Developing Sharepoint-like environment in MODx

Hello,

for several of our customers we’re looking into a knowledge/document/info-sharing environment for their employees and teams. We examined most of the commercial and OS tools that are around. To me it seems that the most mature, flexible and powerfull environment is MS Sharepoint services 2003. It’s free, but unfortunately only runs on MS Windows 2003 server. Imho, the OS tools that claim to be alternatives didn’t come near it, what other people might say (btw, i tested ao O3Spaces, Alfresco, Knowledgetree etc.)

As we are so enthousiastic about MODx i was thinking it might be a very interesting opportunity to get some MODx developers together and jointly try to develop a sharepoint-like environment on top of the MODx framework. Imho this will both be a big killer-app for MODx, and also a big proof of what MODx is capable of for the larger enterprises.

Basically i was thinking about starting out with implementing some of the most essential features like document-sharing and -versioning, configurable workflow, personal dashboard-page, wiki-functionality, blog-functionality and threadeable discussions. This would be enhanced with email and RSS functionality for keeping people up to date.

We can get some funding from companies that are interested in having this developed, i think, but as we’re quiet small and busy doing all kinds of projects, it might be interesting to hook up with some other experienced MODx developers and see what we can achieve together?

Ok, i’m curious what other people think

Olaf

I think you are on the right track. To get really big players interested about MODx would definitely require Sharepoint-like features. That would eventually make MODx an outstanding solution to Enterprise Content Management too.

Love the thought guys and something that’s been discussed behind the scenes for a long time. The groundwork will be laid for sure in 097 and anyone that can help implement more robust features are certainly welcome in my book, but we should talk about anything extensively that might need to have core API-level functionality. It’d be interesting to see a comparison of MS Sharepoint / Alfresco et. al., and what’s good/bad about them.

I think that you may be referring to Windows SharePoint Services 2007 (also WSS3). SharePoint is pretty good but it’s high visibility is mostly based on good marketing, the MS badge and tight integration with MS products (e.g. Office). In terms of collaboration I think that it’s fairly weak. The threaded discussion feature is pretty basic as is the wiki & blog capabilities. Document management is also pretty basic but it’s a definite improvement on WSS2. WSS2 has no workflow. You need SharePoint Designer to develop simple sequential workflows but VS.Net for reusable state machine workflows. I use WSS2 daily and have evaluated WSS3. It’s not as good as you think.

I’m surprised that you didn’t think much of Alfresco as v2.1 (due out today) provides many of the features that you’re after - "document-sharing and -versioning, configurable workflow, personal dashboard-page, wiki-functionality, blog-functionality  and threadeable discussions". It should be noted that wikis & blogs are provided via integration with MediaWiki, WordPress & TypePad. Other features include CIFS, WEBDAV, FTP, AJAXified web client, content transformation, RSS, email notifications, Office integration, simple & advanced workflow, support for JS & PHP scripting, SOAP, REST, RM, WCM, PHP SOAP client API, portlets, etc.

There are other OS ECM products out there that you could consider. Plone is flexible and proven with a large community behind it. I’m looking forward to the upcoming release of v3.0. Nuxeo is a relatively new J2EE-based ECM. It seems to be quite a bit behind Alfresco but their roadmap looks encouraging.

Regards

Thanks for the analysis markdav. Do you see merit in offering a MODx solution in this space? If so, what are the top 3 things that you think would need to be done (technically, not marketing-wise)?

I guess that it depends on what the offering is targeted at.

I’ve seen mention of WSS which to me is a collaboration platform. So the first question is - are you targetting the same audience that WSS is? Are you going after MS shops? Will you provide tight integration with MS Office, etc? Will it fit in with the MS world - i.e. IIS, windows authentication, etc? If you are then good luck but you need to make it appeal to MS-orientated customers somehow. I am keen to understand what is it about SharePoint that is so appealing though.

I’ve also seen mention of ECM. SharePoint could probably be called an ECM but it’s certainly very very different to the competition - Documentum, Stellent, Alfresco, Interwoven, etc. In my humble opinion, out of the box SharePoint has feature breadth but not feature depth (cue angry chorus of MS MVPs). Sorry to any MS guys that disagree but this is my opinion whether right or wrong. I am not aware of a PHP-based ECM system but I can’t see why such a thing could not be developed. Is it what you really want though? For me, an ECM is a central repository that manages a significant portion of all content for organisation (exposed through DM, RM, IM, WCM, KM, portals & custom clients). You could for example use the market leading Documentum system solely for management of Office docs but you’d get more for your money (it’s ridiculously expensive btw) if you used it to hold all corporate content - email, web content, records, XML, etc. Most PHP-based CMSes (e.g. Xoops, ExpressionEngine, etc) do not have such lofty ambitions (which is no bad thing). I would ask this - what value would a MODX-based ECM offer? If you’re replicating the features of Alfresco I would ask - why bother - they’re open source and seem to provide a good product. Why would a MODX-based ECM be a good thing? Easier configuration? More innovative features? Targets a particular vertical market (e.g. engineering drawing management)? Integration of proven OSS PHP systems? Better support services, consultancy? As you can see I don’t know anything about MODX but I am interested to learn more.

Updated: LOL I just realised that you said technically not marketing and I’ve just gone and done that. I’ll get my coat...

OK, top 3 things from a technical perspective:
1. Integration - ECM vendors are changing their products to fit in as services
2. Standards - it depends what the audience is but legal compliance, web standards, accessibility can be an issue
3. Great features - I left the best to last, this could be ease of use/management, extensibility, flexibility, etc

Have a look at Plone, Alfresco & Nuxeo then ask yourself if they’re lacking in anyway? If so consider contributing to those projects or if you think that it would be best done from scratch in MODx then good luck with that!

Regards

Mark

Hello everybody,

thanks for the already interesting replies and discussions!
I am not a MS fanboy by far, but my personal opinion after testing the default installations of Alfresco and MS Sharepoint Services 2007 that Sharepoint seemed to be more powerfull out of the box, i especially liked the powerfull "lists" option that can be used for all kinds of functionality.
Not to say that Alfresco isn’t interesting, i like the fact that it doesn’t need external software like sharepoint designer etc. to do stuff like workflow configuration. Still it’s a littlebit to basic for my liking in it’s default installation.
Anyway, the thing is that MODx is so easy to use and is a great development-base, and i think that some of the essential elements from tools like sharepoint and alfresco might make a very powerfull addition to the basic MODx installation.
Maybe we have to wait until the new 0.9.7 is released with better API and stuff, as it might make things like versioning, threaded discussions, RSS and email-notifications, dynamic workflow, templating etc. much easier? Or maybe it’s better to pick a framework like f.e. Cake and use this to integrate into MODx? What do you think?

Olaf

I think you’ll like the framework aspects in 097 and beyond

Was there any significant progress with this? We redeveloped our intranet last year and I put Modx up against Sharepoint as a platform and unfortunately it lot out to marketing and built in features. It would be great to see it as a real alternative as Sharepoint is so slow, bloated and expensive.

Geoff