Does your organization utilize an intranet system within your internal office network?
If not, today I’m going to recommend to you a free and open-source intranet collaboration tool for your organization to implement and benefit from.
For those who already have an intranet in place, are the users contributing or collaborating enough via the intranet?
I’ve seen many organizations treat their intranet as a place to dump files and documents without much activity going on in there.
In the past, these systems have been designed to provide a space for document management and knowledge retention purposes.
Older intranets weren’t designed to allow employees/project team members to track discussions, collaborate, and work together on tasks to achieve common goals.
Sad to say, some organizations have spent significant money putting up a proprietary intranet that fails to gather enough interest among employees to contribute content/knowledge.
An organization’s intranet system can be considered useless if users aren’t using it to the fullest and instead are turning to social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn for office collaboration purposes.
Whether you’re planning to implement a new intranet system or seeking for alternatives to replace an old and dusty intranet, today’s post will highlight a free and open-source .NET-based intranet tool called TeamLab.
TeamLab can be deployed in two ways:
- Free SaaS (hosted by TeamLab, meaning nothing for you to install/manage. Just register for a free account.)
- Open Source (can be downloaded, customized, and deployed on your own servers)
In order to install TeamLab within your own servers, you’ll need:
- Microsoft IIS
- .NET Framework 3.5 SP1
- SQLite3 / can be migrated to MySQL
The following are three key functions within TeamLab:
TM Community
Within TM community, you can view detailed information about employees and departments.
Some other features include the ability to post in blogs and forums, share news, photos, and bookmarks, and create Wiki pages.
TM Projects
Build your project team, organize tasks, and plan milestones. Discuss important work-related issues, track project status, and generate reports.
TM Talk
TM Talk is a corporate IM system for exchanging instant text messages among the employees/users within TeamLab in real time.
TM Talk can be easily launched using the built-in web client or integrated into popular IM clients such as Trillian, Miranda, or Pidgin.
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From the screenshots above, you can see that TeamLab does not only provide the standard intranet features such as document management and content management but a lot more.
By allowing employees to post information in the format of a blog as well as on wikis and forums, content development and management just got a lot more interesting.
Some organizations block certain instant messaging apps such as Yahoo Messenger or MSN Messenger from working to disallow their staff from wasting time chatting with personal friends/strangers.
If instant messengers are used appropriately for work-related purposes, it can be beneficial as it allows better team collaboration, especially with co-workers working outside the main office environment, for e.g. at client sites.
TM Talk comes in very handy as it confines chats and discussions among an organization’s employees only.
To me, TeamLab is a unique collaboration platform that is full of features and best of all, free to use.
Do consider implementing or switching to TeamLab as your organization’s free and open-source intranet collaboration tool today.