This document summarizes an organization's first experience using Alfresco Digital Workspace (ADF) to build an application. They started with ADF 2.3 and upgraded through several versions. While they found the ADF components useful, they encountered issues like slow loading times and bugs that were fixed in later releases. They also used Alfresco Process Services but found the quality disappointing due to lack of documentation and issues with the APIs and process functionality. Support for ADF issues was better than for APS issues. The organization implemented custom user synchronization and authentication by developing subsystems.

1. Our First ADF Experience
Hans De Bal
@hdebal

2. Learn. Connect. Collaborate.
Warning
Mismatch between use-case and
product!
 Limited use of ADF components

3. ADF

4. Learn. Connect. Collaborate.
Our ADF
story
• First ADF project
• ADF 2.3  2.4  2.5
• Started from scratch, not from ACA
• Compatible with IE, FF and Chrome
• Mobile-friendly
• Components integrated in non-document
centric application

5. Learn. Connect. Collaborate.
Experience
Technical
• Nice
components
but…
• Custom
implementation
of injectables
Technical Ctd.
• Loading time
(PROD)
• Keeping up
with latest
versions of
dependencies
Varia
• Demo-shell,
ACA, APW
• Gitter/Bi-
weekly calls

6. Learn. Connect. Collaborate.
Bugs/remarks
5 bugs
6 feature
requests
• 6 fixed after
upgrade
• 2 fixed in
ADF 3.0
• 2 still in
backlog
Upgrades
• Response
times
• Next ADF-
version
• Hotfixes?
PRs
• Contributions
from
community
User friendly?
• Taskcompon
ent
• Peopleselect
or
• Tasklist
• … ?

7. Learn. Connect. Collaborate.
Documentation
Functional
• Lack of
functional
description
• Lack of visuals
Technical
• Good
entrypoint
• Actual use,
dive into the
code
ACS or APS?
• Is it a ACS or
APS
component?
E.g.
peopleselector
https://alfresco.github.io/adf-component-catalog/index.html

8. Demo

9. APS (1.9)

10. Learn. Connect. Collaborate.
Why APS?
• Customer had the license
• Speed up development
• Strategy of Alfresco (more future proof)
• Integrated components in ADF (task forms,
tasklist…)

11. Learn. Connect. Collaborate.
Quality?
Disappointing!
• No SDK/RAD
• Lack of decent developer documentation
• Form designer very limited (multi-person
picker)
• Public API
– Always returns null for certain property
– Parameters that don’t work
– Response object in api-explorer not matching
actual response
– When querying tasks, no permissions returned
– …
• Process variables substitution in link doesn't
work for completed processes

12. Learn. Connect. Collaborate.
Quality?
• Manual installation custom processes
• Process app not available automatically for all
users.
• No jobLockService
 Lots of bugs and shortcomings!

13. Learn. Connect. Collaborate.
Conclusion
APS 2.0? Or embedded activiti engine

14. Support

15. Learn. Connect. Collaborate.
Help wanted!
• Where to log ADF issue?
• Support for ACS was good
• Support for APS was mixed

16. Learn. Connect. Collaborate.
Some figures
• ADF
– 2 fixed in 3.0
– 2 in backlog
• ACS
– 2 pending engineering
• 1 PR merged
• APS
– 6 pending engineering
11
5
8
7
3
2
ADF ACS APS
Opened Fixed

17. Custom synchronization and
authentication system

18. Learn. Connect. Collaborate.
Custom subsystem
• Create properties and context.xml file under
src/main/resources/alfresco/subsystems
• Create “userRegistry”-and “authenticationComponent”-bean

19. Learn. Connect. Collaborate.
Synchronization
• Implements UserRegistry
• Override some methods
– getPeopleSince
– getPersonNames
• REST-call to get all users

20. Learn. Connect. Collaborate.
Authentication
• Extend
AbstractAuthenticationComponent
• Override authenticateImpl
• REST-call to authenticate user