Alfresco 2.

Web Content Management

Product Evaluation Guide

Version 1.0
 WCM Product Management Evaluation Guide

Copyright (c) 2007 by Alfresco and others.

Information in this document is subject to change without notice. No part of this document may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any
purpose, without the express written permission of Alfresco. The trademarks, service marks,
logos or other intellectual property rights of Alfresco and others used in this documentation
("Trademarks") are the property of Alfresco and their respective owners. The furnishing of this
document does not give you license to these patents, trademarks, copyrights or other intellectual
property except as expressly provided in any written agreement from Alfresco.
The United States export control laws and regulations, including the Export Administration
Regulations of the U.S. Department of Commerce, and other applicable laws and regulations
apply to this documentation which prohibit the export or re-export of content, products, services,
and technology to certain countries and persons. You agree to comply with all export laws,
regulations and restrictions of the United States and any foreign agency or authority and assume
sole responsibility for any such unauthorized exportation.
If you need technical support for this product, contact Customer Support by email at
[email protected]. If you have comments or suggestions about this documentation, contact
us at [email protected].
This edition applies to version 2.1 of the licensed program.

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Contents
Introduction .......................................................................................................................................1
Important Notes ............................................................................................................................1
Typographic Conventions .................................................................................................................2
Web Content Management Product Overview .................................................................................3
XML Content Authoring ................................................................................................................3
Multi-channel Content Publishing.................................................................................................4
Sandboxed Content Development ...............................................................................................4
Virtualization and In-context Preview ...........................................................................................4
Content Staging, Promotion, Workflow, and Snapshots ..............................................................5
Content Deployment.....................................................................................................................5
Link Validation ..............................................................................................................................5
Content Launch and Expiration ....................................................................................................5
Web Publishing Dashlets .............................................................................................................6
Web Content Management Scenario Overview ...............................................................................7
Creating New Users..........................................................................................................................8
Creating New Web Forms ..............................................................................................................13
Creating New Web Projects ...........................................................................................................19
Importing the Sample Dynamic Website ........................................................................................28
Creating New Web Content: Company Profiles .............................................................................33
Creating New Web Content: Press Releases ................................................................................38
Content Launch and Expiration ......................................................................................................42
Site Deployment .............................................................................................................................46
Snapshots and Rollback .................................................................................................................48
Links Management .........................................................................................................................50
Links Management: User Sandboxes.............................................................................................52
Links Management: Workflow ........................................................................................................55
Content Contribution: Alfresco Dashlets.........................................................................................59
Site Regeneration: Updating Templates ........................................................................................61
Virtual File System Interface...........................................................................................................66
Summary ........................................................................................................................................70

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 WCM Product Management Evaluation Guide

Introduction
The purpose of this Product Evaluation Guide is to:

• Introduce the basic concepts of Alfresco’s Web Content Management solution

• Demonstrate how to set-up and configure Alfresco for managing a website

• Showcase a sample web publishing scenario

• Provide update on new Alfresco WCM 2.1 features and capabilities

Alfresco recommends end-users downloading the Alfresco 2.1 release walk through this guided
tutorial and sample content to familiarize themselves with the Web Content Management
extensions to Alfresco’s 2.1 ECM platform offering.

Important Notes
Alfresco also recommends reviewing and keeping up-to-date on the latest around our WCM
offering on our Developer Wiki. To bookmark this page for easy reference, please use the
following link:
http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/New_Web_Content_Management_Plan

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Typographic Conventions
The following typographic conventions are used in this Product Evaluation Guide:

Formatting Convention Type of Information

Bold Navigation, Menu, and Action links in the Alfresco web

client
Blue Italicized Bold Links in the sample website
Italics Filenames and path references in the Alfresco sample
website and source files. Also used for labels within
Alfresco forms.
“Quoted Text” Folder names within the Alfresco web client

Captioned Text Important information to note

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Web Content Management Product

Overview
Alfresco Web Content Management (WCM) extends Alfresco 2.1’s capabilities in the following
areas:

• XML content authoring

• Multi-channel content publishing

• Sandboxed content development

• Virtualization and in-context preview of both static and dynamic web pages

• Content staging, promotion, workflow, and snapshots

• Links validation

• Content launch and expiration

XML Content Authoring

Alfresco WCM adds XForms support to enable Content Publishers to easily create reusable XML
using a simple browser-based form. Alfresco enables Web Developers to upload and register
XML Schemas (XSDs) within a central Form Library in the Alfresco Data Dictionary. Alfresco also
enables Web Developers and Content Managers to subscribe individual Web Projects (websites
or web applications) to use one or more forms from this library to create and edit content. Once
configured for a given Web Project, Content Publishers can access a Web Form via the Create
New Content Wizard and walk-through a step-by-step process for creating or editing XML
assets.
Capabilities provided within a form include support for:

• WYSIWYG content authoring with customizable controls on a field-by-field basis

• Repeating elements, including single, compound, and nested elements, with defined
minimum and maximum number of items

• Re-ordering and deletion of elements within a repeating list

• Enforced data types with pre-defined UI controls for data input

• Standard HTML data entry widgets, including checkboxes, drop-downs, radio-buttons, and
multi-select lists

• File-browser control creating references other assets with support for constraint based on
asset type (file or folder) and mimetype

• Mandatory / non-mandatory elements

• Read-only fields and default field values

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• Client-side data validation

• Custom labels and alerts, including support for internationalized labels and alerts via
resource bundles

• Multi-byte content entry

• Callouts for dynamic content selection options (used to generate conditional

lists of values for users to select for radio buttons, single- or multi-select lists)
Form includes to reuse form definitions as components within other forms (for example,
reused the form definition for an address across a multiple web forms)

Multi-channel Content Publishing

Alfresco WCM also adds support for enforcing rules to generate different output formats from
created XML assets. Alfresco enables Web Developers to upload and associate one or multiple
XSL, Freemarker, or XSLFO templates with an XSD and automatically enforce the application of
one or more templates to generate content upon completion of the Create New Content wizard.

Sandboxed Content Development

To support creation and editing of web content, Alfresco provides support for a sandboxed
development model. For any website or web application, Alfresco provides each user with their
own special space – a sandbox – where they can make any number of changes to web content,
including adding, editing, or deleting both files and folders. Alfresco tracks all content
modifications made within a user’s sandbox and maintains those changes in isolation from other
user’s working within their own sandbox environment. In this way, large teams of users can work
independently on changes to the website without stepping over one another’s work. Web
Developers can modify source code, Web Designers can change site look-and-feel, and Content
Publishers can create and modify content – all in parallel, in their own separate virtual staging
environments, without risk of interfering with one another’s changes.

Virtualization and In-context Preview

Core to sandboxes is the concept of virtualization and in-context preview. Virtualization means
that each user in the context of their sandbox has a complete view of all current, approved,
checked-in content along with those unique modifications made within the context of their
sandbox. In-context preview means that when previewing any non-modified or modified asset in a
sandbox, Alfresco provides a complete virtual view of the website as it would look if all changes in
a sandbox where committed to the live site. In this manner, each user in the context of their
sandbox can do rigorous and thorough QA for all changes they are posting to the website: Web
Developers can ensure code changes to JSP, class files, or jars are working properly, Web
Designers can test changes to CSS files, and Content Publishers can test that XML they are
creating are properly generating HTML pages and being sourced in any number of dynamic web
pages. Combined with sandboxed development, virtualization and in-context preview means that
a large, diverse web team can easily collaborate on changes to the website with reduced risk and
higher overall quality.

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Content Staging, Promotion, Workflow, and Snapshots

When changes are QAed in the context of a sandbox, individual assets or entire change sets – a
list of modified items in a sandbox – can be promoted from a sandbox to a Staging sandbox.
Content is promoted from a user’s sandbox to Staging by initiating the Submit Wizard. This
wizard is initiated by clicking on either the Submit or Submit All actions in the Alfresco web
client. Submitted changes are routed via workflow for one or multiple users to review and
approve, either serially or in parallel using Alfresco’s out-of-the-box sample editorial review
workflow (or any custom-built WCM workflow). Once approved, a snapshot is automatically taken
of Staging to provide an archive of the current version of the site. This snapshot is maintained
over time to provide an audit trail and rollback point for previous versions of the site. Once a
snapshot is taken, all committed changes are immediately reflected and available to each user in
their own sandbox, enabling all users to consistently QA their potential changes against the latest
and greatest version of the website.

Content Deployment
For known good snapshots of Staging, Alfresco 2.1 provides integrated deployment services to
replicate incremental content changes to a remote file server, remote Alfresco server, or a
combination. This integrated content deployment service also provides support for deploying a
single web project to multiple remote servers for maximum run-time scalability. This service
provides support for tracking which Staging snapshot is currently live, and provides audit trails for
what content was recently replicated when a new site version is pushed.

Link Validation
When changes are committed to Staging, a master list of references for all assets is built,
denoting references that are valid or broken. Within a sandbox, users can check links within a
given website or web application, and use the Alfresco GUI to interactively correct and re-test
links. Also, when committing new or modified assets to Staging (including both file and directory
deletions), both end-users and reviewers in the content approval chain can view the incremental
references that would be either corrected or broken were a change set to be approved and
committed to the main site. This incremental links check enables users to more quickly and more
effectively identify potential problems to ensure quality and site integrity on any site update.

Content Launch and Expiration

When promoting content to Staging, users can optionally set a specific launch and expiration date
on the change set they are promoting. When a launch date is set, approved content changes are
maintained in their own separate workflow sandbox until the specified time and date. Prior to that
date, end-users can preview the future state of the website, immediately promote, or cancel the
pending launch. As an example, members of a marketing team could use this facility to pre-
generate a new version of the site to launch on Monday morning at 8am, getting all their changes
finalized, approved, and staged prior to release on Friday the week before. In addition, for any
changes promoted to the site, specific expiration dates can be set on a global or asset-by-asset
basis. Upon expiration, end-users are automatically assigned the asset as a task so that they can
make a determination whether the asset should be updated or removed from the site. This
content expiration also works in conjunction with Alfresco’s new Links Validation service, ensuring
that the site’s link integrity is incrementally tested against the new pending update. In this
manner, content can not only be regularly refreshed through an automated, task-driven review
process, but also be tested upon change to so the no errors on accidentally introduced in the
form of broken links.

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Web Publishing Dashlets

As an ECM platform, many knowledge workers using Alfresco do so primarily to create and
collaborate on business documents. For these business users – Content Contributors – Alfresco
2.1 makes it easy to create and manage web content without having to expose the complexity of
the web development environment for occasional contributors. In 2.1, Alfresco provides two new
dashboard components, My Web Forms and My Web Files that put the needed set of publishing
operations at the finger-tips of any knowledge worker, helping them to access and speed through
the publishing process while masking the underlying process and structure of the Web Content
Management system.

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Web Content Management Scenario

Overview
This Product Evaluation Guide will walk you through a basic scenario for importing and
configuring a basic website in Alfresco and updating it a set of published changes. In this
scenario, we will showcase how four different types of users will interact with the system:
Web Developers, responsible for:
- Creating new users
- Creating new Web Forms in the Alfresco Web Forms Library
- Creating and associate templates with Web Forms for multi-channel output
- Developing and maintaining application code using standard development tools against
Alfresco’s virtual file-system interface (CIFS)

Content Managers, responsible for:

- Creating new Web Projects, including:
1. Setting up a basic Staging and Promotion model
2. Configuring Web Forms and templates for web publishing
3. Configuring workflow for editorial review of site changes
- Reviewing and approving content from the Alfresco Dashboard
- Rolling back published website changes by reverting or deploying older site snapshots

Content Publishers, responsible for:

- Creating and updating re-usable XML assets using browser-based forms
- Automatically generating web pages from multiple XML assets
- Promoting changes to the website and submitting for editorial review
- Staging and scheduling content releases for future publication
- Reviewing expired content for update or removal from the site
- Maintaining link integrity of a site for any promoted set of changes
-
Content Contributors, responsible for:
- Creating new documents and automatically promote PDF renditions to the website
- Creating and updating re-usable XML assets using browser-based forms

Content Reviewers, responsible for:

- Reviewing and approving content from the Alfresco dashboard
- Checking quality, correctness, and integrity of the site prior to content approval

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Creating New Users

To get started, we will first need to log in to Alfresco and create the four users we will need to
walk through this tutorial. We will use the following users for our scenario:
1. Mark, Web Marketing Manager. Mark will play the role of Content Manager. Mark will be
responsible for reviewing and approving all changes to the website. Mark will also be
responsible for managing the new Web Project we create, including adding and removing
users and configuring Web Forms, templates, and workflow.
2. Alice, Product Marketing Manager. Alice will play the role of Content Publisher. Alice will be
responsible for creating and editing new content for the website, including scheduling major
new updates of the site for future site releases.
3. Pat, Product Manager. Pat will play the role of Content Contributor. Pat is primarily
responsible for creating and editing business documents, typically as part of a collaboration
project, that are automatically promoted upon completion to one or multiple websites. Pat is
also an occasional contributor of web content directly to the site; unlike Alice our Product
Marketing Manager, however, Pat needs simple entry points in web publishing that make the
needs for specialized skills or training unnecessary.
4. Lee, Legal Counsel. Lee will play the role of Content Reviewer. Lee will be responsible for
reviewing and approving select changes to the website only.
A fifth user, the Admin user, is the default system user. We will use the Admin user in the role of
the Web Developer to create new user accounts, create our Web Forms and associated
templates, and set-up our first Web Project on behalf of our Content Manager, Mark.
To begin in our capacity as a Web Developer, access Alfresco by going to the following URL and
logging with the following information:

URL: http://localhost:8080/alfresco
User Name: admin
Password: admin
Language: English

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Click on the Administration Console icon.

Admin

Click on Manage System Users.

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Click on Create User.

Type in details for our first user Mark, our Web Marketing Manager. In Step One of the Create
User Wizard, enter the following:
User #1:
First Name: Mark
Last Name: von Alfresco
Email: [email protected]

Click Next when done. In Step Two of the Create User Wizard, enter the following additional
data:
User Name: mark
Password: demo

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Now that we have created Mark, our Web Marketing Manager, repeat this process three more
times to create Alice, our Product Marketing Manager, Pat, our Product Manager, and Lee, our
Legal Counsel. Use the following information:

User #2:
First Name: Alice
Last Name: von Alfresco
Email: [email protected]
User Name: alice
Password: demo

User #:3
First Name: Pat
Last Name: von Alfresco
Email: [email protected]
User Name: pat
Password: demo

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User #4:
First Name: Lee
Last Name: von Alfresco
Email: [email protected]
User Name: lee
Password: demo

Once our four users have been created, you can click on the Show All button in the Manage
System Users console to confirm our newly created accounts. You should see the following
when complete:

With our users now created, we will now move on to create the two Web Forms we will use for
our first Web Project.

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Creating New Web Forms

Click on the Company Home link in the upper-left hand corner of the Alfresco GUI. In the
Company Home space, you should see four spaces: Data Dictionary, Guest Home, User
Homes, and Web Projects. Click on Data Dictionary, and on the subsequent screen click on the
Web Forms space. In the empty Web Forms space, select the Create Web Form action from
the Create menu.

In the Step One of the Create Web Form Wizard, first click Browse to locate and upload an XSD
from the Web Developer’s local drive. Then, navigate to C:\Alfresco\extras\wcm\forms. Select the
file company-footer.xsd. Upon returning to the wizard, note that the schema, company-footer.xsd,
has been successfully uploaded. Now, fill in the following values for the rest of the form and then
click Next.

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Title: Company Profile Form

Description: This form provides a summary overview of a company. These
summaries are included in press releases.
Output path: ${name}.xml (confirm default value)

In Step Two of the Create Web Form Wizard - Configure Templates - leave all values blank and
click Next. As Company Profiles are components sourced dynamically into individual pages, XML
assets created by this form are not pre-generated.

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In Step Three - Configure Workflow - select the “No not now” option and click Next. This step
allows creation of default workflows for form data across all web projects. We will not set a default
and instead configure workflow locally when creating our Web Project.

Preview the Summary screen. If everything is in order, click Finish. To correct anything, click
Back.

After finishing the Create Web Form Wizard, note the new space, company-footer. This is our
newly-created form.

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Now, re-run the Create Web Form Wizard to create the press release form by re-selecting
Create Web Form from the Create menu.

In Step One of the Wizard, click Browse and select the file press-release.xsd from
C:\Alfresco\extras\wcm\forms. After successfully uploading the schema press-release.xsd, enter
the following values and then click Next.

Title: Press Release Form

Description: This form is used to create press releases for www, including both HTML
and printer-friendly versions.
Output path: ${name}.xml (confirm default value)

Now, in Step Two of the Create Form Wizard, click the Browse button to associate a Rendering
Engine Template file with the form. Select press-release.xsl from C:\Alfresco\extras\wcm\forms
and, after successfully uploading the file, confirm that the appropriate rendering engine, XSLT,
has been chosen by default. Then, enter the following values for the prompted fields:
Title: Press Release HTML Template
Description: This template pre-generates an HTML page for www.
Rendition mimetype: HTML (confirm default selection)
Output path: ${name}.${extension} (confirm default value)

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When finished, click on the Add to List button. See the new template association in the summary
screen.

Now, add a second template association. Click the Browse button again, and upload the file
press-release-text.ftl in C:\Alfresco\extras\wcm. After successfully uploading the file, confirm that
the appropriate rendering engine, Freemarker, has been chosen by default, and then use the
following data for the remainder of the form:
Title: Press Release Plain Text Template
Description: This template pre-generates a printer-friendly version to be linked from
the press release HTML page.
Rendition mimetype: Plain Text (change default selection)
Output path: ${name}.${extension} (confirm default value)

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As before, when complete click the Add to List button and confirm the new template association
in the summary screen.

After clicking Next, in Step Three - Configure Workflow - select the “No not now” option. Click
Next and in the Summary screen, confirm your configuration options for the press release form. If
everything is in order, click the Finish button. If any changes need to be made, click the Back
button.

Now, we have set-up and configured the default settings for our Web Forms. We are ready to
create our first Web Project and use these forms to create and publish content.

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Creating New Web Projects

To create a new Web Project, navigate back to Company Home. Click on Web Projects and in
the empty Web Projects space select Create Web Project from the Create menu.

In Step One of the Create Web Project Wizard, enter the name of your Web Project:
“alfrescosample”. When done, enter the DNS name, “alfrescosample”. This DNS name will be
used by our Virtualization Server to create a preview context on-the-fly for review and test of our
website changes. Next, in the Deploy To field, enter “localhost”. This specifies the name of the
server to which we will deploy finalized, approved snapshots of our Web Project for public
consumption. For our evaluation purposes, we will simply deploy new site version to a separate
Alfresco repository on our same local server machine. This will avoid us having to set-up and
configure a second box.

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Lastly, fill in the Title and Description for our Web Project. Use the following values:

Title: Alfresco WWW

Description: Web Project to evaluate Alfresco 2.1 features.

When complete, click Next.

In Step Two - Configure Web Forms - see that this Web Projects has two Web Forms it can
subscribe to. We will subscribe to both Web Forms in this Web Project and configure each for our
Web Project’s website’s unique content generation and workflow requirements.

Next to both Company Profile Form and Press Release Form, click the Add to List button. In the
Selected Web Content Forms section, click on the Web Form Details button next to the
Company Profile form.

In Company Footer Web Form Details, accept the default name and description for the form for
use in your Web Project. For output path pattern, type the following value:

Output path: /${webapp}/media/releases/content/${name}.xml

This expression specifies both the name and folder location of XML assets generated when using
this form. Please note for this evaluation to include the leading”/” in the output path, which roots
the generated path at the root of our web app. Without the leading slash, all generated paths will
be relative to current folder location where the Create Web Content Wizard is initiated. For

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purposes of this demo, we want all paths fixed from the root of our website. Click on the “?” icon
next the output path field to learn more details on available options for this expression.
Next, in the Workflow section, override the default no workflow option (seen by no workflows
being currently selected) and select the single workflow option, Web Site Submission. When
complete, click OK.

After completing Web Form Details for Company Footer, note the attention (“!”) icon next to
workflow. Since we have selected the Web Site Submission workflow for this form, we must now
configure that workflow. Click on the Configure Workflow button next to Company Footer. In the
Configure Workflow screen, accept the default type of review, “Serial”.
For company footers, our Web Marketing Manager, Mark, must review and approve all profiles.
To add Mark to the review list, type Mark’s name in the Search box, click the Search button, and
in the Search Results window select “Mark von Alfresco”. Click the Add to List button, then click
OK.

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Next, configure the Press Release Form for use in our Web Project. Click the Web Form Details
button for the Press Release Form and use the following values and then click OK when done.
Title: Accept default value
Description: Accept default value
Output path: /${webapp}/media/releases/content/${name}.xml (same as Company
Profile)
Workflow: Web Site Submission

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Next, click the Configure Workflow button next to the Press Release Form. In the Configure
Workflow screen, change the default type of workflow from “Serial” to “Parallel”. Then, add both
our Web Marketing Manager, Mark, and our Legal Counsel, Lee, to the list of reviewers. When
done, click the OK button.

Now that workflow is configured for our Press Release Form, click the Configure Templates
button. Note that we did not need to Configure Templates for Company Footer as that Web Form
had no templates associated with it.
In the Configure Templates screen, accept the default option of using both available templates
associated with this Web Form for our Web Project. In the future, other Web Projects may choose
to use different templates or no templates at all (meaning no content is statically pre-generated).
For output path pattern, enter the following for both templates:

Output path: /${webapp}/media/releases/content/${name}.${extension}

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This value governs how each template generates web assets, including both filename and output
directory location. When done, click the OK button. After reviewing the configuration summaries
for both Web Forms, click Next.

After completing Step Two, in Step Three now configure workflow for all changes to web assets
that are not generated via Web Forms.

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In the Select Workflow window, click the Add to List button next to the Web Site Submission
workflow. In the Selected Workflow window, note the attention (“!”) icon next our workflow. Click
the Configure Workflow button next to our selected workflow.

In the Configure Workflow dialog, accept the default “Serial” review type. Add our Web
Marketing Manager, Mark, as the sole reviewer for non-form generated web assets.
In Workflow Settings, note the default regex pattern match, .*. This default means than any
asset other than those generated via a Web Form will go through this review process. Note that
you can add the Web Site Submission workflow multiple times in Step Three of this wizard, and
for each instance configure a different chain of reviewers for different sections of the websites or
types of assets by modifying the regex pattern match in Workflow Settings. Examples includes
having an additional reviewer – the Creative Director – for any assets under /assets or a Product
Manager for anything under /products.

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When complete, click OK. Returning to Step Three of the Create Web Project Wizard, examine
the summary and click Next.

Regex Pattern

In Step Four, let’s add our users. First, type “Mark” in the Search box and click Search. Select
Mark from the Search Results window and then select Mark’s role, “Content Manager”. Then,
Click Add to List. Confirm that Mark has been added as a Content Manager in the summary at
the bottom of the window.
Repeat this process for both Alice, Pat, and Lee. Add Alice as a Content Publisher (Alice, as
Product Marketing Manager, does contribute content to the website), add Pat as a Content
Contributor (Pat, as a Product Manager, typically does not work within a Web Project and simply
publishes documents from a collaboration space) and Lee as a Content Reviewer (as Legal
Counsel, Lee does not contribute content to the www site). When done, click Next.
In Step Five, Email Users, accept the default option “No” for notifying users they have been
added to the new Web Project. Click Next.

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Finally, in Step Six, review a summary of our newly created Web Project. If everything is in order,
click the Finish button. If any changes need to be made, click the Back button.
To see our newly created Web Project, alfrescowww, navigate to /CompanyHome/Web Projects.

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Importing the Sample Dynamic Website

With our Web Forms and Web Project created, let’s import our default website content and
submit to Staging to enable users to create and manage new content updates.
Click the alfrescosample Web Project in /CompanyHome/Web Projects. In the Sandbox view of
alfrescosample, click either the Browse Website action or the Sandbox icon for the Admin
sandbox. See the current contents of the Admin sandbox, which is empty.

In the empty Admin sandbox, select the Bulk Import action from the Create menu. In the Bulk
Import dialog, click the Browse button. Select the file, alfresco-sample-website.war from
C:\Alfresco\extras\wcm. Once selected, click the Upload button. Once uploaded, click OK. The
WAR file will be imported into the current directory, which by default is the ROOT web app.

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Once the WAR file is expanded, preview the set of expanded assets in the Admin sandbox. Click
the Preview Website action in the upper-right-hand corner to preview the site.

Now, click the alfrescosample Web Project in breadcrumb and return to the Web Project View.
Click on Modified Items link in the Admin sandbox. See the list of all the recently imported assets
from the sample war file.

Notice on your list of Modified Items the icon next to each file asset. This is a lock icon. This icon
means that the current user, our Web Developer Admin, is editing this asset (in this case, by
creating it as a new item during the Bulk Import process). Whenever an asset is created,
deleted, or modified, Alfresco will first attempt to automatically grab a lock on that asset. If
Alfresco can successfully take the lock, the user will be able to create or modify the asset. If
Alfresco cannot take the lock, the user will be unable to complete their action. In Alfresco WCM
then, end-users do not need to explicitly check-out an asset in order to work with it; instead, locks
are automatic and implicit in every modification the user makes to the website.

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Looking at the lock icon, note that it is represented as a padlock with a key. The key means that
you, the current logged in user, own that lock and are capable of editing, submitting, or undoing
(reverting) changes to that asset. If you were to log in as a separate user, say our Content
Publisher Alice, you’ll see a different icon – a plain padlock icon. The plain padlock with a key
means that the resource is currently non-editable. A convenient tooltip will also tell you who
currently owns the lock. Because someone else has that resource locked, you will also see that
your Actions list no longer has icons for Edit or Delete. Because your attempt to secure a lock as
Alice would fail in any event, the Alfresco GUI conveniently strips away both Edit and Delete so
that you don’t accidentally try to do someone with that resource only to thwarted with a friendly
message telling you that someone has the asset locked. Simple, but a friendly way to save time
and frustration for your end-users.
To see this in action, click Logout in the upper-hand right corner of your screen and then log in
as Alice. After navigating to the alfrescosample Web Project, expand the Admin user’s Modified
Items list. Note the padlock icon (meaning the asset is locked but not by you). Now, navigate into
the Admin user’s sandbox by clicking on the sandbox icon. In the directory listing, note both the
different icon and the lack of available Edit and Delete actions. These actions are first and
foremost disabled because Alice does not have access rights to the Admin’s sandbox for
modifying content. Even if Alice had rights to this sandbox, however, we would see this same
limited set of actions due to the lock held by the Admin user. Later in the tutorial as we modify
existing content items in one sandbox, log out and log back in as a different user to see in that
second user’s sandbox how locked assets are not editable. Don’t stray too far from the path of
the tutorial, however. Make sure you can get back to where you were originally!

Now, let’s log out as Alice and log in once again as our Admin user, navigating back to our Web
Project and returning to our expanded list of Modified Items. From the list of Modified Items,
click the Submit All action. In the Submit Dialog, provide a Label and Description for the
submission (which will become the name and description of the corresponding Snapshot in
Staging). Enter “Initial Import” for Label and “Sample website” for Description. Also in the Submit
Dialog, note the selected checkbox, Check Links. Having this checkbox select will automatically
initiate a workflow-driven links validation check. Deselect this option for now, as we will examine
links management in greater depth later in the tutorial. For now, after providing both the label and
description, confirm the list of assets you are promoting to Staging and click OK.

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When complete, notice that the submitted items in the Modified Items list are no longer editable,
even though the Admin user is the lock owner. This is because the assets have now been
promoted for editorial review. While assets are under review, those assets are now only
modifiable in the context of the actual review or edit task itself. This prevents the Admin user from
making modifications to the asset underneath the reviewer and having potentially the wrong set of
changes approved and promoted to Staging.

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Now, we are complete with setting up our first Web Project. Logout as user Mark and log in again
as Admin. On the Admin user’s dashboard, note the notification task indicating that the
submission was approved. Clear this task (see above Note). We are now ready to start creating
and editing content on our site.

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Creating New Web Content: Company

Profiles
Return to the alfrescosample Web Project View. Click on the Recent Snapshots link in Staging.
See that we have a new version of our website – Version 3 – which is the Initial Import (Versions
1 and 2 of the website are the original, empty versions of Staging).
Collapse the list of Snapshots. Expand the list of Web Forms under the Admin sandbox. See our
two Web Forms, Company Profile and Press Release.
Now, we are going to start creating some new web pages. To start, click on the Create Content
link next to our Company Profile form.

In the Create Content Wizard, enter “Alfresco” for the name of the new asset. Click Next.
In the Company Profile form, fill in the following values:
Profile #1:
Name: Alfresco
Body: Alfresco is the leading open source alternative for enterprise content
management. It is the first company to bring the power of open source to
the enterprise content management market, enabling unprecedented
scale and a much lower total cost of ownership than proprietary systems.
Founded by a team of content management veterans that includes the
co-founder of Documentum, John Newton and former COO of Business
Objects, John Powell. Alfresco is based in London. For more information,
visit www.alfresco.com.

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When complete, click Next.

If the Press Release Form does not come up and instead generates an error
message, make certain you have first started your Virtualization Server. This
Web Form uses an in-line callout to dynamically generate a list of selectable
Company Profiles. Generating this Web Form is dependent upon the
Virtualization Server running. If you encounter this issue and your Virtualization
Server is running, click the Refresh action on your sandbox in the Web Project
view. This will force the Virtualization Server to reload your virtualized web app
context for your sandbox, enabling proper preview and Web Form generation.

When completed with the form, note that the asset Alfresco.xml was generated. Note the filepath:
/ROOT/media/releases/content/Alfresco.xml generated from the output path expression we
specified when creating our Web Project.
Also note the Submit checkbox underneath the generated filename. To speed publication, and
because we no longer intend to work on this asset, select this checkbox and click Finish.
Notice now you are again returned to the Submit Dialog. Instead of having to initiate a separate
submit process after completing the wizard, the convenient Submit checkbox can automatically
launch our submission process for us. In the Submit Dialog, type “Alfresco Profile” for Label and
“Added Alfresco profile” for Description. Also, make certain to deselect the Check Links
checkbox. Click OK.
When returned to your Web Project view, expand your list of Modified Items. Notice you have
the newly created asset, Alfresco.xml, which is currently locked by the Admin user but not
editable. This asset is now under editorial review and until approved or rejected, is available only
for preview.

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We’ll go through the review process later once we’ve created more Company Profiles.

Now, run through the Create Content Wizard using the Company Profile form three more times.
Use the following data below. For each form, select the auto-submit option at the conclusion of
the wizard.

Profile #2:
Name: Interdoc
Name: Interdoc
Body: InterDoc is a leader in the Enterprise Content Management field that
provides business solutions to enable operational efficiency of critical
business processes. The company has decades of experience in
improving operational efficiency for commercial enterprises and
government organizations and has used this experience to create a new
generation of software solutions based on a core of open source
software. For more information, visit www.interdoc.com.
Profile #3:
Name: Easypress
Name: Easypress
Body: Easypress Technologies (www.easypress.com) provides software for
converting content between XML and QuarkXPress. Its flagship products
include Atomik Roundtrip™, which provides full bidirectional XML
support for QuarkXPress; Atomik Xport™, which provides automated
QuarkXPress-to-XML conversion; and Atomik Import™, which provides
flexible import of XML content into QuarkXPress documents. Easypress
Technologies is an operating division of EvolvedGroup Limited and is
headquartered in Guildford, UK.
Profile #4:
Name World Economic Forum
Name: World Economic Forum
Body: The World Economic Forum (http://www.weforum.org), based in Geneva,
Switzerland, is an independent organization committed to improving the
state of the world. Funded by the contributions of 1,000 of the world's

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foremost corporations, the Forum acts in the spirit of entrepreneurship in

the global public interest to further economic growth and social progress.

When completed, you should see the following four modified items in your sandbox:

When completed with all four forms, log out as Admin and log in again as our Web Content
Manager, Mark. As we did before, from Mark’s dashboard, see the four outstanding tasks for
each of the four new Company Profiles we created and automatically submitted after completing
the wizard.
For the Interdoc, Easypress, and World Economic Forum profiles, open the Task Dialog and
click Approve. For the Alfresco profile, let’s review the process behind rejecting and re-submitting
an asset for approval. In the Task Dialog for the Alfresco profile, in the Comment box write
“Please shorten description and update”. Once done, click Reject.

Once rejected, our serial review workflow will re-assign the asset as a task to the original
submitter for modification. Logout as Mark and log in again in Admin. In the Admin user’s
dashboard, see the new task and open the Task Dialog. In the Workflow History section, note
that the comment in the second task. This is the task assigned to Mark whose outcome is noted
as “Rejected”. After reviewing what changes Mark needs in order to approve the asset, click the
Edit action on Alfresco.xml to launch the Edit Content Wizard.

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In the wizard, remove the last sentence in the profile description field. Then, after clicking Next,
notice in the Summary screen that you no longer have the checkbox option to auto-submit upon
completion. This is because the asset has already been submitted and is currently under editorial
review. Click Finish, and note that you are returned to the Task Dialog associated with the asset
you just modified. In that Task Dialog, type the Comment “Removed last sentence and updated”
and then click Resubmit for Review.

Now, log out as Admin and log back once again as Mark. In Mark’s Task List, notice the “(2)”
next to the task description. This number represents the current review cycle we are in for this
content submission. The initial submission and review was review cycle 1. Since this asset was
rejected, re-edited, and re-submitted to Mark, we are now review cycle 2. This is a convenient
way for Mark to keep close track on those items he needs to be more careful reviewing; items
going through a number of review cycles should have their Workflow History comments
evaluated carefully to ensure all the proper modifications and corrections are being made.
After opening the Task Dialog, review the Admin user’s last submit comment. Then, click the
Approve action to promote this asset to Staging. This final promotion to Staging will once again
send a notification task to the Admin user, and it will also release the lock held by the Admin user
on the asset Alfresco.xml. This means that now any other user will be able to take a lock and edit
Alfresco.xml in their own sandbox. Lastly, this final promotion to Staging also creates a new
Staging snapshot. We’ll look at the list of snapshots in Staging later, once we’ve finished creating
all our of our web content.
Our four Company Profiles are now completed and submitted to Staging. We can now take the
next step and use these profiles in our Press Release Form to create a number of new web
pages for our website to highlight exciting news from Alfresco around our latest product launch.

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Creating New Web Content: Press

Releases
To create our press releases, return to the Web Project View and click the Create Content link
next to the Press Release Form.
For our first press release, use the following data:
Press Release #1:
Name: WorldEconomicForum_Tech_Pioneer
Title: World Economic Forum Announces Technology Pioneers 2007
Abstract: Alfresco selected by leading technology experts appointed by the
World Economic Forum
Location: LONDON
Body #1: The World Economic Forum today announced 47 Technology
Pioneers for 2007. Alfresco Software has been selected as one of these
Technology Pioneers. The Technology Pioneers were nominated by the
world’s leading venture capital and technology companies.
Body #2: “We are proud to have won this award recognizing Alfresco’s technology,
the global power of open source and the importance of managing
content in economic development,” said John Newton. “We hope to use
the opportunities created by this award to gain greater visibility to how
information can help solve some of the world’s most pressing.”
Include Footer #1: World Economic Forum
Include Footer #2: Alfresco
Include Media: Yes
Keywords: None (not used in demo)
Category: Company
Launch Date: Anything (not used in demo)
Expiration Date: Anything (not used in demo)

After filling out each form, click Next.

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In the Summary screen, note that both templates configured for the Press Release form have
been applied and generated two output files, an HTML and Plain Text page. Note the filepath for
the generated content, which corresponds to the rule we configured (via the output path pattern)
in the Create Web Project Wizard.

Click the Preview icon next to the generated HTML page. See the virtualized view of the website
with the pending changes. Preview the generated HTML page, check the link to the generated
text file at the bottom of the page, and click on the News link in the submenu to see that the JSP
index page now has a link to the to-be-published content. If any changes need to be made, click
the Back button to modify and re-generate. When satisfied with the completed web page, click
the Finish button. Make certain to leave the Submit checkbox UNSELECTED. We will be
creating all three press releases first prior to submitting for review to update the site all at once
with a series of new announcements.

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With our first press release completed, now repeat the process two more times using the
following data:
Press Release #2:
Name: Easypress_OEM
Title: Alfresco and Easypress Technologies announce OEM Agreement for
Atomik Dynamic Publisher, powered QuarkXPress Server 7
Abstract: Alfresco and Easypress Technologies Announce ground-breaking
Collaborative Publishing
Location: LONDON
Body #1: Alfresco, the first and leading provider of an open source enterprise
content management solution, today announced an OEM agreement to
support the launch of Easypress Technologies’ new Atomik® Dynamic
Publisher product, which works in conjunction with the new
QuarkXPress® Server 7 from Quark.
Include Footer #1: Easypress
Include Footer #2: Alfresco
Include Media: Yes
Keywords: None (not used in the demo)
Category: Company
Launch Date: Anything (not used in demo)
Expiration Date: Anything (not used in demo)

Press Release #3:

Name: InterDoc_Alfresco_Solution
Title: InterDoc Chooses Alfresco to Deliver Solution for the Government of
Quebec
Abstract: Alfresco continues Government Momentum in Canada
Location: LONDON
Body #1: Alfresco Software Inc., the first provider of an open source enterprise
content management solution, today announced that it has been chosen
by InterDoc to create a new regulatory government solution for
customers including the government of Quebec.
Include Footer #1: InterDoc
Include Footer #2: Alfresco
Include Media: Yes
Keywords: None (not used in demo)
Category: Company
Launch Date: Anything (not used in demo)
Expiration Date: Anything (not used in demo)

When completed with all three forms, return to the Web Project view and expand the list of
Modified Items in the Admin sandbox by clicking the Modified Items link above the list of
available Web Forms.

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Note the complete list of all nine (9) newly created assets staged within the Admin sandbox.

Click the Preview Website link, and in the preview window, browse to About Us
News. See
the JSP page virtualize a unique dynamic view of the website as staged in the Admin sandbox.
Test all three links to the newly created web pages.

Next, confirm that the newly created web pages are only available in the Admin sandbox. Click on
the Preview Website link in Staging. Navigate to the About Us
News page. See that no press
releases are currently available.

If you do not see the list of all published press releases in your sandbox preview,
clear your cache and re-preview the page.

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Content Launch and Expiration

Prior to completing this section, you will need to update the default schedule
settings for content expiration. The default schedule for assigning expired items
is once per day at 3:30am. To explore content expiration, we will need to change
this default to every 5 minutes. Please see Appendix A on how to change this
default setting, or skip past the last part of this section on Content Expiration.

Now that we have finished all the updates we need to make to the site and have confirmed how
those changes will look on www, let’s publish these changes and submit for review by clicking the
Submit All link in the upper-right of the Modified Items list (Note: We can promote just a single
item or select list of items as an alternative to submitting all three press releases at once).
In the Submit Dialog, confirm the list of assets to be promoted for review and submission to
Staging. For Label, enter “Launch Press Releases” and for Description, enter “Major new awards,
customers, and OEM, and agreements”. After this, deselect the Check Links checkbox; once
again, we’ll be examining this later in the tutorial.
In the Content Launch section, click on the NONE link next to the Launch Date label. Select a
launch time that is between 10 and 15 minutes ahead of the current time (this is approximately
how long we’ll need to get through this next section). This launch date will be used to separately
stage these assets once approved in their own mini-Staging sandbox. At our specified launch
time, these assets will be automatically promoted from this mini-Staging sandbox into Staging
proper. While in their own separate staging environment, these pending changes will be fully
previewable against the evolving state of the current website as seen in Staging. This is useful for
things like finalizing a set of site updates for an early Monday morning launch. Changes can be
completed and approved the Wednesday before, and on both Thursday and Friday anyone can
look forward and preview what the site will look like on Monday – inclusive of all incremental
changes that have been made since the change were originally approved and Staged. In case
anyone makes a change on Thursday or Friday that potentially impacts the Monday release,
being able to continually preview against the evolving state of the website is one more way to QA
your site to ensure its quality and accuracy.
Finally, set a Content Expiration date for your content. Select a global value that is between 5 and
10 minutes post our launch time. Hit Apply To All and note that in your list of submitted assets,
the Expiration field has been filled in. Also note in the Actions list next to each item the
Expiration icon. Clicking this icon will allow you to set specific expiration dates on an asset-by-
asset basis to override your globally set default. This content expiration value will be used as part
of a scheduled workflow process to automatically assign a task to the content author to review the
asset for potential update or removal from the site. By ensuring Content Expiration dates are set
on all your assets at time of submission, you’ll be able to have an effective, auditable policy of
regular site updates to keep your content fresh and relevant.

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When complete, click OK.

Now, let’s review and approve these assets as our two reviewers, Mark and Lee. Remember, for
press releases we have configured a parallel review process. To see this, log in first as Mark, and
then as Lee. Note that both users have at the same time the same exact task. When logged in as
either user, open the Task Dialog and note that within this review task, while you can Preview
the generated web pages (and correspondingly the entire dynamic site), you cannot edit.
Because this is a parallel review task, and both reviewers at the same time may be looking at the
asset, by default each reviewer has a READ-ONLY view. If your reviewers potentially need to
make edits to the content, you can enable this by using a Serial review process. Because each
reviewer in a Serial review process has exclusive access to the asset, modifications can be safely
made without having any fear of potential conflicts or overrides (although Alfresco support
branching and merging within the underlying repository, notions of conflicts edits and merges are
a potential source of confusion for average business users. For this reason, any possibility of
concurrent edits is prevented). To change the type of workflow from Parallel to Serial, you can
access the Edit Web Project Settings Wizard under the Actions menu in your Web Project
view. You can explore changing workflows after we complete this tutorial. For now, let’s approve
this content and see how content launch works in practice.
Logged in as either Mark or Lee, click Approve in the Task Dialog. Then, after one reviewer has
approved the asset, log in as the Admin user to inspect her task list. Note that unlike in the serial
review case, the Admin user has not been assigned a notification task. This is because this is a
parallel review process, and although one of your reviewers has approved the content, the
second reviewer has not yet approved the submission.

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Let’s do that now. Log in as your second user, and click Approve. When done, once again log in
as Admin and note the task assigned to you in your task list with the status Submission Pending.
Your press releases have now been approved and are currently being maintained in their
separate staging environment until our set launch date. Open the Task Dialog and confirm the
assets that are to be submitted to Staging. Also note your option to either Abort Submit or
Submit Now. These are simple ways for the Admin user to override the set content launch date.
Let’s ignore these options for now.

At a later point once completed with this tutorial, you can experiment with having
one or both the reviewer reject with comments and run through multiple review
cycles. In the interest of time, we’ll leave this for you to explore on your own at a
later point.

Navigate back into the alfrescosample Web Project and expand the Recent Snapshots section
and the Content Awaiting Launch section. Note that we have 5 current Staging snapshots
corresponding to our initial import and each of the company profiles we submitted. Also note that
we do not yet have a snapshot for the press releases we just approved. See these press releases
in the Content Awaiting Launch section. Note in this section our options to either Submit Now or
Abort Submit. These are the same options we just noted in the Admin user’s Task Dialog. Also
note that we can inspect the assets that make up this pending submission by clicking View
Details and opening up the Task Dialog screen. Similarly, notice that we can preview this future
state of the website, and, using the Visual Comparison action, bring up side-by-side preview
windows for both the current Staging area and this future version of Staging. Click this now, and
in each window, navigate to the News directory. Notice the multiple updates to the site that will be
committed in just a few short moments. Now, close both preview windows. It’s time to wait out our
launch countdown to see the automatic promotion to Staging.
Once time is up, refresh your view of the alfrescosample Web Project. Note the newly created
snapshot, version 8:

Now that our press releases have been committed, we’ll want to ensure our audiences can see
them by deploying this new snapshot to our production server environment outside our firewall.

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Before we do that though, let’s first finish looking at content lifecycle management, and first turn
our attention to our about-to-expire content.
After another 5 minutes (or whatever time interval you specified between launch and expiration),
return to the Admin user’s dashboard, and note the new task on the task list, “Expired content in
alfrescosample”. Open this task and see all of the press releases we just successfully published.
Click Edit on any one of the press releases in the Task Dialog. Note that you can click Edit on
either the source XML asset or any of the generated assets. If you click Edit on a generated
asset, the corresponding XML form will automatically be opened for you.
Once completed with your updates, click Done and Re-submit All. This will bring you back to the
Submit Dialog, where you can provide a new Label and Description for your submit. You can
also specify a new launch and expiration date for these items. And, as normal, once the Submit
Dialog is closed, the updated press releases will go through their normal review and submit
process. We’ll assume you are already comfortable with this for now. Instead, we’ll now take a
look at last leg of the publishing process: deployment.

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Site Deployment
Now that we’ve published a new version of the site, let’s deploy it and then look at how we can
use deployment to rollback (and in the next section, examine the concept of rollback in even
greater detail).
Remember that we configured our Web Project to use localhost as a target server. This means
that we will replicate the incremental changes that comprise a selected snapshot to this named
server (as a single guaranteed transaction). For evaluation purposes, we will deploy to a single
server machine – the machine we are currently using for this evaluation – and replicate content
between one Alfresco web content repository (our Staging sandbox) and to a second, run-time
store (one not visible in our web client). This second store is what we will configure our production
web server to use for hosting our publicly-accessible site. This second store is one that is not
exposed via the Alfresco web client and is maintained entirely by our deployment process. As it is
a full Alfresco web content repository, this store maintains its own version history, with each
successfully completed deployment responsible for creating a new snapshot of the remote store.
When deploying content, we use the known snapshot in the remote server for fast comparison to
build a list of asset updates needed to synchronize the deployed site. But this is too much detail
for this tutorial’s purpose on deployment; if interested, you can learn more about deployment now
on our wiki here: http://wiki.alfresco.com/Deployment.
Let’s first deploy the initial version of our site after our Bulk Import, version 3. In the Actions list
next to version 3, click the Deploy icon. In the next window, confirm the selection of our remote
target server, localhost. Click OK and watch the status indicator to note when the deployment is
completed. In this initial deployment of our sample website, the deployment server is first
identifying that no remote repository exists for this web project and then creating one on-the-fly. It
then recognizes that this new repository is empty and proceeds with doing a full synchronization –
transferring all assets into the new store and creating its first snapshot. The auto-generated name
of the “hidden” repository on our current Alfresco server is the current Web Project’s name
appended with the word “live”. In this case, the full name of the target run-time repository then is
alfrescosamplelive.

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Click Close on the Monitor Deployment Status Dialog upon successful deployment and, when
returned to the alfrescosample Web Project view, expand once again the Recent Snapshots
section under Staging. Note that version 3 is currently listed as being LIVE. To confirm what we
deployed to make version 3 live, click on View Deployment.

Now, click Close and let’s try deploying another version of our site, version 8. Open your Recent
Snapshots list again and click the Deploy icon a second time, this time for our last published
snapshot. Confirm the target server. When the deployment is complete, confirm in the Web
Project view that version 8 is currently the live version of the site. Re-open the deployment report
by clicking on View Deployment. Note the incremental changes that we successfully published
to the site:

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Snapshots and Rollback

There are three ways we can use snapshots to rollback our site:

• Switch run-time environment to serve a previous remote repository snapshot

• Re-deploy a previous Staging snapshot to the live remote repository

• Revert to prior Staging snapshot and re-deploy

In the first case, remember that the target of our deployment is another Alfresco repository. This
repository maintains a history of snapshots of all site versions it has received from our Staging
sandbox. In our case, since we deployed both versions 3 and 8, the remote Alfresco repository
will have two snapshots corresponding to each one of these versions of Staging. In the live
environment then, even without having to formally ‘rollback’ or redeploy, our live web app can
simply be retargeted to serve an older site version. This is useful, for example, in the event of a
catastrophic failure. If the Alfresco server instance used for authoring were to be down, and your
remote site somehow hacked or corrupted, you can still access and immediately reserve a known
good state of your website by simply re-mapping your webserver or app server to a different
context path - the path to the last known good site version of the site. Access to older snapshots
on the live site is also useful for certain types of sites – for example a news site – where you may
want to let users browse older, archived versions of the site instead of just archived versions of
individual pages. In your generated web pages, you can easily include links to a fully functioning
state of the same website, albeit an older version. This is an advanced topic, however, that while
important to note is not necessary to review in any greater depth in this tutorial. For more
information here, please review our wiki at http://wiki.alfresco.com.
In the second case, just as we rolled the site forward from version 3 to version 8 using the
Deploy action, so too could we rollback by redeploying any previous version of the site – version
7, 6, 5, 4, or even version 3 once again. When redeploying an older version, all changes in the
remote server will be undone – newly added files and directories deleted, any modified files
reverted, etc. Since we’ve already examined deployment previously, we won’t review that in any
more detail here. However, you can follow the example we walk through earlier when we
reviewed deployment to test this out in various on your own.
In the third case, we can also rollback the site not only for purposes of ensuring an older version
is currently being delivered in the live environment, but also for purposes of re-edits prior to
deployment. An example of where this is useful is the rollout of some new section of the site or
some new application functionality. In this case, simply redeploying an older site version is not
enough – you also need to rollback the current working copy of the site for your Contributors,
Publishers, Developers, and Designers to correct any errors, re-stage, and then re-deploy.
Rolling back your authoring and development environment to a last known good state for
modification prior to redeployment is straightforward. In the Actions list next to the snapshot you
want to rollback to, click on the Revert icon. Do this now for version 3 of the website. Note now
that we have created a new version of Staging, version 10, that is revert back the state of the site
as it existed in version 3. Please note that although a new version of the site, no underlying
content has been duplicated in the repository; the new version is simply a new entry into the
history chain of Staging noting that an older version has been pulled forward.

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Once this is done, remember that all sandboxes in the Web Project are baselined off the current
view of Staging. This means that each user instantly has an updated context for purposes of
preview and edit. In this case, that means that each of the profiles and press releases we created
no longer exist in each users sandbox – everyone has been wiped clean. You can see this by
browsing into the /media/releases/content directory in any sandbox, and see that the contents of
this directory are now empty. Similarly, you can click Preview on any sandbox and look at the
News index page and see that it is back to its original blank state (if you continue to see a list of
press release, refresh your cache – this is your browser playing tricks on you).

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Links Management
When a new snapshot is committed to Staging, Alfresco automatically scans each asset – both
the data within the source file itself, and the “view” of that asset as served via an http request (to
simulate the real page view an end-user would get). Alfresco uses this to build a master table of
all references contained within the website, and from this allows end users to generate a report
on the current integrity of references within your Web Project.
In the Web Project view, click the Check Links action next to the Staging sandbox. You will see
the links report generated for the current version of our sample site. In this sample report, you’ll
note that the Links Validation service examined 160 files in our sample site, in which there were a
total of 659 links, 442 of which were broken. Since we purposely did not include all assets in the
Alfresco website in our sample, this list of broken references is to be expected. We’ll see how we
can use this links report to clean-up our sample website later. First, let’s simply look at the
structure of the overall report.
You will notice that the links report is broken down into tabbed sections. The first tabbed section
displays a list of all web assets not generated by Alfresco using a Web Form. Mostly typically, this
list of assets may include hand-crafted HTML pages created in an authoring tool like
DreamWeaver that you imported into Alfresco in a drag-and-drop manner via our CIFS interface.
In this view, you can see each of the assets that have a broken reference. You can expand any
one these assets to see what the actual broken references are:

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The second tabbed view is a list of XML assets generated by Web Forms. If the Links Validation
service determines that a web page has a broken reference, and that web page was in turn a
page generated from an XML via a template, Alfresco will list the source XML as the relevant item
for the end user to focus on correcting. The other pages when regenerated will be automatically
fixed once the XML is edited. This is likewise useful as multiple pages may be generated from a
single XML. In this view, you can see a list of XMLs that need correcting, the web pages they
generated that contain broken references, and what those specific broken references are:

Lastly, you will see a tabbed section for Fixed Items. This report can be used as a tool for helping
users within the context of their sandbox or a task to interactively edit, fix, and re-test content
prior to submitting. In these contexts, each item in both the Static Files and Generated Files list
provide an EDIT action to allow the user to fix the asset and recount the number of broken links.
Those assets fully corrected by the end-user will show in this Fixed Items tab. Since we are
currently viewing the links report of Staging, and since Staging is a read-only store (all
modifications to Staging must first be made in a user sandbox, tested, and potentially workflowed
for review), we do not see the EDIT action in our current view. Let’s make some modifications in a
user sandbox now to see exactly how this process works.

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Links Management: User Sandboxes

Within a user’s sandbox, the notion of the overall state of the integrity of the state is not
necessarily the most relevant information. For this reason, when reviewing a links report in a user
sandbox, the report generated is an incremental check against those items that are modified
within that sandbox. In this way, any end user can quickly and easily check whether or not their
unique changes affect the site in a positive or negative way (breaking or fixing links). This let’s
end user focus on what most relevant and important to them: am I introducing a change that may
impact site quality?
In the Web Project view, click the Check Links action against the Admin sandbox. Remember
from our links report run against Staging that our site already has some serious referential
integrity issues (as do many existing unmanaged static and dynamic sites when newly imported
into a CMS). When run against our Admin user’s sandbox, however, since the Admin user has no
modified items, the links report runs a clean bill of health – there is nothing that the Admin user is
doing that is potentially going to impact the overall correctness of site links.

Now, let’s see what happens when we do make a destabilizing changes. For this, navigate into
the Admin user’s sandbox into the /about directory. In that directory list, in the Actions list, click
the Delete action next to the static file (non-Web Form generated) index.html. In the Deletion
Confirmation Dialog, confirm your deletion.

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In your Web Project view, note that the Admin user’s Modified Items list is now showing our
recent deletion. Click on the Check Links action once again. Look at the Report Summary at the
top of the report, and note that one file (our deletion) was checked and it had 0 links (the file
doesn’t exist anymore, and so it does indeed have no data and therefore no links). Also note that
outside our single modified asset, there are 69 other assets that now have a total of 74 broken
links. Looking at the report breakdown, we can see that 66 of those are static HTML assets
created using a standard HTML authoring tool, and 3 are those assets we generated via Web
Forms:

Now that we’ve seen the potentially disastrous effect deletions this asset would have on the site,
in your Web Project view click Undo All on the Admin user’s sandbox. Note that the Modified
Items list is no longer showing any modified items, as we have now reverted the entire Admin
user’s sandbox back to its original, unmodified state (the current state of Staging, which contains
the undeleted asset /about/index.html).
Re-run the links report for the Admin sandbox. See that no incremental broken links are being
reported and that we are indeed back to a whole and good state:

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But what would have happened had the Admin user not checked the links report prior to
committing her change, or worse, continued to promote that change regardless of its effect on the
site?
For that, we turn now to workflow and how links validation is enforced as part of your business
process.

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Links Management: Workflow

To see how we can enforce links validation as part of our business process, let’s first create a
new press release, this time with a hyperlink reference to a non-existent external resource
embedded within our main body content using our TinyMCE in-line hyperlink control.
In the Admin user’s sandbox, click the Create Content link next to our Press Release Web Form.
Use the following as input data:
Press Release #5:
Name: User_Group_Launch
Title: Alfresco Launches Worldwide User Groups
Abstract: Strong demand from customers and partners
Location: LONDON
Body #1: User groups launched in Boston and Los Angeles with more to follow.
Include Footer #1: Alfresco
Include Media: Yes
Keywords: None (not used in the demo)
Category: Company
Launch Date: Anything (not used in demo)
Expiration Date: Anything (not used in demo)

In the main body field in the Web Form, select the word “Boston” and click on the Hyperlink icon
on the TinyMCE toolbar. Where prompting for an URL, type an arbitrary fictitious value to some
nonexistent external resource, for example, http://sample.alfresco.com. When done, click Next
and in the Summary screen click on the Preview icon for the generated HTML page. See the
hyperlink you just created in the generated web page, click in the link, and confirm that indeed
you get a 404 error.

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After confirming your dead hyperlink, instead of clicking Back in the Summary screen, instead
select the Submit checkbox and click Finish. In the Submit Dialog, confirm the assets you are
promoting to Staging, and fill in an appropriate Label and Description for your submission. Click
OK.
Now, click on My Alfresco to return to the Admin user’s dashboard. Note that instead of having a
clear task list in your dashboard that instead there is a new assigned task, Verify Broken Links.
Open the Task Dialog for this task. In the Task Dialog, note the additional section, Links
Validation, and note the summary statistics: of 3 files submitted, there are 4 broken links in 2 of
those files. Those broken links are in the assets generated from our source XML, the HTML and
plain text renditions. Click on View Links Validation Report to inspect further the source of the
problem.
In the Links Validation Report, see that there is 1 generated file with two renditions, each of
which has broken links. Now that we’ve confirmed the source of the error, we can immediately fix
it by clicking on the EDIT icon to the right-hand side of our XML asset. After launching directly
from the Link Validation Report into the Web Form for modifying the XML, select the
hyperlinked text “Boston”. We’re about to fix this link.

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Once the link is selected, click on the Unlink icon in the TinyMCE rich-text editor. Confirm that
the word is no longer linked by noting that it is no longer blue and underlined. Click Next and in
the Summary screen, double-check your work by clicking Preview and noting in the generated
page that “Boston” is no longer hyperlinked to our fictitious, non-existent external reference.

Once confirmed, close the Preview window and click Finish in the Summary screen of the Edit
Content Wizard. Notice that you are returned back to the Link Validation Report. Here, click on
the Recount action to re-check your submitted items for broken reference. In the resulting report,
notice that as a result of your edit, there are now only 4 broken links, as 2 have just now been
corrected. Progress!

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Now that we’ve fixed that error, let’s temporarily bypass the remaining 4 broken links. These links
are automatically generated via our templates, and these links we’ll correct later by updating our
templates and using our Regenerate action. This action will regenerate all web pages based on
those templates so that we can easily apply a a global fix for all broken references. For our
purposes now, we’ve done all we can do to ensure the quality of our content. We’ll leave the site
regeneration to the Web Developer responsible for the templates. Click Close in the Link
Validation Report and when returned to the Task Dialog for the Verify Broken Links task, click
Continue Submission.

We’ve now continued with our normal workflow approval process configured via the Create Web
Project Wizard for press releases. Please do note, however, that when reviewing this press
release from their Task List, our press release reviewers Mark and Lee will each have access to
the Link Validation report. Just in case we weren’t honest, both Mark and Lee can see in the
Workflow History in the Task Dialog that broken links were identified, a task assigned for the
Admin user to verify and fix those links, and the content re-submitted for approval. Knowing this,
both Mark and Lee can pay extra attention when previewing the generated web pages and look
directly at the Links Validation report to confirm all necessary fixes. And if not – either one of
them can reject. As we saw earlier when rejecting submitted content, this will mean a second edit
and review cycle (and potentially third or fourth) for the Admin user, Mark, and Lee.

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Content Contribution: Alfresco

Dashlets
Now that we’ve gone through some scenarios showcasing publishing, links checking, launch,
expiration, deployment, and rollback, let’s look at that same publishing process again – but this
time as our Content Contributor Pat, who is primarily someone focus on creating and
collaborating on business documents and prefers to have little knowledge about web publishing
and web projects.
Logout as the Admin user and log in as Pat. In Pat’s Alfresco Dashboard, click on the Configure
action in the upper-right-hand side of your screen. We are going to add to Pat’s dashboard two
lightweight web publishing dashlets. With these dashlets, Pat will have ready access to all
services he needs to publish content to a website – all without having to navigate into a Web
Project or needing to learn all the details about how content for the Web is staged and managed.
In the Configure Dashboard Wizard, select the second option, Two Column Narrow Right, as
Pat’s layout preference. Then, click Next. In the Select Components screen, select Getting
Started in the right-hand scrolling list and click on the Remove button. Then, from the left-hand
scrolling list, select Completed Tasks. Click Add. When done, select Column Two from the drop-
down list above both scrolling lists. From the left-hand side list, select the My Web Forms
component and click Add. Then, select the My Web Files component and click Add a second
time. Confirm that both components are listed in the right-hand side scrolling list.

Click Finish and return to Pat’s dashboard, noting the new layout and two new web publishing
dashlets. With these dashlets, Pat will be able to create and manage his web content directly
from his Alfresco dashboard. As an occasional web contributor, letting Pat work directly from his

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dashboard along with his task list cuts down the number of things Pat needs to learn – making his
life easier and making rollout a cinch.
Now, let’s explore publishing using these dashlets. In the first dashlet, My Web Forms, hover over
the website, alfrescosample. This is the only website Pat has authorization to publish to, and
hence is the only website Pat sees in his dashlets. Although there may be other websites
managed within Alfresco, because Pat is not a contributor to those, they are filtered from his view
via this dashlet. This is not only a convenience feature for Pat, but also a security feature for IT.
Click on the name of the web form Company Press Release. Note that the Create Content
Wizard comes up, allowing Pat to enter a fill and fill in details for this content item. Fill in any
sample data you wish (as you are getting a handle on Alfresco web publishing). In the Summary
screen, ensure that the Submit option is not selected and click Finish.

Now back at Pat’s dashboard, let’s look at the My Web Files dashlet. Since Pat completed the
previous Web Form to save work-in-progress as he moved on to another, non-web publishing
task, Pat will want to return back to that content item, finalize edits, and publish to the site.
Click on the alfrescosample header in the My Web Files dashlet. See in the expand resource list
that Pat has one modified, locked asset. Also notice the Edit action available to Pat next to the
resource. To finish Pat’s work, click Edit and walk through the Edit Content Wizard to finish the
authoring process. When complete, check the Submit option at the Summary screen and then
Finish. Complete the items in the Submit Dialog, potentially setting a launch date for Pat’s
changes, and then click OK. Pat’s changes are now in queue!

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Site Regeneration: Updating Templates

Now that we’ve gone through various publishing scenarios, let’s turn to two advanced user topics:
working with the virtual file-system interface (CIFS) and with Web Forms in the Data Dictionary.
We’ll first look at working with Web Forms. Recalling from our earlier look at the Links Validation
Report, remember that our page template was generating our HTML page with broken links. We
are going to correct that template now as a developer, and than update all those web pages
based on this template.
First, let’s re-run our report by clicking on Check Links next to the Staging sandbox in our
sample web project. Click on the Generated Files link, and expand anyone of the listed XML’s to
see the broken links in our generated HTML pages:

Now, let’s go an update our XSL that we use to generate this HTML. In that XSL, we are going to
clean-up that code which is generating these links.
Navigate into your /extras/wcm/forms directory and first make a backup copy of the file press-
release.xsl:

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Once you’ve made a copy of the existing file, let’s open up the original. Do a search on the text
string /archive/index.html. Note the <a href> to our missing file. Now, delete the <a href> and </a>
tags as in the following example:

Once saved, turn back to the Alfresco Web Client. Make certain you are logged in as Admin (as
our Web Developer). Navigate into /Data Dictionary/Web Forms/press-release. Under the More
Actions icon, select the Update action. In the Update Dialog, click Browse and select our
updated file press-release.xsl in the navigation window. Once selected, click Upload and then
click Update. Now that we’ve got our new template in the Data Dictionary, click on the Web
Forms link in the navigation bar and return to the space containing the entire list of Web Forms in
our system. Next to the press-release Web Form space.

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Now, click on the Regenerate icon next to press-release. Notice that we have three options:

• For a selected Web Project, regenerate all renditions associated with all Web Form

• For a selected Web Project, regenerate all renditions associated with a specific Web Form

• For a selected Web Project, regenerate a specific rendition associated with a specific Web
Form

Click on each of these last two options. See in the first case that you can choose to regenerate all
renditions generated from either the Company Profile or Press Release Web Forms. Notice that
since the Company Profile Web Form has no templates associated with it, it is not selected. In the
second case see that for the Press Release Web Form, you can choose whether to regenerate
either the plain text or HTML renditions of your press releases or both.

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Since we just have one updated template, let’s choose this third option and select the Press
Release HTML template. Click Next.

See that our template has been re-applied to our three generated HTML renditions. Click on the
Preview File action and see in the re-generated page that View Archived Press Releases is no
longer hyperlinked. After previewing, click Finish.

Returning to your Web Project, now note that you have an auto-generated submission to and
snapshot of Staging with your updated web pages:

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Now, click on Check Links again and select the Generated Files tab. Look once again at the
expanded list of broken links in your generated HTML page. Notice that we no longer find the
broken link to /media/archives/index.html:

Now, to fully correct our both our hand-crafted HTML pages and our Web Form-generated web
pages, let’s turn to our virtual file-system interface and correct the headers and footer HTML
fragments we are including via our XSL to fix all the remaining broken links on our site.

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Virtual File System Interface

In Windows Explorer, let’s map a network drive to our Alfresco virtual file-system interface. Under
the Tools menu, select Map Network Drive and in the dialog select an open drive letter (for
example, the Z: drive). Click on the different user name link and enter the value “admin” for both
user name and password. In the Folder field, enter the value \\your_machinenameA\AVM (please
note that capital letter ‘A’ appended to the name of your machine name).
You’ll see in your Explorer view all of our available sandboxes:

In this view, notice that we have one sandbox, alfrescosample. This corresponds to Staging.
Notice that we also have sandboxes for each of our users, for example Alice’s sandbox,
alfrescosample—alice. Notice too that we have an additional sandbox, alfrescosamplelive. This is
the sandbox associated with the “live” website that we are serving to our external audiences. This
is the content repository we automatically created and keep updated using our deployment
service.
Now, let’s navigate into the Admin sandbox:

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When navigating into the Admin sandbox, notice you will first open the HEAD folder (this is the
current working version of the contents of your sandbox. As each sandbox is it’s own repository,
each sandbox could have it’s own set of historical snapshots. In our current web client, however,
we do not allow users to snapshot their own personal sandbox. This is done for Staging only. If
you want to see historical snapshots, however, you can navigate into Staging and see the entire
list of all snapshots we’ve taken by going into the VERSIONS folder:

Now, let’s return back to the ROOT web app of the Admin sandbox
(/HEAD/DATA/www/avm_webapps/ROOT). We are going to launch our editing tool of choice, in
this case DreamWeaver, and map this location as our website root in order to making changes to
our code and hand-crafted HTML pages.
If you have Macromedia DreamWeaver installed, launch this application and create a new site,
Sample Site, using the New Site command under the Site menu. After setting your doc root to
Z:\\alfrescosample—admin\HEAD\DATA\www\avm_webapps\ROOT and choosing the option to
set your links relative to a document, note how DreamWeaver automatically reads each file in the
repository via CIFS to build an index of content and return a directory navigator for the contents of
your Web Project:

First, we are going to remove all broken links to www.jboss.org. To do this, use DreamWeaver’s
Find and Replace command. In the Find field, type the following:
<a href="http://www.jboss.org"><img src="/assets/images/footer/jboss.gif" alt="JBoss Certified
Partner" title="JBoss Certified Partner" border="0" width="74" height="34" /></a>

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In the Replace field, leave the value blank. Then click Replace All.
Notice how DreamWeaver can seamless access each file via CIFS and remove this link. See the
large number of files DreamWeaver updates:

Going back to our Web Client, navigate into your Web Project and expand the Modified Items list
for the Admin user. See this same list of files showing up as modified, previewable, and
submittable in the GUI:

You will notice the items modified via CIFS do not have a lock automatically
taken on them. It is presumed that users working via CIFS are power users
(Developers and Designers) and therefore are allowed to make concurrent
modifications. This does leave open the possibility of conflicting edits. In the
future, the GUI will support automatically conflicts detection and asset merging at
time of submit. For now, any submit of an unlocked item modified via CIFS will
simply override any conflicting change when promoted. Because all checked in
content is immediately available to all sandboxes, the time window for a potential
conflict and override is small. Please do use with care, however, and remember
that you can revert a file or rollback an entire submission if needed.

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Now, let’s do the same thing again for each of the following six text strings:
1. /rss.php?feed=all"
2. /rss/?feed=coverage"
3. /rss/?feed=all"
4. /about/careers/jobs
5. /about/careers/why
6. /login/?returnpath=/about/careers/
When complete, return back to your modified items list and preview the Admin user’s view of the
website in her sandbox. When done, click Submit All and promote your changes to Staging.
When promoting, keep the Check Links option selected in the Submit Dialog.

Viola! Our website is now up-to-date and complete. New company profiles, new press releases,
and free of any and all broken reference. Job well done!

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Summary
That concludes our walk-through of the Web Content Management capabilities of Alfresco 2.1. In
this walk-through, we saw the following:

• XML content authoring

• Multi-channel content publishing

• Sandboxed content development

• Content staging, promotion, workflow, and snapshots

• Virtualization and in-context preview for both static and dynamic web pages

• Content deployment

• Content launch and expiration

• Links management

• Simple web publishing through dashlets

Thanks for evaluating Alfresco 2.1 Web Content Management. To learn more about the
capabilities provided in this release, including further details on our roadmap, please visit our wiki
at the following location:
http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/New_Web_Content_Management_Plan
Once again, thanks again for evaluating Alfresco 2.1 Web Content Management.

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