Open Source Nuxeo EP and DM 5.3 Support OpenSocial

Nuxeo (news, site) included several new features in the latest release of Nuxeo Document Management. Nuxeo DM 5.3 highlights include support for the OpenSocial API, a new tagging service, SharePoint integration support and interoperability with CMIS as an add-on component.

On top of that, Nuxeo EP 5.3, the vendor's enterprise content management system core, reached the RC stage.

Nuxeo DM 5.3

Nuxeo DM is a (free under standard LGPL) document management product that goes on top of the core Nuxeo EP. The last time we looked at Nuxeo DM, they took it to the cloud, leveraging Amazon Web Services.

This time around, Nuxeo concentrated on the increasingly popular social applications support and a few other things that many DM users may find helpful and welcome.

Social Gadgets

Using Nuxeo’s support for OpenSocial — a common API for social apps access across various websites — users can add and/or build social networking gadgets, for example. 

The gadgets are, essentially, mashups of web and enterprise applications. The Nuxeo DM repository is where the gadgets are centrally stored.

Adding Social Gadgets in Nuxeo DM 5.3

Nuxeo DM 5.3 serves as both the publisher of gadgets and the OpenSocial container. Just for comparison, other known OpenSocial containers include MySpace, Ning, LinkedIn, iGoogle and many others.

CrownPeak, a SaaS Web CMS vendor, also did an OpenSocial integration back in early 2008.

Windows SharePoint Services Support

Who doesn’t want a MOSS connector? Microsoft SharePoint can be accessed from Nuxeo DM 5.3 for basic library services and common file operations. For those die-hard fans of Windows Explorer, there’s a native integration, so they may not even know they’re working with another document management system.

There’s also a Microsoft Office integration that allows opening, saving, editing of files directly to/from Nuxeo DM.

Previewing MS Word Document in Nuxeo DM 5.3

Check out a webcast on this integration here.

Federated Publishing

DM 5.3 is friendlier with distributed information architectures compared to previous versions. In 5.3, there’s more of a central control over publishing content to remote Nuxeo applications, file systems, HTTP servers, web portals, etc. That’s what the new Publishing Service is equipped to do.

Tagging Services

It was about time Nuxeo put more effort into tagging and metadata capabilities of their DM system. The new tagging service is fairly easy to use and allows users to categorize content by applying existing or adding new tags. Tagging can then result in more ways for retrieval and display of content stored in Nuxeo DM.

Tagging recommendations and dynamic tag cloud are also part of the deal.

Nuxeo DM 5.3 Tag Cloud

The vendor also says they improved search and indexing, which should play in nicely into the tagging offering.

Support for MS Exchange and Gmail E-mail

E-mail is, in most cases, where a lot of your documents and records end up. But e-mail is not necessarily the best way to manage them. In DM 5.3, Nuxeo worked to improve support for e-mail folders, where MS Exchange or Gmail e-mail clients can talk to/from Nuxeo e-mail archive folders.

CMIS Support

Having been longtime fans of CMIS, Nuxeo added interoperability into this release as well with their add-on CMIS Server, which is based on the CMIS draft 0.62. The most current (and the official OASIS Technical Committee) CMIS draft is 0.7.

The idea here is that organizations can use Nuxeo DM, while also being able to search across multiple ECM, ERP, DM and other systems.

Nuxeo EP 5.3

Currently an RC, the new version includes that same WSS (MS SharePoint), tagging and OpenSocial widgets support we’ve seen in DM 5.3. In addition to that, the import/export service was improved and performance is said to be enhanced following some benchmarking efforts.

The Nuxeo EP 5.3 RC also features a CMIS implementation based on Apache Chemistry that we discussed early spring — both with Nuxeo's Florent Guillaume and Day Software's David Nuescheler.

Nuxeo EP 5.3 GA should be coming out shortly. Meanwhile, Nuxeo is asking for help with testing more than 350 tasks/bugs currently identified in 5.3. According to Nuxeo's JIRA, 60% of them seem to be resolved, and 28% have been closed. Yet, there're still some show-stoppers and critical issues.

Disruptive Force in the ECM Market?

"The latest release of Nuxeo DM demonstrates that we are continuing to execute on our strategy: be a disruptive force and instigate change…," said CEO Eric Barroca.

It would be unreasonable not to notice the wave of recent activity at this Paris-based open source ECM vendor. With new people on board and an aggressive product roadmap, Nuxeo (if not disrupting) is clearly starting to gain more traction in the global enterprise CMS market.

In the end, when it comes to open source, successes can be measured by the activeness of the community, as well as customer growth — among other metrics. In the U.S., for example, Nuxeo still has quite some space to spread its wings, if the vendor wants to. And we tend to think it will.

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