Alfresco Lays Groundwork for DoD 5015.2 Certification with Alfresco Community 3.2

By Barb Mosher (@barbmosher) Jul 6, 2009 Comments

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Alfresco 3.2 Records Mgt, iPhone Support, IMAP, CMIS Alfresco (news, site) has been talking about their ability to support to the complete CMIS specification in the next version of their ECM for a little while now, but that's not all that has arrived with Alfresco 3.2. The latest version of the community edition of their open source enterprise content management software also includes some updated records management capabilities, improved Forms, IMAP support and a nice solution for the iPhone.

Prepping for DoD Certification

Any enterprise content management system worth its salt will have some strong records management capabilities. And to get into government, DoD 5015.2 certification is critical. With Community 3.2, Alfresco delivers some new records management capabilities built on the Alfresco Share/Surf platform.

Alfresco 3.2 Records Management

According to Alfresco, this is the first CMIS enabled records management system. It has a new YUI-based Forms system, new metadata management, lifecycle management, more open import/export capabilities, enhanced auditing and improved workflow to support all those Freedom of Information Requests.

Other features include inline browsing and URL accessible records and Forms.

Alfresco is aiming for DoD 5015.2 Certification this September. But before that happens, an update in August will provide a new Records Site that includes reporting tools and query capabilities. The Records Site will be offered as a plug-in.

Alfresco Records Site

Supporting Mobile Access

Mobile access is another big requirement for content management today. We saw Autonomy deliver it recently for iManage Worksite. Now Alfresco offers it starting with the iPhone.

Alfresco on iPhone

The mobile solution is a view of Share rearranged and designed for the smaller form-factor. The tasks are applicable for doing business processing "on the go".

In an interview with John Newton, CTO of Alfresco, he indicated that Facebook on the iPhone was the inspiration for the design of the iPhone solution. He also spoke to Alfresco's extensive experience in UI design in London and how they determined what features should be a part of the mobile solution.

We asked why the iPhone first and not the Blackberry, which is still used more as a business tool. Newton pointed to the popularity of the iPhone for personal use (so many people have them) and it's task oriented design. He said it was the CIO device of choice. In fact, Alfresco is moving to the iPhone themselves.

Alfresco on iPhone

Integration with Email

Also included with this latest release is IMAP support. You can now look at Alfresco like an email server, mapping your email client to the Alfresco content repository. You can view metadata and do workflow inside your email client.

Alfresco IMAP Integration

Inside your email, you can classify records manually or automatically, do drag and drop classification, use rules inside your email client to classify records and more.