Engroup document management system overview

• Technology: engroup document system is developed base on excellent java frameworks and libaries as Spring, Spring Modules, Jackrabbit, Lucene at back-end and Flex at front-end.
• Development Time: first line of codes are written when we write the blog post http://blog.esofthead.com/jackbrabbit-ocm-and-spring. By time, the source code have many changes when we have more knowledge of using Jackrabbit, Luncene and product requirements, java libraries are more stable.
• Status: engroup document management (EDM) are maintained and bug-fixes phase. engroup 1.5.1 released on 10/7/2009 has 3 bug-fixes for EDM and we continue to fix any discovered defects of EDM reports from our customer and our QC team. With the workflow process applied to all engroup modules since 1.7.0 version (our roadmap), EDM will support workflow as well (what are the rules people must follow while access document?) also we improve searching criteria and back-up records system and user collaboration.

Benefits of using Engroup Document System

Increased Productivity / Efficiencies

• All documents are stored in central system. People does not need to search document in many sources: mail, network drive, local files etc
• Access heavy use documents instantly by bookmark menu.
• Work with document everywhere and anytime. You only need a web browser to do that.
• Get all documents in the same category fastly.
• Keep all previous documents in versionable form. You can get previous work easily as you work with current document.

Improved, faster and more flexible search

Engroup document system can retrieve files by any word or phrase in the document - known as full text search or browse documents using taxonomies - things are not presented in network sharing.

Secure your data

Most of user are familar with operating file system permission, engroup developers make our system familar with what you are using. Engroup provides permission rules are similar with file permissions. By default, each engroup user has his personal folder with full access right, and he can not access other folders (except administrator can access all folders). Engroup administrator will provide the rights for users, group of users (roles) access some folders/files with appropriate permissions. Engroup search only display results of documents can be accessible by user.

Data Integration with other engroup modules

Engroup modules saved documents in the same central place, it means you can access employee CVs, Sales documents or project attachments in one storage only. When you perform search content document, the system will list all matched document in all places: project management, CRM, HR etc which you have authorization to access.

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

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.

• [1] - The work-around solution: http://weblogs.macromedia.com/emalasky/archives/2008/04/remote_plugins.html
• [2] - The proposed solution but not complete: http://weblogs.macromedia.com/emalasky/archives/2008/04/remote_plugins.html
• [3] - Another solution using AIR Update framework: http://www.intriguemedia.net/2008/02/22/loading-modulesruntime-css-into-an-air-app/

The first work-around solution is tricky, we see it as the last solution if we can not seek the better one (within 2 days). We also do not prefer the third solution because we do not want to use AIR Update framework because we want to deploy our application as SaaS model, that means we do not know how many services we have to bundle them all at the first time also we would like to have right that force people update (such as security pack, bug fix pack like OS without user confirm whether it is necessary or not). The comments of third solution is exact our solution when we combine them with the solution of [2], they solve completely our problem in several lines of code!

I would like to summarize our steps to solve the problem (Copy from [2], temporarily not sign our modules and verify the the signature. They should be presented in our future works)

1. Download the remote module and store them in AIR application storage:

   //Load the remote module base on moduleUri -
   //for example: http://www.esofthead.com/engroup/HrEmployeeModule.swf
   var loader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
   loader.dataFormat = URLLoaderDataFormat.BINARY;
   loader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, moduleLoadedCompleteHandler);
   loader.addEventListener(IOErrorEvent.IO_ERROR, moduleLoaderErrorHandler);
   loader.load(new URLRequest(moduleUri))

   Save module into application storage when the module is completely downloaded

   private function moduleLoadedCompleteHandler(e:Event): void {
       var loader:URLLoader = URLLoader(e.target);
       var data:ByteArray = ByteArray(loader.data);
       var moduleFile:File = File.applicationStorageDirectory.resolvePath("HrEmployeeModule.swf");
       var fileStream:FileStream = new FileStream();
       fileStream.open(moduleFile, FileMode.WRITE);
       fileStream.writeBytes(data);
       fileStream.close();
   }

2. Load the module (in application storage)

   var moduleLoader:Loader = new Loader();
   var context:LoaderContext = new LoaderContext();
   context.allowLoadBytesCodeExecution = true;
   context.applicationDomain = ApplicationDomain.currentDomain;    
    
   //data is byte array of module, it could be filled by loading 
    
   //bytes from local file (module file is stored in app storage)
   moduleLoader.loadBytes(data, context);
   moduleLoader.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, completeLoader);

   We process module when it is already loaded

   private function completeLoader(e:Event): void {
       var moduleLoader:LoaderInfo = LoaderInfo(e.target);
       moduleLoader.content.addEventListener("ready", readyHandler);
   }

3. Use module when the module is already loaded

   private function readyHandler(e:Event): void {
       var factory:IFlexModuleFactory = IFlexModuleFactory(e.target);
       var module:Module = factory.create() as Module;
       // Do as flex module as usual
       ...
   }

Note that you can control the loading remote module and cache module by using AIR embedded database. The database should keep url, version of module (our AIR only download the remote module if it does not exist in local or it has the newer version in server side). And we can develop the Service Management at client side to keep track the life cycle of each application services, that allows we can uninstall/install/update with/or without user knowledge.