Importance of Alfresco in Healthcare Document Management System

Importance of Alfresco in Healthcare Document Management System

The healthcare sector is thriving by adopting the patient care models and enhancing data sharing. In today’s troubled times, it is necessary to build the patient care model in such a way that it can meet the growing pressure of diseases and changing expectations of patients over the period. Cut-throat competition, strict regulations, and other challenges, however, can create big hurdles in developing the excellent model.

Healthcare Document Management System

Here, the data-first approach and advanced healthcare document management can work wonders.

As a healthcare services provider, do you want to improve the patient care services by transforming the way of sharing and processing the patient’s data? Well, the Alfresco framework can help you by enabling you to establish a paperless clinical world. Better collaboration and proper communication are possible when you make the healthcare facility paperless.

Let’s go through the ways Alfresco document management is useful for the healthcare industry.

Four Proven Ways Alfresco can Help Healthcare Sector

Be it pharmaceutical document management or healthcare document management, Alfresco can offer flexibility and scalability to healthcare service providers. They can easily integrate the Alfresco ECM system into their existing system with the help of an Alfresco development company. Alfresco document management also enables healthcare professionals to achieve a holistic view of the patient’s medical records.

  • Complete EMR (Electronic Medical Record)
    As mentioned above, Alfresco enables healthcare professionals to get access to all necessary information about the patient anywhere, anytime. With a holistic view of the patient’s history, the Alfresco document management system can easily add all the electronic documents like lab reports, prescriptions, and other vital data to EMR. It can make diagnosis and treatment easy for the physicians.

    Another benefit of opting for the Alfresco document management system is it helps the healthcare industry to comply with various stringent regulations. When all the records are together in the clinical system, all the laws and regulations are automatically followed. What’s more, administrators, physicians, and other staff can work collaboratively for the patients. Alfresco also enables the healthcare industry to track and categorize medical documents accurately.

  • VNA (Vendor Neutral Archive) System
    Alfresco has a Vendor Neutral Archive that enables healthcare professionals to access the VNA system as a part of EMR. The VNA can consolidate differing images into a single repository. VNA also enables physicians to search, look through, and retrieve the imaging. It also connects DICOM and Non-DICOM content to simplify the sharing process between various PACS (Picture Archiving and Communications System). In a nutshell, healthcare professionals can exchange the patient’s information effortlessly.

    Also, Read- How Alfresco Application Development Framework Benefits Enterprises

  • Clinical Process Automation
    The Alfresco document management system brings automation and makes the clinical processes advanced. It takes care of every aspect ranging from the patient’s admission to the hospital to their discharge. Alfresco can assist physicians and healthcare service providers to make and manage various reports online. It also facilitates healthcare administrators to create e-forms and e-prescriptions while optimizing workflow processes without much technical knowledge.

    In brief, clinical process automation transforms paper-based processes into digital processes. In a way, patients can get better services and their frustration for filling out different forms containing similar information will be reduced. The clinical process automation can also make the process error-free with the minimum human intervention. Any inefficiency related to manual processes can be eliminated successfully through automation.

  • Enhanced Collaboration
    Alfresco enterprise content management system makes the healthcare organization capable of sharing information in real-time. Information-sharing and coordination are possible among care providers irrespective of time and place. Also, Alfresco plays a vital role in ensuring the safety of confidential patient information. With better collaboration and seamless access to necessary information, healthcare professionals can provide enhanced services. They can get access to critical information at any time and on any device.
    As a result, Alfresco ensures collaboration in a secure way. All stakeholders including patients can access real-time information at any time with the help of the Alfresco document management system.

Concluding Lines 

ECM (Enterprise Content Management) and BPM (Business Process Management) solutions of Alfresco can enhance collaboration and improve patient care services. All you need to find a reliable and reputed Alfresco document company to meet the ever-changing and rapidly increasing needs of the healthcare sector.

document-management-system-healthcare-sector

How Alfresco Improves the Efficiency of Modern Education System

Every industry sector needs proper coordination for ensuring seamless business processes. But, it is quite a task as most companies have geographically dispersed workplaces. There, transformation in the existing document management system can work wonders as employees from different places can get access to necessary documents as and when they need them.
Alfresco, with its excellent functionality and features, can bring digital transformation in various sectors, and the education sector is no exception. As a robust document management system, Alfresco can take care of documentation in the education sector. Be it assignments, quizzes, reports, or various questionnaires, Alfresco is a perfect choice for managing everything.

Let’s understand the role of Alfresco in resolving the issues related to universities and education institutes.

Problems Related to Education Sector

Most educational institutes and universities have to manage the documentation process. It starts with the admission of students and ends with evaluating assignments or tests. As mentioned above, the Alfresco content management system can assist education organizations to manage the documentation. Let’s see how Alfresco helps address various problems-

  • Distance Learning

    Most institutes provide distance learning facility these days, and it requires an efficient collaboration with real-time access to various documents. Various institutes offer various courses, and it is necessary for them to conduct the entrance exams for these courses. They need to store and manage the exam-related documents properly. Also, their document management system should be capable enough to facilitate evaluation and manage the admission process after conducting the exam. Here, Alfresco can greatly help.

  • Online Classes

    Thanks to advancing technology, many universities conduct online classes for national and international students. Hundreds of faculty are engaged in giving online lectures worldwide. Now, the challenge is to maintain the documents related to transcripts of lectures and other study material of different courses. What’s more, these documents need proper permission for students. For example, the study material should be in the form of Read-Only for students. The Alfresco document management system can help institutes to manage these documents effectively.

  • Assignments

    Conducting and managing the assignments is complicated for universities and educational institutions alike. Various courses have different subjects and every subject has assignments. Here also, assignments for teachers and students need different permissions. Alfresco can play a vital role in ensuring real-time access to assignments.

  • Examination and Evaluation

    The examination and evaluation concept needs the utmost accuracy and security. Faculties set the examination paper and the institutes conduct the exam. Then the papers are evaluated by reviewers. The entire process is conducted with ease through an advanced document management system.

Also Read- How Alfresco Application Development Framework Benefits Enterprises

How does Alfresco help Education Sector?

Alfresco document management system can be customized to meet data management needs. Here is how Alfresco helps the education sector.

  • Alfresco is basically a repository and enables the sector to manage varieties of documents. As a content management system, it facilitates the educational institutes to store the content in a relational database through the file system. Proper segregation of study material offers better access. Faculty and students can get real-time access to the study material. Whether it is an examination process or admission process, all documents can be effectively handled with the help of Alfresco.
  • Folder management and workflow automation are necessary to streamline the process and ensure proper implementation of processes. Talking about the education sector, the sector needs proper management of various activities. Let’s take an example of the assignment process. The faculty can upload subject-wise assignments in a particular folder. Only students can get access to assignments. After completing the assignment, students can submit the same in a different folder. The content management system can shift this folder to a ready-to-review folder where the reviewer can get access to the completed assignments.
  • At times, there is more than one reviewer for evaluating the competitive or entrance exams. In such a scenario, it is necessary to keep the provision that more than one reviewer can handle the single document along with getting the complete history of changes. It is necessary for proper grading and a more effective evaluation. The alfresco-based document management system can make it possible in the education sector.

Efficient storage and higher mobility can enable the industries to implement process standardization. The education sector is getting more advanced with the concepts of eLearning and online coaching. The Alfresco platform manages the documentation of the sector to ensure a seamless implementation of these concepts.

Concluding Lines
The Alfresco document management system is designed to meet the diverse requirements of the education sector. It helps the sector by segregating all necessary documents properly and assisting the management to maintain all the records. Simply put, when it comes to simplifying the document management process in the education sector, Alfresco always remains handy in increasing efficiency and speed. Alfresco has also a proven track record in ensuring accuracy while promoting optimum time utilization.

A reliable document management company can come up with a customized Alfresco-based system for your education organization.

Document management system

Digital Transformation at Workplace- Why is It Important to Go Paperless?

Paperwork is tedious and cumbersome. Modern enterprises face issues of employee efficiency and productivity due to paperwork. Imagine the situation- you need a signed contract to find the necessary information of the client, and you forget the drawer in which you have put it. Now, how will you find it in the pile of papers? The result? Well, you waste much of your productive time and get no outcome. This example is sufficient to show you the importance of digital transformation.

 

Enterprise content management

These days, many companies tend to jump on the digital transformation bandwagon to make the concept of paperless office real. Airplanes made of paper, origami made out of bits of paper, and the like are the things of the past. In today’s technology-driven age, all we need to shift our document management system to a computing approach. It’s about managing all the documents quickly and effortlessly. Let’s find out why it is important to go paperless at your workplace.

Improve Efficiency with Digitization

Digital offices can help you get rid of paper while adopting digital transformation. As per a survey, over 80% of modern businesses are attempting to go digital across the world. When it comes to the document management system, you can implement digital transformation simply by converting the existing process into the electronic processes. SMEs and large enterprises rely heavily on papers for accomplishing various tasks ranging from interviews to operational processes.

As a result, a lot of documents like bills, business cards, legal documents, process documents, etc. keep on adding in the system. The document management company can enable you to store all these documents digitally to ensure their swift and seamless access. Simply put, the digital transformation of the document management system can save you a lot of time, money, and effort. What’s more, digital transformation makes it possible to implement workflow automation and increase business productivity.

We can also think from the company’s financial position perspective. Digital transformation not only brings automation but also enables you to make the most of available resources. You can also reduce the wastage of time and effort. Automation can reduce overhead costs significantly and increase revenue. You can add value to your business and make it more robust to stay strong amid growing competition.

Also Read- How to Choose the Right Platform between Alfresco and Liferay

New technologies and advanced software can make all the difference while establishing a paperless infrastructure. Both small and large organizations and even startups can improve their workflows by reaping the benefits of digitization. It is fair to mention that all types of industries, irrespective of their size and scale, can leverage the benefits of a robust document management system and go paperless. Gone are the days when only large and established enterprises could afford digital transformation.

Here are key benefits of digitization at your workplace

  • Saves time, effort, and resources
  • Reduces overhead costs and other expenses
  • Makes the process simple and paperless
  • Stores data and facilitates seamless access
  • Improves workflows and increases data safety
  • Enhances customer and employee experience
  • Provides insights to enable decision-makers to make informed decisions

How to implement digital transformation at your workplace?

The IDC has estimated that 40% of all technology spending will go toward digital transformation. A report from Tech Pro Research has found that 70% of companies have either already adopted the digital transformation strategy or are working on its implementation. There is no exaggeration in stating that most industries will make their content management system completely digital in the coming years. Advancing cloud technology will make this digitization process faster.

Top-notch platforms like Liferay can provide a digital experience to the users. Entrepreneurs can store and transfer their documents to the cloud and convert their physical office into a digital office. With the right software and the most suitable digitization strategy, you can certainly reduce the various costs. Digitization and paperless approach can enable you to face the challenges more effectively and remain competitive.

Concluding Lines

If you want to implement the digital transformation at the workplace, you should contact a reputed document management company. Go Green and Paperless approach are the need of the hour, you can simply enhance productivity. Time is just right to embrace digitization to stay productive and competitive.

Document management system

Why businesses should develop Portals with Liferay?

Digital experience is the need of the hour for modern enterprises. When it comes to providing engaging digital experience to audience, you can count upon Liferay development services. Liferay is an enterprise portal development technology that offers DXP (Digital Experience Platform) for bringing digital transformation in the businesses globally. The Liferay platform can boost enterprise content management system with digitally pleasant user experience.

portals with liferay

People get more acquainted with digital interaction as time advances, and therefore, they demand unique ways to interconnect. This trend compels entrepreneurs and business owners to find digitally advanced solutions for the document management system. There, Liferay comes into the picture. It promotes digital transformation across the workflows. As a robust and reliable platform, Liferay also assists dynamic enterprises to mitigate ever-changing challenges.

Liferay development services enable your company to provide advanced features to visitors or customers. It is one of the most popular technologies for developing enterprise-grade software and portals. Here are the top ten benefits of Liferay portal development for your business.

1) Reduced TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)
Liferay is an easy-to-install platform as compared to other portal development platforms like Drupal and Joomla. It can help you save big on development and operational costs. Also, Liferay is easy-to-use for companies and offers reduced cost of ownership. This benefit makes Liferay a preferred choice for a document management system for your company.

2) OOTB (Out-of-the-box) functionalities
Liferay has many OOTB features like content management, core portal, etc. What’s more, the platform offers enhanced security and mobile-friendliness for enterprise portals. When it comes to building advanced enterprise portal solutions, Liferay can remain a robust and reliable platform.

3) Scope for innovation
Liferay offers 60 different features for portal development. Also, the platform keeps on bringing new features and updating regularly to fill the gaps in the market. The version upgrade of Liferay is designed to mitigate the diverse requirements of the industry. The Liferay development company can come up with innovative portal solutions using Liferay’s new social and mobile configuration.

4) High customization
Liferay is a highly customizable platform. It has a new Hook and Extension plugin to give Liferay developers the liberty to develop a product using the old code. It is easy to change or modify your portal in line with your business requirements without rewriting the whole code. Higher customization ability makes Liferay a choice of many enterprises globally. Unisys, Suez Environment, and Volkswagon are some of the big companies that have put trust in Liferay.

Also Read- Top Liferay Features to Watch in Enterprise Portal

5) Increased agility
Liferay offers drag-and-drop like functionalities that ease the burden on your management. It is easy to configure, develop, and modify custom functionalities in the Liferay portal to meet your different business objectives. Liferay has unique workflow APIS to save valuable time for developers and allow the creation of customized APIs.

6) Customization independence
The Liferay development company can give a full choice of application servers, operating systems, and databases based on Liferay. Various features of Liferay enable developers and entrepreneurs to create customized modules. Such modules can sync with your business processes and to give your company a competitive edge.

7) Multilingual capacity
The Liferay platform offers out-of-the-box support for more than 30 languages including Francoise and Portuguese. If you own an MNC or a multilingual organization that deals with customers and stakeholders who speak different languages, then Liferay can help you come up with a user-friendly portal. Users can switch the language with a single click. What’s more, you can add new languages as per necessity as well.

8) Staging environment
Liferay allows you to make changes to your corporate website in a staging area. You can publish all the changes at once after making the necessary changes. The platform also facilitates users, developers, and administrators to integrate content and services from backend applications. It supports multiple methods to integrate like SOAP, RSS, and REST. Simply put, Liferay is just the right platform for developing a customized enterprise content management system.

9) Easy Migration
Regular version updates and development-friendly functionality are key characteristics of the Liferay DXP. It also helps your company share corporate information in real-time with complete user control. You can readily migrate files, blogs, and data from legacy systems to the Liferay platform or simply integrate with existing enterprise platforms like SAP.

10) Huge community support
The growing popularity of Liferay reflects in the fact that every month, around 1300 new members join the Liferay community. Over 56000 active members are a part of a huge community to date and support Liferay development services by resolving issues quickly.

Parting Notes
A reliable and renowned Liferay consulting services can help companies to make the most of Liferay technology. A Liferay-based portal can transform your business operations with an immersive look and feel. The Digital Experience Platform of Liferay can connect devices to offer a unified experience to the users.

liferay-development-services

Liferay DXP or CMS- What is Preferable for Your Business?

We witness continuous changes in the business scenario, technology domain, and customer expectations. It is, therefore, necessary to transform your enterprise digitally and address the user’s requirements effectively. You can offer the omnichannel digital experience to your across various channels by taking assistance from the document management company.

Content management system

Why Unified Experience is necessary?
Today’s tech-savvy customers expect unified and engaging experiences across all the devices. If you want to keep your company ahead of the curve in the growing competition, you need to put your customers first and provide them unified experience. What’s more, employees and stakeholders also like unified digital experience in all the processes with the help of a centralized document management system.

Technological advancements assist enterprises to transform internal operations into an excellent digital experience to the customers. Simply put, this transformation is based on delivering the right piece of content to the right audience in a unified way. Let’s compare the Content Management System (CMS) and Digital Experience Platform (DXP) to understand which one is in a better position to help modern enterprises meet the customer’s expectations and needs.

But before comparing them, let’s have brief information about both CMS and DXP.

What is CMS?
As a centralized system, the CMS assists companies to organize the content. It can be used for building the backend of the corporate website. Users or visitors can view the content with the help of CMS. A robust CMS can enable you to publish, manage, and control all types of content across both web and mobile channels. WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla are popular content management systems worldwide.

What is DXP?
The content management company also offers a digital experience platform to enable SMEs and large companies to deliver engaging experiences to the customers. The DXP is also a centralized platform and it can handle multiple integrations at once. Mostly, DXPs have built-in CMS capabilities. Some of the renowned digital experience platforms are Liferay DXP and Sitecore.

Major Difference between DXP and CMS
When it comes to providing in-depth customer experiences, DXP knows no competition! Do you want to know the key differences between CMS and DXP? Though there is a little overlap between these two from the functionality perspective, here we will attempt to differentiate DXP and CMS.

A DXP can better take care of the asset and content management at a large scale. It is possible to sync, manage, and publish the content across different platforms with the help of DXP. Be it a mobile platform or web portal and IoT devices, the DXP helps the users to publish content anywhere.

A reliable document management company can develop robust DXP solutions and multiple microsites to help eCommerce companies launch their projects. There, traditional CMS falls short of providing the best results. It is fair to mention that DXP has an upper hand over CMS for delivering digital experiences across various channels or platforms. Also, DXP can provide unified experience across all the devices.

Also Read- How to Choose the Right Platform between Alfresco and Liferay

DXP or CMS- What should be your choice?
CMS is fine for your enterprise if you do not consider digital platforms for distributing content. But, if you are looking for rich and personalized experience together with uniformity, then you need an advanced and sophisticated solution. There, the DXP steps in. It is indeed one step ahead of a CMS. Here the questions arise- why does your document management system need a DXP? Does your brand benefit from it?

The answer to these questions is- the DXP can help your enterprise offer an omnichannel customer experience. Let’s go through key benefits of DXP that help your brand to become successful online.

Strengthening Relationships
DXP can make your relationships stronger with existing and new customers. Both small and large enterprises can take benefits of DXP and develop productive relationships with the target audience throughout the lifecycle.

Offering omnichannel experiences
We have already discussed that DXP can provide an omnichannel experience. When your brand offers customers the same experience across multiple devices, you can certainly boost the sales and gain the customer’s trust.

Enabling integrations
The DXP can be readily integrated with existing and new data. You can easily optimize content and manage different document management systems through a centralized DXP while delivering engaging experiences.

Providing multiple touchpoints
The DXP enables you to address the customer’s requirements across various touchpoints. As a result, you can get a higher conversion rate.

The CMS offers limited access and scope for personalized customer experience. CMS is more useful for developing a user-friendly website as a whole rather than offering a personalized experience. It is not possible for CMS to get connected to various platforms and devices. These days, the IoT trend is on the rise and the CMS cannot enable you to make the most of connected devices.

Concluding Lines
In a nutshell, if you want your enterprise to remain competitive amid increasing challenges, it is better to choose a DXP. You can provide personalized content with a connected digital experience to your customers. A renowned content management company can help you find ways to get the most suitable DXP solution for your diverse business requirements.

Content management system

How Alfresco Application Development Framework Benefit Enterprises

The Alfresco framework is known for its regular updates and frequent improvements to meet complex document management requirements of modern businesses. It has gained ground globally for providing robust document repositories, enterprise-grade search facility, and business process workflows. Recently, Alfresco has introduced Application Development Framework (ADF) with customizable readymade components to make feature-rich enterprise applications.

Alfresco development company

Alfresco ADF consists of two parts- UI and backend. Here, Angular powers front-end for developing user-friendly and engaging UI. Developers prefer ADF over Share UI because it promotes rapid application development. Focused user experience, responsive design, customizability, and excellent functionality are some of the key characteristics of ADF-powered applications. The framework is designed to enable Alfresco developers to include the desired functionality in the application.

Why should you prefer ADF over Share UI?

Experienced Alfresco developers may raise this question- why should we use Alfresco ADF over the shipping client Alfresco Share UI? We can mention two major reasons as an answer to this question.

  1. Share UI provides potentially bloated features. On the other hand, ADF enables you to deploy a custom, minimalistic client to meet the needs of a document management system.
  2. ADF is more customizable than Share UI. The Share UI may not fulfill your client’s business needs effectively due to limited functionality. As a result, you require heavy customization. There, Share UI remains short of capabilities.

Simply put, with ADF, developers can facilitate the management to provide enterprise users with modern experience. It can drive user adoption rapidly. What’s more, developers can rapidly deliver unique solutions for the enterprise content management system by assembling a combination of process, governance and content components.

Alfresco ADF is an open-source framework and based on popular web technologies including Angular, Material Design, JavaScript, and RESTful services. If an enterprise content management solution requires extensive customization in its user interface, which most do, then it is not advisable to use Share UI. There, you can count on ADF.

Related Blog: Top Features of Liferay Commerce that Benefit B2B E-Commerce Enterprises

Key Features and Benefits of Alfresco ADF

  • It helps you build an outstanding user experience (UX) quickly on top of the Alfresco Digital Business Platform
  • It automatically provides responsive, localized & accessible UIs components
  • It is designed to enable the rapid development of custom user experiences
  • It enables developers to leverage Google Material Design components
  • It supports Activity 7.0- Activiti 7.0 is the newest version of the cloud-native, open-source BPM project. Alfresco Developers can leverage ADF 3.0 to rapidly build process-led, custom web applications using Activiti 7.0.
  • It supports Angular 7.0 – With the support for Angular 7.0, developers can gain immediate access to the performance improvements and several major enhancements along with new design features comprising Virtual Scrolling, Drag and Drop, and many others.

Major benefits of Alfresco ADF include- The content-based application can provide a streamlined experience for end-users on top of Alfresco Content Services, focused on file management within the Alfresco content repository. Developers get an easily extendable environment for developing custom applications rapidly while injecting custom controls, viewer components, pages, and plug-ins without upgrade concerns.

Business Benefits of Alfresco ADF

  1. Reduced TTV (Time to Value)- Alfresco ADF has over 150 reusable components and dev tools. It can accelerate the development process greatly and thereby reducing time-to-value.
  2. Drive Adoption– You can make your customers happy through advanced applications in the document management system.
  3. Connect People and Content- Alfresco ADF assembles the combination of process, governance and content components to let developers deliver unique solutions.
  4. High Flexibility- The framework offers high flexibility for developers and enterprises can get engaging solutions to drive adoption while addressing business needs.

Concluding Lines
When you want an engaging web application on top of the Alfresco Digital Business Platform, Alfresco ADF should be your choice. It offers a rich set of UI components based on Angular, command-line tooling and JavaScript APIs. Alfresco application development has got an edge with the advent of Alfresco ADF. Developers can bring digital transformation by leveraging the benefits of ADF.

ContCentric IT Services is a leading Alfresco development company. It has already accomplished 3 Projects in ADF. ContCentric has also trained its certified Alfresco developers in Angular to make the most of the Application Development Framework (ADF). If you have explored Alfresco Share and want to experience how ADF is exceeding the user’s expectations with extraordinary features and excellent capability, then send us an email at hello@contcentric.com.

Alfresco development system

How to Choose the Right Platform between Alfresco and Liferay

In today’s competitive business scenario, the document management system plays a vital role in taking your company to the next level. Today, we have several frameworks available to make enterprise content management systems with desired features or build a robust document management system. However, out of these frameworks, only Alfresco and Liferay have attracted maximum developers and entrepreneurs worldwide.

Alfresco is an open, secure, and modern system that activates process and content intelligently to accelerate the business flow. Whereas, Liferay is an open-source framework that provides free documentation and paid professional services while enabling users to build portals, websites, and connected experiences.

Let’s compare them from various aspects. But before that, it is better to go through some common requirements that lead us to consider Liferay and Alfresco.

Common Requirements for Alfresco and Liferay

Here is a list of some common requirements that customers need to have before selecting any of these platforms. If your project has all these requirements then you should look for a reputed enterprise content management system developer.

  • Document management system
  • Wiki Pages, blogs, and chats
  • Collaboration and coordination
  • Portal development
  • Document sharing
  • Business workflow based on content
  • Enterprise-level search
  • Intranets and Common Knowledge Area
  • Forums and Discussion Boards
  • Knowledge management
  • Event management and corporate calendar
  • Web content management
  • Mobile-friendliness

However, it is fair to mention that comparing Alfresco and Liferay is like comparing an apple and an orange. When it comes to their strengths and selection of the right platform, it is possible that poor tool selection can increase the cost of development and implementation. Let’s go through the circumstances that make Liferay the right choice.

When you should opt for Liferay development services

Liferay is a great framework especially when you want to develop mobile-friendly presentation interfaces. This is basically a portal framework and is highly useful for-

  • Developing responsive websites, Intranets, and web portals
  • Web content management
  • Publishing static and dynamic content in abundance with workflows to manage the entire content cycle
  • Document management limited to managing documents available on an Intranet or a website as compared to an enterprise-wide document library
  • Collaboration app-centric views with social media integration or social media apps
  • Websites or applications that use wikis, blogs, and chat heavily
  • Integrating underlying corporate systems to present data to a huge audience

Here are some of the major circumstances when you should seek help from an Alfresco content management company.

Also Read- How to Make the Most of Enterprise Content Management System in 2020

When you should go for Alfresco development services

Alfresco is a popular content repository and workflow engine. It is designed as a robust Enterprise Document Management System and it has less part of a collaborative portal or Intranet, unlike Liferay.

Much confusion about its role as a collaborative framework is prevailing because of its module named “Share”. It is a collaborative application over a document repository, but it has no match with big CMS frameworks like Liferay and Drupal.

Alfresco has gained popularity in providing web content management, but in reality, its WCM experience is not worthy of comparing the same with Liferay. In other words, Alfresco is not a dedicated WCM framework. But, when it comes to document repository and enterprise-grade search capabilities, Alfresco knows no competition. Even the Liferay framework is not this much capable in a document repository.

Alfresco workflow engine is an excellent BPM (Business Process Management) tool that can help companies automate a lot of workflows based on documents along with non-document-based workflows. Alfresco is best used when your enterprise has to manage thousands or millions of documents and all of these documents are either presented to a website or Intranet or within the firewall.

Though Alfresco provides the same features related to Wikis, blogs, and forums like Liferay, the framework cannot give the user experience like Liferay and other similar frameworks. Unnecessary customization and enhancements are outcomes of an Alfresco-based development system used for these objectives.

Do you know that a reputed Liferay development company can integrate Alfresco for enhanced document management and document repository? Here, the Liferay framework takes care of the presentation and web content along with the workflow while providing a rich digital experience. The content-centric workflows are useful for creating the final copies of documents. Here, the Alfresco repository can be used for presenting some of the documents on the Liferay-based portal.

Concluding Lines
Alfresco ECM and Liferay Digital Experience Platform (DXP) are excellent platforms for establishing an enterprise content management system. Though we have covered the major aspects of comparison between these two frameworks here. It is better to contact a reputed ECM services provider to know the most suitable platform for your document management system-related requirements.

ContCentric is a leading Alfresco and Liferay development company. We have provided customized solutions for modern enterprises in a cost-effective way since our inception. ContCentric provides a one-stop solution for all ERP and document management-related queries.

Liferay development services

What’s New in Liferay DXP 7.2 and Why Your Company Needs It?

Whether you have a Liferay application or want to build a customized portal with Liferay, the latest version Liferay DXP 7.2 is here for you! If you still want to sit on the fence to update your existing Liferay-based application to Liferay DXP 7.2 then this is something important for you- Liferay 6.2 support is going to end in December 2020. So you have 14 months left for upgrading.

Liferay development company

Liferay DXP 7.2 was released in June 2019 with a lot of enterprise-friendly features and excellent functionality. These features have a significant impact on the lives of developers and users alike. The latest release Liferay DXP 7.2 has improved features and performance enhancements. It also comes with a revamped UI.

A reputed Liferay development company can enable your enterprise to make the most of the latest version of Liferay 7.2. If you want to increase the operational efficiency and productivity of an existing Liferay solution, it is better to upgrade it to Liferay 7.2. It will take your business to a growth path and make it ready for new challenges. Let’s make a list of business benefits of Liferay DXP 7.2.

Top Benefits of Liferay DXP 7.2 for Your Enterprise

  • Liferay DXP 7.2 makes it easier for non-technical users to provide a rich and seamless user experience. This latest version has more tools and user-oriented updated as compared to other existing versions
  • Audience Targeting and User Segmentation are at the core of the new Liferay DXP 7.2. Both these features can be easily integrated with content creation abilities in the existing Liferay platform
  • Liferay has emphasized on privacy by improving the Personal Data Erasure feature. This feature was introduced in Liferay DXP 7.1 and it is now more powerful and efficient than ever

Other benefits of Liferay DXP 7.2 are following

– Modern Site Building Project
Since the launch of Liferay DXP 7.1, the company strives to deliver the best user experience with some non-technical changes and improvements. Liferay DXP 7.2 has brought a lot of such changes and improved features like Display Pages, Content Pages, Navigation Menus, Fragments, and Pages Administration. Here we will discuss Display Pages and Content Pages because they can have a lasting impact on the Document Management System (DMS).

Also, Read- Top Features of Liferay Commerce that Benefit B2B E-Commerce Enterprises

– Content Pages
Liferay DXP 7.2 has an improved appearance on the content pages. Now, enterprise users can adjust the images, background colors, spacing, and other necessary elements on the content pages. In a way, the users have more abilities for styling and customization of the content pages. The layout can also be customized by using the Section Builder given on the right-hand side.

Liferay also offers fragments, which are basic components consisting of text fields, images, buttons, headers, cards, and the like. It is easy to combine the predefined sections to build complex components. You can hire Liferay developers to combine these predefined sections and add complex components on the content pages.

Liferay DXP 7.2 also enables developers and users to add any widget to any fragment while making the use of alerts, blogs, wikis, and the like. This is simply an enhancement of the functionality of Liferay DXP 7.1 that enables the users to add widgets to Content Pages.

 Display Pages
All the content pages can be made for Display pages as they are built on the same building blocks. The Liferay development company can add support for Display pages in custom entities.

Introduction of AI (Artificial Intelligence)

Liferay DXP 7.2 has introduced AI in the form of Auto-tagging of images. This feature is designed to reduce manual actions and help users build collections rapidly. We certainly expect that more AI functionalities will come in the next versions in the form of Auto-tagging improvements and other features.

Liferay DXP 7.2 offers many benefits and user-friendly features to meet the complex requirements of the document management system. It is always beneficial for modern enterprises to upgrade their existing Liferay version and remain competitive.

Concluding Lines
At ContCentric, our experienced and certified Liferay developers provide the best-in-class Liferay development services. We have successfully delivered several Liferay projects across different industry verticals and helped our global clientele achieve business objectives. We can come up with the most suitable solutions for the most complex content management requirements.

Step-by-Step Process Guide for Alfresco Migration from 5.x to 6.0

As a robust, open-source framework for offering digital operations with exceptional experiences, Alfresco has gained ground across 190 countries globally. One of the reasons for this platform’s increasing popularity is Alfresco keeps on coming with updated versions to meet the diverse needs of modern businesses. On July 11, 2018, Alfresco has introduced Alfresco 6.0 in its Content Services.

Entrepreneurs can leverage the benefits of the latest version of Alfresco by migrating their existing software to 6.0. It is highly recommended for Alfresco developers to follow a structured path while updating the versions in Alfresco Content Services. Here we give a step-by-step guide for Alfresco content migration from 5.x to 6.0. This migration procedure can be done by using the distribution zip or installer.

The Alfresco document migration involves a new installation of the Alfresco Content Services binaries and configuration or installer along with an in-place upgrade of a copy of the repository. However, in-place upgrade of the binaries and configuration is not recommended. Whenever you create a new installation, you can remain assured that if anything goes wrong during the upgrade, the original or existing Alfresco document management system will stay intact and available for immediate restart.

Key points to consider before migrating from Alfresco 5.x to 6.0

1. Pre-Validation
It is necessary to validate all your requirements before initiating the migration process. These requirements include whether your platform is on the correct supporting stacks for the new version, language support, supported environment like Oracle JVM, OpenOffice, ImageMagick, etc. and architecture support.

2. Strategy for Backup and Restore
As you know, backup is essential before migration. All you need to take a backup of the entire production data because it can help you restore the same if your data becomes corrupt after the migration from 5.x to 6.0.

3. Identification of deprecated and new feature
It is better to identify deprecated, removed features or architectural changes in the existing version of Alfresco. It can make a big difference when you upgrade the Alfresco version.

4. After upgrade
This is important- once the migration process completes, you need to deploy the upgraded customized code on Alfresco followed by routine tests. Also, make sure that Solr indexing is completed for the entire repository. If Solr indexing is not completed, then your system may provide incorrect search results.

Steps for Upgrading Document Management System from 5.x to 6.0

1) Take Backup old Alfresco (5.x) data
This is the first and foremost step for initiating the version update process from Alfresco 5.x to 6.0. It consists of three steps.

a) Shut down your existing instance

b) Back up your existing repository (e.g. alfresco-v.1) and the database.
i. Taking back up of a repository involves back up of the directory pointed to by the dir.root setting, the database that Alfresco Content Services is configured to use, and the Solr indexes(optional).
ii. The dir.root directory is defined in the alfresco-global.properties file. By default, this directory is named alf_data and is located within the directory where Alfresco Content Services is installed.

c) Back up any configuration overrides from the <extension> directory.

2) Installation in different directory
Install the new version (e.g. alfresco-v.2) into a different directory from the existing installation and validate the new 6.0 installation to check whether it works correctly.

a) Configure the new installation with a new repository and database (not the existing one).

b) Start the server and validate that the system works correctly.

3) Apply all customization to the new 6.0 installation
This is a very important step and you need to take enough care while implementing the customization to the new version. Below, we elaborate all the steps for applying customization.

a) Stop the server.
i. Navigate to the Tomcat /bin directory then choose one of these options to stop the server:
Linux : ./shutdown.sh
Window: shutdown
You need administrator rights to run this command.
ii. Navigate to the installation directory for your database and stop the server.
Ref : https://docs.alfresco.com/6.0/tasks/alfresco-stop.html

b) Uninstall unwanted AMPs or applications.
i. Open a command prompt and change into the root directory of your installation.
ii. Check for the presence of the module you wish to delete by typing in the following command:
Alfresco.war AMP files : java -jar bin/alfresco-mmt.jar list tomcat/webapps/alfresco.war
Share.war AMP files : java -jar bin/alfresco-mmt.jar list tomcat/webapps/share.war

This displays a list of installed modules. Make a note of the module ID of the module you wish to uninstall,
for example,
org.alfresco.integrations.google.docs in the amps directory
org.alfresco.integrations.share.google.docs in the amps_share directory.

iii. Uninstall the module by entering the following command:
java -jar bin/alfresco-mmt.jar uninstall org.alfresco.integrations.google.docs tomcat/webapps/alfresco.war
and
java -jar bin/alfresco-mmt.jar uninstall org.alfresco.integrations.share.google.docs tomcat/webapps/share.war
You can check that the AMP files have been removed by rerunning the command:
java -jar bin/alfresco-mmt.jar list tomcat/webapps/alfresco.war
and
java -jar bin/alfresco-mmt.jar list tomcat/webapps/share.war
iv.Delete the tomcat/webapps/alfresco and tomcat/webapps/share folders in the installation directory
Ref: https://docs.alfresco.com/6.0/concepts/remove-apps-install.html
Ref: https://docs.alfresco.com/6.0/tasks/uninstall-amp.html

c) Install the required AMP files. (This may require little changes in your custom code because some of the features may have been removed or deprecated)
i. Place Repository amps in /alfresco/amps folder and Share amps in /alfresco/amps_share folder.
ii. Browse to the /bin directory:
Windows : C:\Alfresco\bin
Linux : /opt/alfresco/bin
iii. Run the apply_amps application to apply all AMP files that are in the amps and amps_share directories:
For Windows, navigate to the bin directory and double click apply_amps.
For Linux, enter the command: bin/apply_amps.sh

Ref: https://docs.alfresco.com/6.0/tasks/amp-install.html

d) Do not copy the files. Copy the override settings only so that you will not overwrite the new extension files in the upgraded version.
i. Copy the override settings, Like <extension> directory files and alfresco-global.properties parameter (do not replace this file but just add additional parameter).

e) Start the Alfresco server.
i.Monitor the start-up log messages for information on the status of the upgrade. If any issue(s) occur in the logs during start-up, you need to roll-back the whole repository to fix the issue(s) and then try again.

f) Fully test the working and configuration of your customization.

g) Stop the server

4) Restore the backup to new Alfresco version

a) Remove(or Copy for safer side) all the files and directories under the contentstore directory of the new installation. Also, rename new alfresco database and create a new database at same place with the same name.

b) Delete(or Copy for safer side) the files in the Solr4/alfrescoModels directories, and the indexes in the two directories (solr/workspace/ and solr/archive/) of the new installation.

c) Restore the backup of the indexes(optional but takes time to reindex if no of document are too large), contentstore directory, and database from your previous installation into the new installation.

d) Start the server and monitor logs.
That’s it! Your document management system is ready with the new Alfresco 6.0 version.

ContCentric is a renowned Alfresco development company. We have an in-house team of experienced Alfresco developers to enable our corporate users to make the most of the latest Alfresco 6.0 version.

Click to Know More: https://docs.alfresco.com/6.0/tasks/upgrade-process.html

Top Features of Liferay Commerce that Benefit B2B E-Commerce Enterprises

The advent of Liferay Commerce 2.0 has started helping B2B sellers to increase revenue. Liferay Commerce is an expansion of Liferay Enterprise Solutions capable of building digital workplaces. It enhances the customer’s experience and faciltates enterprises to connect with the wider eCommerce world. Liferay development services can utilize the key features of Liferay Commerce 2.0 to meet the needs of B2B eCommerce.

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Liferay platform can assist developers to build a robust enterprise content management system. It’s recent version Liferay Commerce 2.0 has many features that can help businesses, especially eCommerce business. Here we mention a few noteworthy features that can benefit a lot to B2B eCommerce.

Channel Conflict Resolution
Liferay Commerce is designed to meet the requirements and resolve complex issues of modern businesses. The latest version Liferay Commerce 2.0 has integrated the sales team in the eCommerce channel. Most commerce platforms lack this feature. It will facilitate the end-users or customers to place orders through sales representatives online. Here, technological advancements can streamline the change management and sales representatives can get a clear roadmap with a digital experience.

Advantage for Sales Representatives
Liferay Commerce 2.0 can bring the sales teams into the digital channel. It gives them more insight into every account and access to various tools that lead them to consultative selling. A sales rep can switch between the customer accounts. It enables representatives to see what their customer sees including order history, pricing, and recommendations. They can also create or edit orders online on behalf of their customers. In a way, Liferay Commerce 2.0 empowers sales representatives.

Simply put, the Liferay platform builds a contextualized environment for sales teams and enables sales reps to improve collaboration with customers. Be it submitting order or troubleshooting, the Liferay Commerce 2.0 offers a great benefit to sales representatives.

Also Read- What are New Features in Liferay DXP 7.1 Version?

Account-based Tools for Sales
Liferay Commerce 2.0 has smart alerts to enables sales representatives to find the accounts with reduced buying activity. These alerts are powered by ML (Machine Learning) and facilitate sales reps to reach unhappy customers rapidly. What’s more, each customer’s account has a dashboard that can be accessed by sales representatives at any time. The dashboard shows KPIs, recent or pending orders, and forecast regarding the reorder of products.

Multi-contact Experience
B2B clients will also benefit from a multi-contact experience like B2C clients. Interestingly, the multi-contact experiences take the best of B2C concepts and apply them successfully to complex B2B scenarios. The Liferay development company can connect the dots between portal and eCommerce by combining the Liferay Commerce 2.0 and DXP. Entrepreneurs or business owners can get a robust document management system that supports the entire eCommerce strategy.

Apart from these major features, Liferay Commerce 2.0 has many other beneficial features for B2B eCommerce. Here are all the features of Liferay Commerce 2.0.

ContCentric is a leading Liferay development company with an in-house team of certified developers. We can come up with a reliable and robust solution for your company’s document management system.

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