eXo DMS 2.5 goes open source

July 9, 2009:An open source document management platform has been launched by French company eXo that promises to revolutionise the way Mac and Windows users access shared drives.

“Software packages like Documentum and Sharepoint may be more widely used at larger organisations, but shared drives remain the most common way for people to connect, share and collaborate on documents,” said Benjamin Mestrallet, CEO of eXo Platform.

“With eXo DMS 2.5, we aimed to make the user experience as intuitive and familiar so that the learning curve can be shortened. By making DMS open source, we’re also opening up access to a wide audience to try it out for themselves and see why eXo customers have come to expect usability, modern design, and flexibility in our software.”

A core component of eXo Enterprise Content Management (ECM) suite, eXo DMS is a tool that captures, manages, stores, preserves, delivers, and secures all types of documents. It has a built-in workflow system that manages how documents are accessed, modified, and shared as well as the people and processes involved with these documents.

It promises the ability to transform unstructured content such as Web pages, email text, videos, and audio files, into structured content that can be more easily managed and used to make informative business decisions.

eXo DMS is built on the company’s implementation of the Java Content Repository (JCR) specification (JSR-170), which provides a Java interface for interacting with content and data, regardless of how it’s stored. The eXo JCR implementation, now being developed in partnership with the JBoss community, enables a wide range of actions such as locking, versioning, and access control that makes eXo DMS suitable for enterprise deployments.

New features in eXo DMS 2.5 improve user productivity and experience by making it easier to find files and giving users the option to customize their environment to suit their needs. These features include:

• A user interface extension framework that can be used to create plug-ins and extensions to the File Explorer. Eventually, eXo expects a community of plug-ins to evolve out of this that can be shared among customers;

• Contextual action buttons in the File Explorer that can be customised depending on the type of document and launch the appropriate action(s) pre-defined for the document. Moreover, rather than see all action buttons, the user only sees those actions on which they’re authorized to act;

• New taxonomy management that allows users to classify and retrieve documents regardless the way they are stored in the application. Organizations or departments can organize documents in whatever way that makes sense for them, but still have them stored in an optimal manner by the company to maximize performance and resources;

• Symbolic link implementation simplifies access to important folders and/or documents when the folder structure is complex. This is similar to a “short cut,” except that users are not linked to the real folder, but rather can work in the short cut file as if it is the real one; and

• Google Gadgets support helps improve collaboration with other contributors by showing which documents were last edited or published and by whom. This eliminates guessing and version control problems.