Enter Alfresco!

Alfresco is an Open Source Content Management System (CMS) incorporating key principles of document management, record management, web content management and enterprise collaboration. I have had Alfresco on my “to look into” list for some time now so I thought I would bite the bullet and see if it could conquer our current file management woes. What I would like to achieve from this project includes the following:

• Collaborative content management of student and staff data
• Anywhere access to collaborative and personal data from any web capable device
• Document version control (revision history)
• Single sign-on (SSO) authentication tied to our network directory (Active Directory)
• Integration with other collaborative services such as Moodle and Google Apps
• Centralised management for ICT staff
• Multi platform support (Windows, OS X and various Linux distributions)

Building upon these fundamental points, I would like for staff and students to have a space where they can continue to collaborate together outside the schools walls. The system would allow us to provide their content to them via the local network (ie: mapped CIFS drive) internally or via various web protocols from outside the school on their chosen device – hence maintaing anywhere access. Throughout the schools ICT systems we implement a standard whereby if the system requires authentication the user is able to use their single network directory (active Directory) credentials thus upholding a Sigle sign-on (SSO) cluster of systems. This would need to continue throughout the various facilities within the Alfresco CMS.

The school has implemented Moodle as its Learning Management System (LMS) and has employed the services of a Google Apps Educational account to provide email and other collaborative services to every student and teacher. The Alfresco CMS would need to tie into these current systems and further them to the benefit of the students learning. Our Moodle LMS currently resides on a Linux server which would also need to be able to call upon content stored within Alfresco’s filesystem hierarchy. In tern, Alfresco would be required to be accessible by the multiplatform structure that we have in place throughout the school.

From my reading, which has merely scratched the surface of what Alfresco can provide, I am confident that this CMS will be able to fulfill the school’s requirements and continue to exceed them as we explore its facilities. In the near future I hope to build a test server using Alfresco’s freely available Community Edition to put the system through its paces and confirm that it will be able to fulfill our needs before proceeding down the path of a production server and storage solution. My aim is to document my  way through this project via this blog. This process may be slow whilst I find some free time if that does indeed still exist in this world we live in…

The prerequisites for MRBS are as follows:

- PHP 4/5
- MySQL or PostgreSQL
- A web server (such as Apache) that supports PHP
- PHP-LDAP Modules (optional for LDAP authentication)

Luckily enough I already had an Ubuntu Linux production server in place with these prerequisites installed so I was ready to go. The install process is as follows:

1. Extract the contents of the MRBS.tar.gz file to your web servers storage folder (ie: Apache – htdocs, IIS -inetpub)
2. Create a mrbs database in MySQL
   CREATE DATABASE `mrbs` ;
3. Create the database table structure using the supplied tables.my.sql script
   (Optional: Add sample data to the database using the supplied sample-data.sql script)
4. You must enter a timezone into the config.inc.php file before the system will function (ie: $timezone = “Sydney/Australia;)

At this point the system is ready to use. However, I recommend a few extra steps for ease of use in a school environment:

Enable period view and define school periods:

The default view for MRBS is time slots. Generally schools work to periods not time slots so a period view has been included in MRBS.
To enable the period view:

1. Include the following line of code in your config.inc.php file:
   $enable_periods = TRUE;
2. Define the periods in the config.inc.php file. Example:
3. $periods[] = “Before School”;
   $periods[] = “Mentor”;
   $periods[] = “Period 1″;
   $periods[] = “Period 2″;
   $periods[] = “Recess”;

   And so on…

Activate LDAP authentication:

We endeavor to provide a single-sign-on environment for our staff and students which means that LDAP authentication is a must have for any system that we implement into our network. This process was by far the hardest part of the MRBS install and took my colleague and I sometime to complete mainly due to the PHP-LDAP modules.
To enable LDAP authentication:

1. Install PHP-LDAP modules
   I am not going to go into installing these modules in this post but am happy to lend a hand if you need help getting these working.
2. Define LDAP authentication commands in the config.inc.php file. Example:
   $auth['only_admin_can_book_repeat'] = TRUE;$auth["type"] = “ldap”;

   $ldap_host = “yourdomain.com.au”;
   $ldap_port = 389;
   $ldap_v3 = true;
   $ldap_tls = false;
   $ldap_base_dn = “ou=Users,dc=yourdomain,dc=com,dc=au”;
   $ldap_user_attrib = “sAMAccountName”;
   $ldap_dn_search_dn = “cn=Admin,ou=Users,dc=yourdomain,dc=com,dc=au”;
   $ldap_dn_search_attrib = “sAMAccountName”;
   $ldap_dn_search_password = “Admin_Password”;

3. Define admin users from LDAP in the config.inc.php file
   $auth["admin"] = “Admin”;

Being open source the opportunities to endless for you to critique this system to your individual needs. We have edited various files within the system to do the following:

• Only allow admins to create repeat bookings
• Change field labels by editing the language file (lang.en)
• Apply the users username to the end of the displayed booking so staff can easily see who has made the booking
• Add an “Override Creator” field for admins only so that they can make a booking on a staff members behalf
• Edit the Help page to be more school specific help

Required (FREE) Software:

• MobaPhoto

1.       Start from the Start Menu (Start -> All Programs -> MobaPhoto).
2.       Once MobaPhoto has loaded, select Batch photo resizer from the displayed menu.

3.       Use the file browser to browse for and add the images you would like to convert. You can add entire folders or individual images to the list:

Adding folder/s:

• Select the folder/s that contains the images that you would like to convert.
• Click the button to add all the images in the selected folder/s to the list.

Adding image/s:

• Select the image/s that you would like to convert.
• Click the button to add the image/s to the list.

4.       Once you have added all the required images to the list, click the button.

5.       Select Optimzed settings for uploading online from the drop down list.

6.       Select or create a folder for the converted images to be saved to and click .

7.       The files will now be converted and saved into the specified folder.