Creating Spaces
To create your first space, login to your alfresco server with the administrator account. In the top menu, you will see an entry that says “Company Home.” Click on this entry:

Next, in the grey “Company Home” box, look for a link titled “Create” with an arrow next to it. Click on that link, then choose “Create Space.” This will open the wizard to create a new space.

Follow the instructions to create a space named  “First Space” with the description and title “My First Space.” In the future, you can fill in this information however you please, and choose a desired icon. For now, the default icon is fine. Click “Create Space” to create the space.

The space will now appear in your “Company Home":

Adding Users and Groups
Now that this space exists, users must be added to it. Since you haven’t created any users or groups of users yet, you’ll have to do that next. When logged in as the administrator, look for the little “control panel” icon in the top menu and click on it to open the Administration Console:

On this page, you can create both Groups and the Users that belong to those Groups. Groups are a nice way to segregate different users who are basically the same (such as all programmers, all designers, etc). This will allow you to add specific groups to spaces without having to add many individual users. To create your first group, click the link that says “Manage User Groups":

Next, in the grey Groups Management box, click “Create Group” to create a new group:

Choose an appropriate group identifier, then click create group. For this guide, please choose “First Group":

Now you must create a user to add to this group. Click the “control panel” looking icon again to bring up the Administration Console. Here you will click the link that says “Manage System Users” to add a new user:

In the grey “Manage System Users” box that appears, click the “Create User” link:

Please follow this New User Wizard to add a user with your desired settings.

After the user is created, go back to the Manage User Groups page. Find your “First Group” and click the icon with a user and a plus sign to add a user to this group:

Please follow the instructions in the wizard that appears to add the user you created to this group.

Now you need to assign this group to the space you created. Go back to the company home and then click on “First Space.” In the grey “First Space” box, click the “More Actions” link then select “Manage Space Users” to bring up the user page:

In the grey “Manage Space Users” page, click the link that says “Invite” to add your group to the users:

On the wizard that appears, under the “Specify Users/Groups” select groups from the dropdown, type “First Group” and hit search. Select “First Group” then select the “Collaborator” role under “Role.” For more information about different roles, please see the previously mentioned guides. Click “Add to List,” and then click “Next.”

Here you can choose whether or not to notify the users of their inclusion in this new site by e-mail. For now, select “No” and then click “Next.”

Confirm the summary and then click “Finish":

Congratulations! You have just added a new group to this space. Now, logout of Alfresco and log back in with the user you just created. You should be able to go to “Company Home” and see the “First Space.” From here, you can add new sub-spaces (similar to folders) for even more separation of your content. However, for now, you will just add your first document to the new system.

Adding Content
In the “First Space” grey box, click the link that says “Add Content” to bring up the Add Content service:

Click in the location link to choose any document you have on your hard drive to upload to the server. It really doesn’t matter what the document is for now. Your document will upload. If the document is a recognized format, most or all of the properties will be automatically entered for you. If not, enter them as you see fit, then click “OK” to add the document:

Another page will come up asking you to fill in more information. In the future, you will most likely wish to use this in order to better identify your documents. For now, you can leave this as is and click “OK.”

Congratulations! You have just uploaded your first document to Alfresco.

Setting Up WebDAV
However, as you can imagine, managing and using files through this web interface is not ideal. That is why Alfresco implements a service called WebDAV to allow you to access your spaces as though they were files inside directories inside your operating system. The instructions below will be specific to Windows XP, but the general ideas are the same between all Operating Systems. You may need to find specific instructions for your Operating System and apply the techniques listed in this guide to those.

Start out by finding your “My Network Places” icon. Double click on that to open your network places. Then, double click the “Add Network Place” icon to open the Add Network Place wizard:

The wizard intro page will appear. Click next, then select “Choose another network location” and click next:

Now you will enter the WebDAV address of your Alfresco server. This will most likely be your http://servername:8080/alfresco/webdav Enter that and then click next.

You will then be asked for your username and password to login to the WebDAV server. This will be your normal Alfresco username and password. It is up to you whether or not you wish to remember the password. Click “OK” and your WebDAV should be identified. Choose a name for the WebDAV that you wish to appear in your Network Places and then click “Next:”


The wizard will inform you the Network Place has been setup. Click Finish to open the place. Now, when you go into My Network Places, you should see your WebDAV listed. You can use this as you would any windows folder.