentation storage and that sorta stuff.

My only concern, about using Alfresco or any other CM software in our office, is getting people to use it. Once I get it up and going, I have to learn how to use it, then train everyone else. Trainings not the problem. For some reason, our folks don't like change too much. No matter how it might help them and how sloppy things are for them right now, change is not a good thing `round there.

Oh well... it gives me something to do I guess...