Here are the new user features of engroup 1.5.1, the detail changes can be read at http://esofthead.com/node/51.

1. Project Management module:

• Helps enterprise manage their works easily with hierarchy tasks, deadlines.
• Collaborates project members, store project information with messages and their comments, attachments.
• Manages project resources and statuses such as project members, risks and problems.
• Provides automotive scheduling base on various variables start date, end date, predecessor tasks.
• Integrations with Microsoft Project: import/export data to/from MS Project format.

2. Connection module: is extracted from previous Dashboard module

• Private messages.
• Members List.

3 User Profile module: is extracted from previous Dashboard module

• Uploads user picture to profile section.
• Crop picture to profile picture.
• Displays profile picture.

We will write the usage of engroup modules such as document management, project management in future posts. Stay tuned.

'Engroup is a information, knowledge center and communication tool for groups and companies. Engroup promotes both informal and formal communication by combining various communication methods like private message (one-to-one, simple protocol), chat or email. In addition, Engroup provides many enterprise features like Human Resource Management, Customer Relationship, Document Management and Project Management modules. By utilizing the strength of Java language at server side and Flex on Flash runtime at client side, Engroup provides the fast and stability platform with user friendly interface'.

Engroup is the right tool for you if you want a software for one or many following needs:

• Manage your tasks.
• Read new channels.
• Communicate with others: private message, chat, mail, forum.
• Manage your company knowledge and information: wiki, document management.
• Manage company employee information.
• Manage customer information.
• Manage project: problems, risks, resources and documents.

Engroup milestone 3 is the scrum iteration release (1 month after the second milestone), it includes bug fixes, major improvements in Customer Relationship Management module and a new Project Management module is added. For the detail, you should check out our RELEASE NOTES at http://esofthead.com/node/49

- If any engroup modules need to tag some resource, which resource can be a document or a CRM Lead etc, it does not call tag service (if it do so, tag service must be available and it depends on tag service) but send a message with necessary information to a specific channel name 'add.tag'. If a tag service is available, it will receive message from that channel and save tag as requested.

- When a new user register to engroup system, engroup must do: 1. Create new user document workspace 2. Synchronize user information with its forum and wiki and several tasks later we will add, for example create a account with the same name in chat server, email server. Instead of adding code in register user part and modifying code when there is new added action when register user, we simply send a message to 'add.user' channel, any interested parties would listen this channel and do their tasks.

Engroup runs in Spring Osgi platform that we can control the dependencies among engroup modules and engroup external libraries. With the goal to make engroup modules are loose coupling, Engroup uses publish-subscribe pattern to make two modules have no dependencies in code can talk together with the help from ActiveMQ (messaging server) and Spring Integration framework.

Here are an example that we use all of these tools in engroup: we have two modules engroup document management module and engroup tag resource. Each document could have many tags, when a document is saved into engroup data-store, it will post message to appropriate channel to notify engroup tag module to save its tag. The similar process is applied for any module support tag source in engroup.

• Set up embedded ActiveMQ server:

For deployment simplicity, engroup uses embedded ActiveMQ instance in its community edition.

        <!--  lets create an embedded ActiveMQ Broker -->
        <amq:broker useJmx="false" persistent="false">
                <amq:transportConnectors>
                        <amq:transportConnector uri="tcp://localhost:0" />
                </amq:transportConnectors>
        </amq:broker>

        <!--  ActiveMQ destinations to use  -->

        <!-- JMS ConnectionFactory to use, configuring the embedded broker using XML -->
        <amq:connectionFactory id="jmsFactory" brokerURL="vm://localhost" />

        <bean id="connectionFactory"
                class="org.springframework.jms.connection.SingleConnectionFactory">
                <property name="targetConnectionFactory">
                        <ref local="jmsFactory" />
                </property>
        </bean>

• Using Spring JMS to send message:

          <!--Convert java object to Json message format-->
          <bean id="messageConverter"
                  class="com.engroup.integration.jms.converter.JsonMessageConverter" />
  
          <bean id="jmsTemplate"
                  class="org.springframework.jms.core.JmsTemplate">
                  <property name="connectionFactory" ref="connectionFactory" />
                  <property name="messageConverter" ref="messageConverter"></property>
          </bean>
  
          <bean id="messageDispatcher"
                  class="com.engroup.integration.dispatcher.jms.JmsMessageDispatcher">
                  <property name="jmsTemplate" ref="jmsTemplate" />
          </bean>

• Define message destinations:

In engroup tag module, we define two message destinations: tagRemove and tagAdd

        <!--Import spring service connection factory from engroup esb module-->
        <osgi:reference id="connectionFactory"
                interface="javax.jms.ConnectionFactory" />

        <bean id="tagRemoveDest"
                class="org.apache.activemq.command.ActiveMQQueue">
                <constructor-arg value="tag.remove" />
        </bean>

        <bean id="tagAddDest"
                class="org.apache.activemq.command.ActiveMQQueue">
                <constructor-arg value="tag.add" />
        </bean>

• Define service activator for channels:

Now, we define service activator to handle tag add request

        <bean id="tagServiceActivator"
                class="com.engroup.module.tag.integration.TagServiceActivator">
                <property name="tagService" ref="tagService" />
        </bean>

        <!-- Establish add tag channel and related things -->

        <jms:inbound-gateway id="jmsTagAdd" request-destination="tagAddDest"
                request-channel="tag.addChannel" reply-timeout="5000"
                request-timeout="5000" />

        <integration:channel id="tag.addChannel" />

        <integration:channel id="tag.addChannelAfterTransformer" />

        <integration:channel id="tag.result" />

        <engroup-esb:json-to-map-transformer input-channel="tag.addChannel"
                output-channel="tag.addChannelAfterTransformer" />

        <!--Method addTag is used to receive message from channel &#39;tag.addChannelAfterTransformer&#39;,
process and return message to channel &#39;tag.result&#39;-->

        <integration:service-activator ref="tagServiceActivator"
                method="addTag" input-channel="tag.addChannelAfterTransformer"
                output-channel="tag.result">
        </integration:service-activator>

Here is a part of code of TagServiceActivator:

public void addTag(Map tagInfo) {
        String contentId = (String) tagInfo.get("contentId");
        String[] tags = (String[]) tagInfo.get("tags");

        tagService.deleteTagRelationshipOfContent(contentId);

        for (String tag : tags) {
            tagService.saveTagRelationship(contentId, tag.trim());
        }
    }

Remember to add dependency Spring integration packages into MANIFEST.MF file, otherwise you will get ClassNotFoundException while
running Osgi.

• Send message to tag module channels

We go to the code of any modules are interesting in tag resource, in our example it is document module. First, we import messageDispatcher to document service bean:

         <osgi:reference id="connectionFactory"
                interface="javax.jms.ConnectionFactory" />

        <osgi:reference id="messageDispatcher"
                interface="com.engroup.integration.dispatcher.MessageDispatcher" />

        <bean id="internalAccessValidatorFileService"
                class="com.engroup.module.ecm.service.impl.AccessValidatorFileSystemServiceImpl">
                <property name="jcrTemplate" ref="jcrMappingTemplate" />
                <property name="transactionService"
                        ref="contentTransactionService">
                </property>
                <property name="messageDispatcher" ref="messageDispatcher"></property>
        </bean>

When we want to send a message to add tag channel of engroup tag module, we just simply construct a message and messageDispatcher will do the rest:

    private void sendSaveTagRequest(String contentId, String[] tags) {
        Dictionary
 props = new Hashtable();
        props.put("contentId", contentId);
        props.put("tags", tags);
        messageDispatcher.dispatchObject(AvailableDestinationNames.TAG_ADD,
                props);
    }

Osgi can help you control strictly dependencies of a module with external packages if we control well, we can limit dependencies of one engroup module with other module. Spring Integration framework provides solution to integrate data among modules without modifying existing code base. At the beginning, we feel it is complex solution while combining Spring Integration with Osgi platform. However, after number of modules is grown continuously also data exchange among modules are increased, such complex solution become a simple one on both development and deployment. Could you have other solutions?

The following screen-shots are result of displaying tag in document module.

Engroup 1.5.07082009 has the following new features and improvements according with the previous one:

• eSoftHead replaces Engroup AIR client application by Flex client browser. In the past, several clients complained the security warning while they install Engroup client and additional steps they must do to install client application. With engroup web client, such obstacles are disappeared. eSoftHead will only distribute Engroup AIR client application in its commercial delivery since Engroup 1.6. It will interact with native application, processes and file system that a web application cannot do.
• Document Management Module:
• • Bookmark content: user can bookmark their favorite content and manage bookmarks and its folders easily.
  • Access control: it is the key feature of this release. Now, Engroup Document Management manage contents like Operating System manages its file systems.
  • Improve performance of listing/reading contents.
• Improving caching model and create web session-like variable to manage user sessions.
• Various bug fixes of other modules

All your suggestions/comments will be highly appreciated. Please do not hesitate to drop some lines to us at info@esofthead.com.

The most feasible solution that many companies choose is to developboth web and desktop presentations and reuse the back-end layer since, in general,the main difference between desktop and web applications is presentation layer. However, the middleware and persistent layer in web and desktop applications could be different depending on application architecture as well as communication protocol between presentation and back-end layers. Moreover, for enterprise applications, the cost for developing two separate presentation layers is so high. Let's imagine that your application has hundreds of views and many business processes at client side.

eSoftHead found a better solution - AIR/Flex. Being inspired by the article Building web and Adobe AIR applications from a shared Flex code base, we applied that Adobe solution on our product - Engroup ( http://esofthead.com/node/25) to build the both desktop and web applications using the same code base (this does not mean
that all source codes are portable between desktop and web environments but most of them). Our goal is to deliver Engroup to our customers in the same form. Engroup 1.5 Milestone 2 will be released in both versions: Web (for community use) and Desktop (for commercial use). You can see its two screenshots respectively below:

To make the dream of developing web and desktop applications in the same codebase become true, the following design is applied:

• Build projects based on component responsibility: if a component requires specific classes of AIR libraries, we split the project into 2 sub projects; one for web (if needed) and one for AIR. One example is dynamic loading Engroup modules. We created Platform_AIR including classes responsible for loading the modules of Engroup desktop and Platform_Web including classes responsible for loading the modules of Engroup web.
• Use Abstract Factory pattern instead of Factory method pattern: Abstract Factory pattern creates a family of different implementation services between web and desktop. It helps you manage the set of differences easier.
• Try to keep shared code between desktop and web as much as possible: While implementing, we always kept in mind of reducing the size of project specific for AIR and web as small as possible. For example, if we have 5 services that need to be implemented, we try to write 5 implementation classes. The result we got is 6-7 classes.
• Standardize communication protocol between client and server (regardless of whether client is desktop or web application): we chose Flash/Flex as platform of our Engroup rich internet application due to its capacity of developing both web and desktop application. To avoid using web frameworks for developing web client and Java/Qt etc for developing desktop client, Flash is a good choice with more than 95% code is shared in both web and desktop applications (including hundreds of page and components) in our project. Using Flex makes our application run on Flash platform easier. If we used standard web technology (AJAX and other web frameworks), we would have to use another communication to connect between client and server.

That's our story. If you need to develop an application running on both Web and Desktop, what will you do?

According to the Engroup 1.5 roadmap posted at http://blog.esofthead.com/engroup-15-roadmap/, the new features of Engroup 1.5 M1 are as follows:

• Upload single/multiple contents.
• Download single/multiple contents.
• Categorize contents via document type, status, and tag.
• Display simple transaction view.

If you want to view some screenshots before trying Engroup 1.5 M1, you could check them at http://www.flickr.com/photos/34441795@N06/sets/72157616946782473/. Besides adding Document Management module, Engroup 1.5 added some technical features:

• Improve caching by utilizing ehcache API that manages session-like variables.
• Utilize system resources and improve system responsive time by using Threadpool and asynchronous invocations.
• Engroup 1.0 promotes modular architecture by using Osgi event library to exchange messages among its modules. This approach does not persist messages if the server is down. Engroup 1.5 embeds messaging server (ActiveMQ - http://activemq.apache.org/) to provide persistent message and enterprise integration provider features
• Engroup 1.5 embeds a lightweight enterprise service bus - Spring Integration library. It applies Enterprise Integration patterns to establish message channels (direct, publish-suscribable) to exchange/transform messages among channels.
• RESTeasy is used to enable REST support to integrate data between third-party and Engroup.

All your suggestions/comments will be highly appreciated. Please do not hesitate to drop some lines to us at info@esofthead.com.

Engroup Document Management module (EDM) is developed base on the Java JCR 170 specification with the implementation is Jackrabbit (http://jackrabbit.apache.org/). The jackrabbit provides to us the content model,
authenticates/authorizes user base on Engroup user database (combination between LDAP and database) and support searching with the help of lucene library. EDM will supports some simple methods to classify documents via category/status of document, tag system
also provide the simple statistical data. We plan to release Engroup 1.5 via 3 external milestones:

1. Engroup 1.5 M1:
   • File operations:
   • • Upload single file, bulk file (in zip/gzip format)
     • Delete files.
     • Rename file, move file.
     • Copy file.
     • File shortcut.
     • Download files (support bulk download with zip format)
   • Searching:
   • • Text search.
     • Category search.
     • Tag search.
   • Version:
   • • Track document history via version.
     • Can get the previous version artifact.
2. Engroup 1.5 M2:
   • Security:
   • • User workspace: each user will have his/her own workspace
     • Authorize whether user has right to access Engroup resources via resource permission.
   • Integrate with other Engroup modules:
   • • System folders.
     • Specific module folders for Human Resource Management, CRM, Mail etc.
   • WebDAV support
3. Engroup 1.5 GA:
4. • We could add more small features in this release or make our UI looks better, but no major feature is new in this release.

Each milestone will last from 1-1.5 month depends on our availability for maintaining this project besides our commercial ones. We are welcome all your feedbacks to our product feartures. Here are some screenshots of the first milestone of Engroup 1.5 (note that the UI may change in the future).

EDM: Dashboard View

ECM: Document View

ECM: Document List

ECM: Document Search

I will update in blog the development status of EDM. If you like this product, remember to dig this site. Thanks.

I am very pleased to announce that Engroup 1.0 after more than one month of previous release date. It is the bug fix release for the previous one, Engroup 1.0 beta. You can download the Engroup at eSoftHead site and see the last changes at here.

It is the first time eSoftHead releases the Engroup source codes under GPL license, and it is the major difference between the current release and the previous one. Releasing the source code to community is the key factor to help us continuously improve our source code quality, share knowledge and help other non-commercial organizations build RIA application using Adobe technology faster base on Engroup codebase. These benefits are over the threat that some guys may steal our source code and release the product with their copyright. We faced many issues to manage such big project, overcome the limitation of external libraries and tools and continuously optimize our source code, so we are welcome any your valuable comments to help us work better. You could download Engroup source code at eSoftHead site and read carefully the instruction at here.

Our development team are developing the next Engroup version, it focus on Document Management area and integrate Enterprise documents with varies Engroup modules such as HR, CRM. I will write the road-map for the next Engroup version in next several days and the first release of Engroup 1.0 will be planned in the next 2-3 weeks. Remember to keep update Engroup information on our website and this blog.