I read through the project as I worked with several document storage solution before and still lookin for an ideal solution.
Filenet is horribly overpriced from IBM,
Alfresco looks nice but have serious performance issues (my experience is from 2020), SharePoint is only nice if everything is Microsoft... Apache Oak is an abandoned project with a lot of things that seems to be in it but didnt get finished (e.g. CMIS protocol or usable documentation).<p>This Hermes seems nice and being open source is a great thing but it's still in alpha, do not support custom file types and very Google oriented.<p>If anyone has a good mature alternative I'm all ears.
Alfresco was supposed to be the OSS alternative to documentum/stellent/etc closed source systems.<p>It was basically a freemium model, which means that a complete OSS solution is out of reach.<p>This basically looks like the same thing. I guess Hashicorp is slightly better at OSS, but... I dunno.<p>A DMS needs:<p>1) storage (duh)<p>2) metadata<p>3) permissions enforcement<p>4) search / indexing<p>5) rendering to pdf and pdf signing services<p>6) workflow engine for document lifecycles, versioning, approvals, rendering<p>7) a bunch of virtual filesystem interfaces like CMIS, maybe JCR, webDAV, SFTP<p>8) a decent web client<p>9) a decent integration API<p>It's quite the laundry list. A "modern" one should probably be cloud-aware (so docs can be stored in cloud object stores, utilize interface with the various semi-document features of S3 or other object stores, etc.<p>IMO it should also be implemented perhaps as a non-cloud self-hosted option atop Cassandra or some other scheme with good global replication and scale.<p>Honestly I don't understand why a consortium of governments and businesses with high regulatory requirements don't simply get together and develop a common platform for this. They'd rather give billions of dollars to Documentum or Oracle. If they want support, SOMEONE will provide paid support, like Postgres
The problem with versioning & management systems for docs is that you need the process to drive the adoption. Getting people to version, approve, and fully manage a document database is the hard part. Many companies do not even adequately document - they just send information in a Slack/Teams message and nothing is written down for later (this is why startups like Glean exist: <a href="https://www.glean.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.glean.com/</a>). There are massive companies that exist without this organization layer and just whip up Notion/365/Office docs with the expectation the documentation will get lost and become irrelevant very soon (even if a search feature existed).<p>The point I'm (badly) trying to make it is that my intuition tells me very few companies will actually pick up and adopt software like this. If they do, there might be many nuances in their process and they might find the versioning easier to do with simple duplicate Notion/Office/GDocs parent templates.
The single, killer feature I'm looking for in a document management system (besides collaborative environment that we're used to from gdocs) is a way to stamp versions and have those be reviewed independently, with git like diffs across them.<p>Think gerrit for docs.
This reminds me a lot of the NY Times' Library project: <a href="https://github.com/nytimes/library">https://github.com/nytimes/library</a>. You use an editing environment that people are familiar with (google docs), and you build organizational and workflow stuff around it. Library rendered the document content itself with a link to edit (favoring the reader use case), whereas Hermes embeds the google docs UI.<p>The lack of code blocks in google docs makes it tough for a centralized document repository for an engineering org. For companies using Quip it could work really well...except that I don't think quip lets you embed the editor like that.<p>Everything that's been built so far for Hermes looks cool. My personal opinion is that it'll need more UX iteration for it to really take off.
It's shocking to me that Hashicorp would focus on building this undifferentiated work and not on shoring up their core offerings as SaaS where they are falling behind resting on their laurels selling Vault to central IT teams that are increasingly not on the vanguard on the companies they work for.
Would be really nice if the UI and UX would be disconnected from Google, but could point to any resource, including a Google Doc or Notion (especially a specific version of those docs). Would also be nice if you could just upload stuff, like images, excel docs, JSON files, etc.
I’m not claiming any right in naming after Ancient Greek gods.
But wanna say that I choose the “same” name for a related goal project <a href="https://github.com/Ideabile/ermes">https://github.com/Ideabile/ermes</a>
Full Text Search in Google Docs is a single reason enough for me to try this product. If they create document collections that can be hierarchically ordered, I will ditch Confluence and its million variations in a split second.
Sometime I think, that instead of adding tons of features and overcomplicating things, we should simplify them. DMS are an example, rare people use versioning, categorization must be built into checkin, otherwise nobody is going to use it
So in short, this is attempting to create an open source version of Box, right?<p>Box has Box Notes and Box Canvas for composing documents. Beyond the actual files, it has automated workflows like review & approval processes, document metadata, flexible sharing permissions, full text search, and a laundry list of other features enterprises want/need.
How are comments handled with Hermes? I've been impressed again and again how useful Github is for community RFCs.<p>I wonder why Hermes doesn't handle files by itself instead (or in addition) of relying on Google?<p>Algolia search is a tough decision, because it means instant "no go" for projects with confidential data.
Is it possible to write markdown in Google docs? This is what often pushed me back to Confluence for various docs, the markdown plugin works as expected, so I can write naturally or copy-paste from obsidian.<p>Markdown is so ubiquitous as a dev that I strongly resist writing anything else these days.
Hmmmmm does it lose records or damage them deliberately, perhaps it doesn't care where it puts them or doesn't respond when you try to find them?
If it does just rename it Evri - that'll sort the issues...
Looks awesome, it looks like it could support more backends, as long as they expose some API's:<p>- microsoft office
- confluence
- markdown?<p>I wonder if it exposes a good interface to implement different backends.<p>I think if the search works well, it can be of great help!<p>Congrats for the launch!
I never this is a thing.
Our go to solution for this usually a kanban board in jira and confluence for the doc.
Honestly would like to know what do I miss with this approach?
Os it just me or there’s another document management system and authoring suite called Hermes?<p>Maybe by Unisys? I’ve worked in the publishing industry and that name sounds familiar…
I don't know what it is about the name Hermes for software folk, it's apparently irresistible. I've heard the name used by three different companies for internal projects just in my own circle in the last year. This concludes my useless comment.<p>This is just a joke, that you learn what Hermes means at one company and have to unlearn that when the next Hermes enters your life :p
> Hermes uses Golang for the backend and Ember.js for the front end. It uses a PostgreSQL database for storage and Algolia to power its search capabilities. It also leverages several Google Workspace services for creating and modifying documents, sending email, etc.<p>Great. 50 million incompatible parts combined with duct tape that is no better than Jira workflows with Google Docs, and less flexible. I can't wait to staff a team to maintain this garbage pile.