Setting Up an Intranet with Open Atrium

By Michael Cole On May 5, 2010 · Leave a Comment

One of the key factors in the whether a startup is successful is how effectively the team collaborates in accomplishing their goals. At RightSite we are a small team producing a very big website so we are always looking for tools that help us to share information and work together more efficiently, and setting up a company wiki or intranet is one of the key steps in attaining collaboration nirvana.

We use our intranet to share materials, especially documentation, on how RightSite works. Like any organisation in China, or team is constantly changing and we try to document all processes in the company and make sure this documentation is easily accessible and constantly updated. Over the recent May holiday I downloaded Open Atrium and found it to be an easy to set up, free solution for building your own intranet in an afternoon.

Before you run away screaming, “I’m not a tech person,” let me add that I have no tech skills myself, and if you can set up a WordPress blog and have a hosting package somewhere, or even a server in your office, then you can set up Open Atrium without help. If you can’t muster that much tech savvy, then get your office tech guy to set it up.

Open Atrium is a pre-packaged installation of the Drupal CMS that comes set up with a blog, a project management system, a calendar, an email notification system and a user management system. When I was working at Global Sources about 10 years ago we had a three person team developing an intranet system for our company. The project lasted several months and I’m not sure the product was anywhere near as powerful as what you are now able to download for free and set up in an afternoon.

Prior to setting up Open Atrium, RightSite had been using Google Sites, but that later was blocked in China. We also looked at using Zoho’s Wiki app, but found that the free version had a ridiculously low storage capacity (we store a lot of reference documents) and the paid versions quickly started costing about US$20/month. Considering that the server that hosts RightSite costs less than US$100/month the Zoho solution seemed too expensive.

Now we were able to get the entire system running in an afternoon, on the same server that hosts RightSite, and we will be set to start working more effectively. Specifically, I am hoping to reduce the training time for new hires, ensure that we stick to best practices more effectively and allow all team members to contribute ideas about how to run our company better.

There is no technology that can give you an effective company culture, but smart managers need to be on the lookout for easy to use tools that will help keep their companies on the right track (without costing them more than a new salesperson).

If any of you have input on Open Atrium, or on setting up Wiki systems, then I invite your ideas.