CIFS: common internet filesystem, also known as server message block (SMB)
Two implementation:
Java:java socket based implementation of the SMB/CIFS protocol that can be used on any platform.
Netbios -- windows only: windows specific interface that uses win32 netbios api via jni code
the default configuration will use the netbios based code under windows and java socket based code on other platforms.
Desktop actions allow a client-side application on the Alfresco CIFS server to trigger a server-side action. The action is run in the context of the folder the application is running in. Files and/or folders may be dragged onto the client-side application, these are then passed as parameters to the server-side action.
Desktop actions are configured on a per filesystem basis using the file-servers.xml (or file-servers-custom.xml) configuration file.