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I wish to create a document repository for my company. Reason is because my company have many documents and they did not have a version tracking in place. This means everyone is using different version all the time.

Plone is something new to me and i got to know from a good friend of mine. And too bad he is not around anymore to answer my question. I believed in him and i wish to materialize his idea, to use Plone as a document repository for my company.

I have install Plone and manage to view the default Plone page, add all company's username and change the logo to my company's logo. And now the biggest question is, how to setup the document repository? What i have in mind was to create a "page" for the user to add files, download files, search for files and read its description.

Any lead for me to go about?

Reusable
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3 Answers3

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Reusable, Same problem here. We started to use Plone as our main DMS 4 weeks ago (inserting existing docs at present).

For working copies, we use iterate (insert plone.app.iterate under eggs in your buildout.cfg).

For versioning, Products.CMFEditions. I believe this worked out of the box.

For creating new workflow, look into plone.app.workflowmanager and read the docs.

In a previous question we asked, we were still looking at Dexterity which has alot going for it but eventually we decided on adapting an existing content type based on Archetypes.

As for inserting files, as long as the description is ok, they will be found through the in-built search functionality, but you might consider using Iterate mentioned above to make sure that nobody is using the same file twice.

As your new, as I am, the docs seem hard at first but are actually quite good.

And this book is still giving me the foundation we need to keep adding functionality.

Good luck

Community
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Speediro
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  • you mention workflow, why would i need it? any good reason to have it? And lastly, you must have read my mind: "whether there is a good book reference" :) – Reusable Apr 13 '12 at 01:56
  • If there is no need for review of the changges in both online documents (ie html) and the files, then no. But a good review cycle seems crucial in a document "Management" system, but not imperative. – Speediro Apr 13 '12 at 07:43
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    collective.documentviewer can be a nice add-on to use with document management also. – vangheem Apr 04 '13 at 14:59
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I think, you should get pretty far with vanilla Plone installation, without developing your own extensions or other customization add-on-products. Therefore, I'd recommend you to start with Plone 4 User Manual to find out everything you could do out-of-the box.

As @Speediro mentioned, versioning support comes built-in for the main content types (and you don't actually see CMFEditions mentioned anywhere), but it's not activated for file uploads. Although, as briefly mentioned in the manual: Content items can be configured to have versioning enabled/disabled through the Site Setup → Plone Configuration panel under "Types".

Working Copy Support (plone.app.iterate) should also be there already waiting for activation on Site Setup's add-ons-panel.

Yet, before the Plone Collective (=community) Developer Docs or Professional Plone 4 Development, I'd recommend Practical Plone 3. It has a bit outdated graphics (because it was made for Plone 3), but it's great next step after the user manual. E.g. how to define content rules to send e-mails notifications for content updates (still through the browser without coding). Or how to create custom forms using Products.PloneFormGen.

When you really need to write your own code, it'd be time for Professional Plone 4 and the Collective Docs.

Asko Soukka
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  • @Reusable: Asko Soukka's description is pretty much the exact path I had to follow to take the first steps towards Plone. Follow his advice and then look into the book I mentioned. It was a great learning path for me. And he is of course correct about not needing to add certain products since they are available "out of the box". – Speediro Apr 13 '12 at 07:45
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If you can't have a developer to manage your stuff, I would recommand to stay on official Plone, no custom code and use only widly used addons.

I mean:

  • stay on the default theme (sunburst)
  • use the default plone content types
  • only customize the logo
  • activate plone.app.iterate in the addon controlpanel
  • do not play with workflow because they need to know what you are doing. by default a file has the visibility of it's folder. It mean if you can see the folder you will be able to see all files inside. You can just activate default worklfow for files under the ZMI.
  • Use collective.quickupload addon

Your database will going really fast to a huge size because Plone is doing indexing and indexing means lot's of spaces. So you will have to handle this as system adminstrator;

toutpt
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