Contributors Guide

Chapter 3 Using LibreOffice's Alfresco Website

Copyright
This document is Copyright 2011 by its contributors as listed below. You may distribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license ([Link] version 3.0 or later. All trademarks within this guide belong to their legitimate owners.

Contributors
Jeremy Cartwright Surat Lozowick Jean Hollis Weber

Feedback
Please direct any comments or suggestions about this document to: documentation@[Link]

Acknowledgments
This chapter is based on the work of the following: David Nelson Jean Hollis Weber Jeremy Cartwright Ron Faile Jr. Samphan Raruenrom

Publication date and software version

Published 18 May 2011. Based on Alfresco Community - v3.4.0 (c 3335).

Documentation for LibreOffice is available at [Link]

Contents
Copyright......................................................................................................................................... 2 Introduction...................................................................................................................................... 4 What is Alfresco?......................................................................................................................... 4 Logging in to Alfresco.................................................................................................................. 4 The Alfresco Interface...................................................................................................................... 4 The Toolbar................................................................................................................................. 4 The Sidebar................................................................................................................................. 5 The Working Area........................................................................................................................ 5 The Alfresco interface: terms.......................................................................................................6 Initial setup....................................................................................................................................... 6 Change your password................................................................................................................ 6 Navigating through the LibreOffice spaces.......................................................................................7 Navigating using the Working Area..............................................................................................7 Navigating using the Sidebar.......................................................................................................8 Exploring the Working Area.............................................................................................................. 8 Using the Custom View pane......................................................................................................9 Using the Content Items pane...................................................................................................10 LibreOffice documentation workflow: Theory.................................................................................10 LibreOffice documentation workflow: Practice................................................................................11 Adding new content...................................................................................................................11 Editing offline............................................................................................................................. 11 Upload new version...................................................................................................................12 Done editing.............................................................................................................................. 12 Submitting a document to review...............................................................................................13 Reviewing a document..............................................................................................................13 Check Out a document..............................................................................................................13 Submit to Proofing..................................................................................................................... 14 Proofing a document.................................................................................................................14 Starting a discussion.................................................................................................................14 Rejecting a document................................................................................................................15 Where to from here?...................................................................................................................... 15

Using LibreOffice's Alfresco Website

Introduction
This chapter aims to get you familar and working as quickly as possible with the LibreOffice documentation workflow, using the Alfresco content management system. It describes a single way of operating within the Alfresco framework abiding by the LibreOffice workflow. This guide is NOT a definitive description of all that's available with Alfresco. As you grow comfortable with Alfresco, it is most certain that you will find a way of working that suits you better.

What is Alfresco?
Alfresco is a highly customizable, feature-rich ECM (Enterprise Content Management) system. Alfresco is a powerful tool. From the Alfresco website, The Alfresco content platform uses flexible, open standards architecture to provide document management, web content management, records management and collaboration software to 1100 enterprise customers in 40 countries. Impressive, truly. However, we are not here to understand Alfresco fully, but to document.

Logging in to Alfresco
The LibreOffice Alfresco site is located at [Link] . You will be greeted with a login box in the middle of the screen. Enter the user name and password you received from an administrator and click Login. The Alfresco user interface opens.

The Alfresco Interface

The Alfresco interface has three main components:

The Toolbar The Sidebar The Working Area

The Toolbar
The Toolbar is the strip that runs across the top of the screen.

Using LibreOffice's Alfresco Website

A detailed description of the Toolbar can be found in the Alfresco Help Page under Getting Started/User Interface. To summarize, the components of the Toolbar from left to right are:

The LibreOffice logo Links to various spaces Administration Console icon (not shown in image; may not be present for all users) User Profile icon Hide or Show the Sidebar icon Help icon Raise an Issue link Logout (username) link A Searchbar

The Sidebar
The sidebar runs along the left-hand side of the screen. A detailed description of the Sidebar can be found in the Alfresco Help Page under Getting Started/User Interface. You can explore the Sidebar and its features at your leisure, and are encouraged to do so. Note: If you cannot see the Sidebar, be sure to click the 'Hide or Show the Sidebar' icon located in the Toolbar.

The Working Area

Using LibreOffice's Alfresco Website

The working area on the right fills most of the screen. A detailed description of the Working Area can be found in the Alfresco Help Page under Getting Started/User Interface. As you use Alfresco, this is the are where you will work. The Working Area is comprised of different panes. We will look at some of them later in this chapter.

The Alfresco interface: terms

The Toolbar The strip that runs across the top of the screen. Used for navigation. The Sidebar The bar that runs along the left-hand side of the screen. Used for navigation. The Working Area The area that fills most of the screen. It is a dynamic area that will change based on choices made with the Toolbar and the Sidebar. Space An Alfresco-specific term equivalent to directory or folder in other systems. Pane A portion of the Working Area. They can vary depending on which Working Area is being shown. Space Header The space header caps the Working Area and contains details on the current space and the functions available within the space.

Initial setup
The first time you login to Alfresco, you may wish to do a few housekeeping tasks, for example change your password and add more details to your profile.

Change your password

As the first order of business, let's change the password supplied off-list to something that only you know. To do this, select the User Profile icon in the Toolbar, which leads to the User Profile and Settings page. The User Profile and Settings Working Area offers three panes, My Details, General Preferences and Management. The option to change your password is located in the bottom left of the My Details pane.

Using LibreOffice's Alfresco Website

Clicking that link leads to a screen which prompts for your old password, your new password and a confirmation (type new password again). To the right of that dialog are two buttons: Finish, which is initially not active; and Close, which is active. After you correctly enter the information in the Change Password dialog, the Finish button becomes active. Click Finish to save your changes and return to the User Profile and Settings page. If you wish to fill in the rest of your details, please do so. You can come back to your profile at any time and add or change the information.

Navigating through the LibreOffice spaces

You can move around the contents of the LibreOffice spaces in two ways: using the Sidebar, and using the Workspace. Both methods begin by clicking Company Home in the Sidebar.

This will open the Company Home space in the Working Area and display several spaces in both the Working Area and the hierarchy of the Sidebar. Some of these spaces are for documents in different languages; well be looking at the English Contant space.

Navigating using the Working Area

To navigate using the Working Area, click on the name of the required space, for example English Content. The Working Area changes to show the subspaces in the English Content space. Notice that the Sidebar does not change. In the English Content subspace, click on Documentation. Here you will find the names of the user guides and other documentation (such as Quick Reference Guides) that we are working on. Notice the Items Per Page field on the right-hand side. You can change the number of items displayed in the Workspace. Otherwise, if there are more items than will fit on one page, you can
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navigate through the pages of items using the Page field below the list of items (not shown in illustration above). Notice also that the icons by each of the item names are folders, indicating that these items are subspaces. When you get to a subspace containing files, the icons change to those relevant to the individual files. Well see some examples later in this chapter.

Navigating using the Sidebar

Navigating though the Working Area can be a bit time-consuming, especially if you want to change from one subspace to another. For faster navigation, use the Sidebar. The Sidebar should now be showing a set of subspaces under Company Home. Click on the arrow next to (en) English [English] Content to drop down a list of subspaces in the English space. Click on the arrow next to Documentation to drop down a list of documentation spaces (the user guides and the other document types we are producing). The Navigator area in the Sidebar should now look like the picture below. (Note that the Working Area does not change when you are opening the Sidebar hierarchy.) Now choose the book you are going to be working on. This example uses the Getting Started guide. Click on the triangle to open more subspaces: Drafts, Proofread, Published, and Reviewed. Each book has these four subspaces, which are used during the document production process. They are listed in alphabetical order, but as youll see later, the workflow order is actually Drafts > Reviewed > Proofread > Published. At this point the Working Area still shows the Company Home space. When you click on the name of one of the spaces, the contents of that space opens in the Working Area. You can then quickly navigate from one space to another using the Navigator in the Sidebar.

Exploring the Working Area

Click on the Writer Guide in the Sidebar. You should see three panes in the Working Area: Custom View, Browse Spaces, and Content Items. We are interested in the Browse Spaces pane, where four spaces are listed: Drafts, Reviewed, Proofread, and Published. These spaces are also listed in the Sidebar if you have expanded the Writer Guide section. Each space offers a description, the date it was created, and a series of icons to provide further functionality. You can click on the name of one of the spaces to display the contents of that space. Some spaces may have no contents. As well see in the next section of this chapter, files appear in the space associated with their stage in the documentation workflow.

Using LibreOffice's Alfresco Website

How will you know where files are located, without changing from one space to another? Heres the trick: click on the arrow to the left of the Custom View pane in the Writer Guide space. The pane expands to show the four spaces and a list of files in each space. There you will see a list of files under the name of the space where they are located. At the time of writing this chapter, the Writer Guide chapters are in the Reviewed space. At this point you can either choose a file from the Custom View or open the appropriate space in the Browse Spaces pane to see the content items in the Reviewed space. Which method you use is entirely up to you.

Using the Custom View pane

In the Custom View pane, you can see immediately if any documents are checked out for editing: those filenames will have Locked set to Yes. To see more information about a file, and actions that can be taken on the file, click its name in the list. The Details page has many panes; not all are visible in the illustration below.

Using LibreOffice's Alfresco Website

We are primarily interested in the Properties and Actions panes. You can edit the information in the Properties pane. To do so, click the Modify icon in the top right of that pane. You can also choose an action, such as Check Out, from the Actions pane. Well look at actions later in this chapter.

Using the Content Items pane

In the Content Items pane of (in this case) the Reviewed space, youll see several icons below each of the files. These icons provide quick access to common actions; well look at their use later in this chapter. The middle icon (View Details), which looks like sheet of paper, opens the same Details page as shown above.

LibreOffice documentation workflow: Theory

[Some of the details in this section may change as we review our processes. This section will be revised if/when that occurs.] The LibreOffice documentation workflow is facilitated by automation in Alfresco. As you have seen in the previous section, each of our books has a subspace structure of four subspaces: Drafts, Reviewed, Proofread, and Published. You can think of those four subspaces as a continuum. Drafts > Reviewed > Proofread > Published Our workflow is described below. Step 1 A documenter uploads a new file to the Drafts space. Another documenter checks out the file. Alfresco marks it as Locked as they do so. After the second documenter is done editing the document, they check it back in. If they feel it requires no more work, they Approve the file and it progresses to the Review space.
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Step 2 A reviewer checks out the file from the Reviewed space. Alfresco marks it as Locked as they do so. After the reviewer is done reviewing the file, they check it back in. If they feel it needs more work, they Reject the file and it goes back to the Drafts space to begin the cycle again. If they feel it is ready to progress, they Approve the file and it progresses to the Proofread space. Step 3 An editor checks out the file from the Proofread space. Alfresco marks it as Locked as they do so. After the editor is done working with the file, they check it back in. If they feel it needs more work, they Reject the file and it goes back to the Drafts space to begin the cycle again. If they feel it is ready to progress, they Start Discussion on the file to inform other editors and proofreaders that the file has cleared one editing and needs one more. Step 4 A second editor or proofreader checks out the file from the Proofread space. Alfresco marks it as Locked as they do so. After this person is done proofing the file, they check it back in. If they feel it needs more work, they Reject the file and it goes back to the Drafts space to begin the cycle again, adding to the Discussion that the file was rejected. If they feel it is ready to progress, they Approve the file and it progresses to the Publish space, where it waits for the other chapters of the book to become LibreOffice documentation.

LibreOffice documentation workflow: Practice

Now lets put the theory into practice. For this exercise, we will follow a document through the steps listed above.

Adding new content

To begin, navigate to the Drafts space of the Getting Started Guide. In the Toolbar of the Drafts space, click on Add Content. That will bring you to the Add Content Dialog, which features a search box and a Browse button. Click Browse, locate the file you would like to upload on your computer's hard drive, and click Open on the pop-up window. The Add Content Dialog then changes to show your choice and allows you to verify settings. Do so, then click the OK button to the right. This opens the Modify Content Properties dialog, where you can modify the content properties. Alfresco is usually quite good at importing metadata, so if your document has the correct information in its Properties dialog, you may not need to make any changes on this dialog. However, its generally useful to fill in the Description field. Click OK when you are satisfied with the properties.

Editing offline
The document has been added, but we are not yet done creating the content. So we want to Edit Offline. We do not want to download, as that merely gives us a copy; it does not trigger the versioning and it does not lock the document for us. So we will click the first icon under our document, the pencil Edit Offline. This will do a few things: 1) It automatically downloads the document to our hard drive. 2) It locks the original document to inform others that youre working on it, and 3) It creates a (Working Copy) of the document which you can update often until you have finished editing.

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If we choose Done Editing, we will get a dialog on which we will go into greater detail later. If we choose Cancel Editing, the (Working Copy) will disappear, the original document's version will remain unmodified, and no changes will be saved. If we choose Upload new version, we can keep working on the document without affecting the original document's versioning until we are truly ready to update it. Let's do that now. Choose Upload new version.

Upload new version

This brings up a dialog much like the Add Content dialog. Click the Browse button, find the file on your hard drive, and click OK. If all goes well with the transfer, you will be told as much and the OK button will be clickable. Click it and you return to the Drafts space. The original document has remained unaffected at this point. And you still have all the choices available to you as before with your (Working Copy). This has merely refreshed the (Working Copy) on Alfresco so that your team can see the progress you are making on the document as you work on it.

Done editing
When you have finished editing your document and are ready to commit the changes, you need to upload a new version of your file so it mirrors what you have been editing. And then you are ready to commit the changes. First, though, let's take a look at the details of the original document. In the Custom View pane of the Working Area, you should see icons for each subspace of the Getting Started Guide. Under the Drafts icon, you should see both the original document you uploaded and the (Working Copy) of that original. The original is still at Version 1.0, even though you might have updated your (Working Copy) a few times, as in the example. Lets update and see what happens. Click the (Working Copy) link in the Custom View pane, and that will take you to the Details page of that document. To the right of the Panes there is a smaller Pane, named Actions. This offers all of the functionality and more that was available to you in the previous view. Find Done Editing in that Actions pane, and click it. This brings you to a dialog where you can choose to increment the version number by .1 or up to the next full number in this case 2.0. It also gives you the option to write some version notes. This can serve as a useful summary of the work that you've done, for the sake of others working with that document. Make your choices and click the OK button to the right.
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This will bring you back to the Working Working Area. Our Custom View shows us that there is now just one file, the original document. It also shows us that the version number has been incremented to reflect the change of your applied edits. It also shows that the document is no longer locked. Let's view the Details of that document. Click the link in the Custom View to go to the Details page. The bottom pane in the Details Working Area is Version History. Click the triangle next to Version History to expand that pane. You can see both versions, the original and the edited version you just applied. If you entered version notes, you can see that as well. If you ever need to retrieve a previous version, clicking the appropriate version number in this pane will download the document to your hard drive for editing.

Submitting a document to review

You have committed the changes of your document and are ready to Submit to Review. While we are still in the Details page of our document, look in the Actions pane for Submit to Review. Click that icon. This will take you back to the Working Working Area. Our Custom View shows that the document is no longer in Drafts, but has moved to Reviewed. You can also see that the version number has incremented by .1. Even though there were no edits committed, it has changed status, and therefore has a new version number.

Reviewing a document
Now we are ready to review our document. And to be clear, this is an exercise. Submitting to Review and then Reviewing the same document is generally considered poor form and is not something we recommend. With that said, and the understanding that we do not do this in production, lets move on. (If you discover that you need to make further changes to the document, you can check it out as described below, upload a revised copy, and check it in again.) Click on the document link in the Custom View. In the Actions pane, there are now a couple of viable options. We can choose Edit Offline, the process we have covered previously. This is a streamlined method which removes a lot of extra steps. Or we can choose Check Out. This will lock the document and provide a working copy, but won't necessarily download the file to our hard drive. It's our choice. Also, when we check in later we are given more choices as to which document we will check in. Let's check out our document. Click that icon now.

Checking out a document

Clicking Check Out will take you to the Check Out page. There is a dialog which explains that your working copy can be created in the same space as the original document, or in a space of your choosing. Selecting In the current space will allow us to take advantage of our Custom View, so click Check Out with the default setting, In the current space.
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You are given the option to download the (Working Copy) on the next dialog page. Click the document name in the dialog and then click Save, then OK on the pop-up box. Finally click OK on the Check Out page. This will take you back to the Working Area. As you can see in the Custom View, the original document is now locked and there is a (Working Copy) present in the directory as well. After you review the document, return to this page, click on the (Working Copy) in the Custom View and select either Undo Check Out (if you did not make any changes) or Check In (if you did make changes). If you choose Check In, you will see a box where you can choose the document to upload and check in. This takes you back to the Working Area, where you can either send the document on to the next stage (proofreading) or return it to Drafts for further work.

Submitting a document to Proofread

You have reviewed your document and are ready to submit it to be proofread. Click on your documents name in the Custom View pane and look in the Actions pane for Submit to Proofing. Click that icon. This will take you back to the Working Area. Our Custom View shows that the document is no longer in Review, but has moved to Proofread. You can also see that the version number has incremented by .1. Even though there were no edits committed, it has changed status, and therefore has a new version number.

Proofing a document
By now you should see a pattern emerging. We find a document in a space. We take measures to Lock the document in Alfresco and download it to our hard drive, either the long way with Check Out or the streamlined way with Edit Offline. When we are done, we update the document as necessary and ensure that the document is no longer locked in Alfresco. Then we move the document in the LibreOffice workflow. We haven't covered Start Discussion yet, though, as well as what happens when a document is Rejected. Let's do that now. From the Working Working Area of Boot Camp, select your document's name. In the Details page, select Edit Offline. Click Save on the Pop-up, and then Close in the Edit Offline dialog. Proof the document as desired. Let's say it withstands the first proofing unscathed. Click the (Working Copy) document in the working Custom View pane. Click Cancel Editing in the Actions pane. Confirm by clicking Cancel Editing to the right.

Starting a discussion
Now click the document's name in the Custom View again. But this time click Start Discussion in the Actions pane. This launches the Start Discussion page. Enter a Subject, such as Proofing, and a Message, such as This Document has cleared one Proofing. and then click Create Topic to the right.

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Using LibreOffice's Alfresco Website

This will take you to the Topic page, named for the Subject you gave your Discussion. This page displays your post and allow others to respond.

Rejecting a document
From the Working Area, select your document's name. In the Details page, select Edit Offline. Click Save on the Pop-up, and then Close in the Edit Offline dialog. Proof the document as desired. Let's say the document doesn't clear the second proofing. Click the (Working Copy) document in the Custom View pane. Find Done Editing in the Actions pane, and click it. This brings you to a dialog where you can choose to increment the version number by .1 or up to the next full number in this case 2.0. It also gives you the option to write some version notes. Make your choices and click the OK button to the right. Now click the document's name in the Custom View again. But this time click View Discussions in the Actions pane. This launches the Discussion page. Click on the topic you would like to respond to, in this case Proofing. Each bubble will have a Post Reply choice, and depending on if you created the post or not, an Edit Post and Delete Post as well. Lets choose Post Reply. This launches a message dialog where we can enter text. Write a brief description of the problem, for example Several figures need to be replaced. They are marked in the file. Click OK. You can now see the discussion. Now we need to Reject this file to Drafts. In the Working Area, select the document name to load the Details page. From that page, choose Reject to Drafts in the Actions pane. This will change the screen to the Working Area, where we can see in our Custom View that the document has indeed moved to Drafts, its version number has been incremented by .1, and it is now ready to begin the cycle again. Feel free to practice on your document as much as necessary to get a handle on Alfresco and how to maneuver within its framework while abiding by the LibreOffice Documentation workflow.

Where to from here?

Alfresco is a powerful tool, and this guide detailed a single way of operating within the Alfresco framework while abiding by the LibreOffice Documentation workflow. There are various paths you can take to reach the same destination, and as you become comfortable with Alfresco and the workflow, your personal workflow can evolve, and you can improve upon the tips provided here. For instance, try creating a shortcut in your home space to a document you will be focusing on. Try customizing your My Alfresco space to suit you. There are many ways you can harness Alfresco to work for you and your preferences.

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