Zia Consulting, Inc

The Denver 311 application, which Zia created for the City of Denver,  has just been released  on the Apple App Store. Zia integrated Alfresco with the city’s call center and CRM technology and created a metadata form that can be filled out online or through an iPhone, or iPad application. Once submitted, a ticket is created in the CRM system and a city worker is assigned to investigate. 311 requests can be resolved faster while keeping the citizen who reported the item updated on the resolution.

Together Zia and Denver plan to make more city services and processes available online or through mobile applications. As Denver’s CIO Chuck Fredrick said:

“We are able to quickly roll out new services and automate city processes with the help of Zia and Alfresco. In the Technology Services Group, we are continuously looking for ways to make the city more open, efficient and easier for citizens to engage with.”

You can also read a Case Study about our project with the City of Denver here.

Continue your Alfresco DevCon experience and Level Up again with this webinar on Alfresco Mobile.

When: November 01 2011
Where: Online Webinar 1pm ET, 10am PT, 4pm GMT

Zia is talking about the iOS Mobile Application at Alfresco DevCon this year. Our session covers a technical review of the application’s features and functionality as well as a walkthrough of the open source code repository details. Join us for this webinar to level up once again. We’ll take the presentation to the next level, covering an in-depth walkthrough of the code and specific feature implementation details we weren’t able to cover in the DevCon presentation.

Register here http://www.alfresco.com/about/events/2011/11/alfresco-mobile/

If you are at DevCon this week, stop by the Zia booth to learn more about the application and the webinar.

Zia is pleased to announce a new partnership agreement with German based company WeWebU AG.  Zia will resell, implement and support WeWebU OpenWorkdesk based on the Alfresco Enterprise Content Management (ECM) platform in the US.  You can read all the details here.

“Combining the high-quality products of Alfresco and Ephesoft with WeWebU OpenWorkdesk enables us to provide end-to-end solutions and processes based on an open source software stack. Our customers profit in two ways: End users enjoy fully professional, user-friendly transactional content management applications while their IT department benefits from manageable risk on a limited IT budget”, explains Mike Mahon, President & CEO of Zia.

“Only a few weeks ago Alfresco announced a global technology partnership with WeWebU. Zia brings wide-ranging knowledge and experience of both, the Open Source and ECM market and is the perfect US partner from the Alfresco ecosystem for us”, states Stefan Waldhauser, WeWebU’s CEO.

The latest version of Zia Fresh docs mobile app is now available free  for download in the Apple iTunes Store.

With Fresh Docs users can browse, search, retrieve, open, edit and email documents from any ECM system on a mobile phone or tablet device.  It connects and authenticates to any CMIS repository supporting Atom Pub protocol binding without any server side installations.

Changes and additions in Version 1.50 include:

• Many bug fixes and performance enhancements
• better support for the different CMIS Producers
• View Properties
• Capture Photos & Upload Photos
• Enhanced handling of content being previewed
• Ability to add Alfresco comments (Alfresco Repositories only)
• Alfresco Tags (available only on Alfresco repositories)

If you’ve seen the new Alfresco Mobile app,  you’ve seen a branded version of Zia’s Fresh Docs v 1.5. Contact us 303.443.4004 x203 to find out more about getting a custom version for your organization.

For more information on Fresh Docs V1.5, visit the fresh Docs web page, download a data sheet or give us a call and keep watching this space for more on upcoming Fresh Docs happenings at DevCon and beyond.

When: Wednesday, November 2nd, 5:30 – 8:30 pm

Where: Denver

Please reserve this time to join us for an evening of pizza, beer and Alfresco!

Zia is planning a fun and informative evening for people in our local community who are either current users of Alfresco or who are considering it for their content management solutions.

Get together with Zia developers, executives and other users to learn about the latest goings on in the Alfresco community and the hottest topics in enterprise content management solutions.  This event comes fresh on the heels of Alfresco DevCon 2011 which takes place the week before in San Diego.  If you weren’t able to make it to DevCon, this is your opportunity to level up right here at home on topics like CMIS, mobile content management apps, social content management, business process management as well as the new functionality in the latest release of Alfresco.

Please take a moment to let us know if you will be joining us by registering here and we’ll get back to you with all the details.

Zia is pleased to support the growing local Alfresco community and we look forward to seeing you there.

Zia is a proud sponsor of DevCon again this year and we will be there in force.  We are very pleased that four of our submissions for presentations have been accepted for the conference tracks.  So, if you are going to DevCon, we hope to see you at our presentations and please,  stop to say hello at our booth.  Look forward to seeing you!

Here’s what we will be talking about in our presentations:

Title:  CMIS – What’s coming next?
Presenter: Ryan Mcveigh (Zia)

Abstract: CMIS 1.0 has been ratified for over a year and is proving to be incredibly useful and popular.  What now?  Come and learn what the CMIS Technical Committee is focused on for the next version of the specification.  We will discuss new features including Content Type Mutability, Repository Extensions, the new Browser Binding, Secondary Object Types (such as Aspects), Retention and Legal Hold Policies, and Tagging.  We will lend an eye to the future to review other possible features and invite the audience to suggest what they feel the specification lacks.

Title:  Alfresco iOS Mobile Application Details and Design
Presenter: Ryan Mcveigh (Zia) and Gi Lee (Zia)

Abstract: In this session, we will explain how the Alfresco iOS Mobile Application was designed and developed.  We will focus on the implementation details including the CMIS client, when the application talks directly to Alfresco API’s and some details, tips and tricks for Objective-C iOS development.  If you attend this session, you’ll learn the Open Source project hierarchy including how to modify, build and run the application.  You will learn about our future plans for the application and the project, and perhaps become a contributor yourself.

Title: Automating Business Processes in Denver: A Technical Case Study
Presenter: Eric Harper (Zia) & Paul Lungu (City of Denver)

Abstract: In 2010, the City and County of Denver turned to Zia Consulting to implement Alfresco to store contract and financial records and used CMIS to integrate with PeopleSoft Financials.  Then the city wanted to fully automate the process for requesting, writing and approving contracts. Zia augmented their Fresh Workflow Alfresco solution, adding a workflow initiation web service, connected workflows, rules-driven task assignment, digital signatures and a management dashboard.  Explorer and Share user interface customizations also streamline workflow tasks.  This presentation reviews in depth the tools and technologies that were used to implement the solution, and previews additional features on Zia’s roadmap.  The presentation concludes with a discussion of the role of Agile processes, iterative workflow development, and the technical impact of lessons learned in the business process.

Title: Social Enterprise Integration
Presenter: John Giffin (Zia)

Abstract: In today’s environment, businesses are increasingly gaining market advantage by reaching out to customers through the use of social media and mobile technologies.  This session will demonstrate the use of Mule ESB to integrate Alfresco with social media and traditional enterprise systems hosted both onsite and in the cloud.  Basic configuration and use of Mule and the Cloud Connector architecture.  Includes sample Cloud Connector configurations for Alfresco CMIS content repository.

This week Alfresco demonstrated their ongoing commitment to the mobile arena with the announcement of Alfresco Mobile,  the centerpiece of which is a mobile iOS application developed by Zia for Alfresco.
“This has been a great opportunity for us to leverage our mobile development experience and to work with the Alfresco team to get Alfresco Mobile to market,” said Mike Mahon, CEO of Zia.

Alfresco Mobile is based on Zia’s own Fresh Docs product, one of the first iOS apps using CMIS to connect to enterprise content stores, and still the only CMS neutral mobile app available which requires no server component to be installed. “We’ve been out for a while now with our Fresh Docs mobile platform application”, continued Mike, “and we’ve seen a tremendous amount of excitement from our clients in this space.”

With Alfresco Mobile Apps, connected to Alfresco Enterprise or Team, you can:

• Securely access corporate content from your iPad or iPhone
• View documents, presentations and media files or download for offline access
• Take photos on your iPhone and upload them directly to Alfresco
• Edit documents on your iPad and upload them using WebDAV
• Start Alfresco business processes right from your tablet using Alfresco folder rules
• Add comments and tags to corporate content
• Search file names or full-text
• Enforce corporate security rules

Alfresco Mobile is available now for the iPhone and iPad in the Apple App Store, get it here.

Fresh docs itself will be updated within the next few weeks with bug fixes, performance enhancements and new features, so stay tuned for a product update post coming to a blog near you.

TSG (Technology Services Group) has an interesting post on their blog which is a great endorsement of the benefits to customers of open source solutions in ECM.  One of those benefits, not often mentioned, is the level of cooperation between open source solution consultants  “we have found that open source partners tend to be less competitive when it comes to supporting each other efforts via consulting or software solutions”.  It goes on the mention the effort between TSG and Zia to provide a client with a great content migration solution.  You can read the entire post on their blog.

We have been working hand in hand with the City of Denver for over 15 months to help them streamline their content management applications and business processes – see our recent customer case study. Denver, like many cities (and businesses) had invested in a number of different technologies that were hard to manage, too rigid and expensive to maintain.

We worked closely with Denver to help maximize their investments, identifying strategic technology purchases and planning their integration with existing technologies. To date, the City’s the most effective technology investment has been consolidating on Alfresco as their content management platform. As an open source technology, Alfresco offers Denver an open and flexible infrastructure with huge cost advantages. Denver estimates saving $1.5 Million over 5 years by migrating Documentum content to Alfresco. Alfresco has just published a case study which features Zia’s engagement with the City of Denver. A slideshare presentation is also available.

Over the past year, Zia consultants have truly become an extension of the Denver Technology Services Group. We have implemented a number of projects, creating solutions for contract management, procurement, mobile apps, and more. During the course of these engagements, we’ve configured the systems, designed workflows and user interfaces, written web services, created new applications for roll out and performed migrations. Many of our consultants wear multiple hats, ranging from project manager to architect to lead engineer to business analyst. As a result, Denver leverages Zia consultants to work with their existing team saving the city additional money and resources.

Key to Denver’s success has been its strategic use open source technology. As commented in Alfresco’s recent blog, open source technology can provide the building blocks for more open and social government interaction.

This can be seen in the Denver 311 application, a soon to be released app on the Apple App Store. Reusing the web services already created, we integrated Alfresco with the city’s call center and CRM technology and created a metadata form that can be filled out online or through an iPhone, or iPad application. Once submitted, a ticket is created in the CRM system and a city worker is assigned to investigate. 311 requests can be resolved faster while keeping the citizen who reported the item updated on the resolution.

Together Zia and Denver plan to make more city services and processes available online or through mobile applications. As Denver’s CIO Chuck Fredrick said:

“We are able to quickly roll out new services and automate city processes with the help of Zia and Alfresco. In the Technology Services Group, we are continuously looking for ways to make the city more open, efficient and easier for citizens to engage with.”

You can get a pdf of the case study from Zia Resources

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We were thrilled recently, when we discovered a blog post by @debryc, a middle school teacher from Houston. She has done a great job of explaining how to track expenses at the point they are incurred and she has a really nice section on our Fresh Xpense Capture application.