Alfresco 4.2 Desktop Sync

This document shows how to install and use Desktop Sync with Alfresco 4.2.    It assumes you already have alfresco 4.2 installed on a server and running.

Desktop Sync is the equivalent of drop box, but controlled by your alfresco install.

Download

First download Desktop sync,  as of this writing it’s still in Early Preview (Beta).  Go to  http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Community_file_list_4.2.b [1]

Scroll down to “Desktop Sync - Early Preview”

First I am going to show installing the windows installer.

download the .exe file

Install  Windows

Double click on AlfrescoSync-0.8.0.6.exe

You should get a “Publisher not verified”   Click Run

Set up Wizard starts,  Click Next

Leave Defaults, Click Next

Leave Defaults, Click Next

Checkbox “Create a desktop icon” and click Next. 

Click Install

Finish, and launch AlfrescoSync

Configure

Select New Account

For Account Type, Select Private…. Unless you are using Alfresco’s own cloud service.

Enter your  name and password you use to log into alfresco.   Also enter the web location of the alfresco server.

Mine is an internal server and uses an odd port,  Also it is not using https  (security) which I would recommend for securely sharing your files.

Click Login

Now you will see all Alfresco share sites you have access to.  In this case I created a single site named hard-drive-test  to test out all this AlfrescoSync stuff.

Select it then click on folder

You will see the folder structure pop to the right.   In my case I made two folders  Test_1 and Test_2 in the Alfresco Share site.

I selected the first folder, which you can now see is shown under the hard drive test.   Then click  Browse to select a folder to sync with on your system. 

I selected a file called Alfresco_Test on my Desktop.

Now click Start Syncing!

Open up the synced folder

Opening the Synced folder I see a folder that represents the site name.   It looks like it does not yet allow syncing one folder to one folder, but first lists sites as folders.

Open this site folder

And you should see any files that are currently in Alfresco Share.

Here you can see the picture I put of myself in the alfresco share folder.

And if I open up the alfresco share site

You can see that it contains the same image in the same folder  “Test_1”

Test

Drag and drop some files from your system into this folder.

I dropped several files into this folder.

Going back to the alfresco Share site I can see they all synced up just fine.

As a quick test I chose another folder to sync to.   I wanted to see what happened with the original folder.  

It turns out nothing  all the files remain in the original folder even if its not syncing with the alfresco server.   

I prefer it this way, if I stop syncing a folder I can manually delete the documents from it.

The tool seems a little confusing on how you could sync multiple folders at the same time.   It looks easy to sync multiple sites to one folder on your system but to sync different sites to different folders looks like it’s not set up easily yet.   

AlfrescoSync has a taskbar tool.  Right click on it and select Preferences to change its settings.

Deleting or adding files from my local system seems to work very quickly, updating Alfresco.  However deleting or adding files in Alfresco updates my system slowly, it seems to update every few minutes.  In one test it took almost 5 minutes for the windows folder to update with the new files.

If you are in a rush you can right click on the taskbar tool and click Sync Now.  And that will update the folder to current.

Very nice feature if you someone just put a file in you need to see.

A gotcha

If you simply drag and drop files from your system to an AlfrescoSync folder (assuming the file and folder are on the same hard drive)  It moves the file.   If you do this and another user deletes it from Alfresco Share then it deletes it from your AlfrescoSync Folder.   To get around this I would recommend always copying files to the alfresco sync folder.   One way to do this is drag and drop while holdin the right mouse button.   When you do this after you drop a menu will pop up and ask if you want to copy the file to this location.

Install Mac OS X

Go to  http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Community_file_list_4.2.b [1]

Scroll down to “Desktop Sync - Early Preview”

download the .dmg file

Drag and drop into Applications

Go to Applications and click on AlfrescoSync

Click Open

Configure

Select New Account

For Account Type, Select Private…. Unless you are using Alfresco’s own cloud service.

Enter your  name and password you use to log into alfresco.   Also enter the web location of the alfresco server.

Mine is an internal server and uses an odd port,  Also it is not using https  (security) which I would recommend for securely sharing your files.

Click Login

Now you will see all Alfresco share sites you have access to.  In this case I created a single site named hard-drive-test  to test out all this AlfrescoSync stuff.

Select it then click on folder

You will see the folder structure pop to the right.   In my case I made two folders  Test_1 and Test_2 in the Alfresco Share site.

I selected the first folder, which you can now see is shown under the hard drive test.   Then click  Browse to select a folder to sync with on your system. 

I selected a file called Alfresco on my Desktop.

Now click Start Syncing!

Open up the synced folder

Opening the Synced folder I see a folder that represents the site name.   It looks like it does not yet allow syncing one folder to one folder, but first lists sites as folders.

Open this site folder

And you should see any files that are currently in Alfresco Share.

 

AlfrescoSync has a taskbar tool.  Right click on it and select Preferences to change its settings.

If you are in a rush you can right click on the taskbar tool and click Sync Now.  And that will update the folder to current.

Very nice feature if you someone just put a file in you need to see.

I like this AlfrescoSync Tool a lot.

In its first release it is a very useful tool.  I imagine over the next year or so it will only get better and richer in its features.

References

[1]  Community file list 4.2.b

       http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Community_file_list_4.2.b

       Visited 1/2013