This is an overview of Alfresco WCM gaps and issues that we have identified via the MIT Alfresco Content Services Initiative. This outline is a compilation of gaps and issues gathered from our project, the MITAA project, the IS&T redesign project, and more.
A portion of our issues and gaps are already on Alfresco's roadmap (see spreadsheet)... these have "vX.X" numbers in the outline below.  Also, towards the end of the document, you will see less concrete "comments" about the overall stability of the WCM application and repository.
Current Prioritizations:
High Priority

Medium Priority

Low Priority

Comment (no priority)
Issue / Gap Detail

  • Search
    • Indexing of content – v2.1
    • Flexible searching of assets – v2.1
    • Location specific searches (i.e. - search only within one web project) – v2.1
    • Searching of assets using specific content information (text, filename, date published, etc) – v2.1
    • Searching of assets within authoring interface
  • Deployment
    • Deployment to a production environment with Alfresco Runtime – v2.0.1
    • Deployment according to publishing / expiration dates – v2.1
    • Deployment to a file server (no Alfresco Runtime) - TBA
    • Compare staging snapshots to view differences – v2.0.1
  • Security / Access Control
    • Locking
      • Ability to lock assets – v2.1
      • Content manager lock override – v2.1
      • Automatic locking upon editing – v2.1
      • Automatic unlocking upon completion of editing – v2.1
      • Align locking to workflow review steps (a file cannot be changed while it is in the review stage) – v2.1
    • User Control
      • Manage permissions at granular level within specific web project partitions
      • Hide web projects from unauthorized users (every user should not be able to see every web project... they should just see their web projects) - TBA
      • Restrict specific sections of web projects (by user or group of users) based on permissions – TBA
      • Allow different users to fulfill different roles, depending on the section of content
      • Allow organizations to partition web projects – TBA
      • Restrict the ability to see a web project within Alfresco to those users who have access rights (in the case of one instance hosting more than one web project authoring environment)
    • Virtualization Server
      • If you know the virtualization URL, any page can be viewed via the virtualization server... this needs to be restricted (at least the option to restrict needs to be available) – TBA
    • Authentication
      • MIT Certificate / Kerberos / Web SSO Authentication – Alfresco username / password authentication will not be adequate
  • Usability
    • Allow files to be added / removed / created via workflow interface – TBA
    • Disable web form buttons during "loading" times... impatient clicking can wipe the record being loaded – TBA
    • Fix the breadcrumb navigation... the application seems to get lost at times, specifically when entering and exiting multiple web projects... there seems to be too many ways to go back, which may confuse the browser – TBA
    • Inline editing of WCM files (similar to Interwoven's LaunchPad features) – TBA
    • Offer an easy way for previewing content within authoring environment
    • Provide one place to access in order to edit all content (no separation between dynamic and static content)
  • Content Editing
    • Promote content from one web project to another – TBA
    • TinyMCE
      • Allow for links to be inserted via TinyMCE editor... offer a searching mechanism to locate link locations within web project – v2.0.1
      • Allow for images to be inserted via TinyMCE editor... offer a searching mechanism to locate link locations within web project – v2.0.1
      • Support for unescaped markup in TinyMCE content fields – v2.0.1
      • Support for escaped markup in AVM and CIFS – v2.0.1
    • Workflow
      • Current default workflow behaviors are not sophisticated enough for practical usage... in addition, it's hard to figure out how to develop new workflows on your own.
  • Configuration
    • Nest sub-web projects within overall web projects to provide a space for separate development of a section of the website – TBA
  • WCM / Repository Performance
    • Scheduled Completion
      • Deploy / Undeploy workflows without bouncing server – v2.0.1
      • Deploy / Undeploy repository customizations without bouncing server – TBA
      • Repository Robustness
        • Alfresco should test and publish metrics proving the testing and stability
        • Need to perform load testing on a system with multiple users and multiple applications
        • Database corrupts easily – seems like the repository needs to be rebuilt from scratch periodically
        • Adding /removing custom data types to repository can corrupt the database and require you to rebuild
        • Application and Repository need more testing and more stability
      • Virtualization Server
        • Easy to "tip over"
        • In most cases, you can simply restart – in extreme cases, you need to rebuild entire repository
        • If the virtualization server does fail, it should be self-righting
      • Maintenance / Notifications
        • Need notification of outages
        • Provide monitoring hooks for health check / fail over
  • Link Management
    • Validate links (WIP)
    • Update links when content is moved with a web project (WIP)
  • Reporting
    • Task-based reporting for administrative roles
  • Other
    • Incorporating Google Search Box into production website
    • Safari Browser is not compatible with Alfresco
    • WCM application documentation
    • Need information on high availability clustering / 3-tiered system architecture
    • Provide a remote API so that Alfresco can run separately (in a different JVM) from the web application.  We DO NOT want in process APIs.  We prefer the REST web services over SOAP services.
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