Looking for off-the-shelf Intranet Solutions

rich_g85

rich_g85

rich_g85

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Hi all,
At work I have become involved in a project to look at completely replacing our Intranet, preferably with an off-the-shelf package.

Apart from Microsoft SharePoint Server, I don't really know of that many packages which we can investigate.

So, what does your company use? Or, what can you suggest?

Thanks,
Richard
 
- Document repository (eg Hotel/Hire Car request forms etc)
- Communications (eg Staff news, vacancies)
- Separate sections for each department, with the ability to delegate editing permissions to nominated staff members in each department

I think the requirements are still very much under debate, but I think these will be the major ones.
 
rich_g85 said:
- Document repository (eg Hotel/Hire Car request forms etc)
- Communications (eg Staff news, vacancies)
- Separate sections for each department, with the ability to delegate editing permissions to nominated staff members in each department

I think the requirements are still very much under debate, but I think these will be the major ones.
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Have a look at Moodle it has all them features. www.moodle.org It is geared towards schools/colleges, etc but we use it for out Intranet.
 
rich_g85 said:
Sorry mate, as Moodle appears to be 'open source' it wouldn't even be considered!
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Stupid...

(not directed at you, but at your companies policy)

'BlackBoard' is common amongst Colleges, might be worth you looking in to, but I don't know exactly which one my college was using.
 
furnace said:
Stupid...

(not directed at you, but at your companies policy)

'BlackBoard' is common amongst Colleges, might be worth you looking in to, but I don't know exactly which one my college was using.
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Not that stupid really, we have over 1000 employees which will have the Intranet as their homepage. Imagine what happens when 'Moodle' falls over and everybody phones the Helpdesk. As second-line support, who can I phone for technical assistance in fixing a corrupt Moodle database or equivalent problem? Nobody- because it's open source and hence unsupported (apart from the online documentation).

Now do you understand the policy?!! :)
 
rich_g85 said:
Not that stupid really, we have over 1000 employees which will have the Intranet as their homepage. Imagine what happens when 'Moodle' falls over and everybody phones the Helpdesk. As second-line support, who can I phone for technical assistance in fixing a corrupt Moodle database or equivalent problem? Nobody- because it's open source and hence unsupported (apart from the online documentation).

Now do you understand the policy?!! :)
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If that's the case and phone support is a necessity then you're best off just using sharepoint.

There are many open source software applications that you can purchase paid support for - I don't think Moodle will be one of them though.
 
rich_g85 said:
Not that stupid really, we have over 1000 employees which will have the Intranet as their homepage. Imagine what happens when 'Moodle' falls over and everybody phones the Helpdesk. As second-line support, who can I phone for technical assistance in fixing a corrupt Moodle database or equivalent problem? Nobody- because it's open source and hence unsupported (apart from the online documentation).

Now do you understand the policy?!! :)
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Moodle is VERY popular and VERY robust. We run it at the college where I work and have thousands of logins a day running on one average spec server.

LazyManc said:
There are many open source software applications that you can purchase paid support for - I don't think Moodle will be one of them though.
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There are companies that offer moodle support to the same standard as product support. Some even develop extra blocks for moodle tailored to your needs.

Even if that doesn't convince whoever then I agree with the post above and head for sharepoint. If sharepoint portal is too pricey then just install Windows Server 2003 R2 and add the sharepoint services from the add windows components bit. Cut down version of portal that should do what you want - best works with Exchange 2003.

More install info here:

http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/50154/50154.html
 
rich_g85 said:
Not that stupid really, we have over 1000 employees which will have the Intranet as their homepage. Imagine what happens when 'Moodle' falls over and everybody phones the Helpdesk. As second-line support, who can I phone for technical assistance in fixing a corrupt Moodle database or equivalent problem? Nobody- because it's open source and hence unsupported (apart from the online documentation).

Now do you understand the policy?!! :)
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We have over 3000 employees which have the Intranet as their homepage. And in the case of it falling over, it never has. We have installed it on a dedicated Linux box and it has never ever given us problems. Anyway, I see why your company is reluctant to use open source.
 
rich_g85 said:
Not that stupid really, we have over 1000 employees which will have the Intranet as their homepage. Imagine what happens when 'Moodle' falls over and everybody phones the Helpdesk. As second-line support, who can I phone for technical assistance in fixing a corrupt Moodle database or equivalent problem? Nobody- because it's open source and hence unsupported (apart from the online documentation).

Now do you understand the policy?!! :)
Click to expand...

Just 'cos something's open source it doesn't mean it's unsupported - quite often there are companies who will provide you support which you have to pay for. Which is fair enough if you get the product for free anyway. I'm not saying you should use Moodle, I've never even heard of it before, but I do think the 'no open source' policy is pretty dumb - using open source can save thousands, even if some of those savings are spent on paying for third party support :)

Still I'm not expecting to get you marching in to the board room demanding they start using OS everything, it's pretty common for companies to not want open source things. I just disagree with entirely cutting off open source as an option.
 
furnace said:
Just 'cos something's open source it doesn't mean it's unsupported - quite often there are companies who will provide you support which you have to pay for. Which is fair enough if you get the product for free anyway. I'm not saying you should use Moodle, I've never even heard of it before, but I do think the 'no open source' policy is pretty dumb - using open source can save thousands, even if some of those savings are spent on paying for third party support :)

Still I'm not expecting to get you marching in to the board room demanding they start using OS everything, it's pretty common for companies to not want open source things. I just disagree with entirely cutting off open source as an option.
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I totally agree with you. If it were up to me, I'd roll out Firefox, OpenOffice etc to the desktop. Sadly it isn't, and I have to work within the constraints which exist.

However, I will put Moodle forward as an option. My thinking being, as this won't be a customer-facing/business critical application it's possible an exception could be made in the interests of saving money.

I will download Moodle tomorrow and have a play around with it, in between doing umpteen other jobs! :p
 
Not jumping on the anti-Sharepoint bandwagon here, but our company (US large telecoms company) recently replaced our whole Intranet setup with Sharepoint and no-one likes it, it is SOOoooo slow :( For the features it is good, perhaps a little too much but overall ask anyone in the company and they will tell you it was better before. Only the support staff prefer it, it's managed and an "official MS product" which sits well with them.
 
RockLobster said:
If you go ahead and roll out Moodle I strongly suggest using a Linux server as I have spoken to other contacts who use and they found it slower running on a Windows server.
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Windows is slower only if you use the CGI version of PHP. Tell them to change to ISAPI and look at a PHP accelerator. Our server zooms along!
 
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