Alfresco - A breath of fresh air in the content management arena
Updated October 20, 2015

Alfresco - A breath of fresh air in the content management arena

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Alfresco Enterprise Edition

Modules Used

  • Alfresco One

Overall Satisfaction with Alfresco

Alfresco is being used across the whole organization for document management/retention, blogging, audit trails and approval workflows. We have integrated Alfresco with our home grown database. As soon as a deal is entered into it, a site creates with standard folders and rules that make metadata assignment easier or completely automated. All parties working on the deal are able to easily access and save documents to the right place. Workflows are used for obtaining and tracking deal approvals based on credit submissions. Blogs are used to make the sharing of information interactive and are part of our knowledge management strategy.
  • Basic workflows are easy enough for casual users to set up and utilize.
  • Cloud sync capability provides a great way to share documents with third parties and to use as a backup system for critical documents.
  • Alfresco mobile app makes it easy for those on the road to access, approve and share documents.
  • Folder rules are easy to set up and make assignment of metadata easier to automate.
  • When users are members of 1000 sites or more, certain features such as sites dashlet do not work properly.
  • There isn't any integration between Alfresco and Microsoft Outlook for Mac. IMAP integration has flaws that can cause loss of email.
  • Mobile app doesn't have a site search feature. this is problematic when you have thousands of sites and you need to access one where you have not saved it as a favorite.
  • Deal flow process runs much more efficiently.
  • Compliance needs are easily met in a cost effective manner.
  • Mobile access allows employees to be productive wherever they have internet access and even where they don't have access if they have chosen a document or folder to automatically sync to her/his mobile app.
If you have regulatory or business needs that require saving email into Alfresco and you are using Outlook for Mac, you may need to perform significant customization to make it work. Additionally, if you will have users that will be members to a large numbers of sites over time, you need to thoroughly explore what functionality will be degraded or lost and how to mitigate the impact. Other than these two scenarios, I cannot think of any scenarios where Alfresco would not be well suited to an organization's needs.

Alfresco Implementation

Process was relatively smooth and overall, downtime minimal. MSI was very responsive to our needs and made the transition easier than it otherwise might have been.
  • Professional services company
MicroStrategies, Inc. (MSI) implemented Alfresco for our company.
Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled - It's essential to include key members of each department in building requirements, get feedback along the way as components are built, allocate plenty of time for testing and ensure that training and training tools are easily accessible and available.
  • Took some trial and error to find the Amazon cloud instance best suited for our implementation.
  • When connected, IMAP integration caused Alfresco to come to a crawl on several occasions.