At the end of September, my employer will be closing its only office, which means the staff will be 100% telecommuting, or e-commuting, e-work, telework, working from home (WFH), or working at home (WAH)...whatever. You get the point.
Our biggest challenge is maintaining communications via computer, especially during production. (We edit, layout, and otherwise design books.)
A while back, the publisher bought a house out of town and has already been working from home mainly. Most of what we do is through email and the occasional ftp setup on yousendit.com. We've played around with other things such as a few Google apps and MobileMe through Apple, plus a few other things. None of which were very promising.
We basically want a system that will allow us to manage our projects so we are all on the same page. Calendars, timelines, messages, bulletins, whatever. Anything that will help ensure the effective organization of our work.
So I got to thinking about setting up our own intranet. I have no experience with this. The only thing I've done is set up domains, websites, blogs, etc., using FTP, etc. I see there are some open source options out there including
Open Atrium and
hipergate.
Does anyone have any experience with these? With intranet in general?
I'm a fast learner. Most of my computer skills are self-taught, but I can use all the help I can get. We need a no-cost (or really low-cost) solution, as we are a small-press book publisher. We don't even have a marketing budget. I want to evaluate the options before dumping a bunch of time into this. Any help, tips, feedback, warnings, advice is greatly appreciated.