Hyland Alfresco

My main use case for Alfresco is to archive public records. For archiving, I use Alfresco for zoning records.

In my experience managing zoning records, the best feature Alfresco offers is being a great source of archive files. It is a great source for archive files because of the easy search functionality and the ability to download files in a timely manner. Alfresco has positively impacted my organization by providing consistent use and the ability to utilize the system when needed to research zoning compliance records.

I think Alfresco can be improved, but there is nothing that frustrates me or that I wish worked better.

I have been using Alfresco for ten years.

I choose eight out of ten because I have dealt with the system being down at times and not having access, which keeps it from being a perfect score.

Alfresco's consistency and ability to be utilized when needed means that reliability saves time from having to go through paper files. At the touch of a mouse, I can search a record either by street name or zoning record. Regarding Alfresco's AI capabilities, the governance and security are not applicable to my use. In terms of accuracy and reliability of the output, Alfresco's AI capabilities have met my expectations and have been reliable and accurate for my needs. My advice to others looking into using Alfresco is to be sure to use correct spelling when searching. I rate this product eight out of ten.

I use Alfresco as a centralized repository of documents, managing all the proposals, materials, and all the information that we have about our solution software.

An example of how we use Alfresco as a centralized repository is that we have a repository where we include all the information about a customer, such as all the contract proposals, materials, drafts, and preparations. It is the place where we centralize all documents and all the team can work individually while centralizing everything in one place.

We use Alfresco from our laptops and mobile devices, which gives us so much flexibility to work with the solution.

Alfresco has positively impacted my organization by providing an easy way to work with the tool because we centralize all the documentation of our practice. This has a huge impact that is not very visible sometimes, but when you are using it without any issues, you feel that you can find any document very quickly, which reflects the higher impact.

The best features Alfresco offers in my experience include the intelligent search, because sometimes you need to find a document, and this solution provides a full-text search across different document types and formats, which is perhaps the most remarkable feature, along with version control. The solution tracks all the changes of the documents and prevents accidental overrides or other issues.

The intelligent search has made my work easier because you can just put a word. Perhaps you are thinking of finding something related to a client or a specific MSA agreement, and with one or two words, the intelligent search proposes all the documents that include this word, facilitating finding the information very easily and very quickly. This is the most important feature for us.

The areas where Alfresco can be improved include perhaps the interface, which is not very modern, as you can find other solutions with a more attractive design. The mobile app is quite old and could be modernized.

I have been using Alfresco for four or five years.

The performance in general is good, and regarding integrations, we have not integrated the solution.

The easy access to documents has affected my team's productivity by saving time, which is the most remarkable difference, along with the easy navigation, as it is totally intuitive and easy to navigate through Alfresco to find the information. We have classified all the documents in a folder structure, and with just two clicks, you can easily find the information you are looking for, making usability and quick response times the two main remarkable aspects.

Regarding Alfresco's AI capabilities, I think its governance and security are quite robust and working well. We never have issues, and they provide detailed audit trails, certifying who has accessed or downloaded a document.

To be honest, we are not utilizing Alfresco's AI capabilities very much. We use the application, and while they have implemented AI capabilities, they are quite transparent for us, as we are not conscious of the AI capabilities we are using, which may be something quite new and not utilized at all.

I need to check with my technical team regarding which cloud provider we use for our Alfresco deployment, but I mean, it is a commercial cloud and nothing particularly relevant. It is one of those servers that you can find, but I do not really know the name.

I would advise others looking into using Alfresco that it is a very good tool, easy to implement in a few weeks, covering the main features you expect from a content management solution. You can easily find the information, classify all documents, have really fast access, and enjoy a good user experience. It might not be the most advanced solution, but it covers the basics very well, which is why we are really happy with Alfresco.

Regarding our business relationship with this vendor, I think we are not a reseller, but we have implemented Alfresco in other clients. The specifics of the relationship might be managed from the US, so I do not have much information, but I know that we have worked with Alfresco in several projects with various clients.

I have no additional comments. We are happy with Alfresco, believing it to be a very good and competitive solution in price as a great content management solution. I would rate this review an 8 out of 10.

My main use case for Alfresco was that I was a sales rep for Alfresco.

A specific example of how Alfresco was used by my customers is loan automation to take an onboarding for a bank loan and automate that process for the consumers.

In addition to that, I was involved with insurance claims processing as another typical use case I saw with Alfresco.

From what I have seen in those projects, the best features Alfresco offers include the ability to customize using APIs and using Alfresco as a headless repository.

Customers typically make use of Alfresco's APIs or the headless repository by building their own custom front end, either a web page or a Java application that would use APIs to talk to the repository.

Regarding features, the flexibility of the APIs is something that mainly stands out.

Alfresco has impacted my organization and my customers' organizations positively by enabling them to have a very flexible solution that could meet their requirements.

Specific outcomes that demonstrate how Alfresco helped those organizations include process improvement and being able to search and find documents within seconds versus manually having to hunt for them in other systems.

Alfresco can be improved as the roadmap went a little stagnant for the past few years, so there had not been any new development, and coming out with a new roadmap with new features and executing and delivering on those new features would be an improvement.

Additional needed improvements include the ability to use a NoSQL database versus relying on a relational database, which has capped performance at 50 million documents, so being able to leverage something such as MongoDB, a NoSQL database as part of the architecture would be a big improvement to enable high volume in the hundreds of millions of documents, and claims processing scenarios to be more efficient and performant.

I have been using Alfresco for 15 years.

Alfresco is deployed in my customers' organizations predominantly with about 70% of the customers being on-premise or 80% on-premise, about 20% cloud, and it was probably more 90% on-premise and 10% cloud, with the barrier being that if it is a federal government, FedRAMP compliance was not available at this point and that kept a lot of the heavy compliance government customers from being able to go cloud.

For those customers using cloud, they typically had to use AWS, as that was the only option. Some of those customers purchased Alfresco through the AWS Marketplace.

My advice to others looking into using Alfresco is that it depends on the use case; there is definitely a fit if you need high customization to meet a requirement, and it should be considered, but if you are looking for more out-of-the-box solutions, then there are other solutions that are a better fit. I would rate this product a 7.

My main use case for Alfresco was working for a healthcare company in 2023 that was using Alfresco, where I helped them migrate all their documentation out of it into Contentful.

The documentation I was migrating included Word documents and PDF documents, all healthcare-related. I was in charge of the team that was to extract them and ensure that they did not get corrupted, while ensuring that everything naming-wise was detailed correctly for the metadata to be transferred into Contentful.

Alfresco had the ability to store a large volume of documents, which was excellent, although handling images, videos, and clips was somewhat more challenging. It proved to be a good data document CMS system.

The best features Alfresco offers in my experience include a strong document repository, the ability to conduct audits on the history of the documents, and having security and permissions around it, which I found very useful.

Alfresco positively impacted my organization by enabling the ability to store hundreds of thousands of documents. This capability helped my team save time and reduce errors. It enabled users to find exactly what documents they were looking for in a timely fashion, as well as to export to patients and healthcare members what they needed to do for Medicaid, Medicare, or any other secondary insurance, including the documents they needed to fill out as well as prescriptions.

Alfresco can be improved by having a more intuitive interface and greater ability to be customized without needing a developer, making it a more user-friendly out-of-the-box CMS.

There is always a learning curve for users, and more helpful documentation on how to find things for people who are not accustomed to working in a CMS platform would be beneficial.

I have been using Alfresco for about a year.

Alfresco is stable.

Regarding Alfresco's scalability, I think it is able to be scaled for specific industries. However, if you are looking to expand into areas with more images and videos, the scalability is somewhat limited without a developer and customization.

Before choosing Alfresco, they did evaluate other options. At that time, Alfresco had the most security and governance for regulated industries, which is why they chose it.

I have not seen a return on investment, as at the time it was not saving them money at Evernorth and Cigna, which is why they moved out of it.

I would give advice to others looking into using Alfresco that it is a strong document management system great for version control and security. However, sometimes finding content if you do not use the right metadata practices can be difficult, and user understanding of how to search is not quite as easy. More documentation and how-to guides would probably be more helpful, along with a bit more technical support.

This is mainly for unstructured document management systems with workflow and data classification.

The overall extensive base APIs are available, and it is open for extension. This part is something I appreciate. You can have your own use cases and customizations. It is highly extensible, meaning you can do whatever you want. You can meet your users' expected features without having Alfresco's involvement. You don't need Alfresco to be there for your future enhancements, which is very advantageous.

After onboarding Alfresco, many applications got decommissioned and everything merged into Alfresco.

Currently, the challenge is the general availability to users. Initially, they had poor documentation, but over the years, their documentation has highly improved. Initially, we had challenges finding the extension points and understanding how to extend the system. The workflow was one of the hurdles we had. At that time, it was not that beautiful or feature-rich. Even today, workflow consists of basic workflows. If you want to extend, you have to implement your own customizations. They are using it extensively with features such as records management, CMIS, Share UI, and Web Scripts. All these features are being used extensively.

Governance of this system is required. If you don't have proper governance, things can go wrong. If you don't have a proper policy of how documents should be maintained, issues can arise. You have to make rules, such as one folder should not have more than 5,000 subfolders or children. This was advised by Alfresco, but we did not have that advice, so we had challenges when everything was dumped into single folders. It slows down the systems and sometimes becomes unusable. Whoever is going to use it should have that governance system in place.

It has been in use for around 10 years now.

Deployment is now straightforward with WAR-based deployments. They have a straightforward one-file deployment system. If you have different components, they need to improve that part as sometimes requirements are not declared.

Initially, the clustering was not efficient as you could not start multiple servers together. Those issues have now been corrected. In the past, you had to restart or start servers one by one, as two nodes could not join the cluster at the same time.

Customer support is good because they are responsive. Sometimes it takes time to resolve issues, but the customer support team attends to concerns promptly.

Before choosing Alfresco, there were in-house document management systems. Many document management systems existed with every business unit having their own system.

Initially, there were challenges. After release 6.2, these things became much better. Before 6.2, we faced various issues. With the help of Alfresco Technical Account Manager, we could resolve many of the problems.

I give Alfresco a rating of 8 out of 10. If I expect resolution today, I sometimes don't get it until tomorrow. However, the overall experience is not bad.

Mostly, the primary use case is to store documents related to transactions in our company. These documents could be signed documents, invoices, purchase orders, etc. While transaction records are stored in our ERP system, it is crucial to have the document as proof of the transaction. We implement a content manager to link documents in Alfresco with the registry in the ERP system. This is the most important use case for us.

The advantage of Alfresco over other document storage solutions is that it allows for the creation of a persistent link between a document and a registry. Even if you update or version the document, the link remains unchanged. This makes the record independent of the document, which is beneficial as documents often change, and it helps avoid continual updates to the registry. Additionally, the ability to handle various document types, create workflows, and its extensive customizability, from my point of view as a developer, are also significant valuable features.

Currently, documents in Alfresco are stored on a file server, which, while good for performance, is a security risk. Clients, especially large enterprises such as banks, are concerned about document security if someone breaches the server. It would be beneficial if Alfresco offers different options for document storage, such as databases or cloud solutions. Also, it would be helpful if Alfresco's viewer could be easily embedded in other systems, as its integration is currently complex.

I have been working with Alfresco since 2010 or possibly earlier, around 2009, which means over 15 years.

Alfresco is very easy to deploy. In the past, it had a very useful installation tool, making it straightforward. Although current options include deployment through containers or as a service, it still remains quite easy to deploy. Clients have even installed Alfresco themselves before we customize it.

Alfresco is generally a very stable and high-performance platform. However, dealing with a massive number of documents can become problematic if the platform is not scaled properly. In older versions, the cluster implementation of Alfresco was challenging and required expertise. Newer versions offer platform as a service, which alleviates some performance issues.

Alfresco is a scalable platform, but scaling involves challenges, especially with older versions. Implementations needing to handle millions of documents may involve complex cluster setups requiring expert assistance. Clients not wishing to migrate to newer platform-as-a-service versions may face difficulties maintaining large document volumes.

Alfresco's technical support is very fast and professional. They are experts, which is reassuring when seeking help. Our interactions with them have been positive, and I feel confident in their expertise.

Before Alfresco, we have worked with FileNet from IBM, mainly in banks, and SharePoint from Microsoft. We have also done several projects with OpenText.

The initial setup of Alfresco is very easy. Currently, multiple options exist such as containers or cloud-based services, but it remains straightforward. Even non-expert teams can deploy it without difficulty.

We are partners and system integrators who sell Alfresco licenses and platforms based on it. We have our own product based on Alfresco.

Alfresco provides a significant return on investment by efficiently managing documents. While it is challenging for clients to immediately see the benefits, the long-term advantages include seamless document management and cost savings.

The pricing of Alfresco starts at $100,000, which can be expensive for small projects. There is often a transition from the community version to the licensed version, which incurs migration costs. Overall, the cost can be a deal breaker for small companies or government institutions with budget restrictions.

We have evaluated FileNet from IBM, SharePoint from Microsoft, and OpenText.

Alfresco is highly suitable for companies needing professional document storage with metadata, document types, categories, and specific content management security measures. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate Alfresco as an eight.

We used Alfresco as a document management system for automating and digitizing manual forms. Those were the main use cases.

The digitalization of workflow, forms, operations, and business processes has improved our organization.

The most valuable features of Alfresco include its integration with the scanning solution, the ability to search, and the capability to store and index to capture metadata. The digitalization of workflow, forms, operations, and business processes is also significant.

Alfresco could improve workflow digitalization and enhance artificial intelligence capabilities.

I have been working with Alfresco for approximately four years.

The stability of Alfresco is rated highly as it hardly goes down, deserving a rating of eight out of ten.

We encountered no issues with scalability. It scales well.

Customer support is responsive when we encounter issues, however, I would prefer a direct relationship with them, focusing on updating their products more like in an agile practice.

We switched to SharePoint because it was part of our existing license with Office 365, eliminating the need for a separate license fee.

The setup process for Alfresco was complex.

We required a consultant for implementation, which was another concern.

Pricing is considered mid-range, and there are considerations regarding the cost of licensing.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Alfresco six. There is certainly room for improvement. I can recommend the product to other users.