Integration of IFTTT with Alfresco

If you are not aware about what IFTTT is, I recommend you to take a look in to this https://ifttt.com/wtf and then come back here to continue reading this blog post.

Here a brief demo about this integration, more details and configuration steps below.

Once you know what “if THIS then THAT” is, I want to explain how I have made a seamless integration with Alfresco using some very straightforward receipts and sending information to Alfresco in the THAT (action) part of its receipt.

Since there is not an Alfresco channel in IFTTT (yet), the data flow is from almost any channel to Alfresco using “Send an email from GMAIL” to Alfresco inbound email service (to a folder). I mean, this article is about how to send multiple kind of data from several IFTTT channels to Alfresco through the inbound email feature built in Alfresco.

In this screenshot you can see a self explained example:

Screen Shot 2014-06-09 at 11.50.25 AM

When I liked a picture in Instagram, it will be sent to Alfresco, once in Alfresco, we have a world of possibilities like transformations, workflows, publication, alerts, etc.

What do we need for having this working? Here you go a list of steps to get this ready to go:

1- Enable your Inbound Email service in Alfresco:
For Alfresco One 4.2 this is very easy by using the new Admin Console http://localhost:8080/alfresco/service/enterprise/admin/admin-inboundemail. Explanation below.
For Alfresco Community refer to here http://docs.alfresco.com/community/concepts/community-videos-12.html and here http://docs.alfresco.com/community/concepts/email-inboundsmtp-props.html

Screen Shot 2014-06-09 at 12.22.54 PM
As you can see in the screenshot above, I have made some changes to allow only emails from @blyx.com and from @alfresco.com, any one inside Alfresco and member of the EVERYONE group can send emails to a folder with an email alias aspect. My server is running in Linux and with a non-root user this is the reason I set port 1025, I have a port redirect to listen on port 25 from the internet. Examples of port redirect here http://docs.alfresco.com/community/tasks/fileserv-CIFS-useracc.html.

In the example I have created a folder called “Drafts” with the aspect Aliasable (Email):

Screen Shot 2014-06-09 at 12.16.49 PM

Edit this folder properties and add a new value for Alias property, in my case drafts which will be the email address alias of this folder, like [email protected] (alias + @ + server FQDN). I don’t have to create a MX DNS record because I’m using the FQDN.

Screen Shot 2014-06-09 at 12.18.45 PM

Now, I’m ready to send an email from an existing Alfresco user  (and with permissions to create content) to Alfresco, in my case [email protected] is the user toni in Alfresco.

2- Create an IFTTT receipt like showed in the video above.

3- Enjoy thousands of ways to add contents to your Alfresco!

2 thoughts to “Integration of IFTTT with Alfresco”

  1. I just started looking today for an ifttt API to see if there was an option for Alfresco integration. I like the email option but can see a lot of potential with an Alfresco target.

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