Open Source ERP Academy

Document Management

The purpose of this page is to help you best management documents/attachments in iDempiere (document management). Good and quick bullet discussion about document management in iDempiere

Document Management Demonstration

This is an older demonstration; however, it illustrates some very good points.

Storing Attachments and Archives in your File System

By default, iDempiere stores attachment in your database. This is not best practices for the following reasons:
  1. They cause your database backups to explode in size. This increased backup size often limits your backup options.
  2. Files are best managed in a file system where you can use file system tools to keep them safe.
Follow these steps to tell iDempiere to store attachments and archives on your file system:
  1. Log into your server via ssh and issue the following commands:
    1. sudo mkdir /opt/idempiere-attachment
    2. sudo chown -R idempiere:idempiere /opt/idempiere-attachment/
  2. Log into iDempiere as the System Administrator role.
  3. Create and save a Storage Provider record.
    1. Name = /opt/idempiere-attachment/
    2. Method = File System
    3. URL is empty
    4. Folder = /opt/idempiere-attachment/
    5. username and password is empty
  4. Log in as your respective client admins (GardenWorld Admin) and open the Client window => Client Info tab. Set the Attachment Store field and Archive Store field to the "/opt/idempiere-attachment/" option.
  5. Restart your application server and test attaching records. You will now see folders and files appearing in your /opt/idempiere-attachment/ directory.
Please be aware that this option should be completed when you first install your client. If you have been using iDempiere for some time, performing the above process will orphan your existing attachments in your database.  If you need help extracting existing attachments out of your database, you can contact Heng Sin Low via the iDempiere Google Groups mailing list for help. He has done this in the past.

Using External Document Management like Exo and Alfresco

There are a couple of ways you can use external document management with iDempiere:
  1. You can use the above technique to store iDempiere attachments to a shared drive. This shared drive could be an Alfresco CIFs share. This strategy helps make sure keep your document backup strategy centralized; however, it does not allow you to see the files through Alfresco.  You do not want the files view-able through Alfresco either, doing so would bypass iDempiere's security. Imaging if someone saw an attached payroll spreadsheet. That would be bad.
  2. You can create an Alfresco folder naming convention where you have Alfresco folders that are the names of iDempiere windows and sub folders that are iDempiere document numbers. This way you can create a column SQL link field on any given document to allow your users to easily zoom to Alfresco's folder where attachments can be shared. This topic is discussed in greater length in the below video.
The below sections are Open Discussions that cover this topic.

2014-07-22 AM Open Discussion -