How to apply versioning in datalist

[ppatel]

Hello,

I am using Alfresco community version 5.2 . We want to apply versioning in data list , so that we can keep track of different versions of datalist. How can we achieve this ? please suggest me!.

Warm Regards,

[afaust]

Versioning can be added on any node by using the cm:versionable aspect. That will only add the versioning behaviour though - you would have to implement custom UI controls / features to actually provide any interaction with datalist versions in Share. There is no default support for this and there are no addons that do this as far as I know.

Also note that Alfresco is likely going to remove data lists as a feature from Share within the next year or so, so it isn't really recommended to invest much effort into modifying its behaviour.

[ppatel]

Hello  , Thanks for your reply.

Our requirement is  to store data and related documents as a single record. So, is there is any alternative which we can use on behalf of datalist.

Warm Regards,

[afaust · Accepted solution]

Nothing that is supported out-of-the-box within the UI.

Alfresco supports each node having multiple content streams instead of just the one default that a "document" has. You could have a special document node type with multiple content streams for related documents while the document node itself would be your record. Then, versioning applied to the record always implicitly versions the documents as well. Again, there is no support for this in the out-of-the-box UI, but it would be a technical option (provided your related documents don't need their own metadata).

Alternatively, related documents could just be stored as a ZIP, and the ZIP is the record at the same time.

Otherwise, you would have to model a custom content model and manage the relations (and versioning) yourself in a custom way. One approach I have seen at a customer was to essentially make a full copy of all documents whenever the record is versioned, and represent the record as a folder. Each version would be a separate folder (linked amongst each other for navigation purposes), and as soon as a record version folder has been created / marked as a version, all modification of it was prohibited. Custom logic was provided via an action to create a new version for the record including all the documents in it.