Alfresco Stability & Reliability Extension (License Management)

Extension is the perfect place for your business to start with Alfresco.

The Alfresco Skytizens Extension addon was developed by Skytizens to take Alfresco Community version from sufficiency level to supercharged. From stability improvements to system upgrades to enhancements that are the icing on the cake, represents a cadre of adjustments that we consider an efficient starting point for the companies we work with. Our developers stand behind this particular set of improvements and we are proud to call the “Skytizens version” of Alfresco.

We have done our work up front to make sure our product is reliable. We have gone above and beyond to make this version of Alfresco stable and feature-rich enough to use as is. Our support team spends the majority of their time developing new Alfresco enhancements and working on custom software solutions—not dealing with a barrage of technical issues from our core product. We are able to do this because with the Skytizens Extension addon framework, those types of problems simply don’t come up.

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What is Skytizens Extension 5.2?

The Skytizens Extension 5.2 addon for Alfresco contains multiple patches to provide system stability and reliability for users. The talented developers at Skytizens have taken the core product and pushed it beyond expectations. This addon contains all the basic improvements you need to make your system production-ready. We revamped its security grade, corrected performance issues, boosted its functionality, developed groundbreaking new extensions, and elevated it to a level where it’s punching well beyond its original weight class.

We chose to develop the features included in the Skytizens Extension 5.2 addon based on common needs as well as special requests from past client development projects. Using our deep knowledge and extensive experience working with this platform, we have created the perfect foundation for all your Enterprise Management System needs.

Why is Skytizens Extension 5.2 so important?

  • Stability – Alfresco will not crash on you
  • Reliability – Alfresco will not get caught in a loop or slow down to a crawl
  • Foundational – Skytizens has developed a set of basic improvements that all enterprise-level companies will need on a regular basis in order to successfully use the Alfresco EMS
  • Control – many of the improvements give control to administrators and file managers within the Alfresco system so that companies can restrict or bestow permissions to users based on their employee hierarchy
  • Management – includes a basic module to manage your Alfresco license and your company’s cadre of addons

The Benefits of Skytizens Extension

Skytizens has developed the Skytizens Extension  addon for Alfresco in order to offer a high-quality, stable EMS product without the need for further development. Skytizens Extenstion brings solid stability, security, and usability to the Alfresco platform. With the Skytizens Extension cadre of addons, Alfresco is ready to use and contains many important features that large-scale companies require due to their functionality, their industry standards, and international law.

How Does It Work?

Skytizens Extension is a well-thought-out collection of stability improvements, system upgrades, and feature enhancements that turns Alfresco into a ready-to-use EMS product. Skytizens takes Standard Alfresco and implements a long list of patches and enhancement modules to bump it up to version. This is the foundational system that gets installed for customers. This framework already includes some standard Skytizens Features and additional menu items throughout the system in places that we provide enhanced usability.

Main Features

Happy Customers – We have an impressive list of happy customers including military institutions, multinational insurance companies, major airlines, oil & gas companies, financial institutions, government agencies, electronics corporations, leading appliance manufacturers, healthcare companies, car manufacturers, international supermarket chains, and more. Despite many enterprise-level clients with strict demands, we receive a very low volume of support calls.

Level I: Stability Improvements – These are the basic improvements that Skytizens has developed to take Alfresco Community version out of the box and into the office. This set of crucial fixes and patches are the basic foundation needed to actively use the Alfresco EMS without technical issues. Bottom line: the Skytizens version of Alfresco doesn’t crash.

  1. Memory Leaks – Standard Alfresco has multiple issues with managing memory where the system’s memory usage balloons out of control, the system crashes, or the system does not adequately flush items from temporary memory usage. We have developed fixes for all of these.
  2. Solr log – We disabled the logs for Solr, the searching subsystem used in Alfresco, to prevent storage from being eaten up by logs from overactive system activities.
  3. Extend properties field – Text fields for properties such as filename are typically limited to 1024 characters. Industry competitors have a standard limit of 4,000 characters. We have enabled Skytizens Alfresco to accept up to 8,000 characters.
  4. Consolidate error messages – Standard Alfresco shows multiple error messages for the omission of mandatory information from the same page. With our patch, error messages get consolidated for each page/form in the system.
  5. MIME type recognition – We fixed a bug with recognizing proper MIME types for documents uploaded in Firefox.
  6. Home page settings – We fixed an issue between URLs and home page settings in IE9.
  7. RSS feed menu – We disabled the RSS feed menu and cleared up an issue between the Alfresco login screen and the user’s browser cache.
  8. Dashboards on devices – We patched an issue with Alfresco dashlets showing too much content on iPads, tablets, smartphones, and handheld viewing devices.
  9. Copy document – Standard Alfresco saves a temporary file when creating a copy of a document. This means double files, confusion, and storage issues. We eliminated this bug.
  10. Trash recovery – Standard Alfresco crashes when a user attempts to recover a file from the trash but the parent folder no longer exists. We fixed this bug.
  11. Other backend fixes – We have included a handful of other minor and major fixes and patches. Although the fixes may not be visible to the average user, our clients can rest assured that our developers have worked behind-the-scenes to make the Skytizens Extension stable and bug-free.

Level II: Upgrades –These improvements cover all the bases to make the Skytizens version of Alfresco extremely efficient for use in the commercial world. These upgrades offer the control that IT demands and the simplicity that end users love. We believe it is a solid foundation to make Alfresco powerful while remaining flexible for companies to customize the product to their needs.

  1. Alfresco launch – We smoothed out the launch by improving module management and delaying module launches. This avoids server errors and allows Alfresco to boot up quickly.
  2. Custom workflow API – We created our own API which optimizes and increases the performance of access to workflow over the standard Alfresco API. Our Skytizens API sends custom queries to smaller databases for a faster system.
  3. Custom workflow behaviors – We’ve created an option to include workflow behaviors that are helpful to add to tasks. This allows users to add actions to the start or completion of a task.
  4. Real activity log – We’ve adjusted the audit log to show only real user activity instead of server activity.
  5. Log document IDs – We enhanced the audit log to keep track of document IDs so users have a history of document activity.
  6. Blacklist audit activity – We have disabled the tracking of certain activities that do not involve users such as properties indexing, which can balloon out of control and take up valuable server storage space.
  7. Regulate file properties – We used sort sets to control the aspect positions within the properties view of a file and set them for fixed positions.
  8. Validate certificates – We increased usability and solved the problem of regular certificate authentication. We have made Alfresco synchronize without issue to LDAPS so that users with Active Directories don’t have access issues.
  9. Thumbnail recovery – We added a follow-up on broken thumbnail images to allow users to manually rebuild a thumbnail that didn’t come through. This makes the document library easier to navigate.
  10. Toggle Thumbnail action – For files that cannot use thumbnails (e.g. encrypted documents) we have disabled Alfresco’s thumbnail requirement and removed it as an error in the system.
  11. Toggle Avatar options – We have created a way for companies to enable/disable their users’ ability to change avatars in their Alfresco profile. Companies can control employee avatars through HR or leave it open.
  12. Custom filenames – This upgrade gives the customer the ability to set appropriate suffixes for filenames (e.g. COPY for duplicate files) and to create filenames systematically.
  13. Toggle user dashboard configuration – We have given companies the ability to enable/disable their users’ ability to configure their own home page dashboard in Alfresco.
  14. Toggle site configuration – We have given companies the ability to enable/disable users’ access to configuring their site pages’ dashboards in Alfresco.
  15. Document ownership settings – We have created the ability for document creators to give away ownership of files within Alfresco. This is important for gatekeepers and for complying with company access procedures. It is a necessary requirement for any company that deals with sensitive information such as HR records or financial information.
  16. Other backend upgrades – Our developers at Skytizens have included other minor and major upgrades that make Alfresco more stable, help the system run smoothly, and avoid using up company resources while the system is deployed.

Level III: Enhancements – This cadre of improvements was agreed upon by our talented team of developers and sets the version of Alfresco apart as a unique Skytizens product. Many of these advances have been exclusively developed by Skytizens and are not available elsewhere in the world. Thanks to years of working with international organizations, our experience tells us that these enhancements are must-haves for enterprise-level clients. These adjustments are the final touches that give us the confidence to put our name on this version of the product.

  1. Workflow execution – Standard Alfresco crashes with simultaneous workflow action. This enhancement creates asynchronous tasks, executes workflows by site, manages workflow processes, and forces some workflow activities to occur in the system background.
  2. Restriction for task completion – Standard Alfresco allow initiators to work every part of a task themselves. We have created a toggle to enable/disable this kind of activity in order to allow for real authorizations and true workflow to happen without cutting corners. This allows companies to follow procedures correctly within the system. It closes the loophole for false approvals.
  3. Log cancelled workflow – Standard Alfresco deletes cancelled workflows from the system. This enhancement creates the ability to mark a workflow status as cancelled and track cancelled workflows in the log instead of removing them from the system. It allows for monitoring of real activity and disallows data loss.
  4. Clear audit log – We built in a way to clear the audit log by user and by date range. This saves storage and avoids the issues associated with a server at maximum capacity.
  5. Split screen scrolling – For this exciting accessibility and usability feature, we built split-screen scrolling capability into the Alfresco Document Library. We added an additional scroll bar with a file-manager style menu as the first column. The main area of navigation is by thumbnail view. Both areas are scrollable separately for agile navigation. We also added drop-down menu extensions to the file action menus to create a more user-friendly view of the Document Library.
  6. Live search customization – Standard Alfresco typically searches documents in the Alfresco repository based on three properties. We have enhanced live search to include whichever properties the user dictates as part of the search. This feature markedly improves the capabilities of live search and saves companies innumerable man hours.
  7. Toggle transactional delete – We have developed the ability to enable/disable transactional deleting of files. This means the system can delete files one-by-one instead of reviewing each file when numerous files have been selected for delete. This is more efficient than Standard Alfresco’s batch delete and avoids system crashes for companies with large amounts of data.
  8. Concurrent transaction order – Standard Alfresco has a general bug when it comes to concurrent transactions that causes system errors and lost data. We have developed a patch to prioritize and spool multiple transactions (e.g. first copy then delete a file) so that Alfresco can function well for large companies with a high volume of users.
  9. And more

License Management – An administrative tool that clearly displays license information and details about the modules included in your company’s system. For example, with version 5, you will see each of the above modules with details about the code, name of the module, Skytizens version, description, and wiki information from our developers. This information is located under Licensing in the Admin Tools menu.

Conclusions

Extension is the perfect place for your business to start with Alfresco.

The Alfresco Skytizens Extension addon was developed by Skytizens to take Alfresco Community version from sufficiency level to supercharged. From stability improvements to system upgrades to enhancements that are the icing on the cake, represents a cadre of adjustments that we consider an efficient starting point for the companies we work with. Our developers stand behind this particular set of improvements and we are proud to call the “Skytizens version” of Alfresco.

We have done our work up front to make sure our product is reliable. We have gone above and beyond to make this version of Alfresco stable and feature-rich enough to use as is. Our support team spends the majority of their time developing new Alfresco enhancements and working on custom software solutions—not dealing with a barrage of technical issues from our core product. We are able to do this because with the Skytizens Extension addon framework, those types of problems simply don’t come up.

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