ECM: Alfresco Workdesk: Focus on Transactional Content and Case File Management

Alfresco has recently acquired and begun selling the ECM application called Alfresco Workdesk. Formtek, a Gold-Integration partner of Alfresco since 2007, is now trained on WorkDesk and has added it to the list of Alfresco technologies which they support.

What is WorkDesk? Alfresco Workdesk is a browser-based application that was designed to streamline business processes associated with loans, claims, applications, invoices, and cases. Alfresco acquired Workdesk when it purchased WeWebU, a German Open-Source company, at the end of January this year. After acquiring Workdesk, Alfresco immediately rebranded the former WeWebU Open Workdesk product as Alfresco WorkDesk (AWD).  The press release of the acquisition describes the synergies that WorkDesk brings to the Alfresco repository by saying that it “adds dynamic, role-based views and virtual folders to Alfresco’s powerful content management platform, making it easier to customize Alfresco to business processes with configuration instead of coding.” The acquisition of WorkDesk came just a few weeks after the appointment of Doug Dennerline as Alfresco’s new CEO.

Why another Alfresco client? Alfresco already has Share and its earlier JSF-based client app — Alfresco Explorer. If you just download Workdesk and do a quick visual comparison of its interface versus Share’s, there aren’t that many features of Workdesk UI that pop out as unique. While I did like the denser rendering of items in the data display list (compared to the default Share document list), the out-of-the box skin for Workdesk doesn’t seem quite as eye-appealing as Share’s interface (although I later discovered that via configuration re-styling of Workdesk is easy to do). Another observation is that many of the collaboration features like discussion lists, calendars, and data lists that are available in Share are not found in Workdesk either. But that’s really the point. Share and Workdesk are targeting two different sets of requirements, and because of that, the feature sets and interfaces of the two apps are quite a bit different, and a lot of the great features of Workdesk aren’t immediately obvious on first inspection.

While Share excels at managing ad-hoc collaboration and the sharing of data, Workdesk targets more traditional ECM sweet-spot applications like Transactional Content Management and Case File Management. Transactional Content Management (TCM) can be described as a “system of record“.  TCM apps are typically built around load-once view-often data with a strong focus on business process. Examples of TCM applications include high-volume imaging applications, loan origination, human resources, insurance claims, customer invoices and legal contracts.  These types of applications are what many businesses consider to be core to their business-critical document processes. They’re distinctly different from the types of collaboration-focused applications that Alfresco Share and Microsoft SharePoint are tuned to address.

WeWebU has been selling Workdesk primarily in Europe since 2005 and has a number of very large-volume deployments. Workdesk customers currently include large banks, governments, and industries with process and transactional requirements. With Workdesk now part of Alfresco, expect Workdesk to continue to be sold not just in Europe, but globally.

Uwe Kartmann, CEO of Transactio, a back-office service provider for savings banks in Germany, said that “Workdesk allows us to create and maintain the needed workflows for our customers in a very efficient and flexible way.  Thus, we can guarantee high quality and achieve shorter delivery and processing times, leading to a significant increase in productivity, customer satisfaction and overall lower costs.”

Features that make WorkDesk unique include:

Dynamic Folders Dynamic Foldering is a major strength of Workdesk and a key differentiator between it and other client applications like Alfresco Share. In Workdesk, Dynamic Folders can be constructed by configuring the query criteria of a search template to keys off of document metadata. From the results of the query, Workdesk can then dynamically build and present to the user a virtual folder hierarchy that’s populated with the relevant documents. An unlimited number of virtual folder views can be created in this way. By using these dynamic or virtual folders, custom folder hierarchies can be created that present information in a way that most efficiently guides users in their interactions with documents when performing their job role.  All relevant documents can be aggregated and presented in one place, rather than making the user navigate through various folders to find related documents.

Roles-Based Security Another clear differentiator of Workdesk is it’s ability to provide very granular security and access rights — something Alfresco is calling “Business role management”. Based on a user role, permissions on pages, forms and even specific metadata fields can be selectively configured and associated with a role. Users see only the documents and data that they need to work on, when they need to work on them. This is very different in approach to how, for example, Share works. Share comes with a set of pre-defined user roles and has fewer restrictions because its emphasis on collaboration and the discovery of data.

Support for Multiple Repositories Workdesk isn’t restricted to work only with the Alfresco repository.   Workdesk provides support for both FileNet and CMIS repositories. FileNet support is available via a connector that uses the native FileNet API;  the CMIS-compliant repository connector is based on the CMIS API. Workdesk was originally developed as a FileNet application with CMIS support being added later.

Out of the box, Workdesk can be configured to plug into FileNet or any CMIS repository on the back end. Workdesk offers support for Alfresco via the CMIS connector. It’s also possible for Workdesk to simultaneously connect to multiple repositories. If you’re only planning to use Workdesk with a single Alfresco repository, then this capability may not do much for you; but if you ever have the need to connect to multiple repositories, it can be quite powerful. Alfresco is positioning this feature as a path that can be used to achieve a gradual migration away from other repositories, like FileNet.  For example, immediately after turning on Workdesk, users from day one would be able to continue to access documents still stored in their legacy repository, while any new documents stored could be directed to a different CMIS repository like Alfresco — and simultaneous access to both repositories would be possible using the same Workdesk  interface.

Like Alfresco, Workdesk comes in both Community and Enterprise versions. The Community version of Workdesk is available for free download. In addition to the Workdesk browser client, Workdesk also has an iOS mobile app and has a tight integration with Microsoft Office. Some features though, like the Role manager, the mobile module, and Workdesk Office integration aren’t available in the community version. Similar to the standard Alfresco Office integration, the Workdesk Office implementation also is totally different and also uses SharePoint protocol.

The Workdesk product provides an interesting complement to the collaboration capabilities found in Alfresco Share. It excels when used to solve problems related to Transactional Content Management and Case File Management. You can learn more about Alfresco Workdesk here.