Overview
What is Alfresco?
The Alfresco platform, from Hyland, delivers comprehensive cloud-native content services. It is used to intelligently activate processes and content to accelerate the flow of business.
Alfresco Activiti - The most advanced, rich in features and easily integrated BPMN tool
UI dampens otherwise great versatility
Content Orchestration and Automation
Alfresco Review
Why and why not Alfresco ECM
The users vary …
WHY ALFRESCO!!!!
Enterprise Content Management Quality Matters
Alfresco - A breath of fresh air in the content management arena
Alfresco Document Management Review
Alfresco is great at what it does good.
Alfresco: Document Management System
Alfresco - A Great Option for Your Enterprise Content Management Needs
Alfresco: Best ECM solution on the market
Alfresco - Great product for ECM
Alfresco (community edition) is good for small scale implementations.
Awards
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Popular Features
- Document management (6)10.0100%
- Content search & retrieval (6)10.0100%
- File sync, storage & archiving (5)9.090%
- Enterprise content collaboration (6)8.080%
Pricing
What is Alfresco?
The Alfresco platform, from Hyland, delivers comprehensive cloud-native content services. It is used to intelligently activate processes and content to accelerate the flow of business.
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Product Demos
Alfresco Governance Services – Product Demonstration
Alfresco Federation Services – Product Demonstration
Alfresco Digital Workspace.
Features
Enterprise Content Management
Features related to managing business content and transactional content for enterprises.
- 3.1Content capture & imaging(4) Ratings
The system supports the digitization of content.
- 9File sync, storage & archiving(5) Ratings
Storage system for long-term preservation & retention of content in an organized fashion; foundational to the ECM.
- 10Document management(6) Ratings
Beyond capture, the ECM supports sharing, distributing, printing, faxing, etc.
- 8Records management(5) Ratings
Secure, policy-controlled and compliant storage, retrieval and production of records, transactional or otherwise.
- 10Content search & retrieval(6) Ratings
Helps users find the content they are looking for. Various methods for assistance include filters, tags, metadata, and the like.
- 8Enterprise content collaboration(6) Ratings
ECM support file and content sharing within the enterprise, or integrate with preferred collaboration software or modules. May also be referred to as social intranet.
- 8Content publishing & creation(4) Ratings
Supports the publishing of content to web pages or other avenues leading out of the enterprise.
- 9Security, risk management & information governance(5) Ratings
Security controls with rules, policies, and permissions defining and delimiting access to content and records. This is a core feature, and a necessity for enterprises.
- 8.9Contract lifecycle management(5) Ratings
ECM tools optimize business transactional processes where they can improve or automate the contract lifecycle (e.g. Invoice Management, Proposals, etc.). This component is similar to the features provided by advanced contract management software.
- 9Automated workflows(3) Ratings
Automated workflows include contract management, invoice processing, etc.
- 8Artificial intelligence(2) Ratings
Artificial intelligence and natural language processing help automate document classification
- 3Mobile support(3) Ratings
Repository access from mobile devices
- 10Integration(3) Ratings
Integration with 3rd-party systems like ERP, SCM, or CRM
Product Details
- About
- Integrations
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Alfresco?
The Alfresco platform, from Hyland, delivers comprehensive cloud-native content services. It is used to intelligently activate processes and content to accelerate the flow of business.
The Alfresco platform combines three services.
Content
Alfresco Content Services offers full-featured ECM for organizations that require enterprise-grade scalability, performance, and 24x7 support for business-critical content and compliance. It delivers a wide range of use cases such as content and governance services, contextual search and insight, the ability to integrate with other applications. At the core of Content Services is a repository supported by a server that persists content, metadata, associations, and full text indexes.
Process
Alfresco Process Services (powered by Activiti) is an enterprise Business Process Management (BPM) solution targeted at business people and developers. Alfresco Process Automation can be used on top of Alfresco Cloud (Alfresco Content Services on PaaS) to automate simple and complex content-centric business processes.
Governance
Alfresco Governance Services controls important information that needs to be retained over time. It's used in highly regulated environments, for managing governmental information or personnel records, or where information might be audited.
Alfresco's features include:
- Document management - The Alfresco platform can quickly find and access exact information from anywhere on any device using web-based viewing tools.
- Intelligent process management - Tightly integrated process and content services capabilities streamline content-centric processes to enable faster, more informed decision making.
- Enterprise collaboration - Teams can extend Microsoft 365 and Google Docs, enhancing productivity with enterprise collaboration tools.
- Information governance - Alfresco Governance Services automates the information life cycle with little intervention by users, reducing business risk and strengthening compliance.
- Intelligence and analytics - The Alfresco platform delivers a scalable way to automatically enrich content and metadata and providing key insights by automatically extracting valuable information.
- Extensions and integrations - Built on open standards and APIs, the Alfresco platform can be integrated and customized to meet any particular business needs.
Alfresco Features
Enterprise Content Management Features
- Supported: Content capture & imaging
- Supported: File sync, storage & archiving
- Supported: Document management
- Supported: Records management
- Supported: Content search & retrieval
- Supported: Enterprise content collaboration
- Supported: Content publishing & creation
- Supported: Security, risk management & information governance
- Supported: Automated workflows
- Supported: Artificial intelligence
- Supported: Mobile support
- Supported: Integration
Alfresco Screenshots
Alfresco Video
Alfresco Integrations
Alfresco Competitors
Alfresco Technical Details
Deployment Types | On-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
---|---|
Operating Systems | Windows, Linux, Mac |
Mobile Application | Apple iOS, Android, Mobile Web |
Supported Countries | Global |
Supported Languages | German, English, French, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Norwegian, Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Russian |
Frequently Asked Questions
Comparisons
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Reviews and Ratings
(74)Community Insights
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
- Cons
- Recommendations
Alfresco Activiti has proven to be a valuable tool for organizations in various industries, offering a range of use cases that have benefited users. With over 1000 business process models created and deployed, it has become a trusted BPMN modeling tool. Users have utilized this tool to invoke workflows and create manual tasks for different roles in response to various types of requests. One of the primary use cases of Alfresco is its ability to manage digital documents for HR departments and student records departments. Organizations with large numbers of employees and students, such as those with over 12,000 employees and 85,000 students, have successfully implemented Alfresco to handle their document management needs. By promoting the concept of a paperless office and providing a unified ECM system, Alfresco aids in achieving efficient and organized document management practices. Clients have recommended Alfresco due to its robustness and compatibility with Ephesoft scanning management. Additionally, Alfresco's cloud and on-premises integration feature allows for seamless synchronization regardless of location. This flexibility has made it suitable for a wide range of use cases, from acting as a central DMS across an entire company to being dedicatedly used in specific departments. The configurability and customization options offered by Alfresco make it highly adaptable to different organizational needs. It has been implemented by businesses and government entities alike for enterprise content management solutions. Its features enable easy document access, file editing, and data sharing. The built-in workflow engine helps route documents for approval or review by specific individuals. Furthermore, the record management module being DoD 5015.02 Certified ensures compliance with content life cycle requirements. Alfresco leverages its architecture through various service interfaces like node service, content service, and search service. Its UI components built with the spring framework and Restful Webscripts provide ample extension points for customization and integration. The software supports web and mobile access along with communication tools like CIFS, WebDAV, and FTP. Alfresco has been utilized in specific domains like healthcare for automated healthcare provider recruitment. It has also found extensive use across industries for document management, retention, blogging, audit trails, and approval workflows. By integrating with homegrown databases, it facilitates the creation of sites with standard folders and metadata assignment rules. Moreover, it automates deal approvals based on credit submissions. Other notable use cases of Alfresco include its implementation in digital teams for marketing functions on client-facing platforms and real-time content management across websites. Engineering departments benefit from Alfresco's collaboration capabilities for uploading part prints, invoices, and engineering documents. Sony Pictures Entertainment migrated from Stellent to Alfresco as their primary document management system, serving software applications organization-wide. Additionally, Alfresco ECM has been deployed at customer sites to enrich Elixir's enterprise solutions, develop products, and orchestrate content and content processes. Alfresco effectively addresses various business problems. It serves as a cost-effective replacement for systems like Documentum while offering easy integrations with third-party tools and flexible workflow development. By solving content management and document integrity issues, it has become a preferred choice for organizations looking to replace outdated systems in different departments. However, it is worth noting that Alfresco does have some limitations. Users have reported that the product lacks backup capabilities and certain support resources, including FAQs and live chat. Additionally, some users have experienced challenges with resourcing when implementing Alfresco as a document management system for one department. In conclusion, the wide range of use cases for Alfresco Activiti demonstrates its versatility and effectiveness in managing digital documents and workflows across industries. Users have praised its robustness, flexibility in deployment options, and compatibility with other tools. From HR departments to specialized domains like healthcare, Alfresco has proven to be a reliable solution for organizations seeking efficient document management and collaboration.
Intuitive User Interface: Users have consistently praised the intuitive and user-friendly interface of Alfresco, stating that it requires little training for basic functionality. Many reviewers found the interface clean and friendly, making it easy to navigate and understand. Seamless Integration with Other Applications: According to users, one of the standout features of Alfresco is its seamless integration with other applications such as Drupal and Moodle. This integration allows for smooth collaboration and content sharing across platforms, enhancing productivity and efficiency. Scalability and Performance: Numerous users have highlighted the impressive scalability and performance of Alfresco. They have noted that the system can handle a large number of documents without requiring significant server capacity. This scalability feature has been highly valued by users who deal with extensive document management needs
REST Calls Need Improvement: Some users have expressed that the configuration of REST calls, such as scheduling API calls, needs improvement in terms of functionality and ease of use. They feel that the current setup is not user-friendly and requires more advanced customization options.
Inconvenient BPMN Model Sharing: Several reviewers have mentioned that sharing the entire BPMN model with the support team for minor issues is inconvenient and time-consuming. They suggest implementing a more streamlined process where only relevant sections or specific components can be shared for quicker troubleshooting.
Lackluster Documentation: Many users have found the documentation to be lacking, particularly when it comes to adopting the Activiti microservice. They feel that there is a significant need for improvement in terms of clarity, real-world examples, and keeping it up to date. Reviewers would appreciate more comprehensive guides with step-by-step instructions and practical use cases.
Users commonly recommend the following when using the free version of Alfresco:
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Test the capabilities: Start by testing the capabilities of Alfresco using the free version. This allows users to evaluate whether the software meets their specific needs before upgrading to a paid version.
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Explore features: Take the time to explore all the features offered by Alfresco. By familiarizing themselves with the various capabilities, users can make better use of the software and tailor it to their specific requirements.
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Consider scalability: When analyzing Alfresco's potential value for their organization, users should consider its scalability. It is important for the software to be able to handle increasing volumes of data and accommodate future growth as businesses evolve.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-17 of 17)Alfresco Activiti - The most advanced, rich in features and easily integrated BPMN tool
- Creates tasks based on the roles configured in workflow
- Tasks can be auto-escalated and auto-closed based on timer configuration
- From workflows the external APIs can be invoked
- REST calls should be improved in terms of configuration like scheduling the API call
- No option to invoke legacy SOAP Apis
- Even for minor issues the entire BPMN model needs to be shared with support team
- The documentation needs a lot of improvement especially for activiti micro service adoption
UI dampens otherwise great versatility
- Document storage with metadata
- Document versioning
- Document workflow
- Check-on and Check-out
- Rest API for integrations
- Easy customization
- Fine-grain-level role and permission
- Vibrant community support
- User interface is not intituve
- Customization of user interface
- Dependency on partner solution for common use cases like content capturing and imaging (e.g., OCR).
- Alfresco Content Services is well suited as a backend document management service where the front end is different and Alfresco Content Services is used as DM.
- Alfresco Content Services can be leveraged for document storage, metadata management of document, and document searches based on content or metadata.
- Alfresco Content Services provide many customization options, making it usable for different scenarios.
Content Orchestration and Automation
- Archival and search and retrieval functionalities.
- Organization and metadata applications for content processes and orchestration.
- Scaling to serve more use cases and larger content stores and archives, as well as migration to the cloud/hosted environments.
- Alfresco Process Services and Alfresco Application Development Framework integration makes for best functionality/application of ECM.
- Use case alignment - Marketing content and documentation of specific business requirements and user stories being available as reference material/documentation.
- Integration with multiple silos for content.
Alfresco Review
- It facilitates real-time updates to manage content throughout the website without any code drops.
- It helps with digital marketing to customers.
- It also has good mobile support when it comes to managing content.
- Enrichment of current content is not so easy, we have to reload the content to do so.
- There is no support for XQuery.
- Content transformation is absent.
Why and why not Alfresco ECM
The users vary from Sales, HR, Legal, Records management, IT etc, to store employee records, legal documents, project specific documents.
Main business problems Alfresco addressed were:
- We had to replace Documentum system which has 70 TB of content and more than 1000 active users in a shorter time. Alfresco licensing is affordable and we implemented ECM with Alfresco.
- Integrations with the third party are easy and flexible, ex: SFDC, Reporting tools, external publishing systems.
- The workflow is so flexible and can develop small to big complicated business processes. The business users can have a single user interface to finish the workflow having interacted with other third-party tools.
- The organizations demand a hybrid approach, running the same software applications on-premise and on-cloud with the same architecture. The local which can act as a master, can be synced with the cloud. This allows collaboration between internal and external users with selective privileges and access control.
- The Workflow architecture is quite robust and scalable platform. The business users can create business processes easily without any technical knowledge.
- The service integrations comprised in BPM paves the way to develop complex BPM solutions.
- ECM and BPM have different licenses and different user interfaces. The users often gets confused about which one to use and it plays a bigger factor in deciding the ECM platform. The workflow engines in Alfresco are redundant, the inbuilt ECM has workflow engine and Alfresco offers activity product as BPM.
- The UI development is little complicated, the knowledge of UI framework is required. These are not simple java technologies to learn.
- Documentation of Alfresco really sucks. There is no single place to refer the architecture, development/deployment guides. The information is scattered across multiple websites with different login credentials.
- Companies which look for content management solutions with simple to complex workflow requirements.
- Companies which don't look for complex functionalities in content creation like DITA, web authoring, co-authoring etc.
- Fast deployment, easy adoption, and scalable teams can look into this.
Less Appropriate:
- Dynamic content publishing, co-authoring, and collaboration.
WHY ALFRESCO!!!!
Moreover, it's cheaper than Microsoft SharePoint.
- Document management i.e. it promotes a paperless office
- Cloud solution i.e. ability to access content outside your work zone
- Collaborative web content
- It also brings content and process together
- Ability to scan directly using Alfresco scan features
- Ability to integrate with social network platform.. i.e. upload and share to Facebook or Instagram
- Interface should be much more user-friendly and light
Enterprise Content Management Quality Matters
- The UI is intuitive, clean, and friendly. Users have required little training for basic functionality.
- We have been pleased with the overall system performance of Alfresco Enterprise Content Management.
- Our greatest need for Alfresco ECM is the functionality to generate public URLS for content. We've accomplished this through our Drupal integration, but at times, it would be very useful to be able to make Alfresco content publicly available without this added layer.
- Many of our other concerns have been addressed in the latest version and we look forward to that implementation.
Alfresco - A breath of fresh air in the content management arena
- Basic workflows are easy enough for casual users to set up and utilize.
- Cloud sync capability provides a great way to share documents with third parties and to use as a backup system for critical documents.
- Alfresco mobile app makes it easy for those on the road to access, approve and share documents.
- Folder rules are easy to set up and make assignment of metadata easier to automate.
- When users are members of 1000 sites or more, certain features such as sites dashlet do not work properly.
- There isn't any integration between Alfresco and Microsoft Outlook for Mac. IMAP integration has flaws that can cause loss of email.
- Mobile app doesn't have a site search feature. this is problematic when you have thousands of sites and you need to access one where you have not saved it as a favorite.
Alfresco Document Management Review
- Document Management - The ability to store documents, manage custom aspects and metadata. Plus full control over versioning of documents with the ability to check in and out.
- Custom API's - Alfresco supports multiple API's both internal and external and pretty much allows you to customize and integrate with any application
- Searching - Lucene and SOLR which are integreated into Alfresco offer a multitude of ways to find documents/folders.
- Auditing - They have a fairly powerful (although somewhat confusing) auditing system that lets you audit almost any action or service.
- Documentation can be challenging -There can be pages of documentation on features and api methods, but they often lack real world examples and are quite often out of date
- Early adoption of features can be problematic - Alfresco seems to change quickly and often trying to use newer features can be frustrating. Especially when they keep tweaking/modifying functionality between versions. There has been cases (IE: Records Management) where they've completely re-worked how it works.
- Customization of share interface seems cludgy and sometimes limiting
Alfresco is great at what it does good.
- The out of the box Alfresco is very good.
- Easy customization.
- Support from Alfresco is great.
- Using YUI (Yahoo User Interface) for id's makes my job in Quality Assurance tough.
Alfresco: Document Management System
- Collaboration - it is an excellent tool for collaboration and makes it very easy for several people to work on projects together.
- Scripting - If there is something that Alfresco does not do natively, you can use their custom API to do almost anything that you want.
- Interface - The interface of the application is nice and neat, and is very easy to use and understand.
- Workflows - I believe that creating workflows from the API is a little cumbersome. I think that they could package a few more generic workflows or it could be a little easier to create one.
- First of all, Alfresco is newly developed compared to old content management systems, so it has adopted some of the best practices and it has avoided the problems faced by earlier systems.
- Alfresco is open source so it is very easy to find problems if any and to extend it. The cost of licensing Alfresco is very less compared to other systems.
- Alfresco does very well in performance, design, API design and has lot of great features such as auto PDF conversion, auto compression, etc.
- The customer support and community support is very good.
- Some more APIs can be added although the existing APIs very well provide the required features.
- Their other tools such as collaboration, etc need to be marketed well so that companies adopt Alfresco as a whole package.
- Alfresco needs to be on the lookout for immediately introducing any new functions provided by other competitive products.
Alfresco: Best ECM solution on the market
- Alfresco is able to handle a very large number of documents without requiring huge server capacity.
- Alfresco is able to connect to the cloud solution and to share documents with an external organisation without security issues.
- Alfresco implements standards like CMIS, and provides very simple integration points.
- Alfresco is a bundle of technology packaged together, so this solution requires a lot of expertise if you want to customize a lot your solution.
Alfresco - Great product for ECM
- Tools to access documents, edit files and share data
- Easy for customization and integration
- Open source, knowledge sharing, etc
- Performance monitoring and tuning
- Solr search capability to handle very large content repository
- Easy to develop Workflows
- Simple and controlled Web Content Management for HTML based websites
- Good in Document Management System
- Web Content Management should be matured
- Internal Search
- Workflow customization with external applications
Alfresco-Review
- Alfresco workflow capabilities which is easy to impelent and provides all kind of serial and parallel workflow implementation.
- Alfresco CIFS implementation which allows us to implemente business rules for importing scanned documents directly in alfresco through CIFS location and process it based on busines rules.
- Alfresco webscripts allows us to integrate Alfresco and liferay portal.
- Alfresco Mobility
- Alfresco Cloud
Alfresco ECM Review
- One of the standout features available on this enterprise digital document management system is the workflow and collaboration options it includes. This solution lets you easily share files with certain members of your team. You can also route documents to certain individuals for approval or review.
- Alfresco also offers social tools. You can view an activity feed and see what is happening with content. You can also “like” and “follow” certain creators or content. Additionally, Alfresco offers the ability to publish your content directly to certain websites and social media networks.
- Alfresco provides all of the necessary features for finding, editing and storing documents. You can open existing documents and edit them. Version control options are available, allowing you to access and view the most recent and previous versions of a document. There are also document imaging capabilities and the option to store your files and documents on the Alfresco cloud.
- Additionally, this enterprise content management software is accessible on mobile devices. You can view content on these devices and even make changes. This is a valuable tool that makes working on the go much easier and more enjoyable.
- This enterprise CMS does not provide backup capabilities and it is lacking several support resources including FAQs and live chat.
- Alfresco Share platform is good but to create pages , using dashlets is a tedious task in Surf platform. Some automation similar to Liferay Studio is required.
- Alfresco Backup/Restore strategies needs improvement.
- Alfresco Customization/Extension process needs improvement.