LogicalDOC - Open Source DMS









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LogicalDOC is both a document management and a collaboration system. The software is loaded with many functions and allows organizing, indexing, retrieving, controlling and distributing important business documents securely and safely for any organization and individual.

Gone are the days when companies used paper-based processes such as printing, mailing and manual filing of paper documents; this document management system promises to replace all of this with electronic procedures that allow a significant reduction in cost.

Check out http://www.logicaldoc.com to learn more.

The design of LogicalDOC is based on best-of-breed Java technologies in order to provide a reliable DMS platform. The main interface is web-based, with no need to install anything else; users can access the system via their browser.

But this is not the only way to access to the software; in fact, you can interact with LogicalDOC through a rich web-service API (SOAP) that is used to control the system as desired and integrate with third-party applications, such as a System ERP or a business automation system.

Besides creating good instructions for use, the developers who produced it have also produced instructions for the web-service interfaces, which makes it easier to write code, thanks largely to the readily available examples in the major programming languages.

A handy gadget that takes advantage of the Web service is the Joomla integration plugin. Published on the official Joomla website, this free plugin allows you to present on the popular CMS document archive section allowing navigation of the repository, document downloading and full-text search.

LogicalDOC Community (AKA LogicalDOC CE) offers 2 access interfaces, WebDAV and CMIS. The first protocol is used to access the system using the WebDAV protocol which is also solid if not too recent. The market has a software client that we tried and that work pretty well, WebDrive and NetDrive. Both let you to load the entire repository or a branch as a Windows Drive.

CMIS (Content Management Interoperability Services) is an open standard that allows different content management systems to inter-operate on content through the exposed services. In particular, CMIS defines an abstraction layer for control of documents and archives via web protocols. [source: Wikipedia]

LogicalDOC implements the CMIS specification 1.0 / 1.1 and then provides access to documents to all clients that implement the compatibility. Among these we point CmisSync, a handy software that allows you to synchronize documents on your file system with LogicalDOC like you would with Dropbox or Google Drive.

The following is a list of the main features of LogicalDOC CE 7.4.3, as specified on the project posted on SourceForge https://sourceforge.net/projects/logicaldoc/

Web-based Document Management System

Import from compressed .ZIP archives

Full-text search across document content and metadata

Preview of documents

Standards-based API (CMIS) simplifies building custom front-ends

Document versioning, document version control

Web services API

Extensible metadata model

Document Repository Statistics

Complete Document History with metadata comparison

Tagging on documents with TagCloud

Free Mobile applications (iPad, iPhone, Android, Amazon Kindle Fire)

Bookmarks on documents

WebDAV interface

Joomla file-browser extension

Dropbox integration

Notes on documents

Now we come to the installation of the system. LogicalDOC is a multi-platform application written in Java. Thanks to this feature, it can be operated on almost any operating system, including Windows, Linux, Ubuntu and Mac OS X, without any problem. On the SourceForge project website, it is available in both a practical Windows installer package and a cross platform Java package.

It just needs to meet the minimum memory requirements and JVM version in order to operate the system. LogicalDOC 7.4.3 requires 1.4GB of memory and Java 7 for installation.

This is the command from the shell (command prompt) that lets you run the installer

$sudo java –jar logicaldoc-installer.jar

This command will launch the graphical installer. If your system (server) does not have a graphical interface you can run the installer in console mode

$sudo java –jar logicaldoc-installer.jar -console

The installer is composed of several screens. One of the first requires the installation folder, then it will ask for the reference database.

LogicalDOC CE is 100% free software and is packaged with an open source database. While it supports all major DBMS (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle and MS SQL Server), developers still recommend MySQL for production systems.

If you don't want to install a database, you can always opt to use the embedded database (last entry), but be careful: when using the embedded database, you must assign more memory to the system.

After installation, you can open a browser to access the login page. If you used the default options, simply type the following url in the browser address bar http://localhost:8080

To access the system as the administrator, use these credentials: admin/admin (username/password)

The core of the application is, of course, the document area.

From here you can manage the document archives, creating new folders for cataloging and entering new documents. In addition to the main operations of a traditional file management system, we have developed a set of options typical of an advanced DMS, the ability to categorize documents by tag, classify them by type by defining their own custom fields, add bookmarks to documents of interest, view a preview of documents and much more.

After the "Documents" tab there is another tab labeled "Search." This is one of the best features of this software. The user can run the archive documentary research starting from the name of the document or simply using words or phrases in the document. For example, if you forget the name of the document, but you still remember the topic or theme, it will be sufficient to specify in the search field one or more words of the text of the document. The software will show you all the documents in which the word or string exists. Below is an image of the search tab that allows you to easily understand its operation.

For the moment I think it's better not to delve too much into most of the administrative functions, but leave them for a future article, so we can go directly to the conclusion.

Pros: web-service APIs, CMIS support, free application for iPad and Android, localized user interface in many languages, full-text search on documents, the system also designed for large volumes of documents.

Cons: The preview of the documents is limited to certain file types (PDF) and the same goes for full-text indexing (at least in this edition).

The final assessment is very positive. The team did a great job on the package setup that lets you to easily install LogicalDOC CE. The software interface is smooth and pleasant with a complex storage tree. There is excellent opportunity for cataloging and classification of documents as well as a fast search engine. However, care must be taken in tuning the application. With an increased number of concurrent users, the RAM resources to be allocated for execution of the archived documents must be boosted.

LogicalDOC is also available in a commercial edition with a more extensive set of features and plugins. A comparison chart has been published on the manufacturer's website, which shows the major differences between the community and the commercial version (Business and Enterprise) or LogicalDOC cloud service. http://www.logicaldoc.com/product/features.html

Documentation website is published at: http://docs.logicaldoc.com

There is also a Community forum for those wishing to ask questions: http://forums.logicaldoc.com