Getting Started: How Alfresco Works
- Terminology Guide – Skim the Alfresco terminology guide before diving into details of the product.
- Aflresco Documentation Resource Center – These “Getting Started Tutorials” are great for first-time Alfresco users: “Alfresco Explorer Document Management” and “Getting Started with Alfresco Share Collaboration”. This site is organized like online help, so navigate the tree on the left to find these tutorials.
- Alfresco in an Hour – This webcast will show you many of the features available in Alfresco.
- Replacing your Shared Drive with Alfresco – This webcast walks you through the “new to Enterprise Content Management” scenario. Take a look if you are new to ECM.
- BOOK: Professional Alfresco: Practical Solutions for Enterprise Content Management – Many will find the first 5-8 chapters useful in understanding the Alfresco landscape.
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Try Alfresco for Yourself – This is the best way to learn about how Alfresco works is to play with it.
- The Cloud Trial is a simple way to take a look at Alfresco Share without installing the product.
- You can Download Alfresco’s Community Edition free of charge and install it on your own server.
- You can try the Enterprise edition of Alfresco free for 30 days.
Administering and Configuring Alfresco
- Data Dictionary – To understand the existing object model, you should review the existing Alfresco Data Dictionary. This link also gives you a step-by-step guide to defining a new model definition with new content types, aspects, and associations.
- BOOK: Professional Alfresco: Practical Solutions for Enterprise Content Management – Chapters 14-18 will guide you through many of the most common customizations.
- Administering an Alfresco ECM Production Environment – In addition to information about installing and administering Alfresco, this document contains a big section on configuration that is worth reviewing. (Available only with an enterprise license.)
- Alfresco Documentation for Community Edition – Installation and configuration guides for the Alfresco Community Edition.
- Alfresco Wiki – The Alfresco Wiki is full of great information, but it can be hard to know where to start. The content on the Wiki is always in flux, so pay close attention to the version/release information in your quest for knowledge.
Alfresco Development and Customizations
- BOOK: Professional Alfresco: Practical Solutions for Enterprise Content Management – This book is useful for eveything from understanding the Alfresco landscape to implementing your own customizations.
- BOOK: Alfresco Developer Guide – This book is full of step-by-step instructions on how to implement many of the most common configurations and customizations. The book will help you do everything from setting up your development environment to packaging and deploying your newly developed customizations.
- Alfresco Forums – A decent, free resource for getting your questions answered. If you are browsing the forums, in search of a particular roadblock or issue, pay particular attention to the date on the forum threads. Alfresco has undergone many changes in the years since it was created, so some of the information on both the forums and the Alfresco Wiki may be deprecated or obsolete in the most recent releases.
- Alfresco Issues – Search for existing issues in Alfresco or add new ones.
- Alfresco Developer Tools – The developer tools is a sample code archive. Make sure the code is still applicable to your Alfresco release.
- Alfresco API Reference – The API reference is a great resource when you’re writing custom Web Scripts.
Keeping Up (Blogs and Tweets)
- ECM Architect – Jeff Pott’s blog is a great way to keep up with some of the changes in Alfresco and Enterprise Content Management.
- Peter Monks: Alfresco from the trenches – As head of the Alfresco North American consulting group, Peter Monks blogs about everything ECM.
- Alfresco Blogs – A listing of lots of other Alfresco Blogs on the web
- If you use twitter, here’s what to follow:
- @mikeytrafton – Blue Fish founder and Chief Architect – retweets the most interesting Alfresco tweets from around the tweetosphere
- @Alfresco – Alfresco’s company twitter account, posts Alfresco related news and retweets most Alfresco employees
- @pmonks – Alfresco consulting guru
- @johnnewton – Alfresco’s co-Founder and CTO
- #Alfresco – tweets about Alfresco from the entire Alfresco community
General Resources
Books
- BOOK: Professional Alfresco: Practical Solutions for Enterprise Content Management – Written by Alfresco CTO and engineering staff
- BOOK: Alfresco Developer Guide – Jeff Potts’ Book
- BOOK: Alfresco 3 Web Services
- BOOK: Alfresco 3 Enterprise Content Management Implementation
Downloads
- Community Edition – The open-source aspect of Alfresco means it is free to download, customize and even use in a production environment.
- Enterprise Edition – The Alfresco 3 Enterpise Edition is available on a per CPU license basis.
Websites
- Alfresco.com
- Aflresco Documentation Resource Center
- Aflresco Forge Community
- Alfresco Forums
- Alfresco Network (Requires Enterprise License)
- Alfresco SlideShare
- Alfresco Webcasts
- Alfresco Wiki
- Alfresco Youtube
Technical
Alfresco Technical Resources
Code Samples
- Dr. Q’s Workshop – Hello World Dashlet
- Blue Fish – Alfresco Source Code Organization
- Example Dashlet Source Code
