(For more resources on Alfresco 3, see here.)
Alfresco WCM staging has an autodeploy option in its default workflow, allowing end users, at the time of submit, to enforce automatic deployment of approved changes directly to the live website without having to manually initiate deployment.
The Submit Items window has an Auto Deploy checkbox, as shown in the following screenshot:
Upon approval, if the auto deploy option is on, the workflow will perform a deployment to those live servers that have the Include In Auto Deploy option enabled. For more details about enabling this option, refer the Configuring a web project to use FSR section in the previous article.
Deploying to a test server
The Test Server Deployment functionality provides in-context preview by allowing a contributor to deploy their content to an external target (either an ASR or FSR), from which it can be rendered by any web application technology that can either read from a filesystem or access an ASR via HTTP (which includes all of the major web application technologies in use today, including Java, .NET, PHP, Ruby, Python, CGI, and so on).
Once a test server has been deployed to, it is allocated to the user or workflow that performed the deployment. Once the user or workflow has finished with the test server it is released and returned to the pool of test servers. This happens automatically in the case of a workflow sandbox and manually via a UI action for User Sandboxes.
The following process has to be followed to use the test server:
- Set up a test server pool.
- Deploy to a test server.
- Preview the content.
- Release the test server.
Setting up a test server pool
The following are the steps to configure a Web Project to use an FSR.
- Navigate to Company Home Web Projects | <web project name>|.
- Select the Edit Web Project Settings from the Action menu.
- Click on Next to reach the Configure Deployment Servers window.
- Click on the Add Deployment Receiver link as shown in the following screenshot:
- For Type, select Test Server, specify the Display Name, Host name, and the Target Name. Click on the Add button.
Similarly configure another test server, say with “cignex-test2” as the target.
Ensure that the FSR is running on the test server. The targets “cignex-test1” and “cignex-test2” are configured in FSR.
Deploy to a test server
Let’s say, you as a content manager would like to deploy your User Sandbox to the test server for testing purposes.
Go to your User Sandbox and from the More Actions menu choose Deploy as shown in the following screenshot:
The Deploy Sandbox window displays, listing all of the unallocated test servers as shown in the next screenshot. Select a test server to use (only one test server can be allocated to a sandbox at a time), and click on OK. The Monitor Deployment information displays once the deployment completes. If an error occurs, the reason for the error is shown under the Deployment Failed message:
