[OOTB-hive] Workdesk, Case Management?

[Richard Esplin]

We haven't yet had anyone request that so there are no current plans. If there is sufficient interest in it, I can look into it.

An ALF issue would be best for me to track the request. If there are multiple comments showing that people want to maintain and enhance that product, it will help me to explain why it is worth the engineering time to find and post the code.


On Tuesday, February 21, 2017 8:02:24 PM MST Bindu Wavell wrote:
> Is the source for the enterprise edition going to be released as it is not
> sold anymore?
> 
> Bindu Wavell
> 
> On Feb 21, 2017 at 9:00 PM, Richard Esplin <richard.esplin at alfresco.com>
> wrote:
> 
> You make some excellent points Heiko. Thank you for writing this up.
> 
> No one has explained to me the reasoning around our end-of-life of
> Workdesk, but I do regularly hear discussions of how we will be bringing
> Workdesk functionality / case management functionality into new products.
> 
> It will take some time to bring these products to market, and we recognize
> that leaves a feature gap it. If anyone is interested in maintaining or
> modernizing Workdesk, the source code of the last release is available here:
> 
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/alfresco/files/Alfresco%20Workdesk%20Community%204.2.0/
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Richard
> 
> On Tuesday, February 21, 2017 11:43:42 AM MST Heiko Robert wrote:
> > Hi David,
> >
> > case management and the Alfresco repository are not the best friends if
> > you don't implement a separate (preferable relational) layer for the
> > case and business object master data. That may be the reason why this
> > road hasn't been continued.
> >
> > Alfresco made some architectural decisions which works good for
> > archiving (dead documents) but which conflict with the requirement to
> > _relate_ objects by metadata and processes as you may have already seen
> > in other case management systems:
> > * by default metadata is queried from SOLR (which is not designed to be
> > a replacement for a relational db)
> > * you can't garantuee when metadata is stored in the index (async)
> > * alfresco search doesn't support joins / complex queries, metadata
> > inheritance (I mean inheritance from data, not from model) which are
> > important principles in cases
> > * the alfresco db schema is not optimized for mass metadata queries /
> > case like queries and therfore not an alternative if you want to support
> > millions of nodes except you create your own BI like autogenerated
> > schema on top using mechanisms like materialized views.
> >
> > With this in mind any case like layer would be very limited on vanilla
> > Alfresco because you can only query on metadata directly stored on the
> > node but your users want to define complex queries for their case logic,
> > dimensions and they expect joined acces to other internal or external
> data.
> >
> > We decided to go the american way: love it or leave it (as it is). But
> > don't try to change it.
> >
> > To be happy with alfresco as it is we only store in alfresco:
> > * metadata which will never change
> > * references to master data as link to the case objects managed / stored
> > outside Alfresco (e.g. case-id, business-partner-id, process-id, ...)
> > Additionally we extended Share to use the external stored metadata and
> > query capabilities from our mastadata and case middle tier using
> > configurable controls which no longer require expensive Share
> > customization to support case views and showing relevant external data.
> > To work around the query restrictions in Alfresco to enable expected
> > case views we don't use smart folders but create associations controlled
> > by our custom rule based configurable layer (you may call this links to
> > other nodes). This scales much better and gives more flexibility than
> > just being restricted on metadata stored on a node.
> >
> > To make the long story short:
> > Alfresco is not the perfect layer for case management. You may want a
> > separate layer for that and either another client instead of Share or
> > configurable extensions for Share (as a supported, managed product) to
> > implement the expected behavior and UI.
> > I would not encourage anybody to customize Share for this as a single
> > customer project. You would be surprised about the huge efforts to
> > support and migrate this over several Alfresco Share versions.
> >
> > If there is enough interest from others we may discuss this in detail
> > and by examples in a private web meeting but be warned: our solutions
> > are not open source and not for free ;-)
> >
> > Regards
> > Heiko
> >
> > Am 21.02.2017 um 01:18 schrieb L. David Zuluaga Botero:
> > > Hi Bees, sorry for writing so many times, but we're pretty new to the
> > > community and would like to contact people who have the same questions
> > > we have!
> > >
> > > I am writing now because according to some client's requests and some
> > > inquiries I've made, seems that the perfect solution is Alfresco
> > > Workdesk!. (case management and similar applications)
> > >
> > > However, the project seems to be deprecated, which I cannot
> > > understand... Since it seems to be an increasing need from the public,
> > > and are integrated systems that alike systems like Nuxeo has integrated,
> > > according to what can be seen really quick on their web.
> > >
> > > Anyhow, I though the Alfresco Share would have something similar.. but
> > > there's no trace of it.
> > >
> > > Luis Sanchez, a OOTB member, suggested us to retake the most recent
> > > workdesk version. But we'd like to know whether someone else is involved
> > > with workdesk use, usecases, implementations, etc.
> > >
> > > Should we have to develop it, refactor it?
> > >
> > > I'll be looking forward to your response,
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