Baraka_Guru

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.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Cynthetiq

The problem you are thinking about isn't so much about how it works, but how it is going to be maintained.

I would suggest basecamp.

Project management, collaboration, and task software: Basecamp

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I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

Baraka_Guru

Thanks for the quick response, Cyn. Basecamp looks exciting at first glace. I'm going to take a closer look. Do you have a lot of experience with it?

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Cynthetiq

you could also look at using the microsoft product Sharepoint. It's almost the same kind of thing as basecamp and there are many companies that will host it for you.

I don't have any experience with basecamp. I have been looking at different collaborative scripts for production for images and video.

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

Baraka_Guru

I'm going to stay away from Sharepoint. We're all Macs here, and so we're naturally suspicious of Microsoft products.

I've looked at the basic features of Basecamp and it looks like it might work. I'm going to take the "Tour" and watch a few demo videos, but it has what we're generally looking for. The trial will be most telling.

I have another issue still: We all need to have access to the same external hard drive (to access such things as press releases, PDFs of books, book cover images, admin files, etc.). I understand Basecamp has fairly decent storage, but it's not enough to hold our entire digital archives. Does this require setting up a server? We've tried the various file-sharing features in Mac OS X, but we've never seemed to get it to work. Is it possible to access remote computers without setting up a server? I've never really known how these things work.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Cynthetiq

That's essentially what my problem has been, the digital archive. I've been looking at scripts like basecamp because I need to help manage workflow but also have storage to work historically and generically, meaning the ability to take artwork, text, video and repurpose them.

I have dreamhost, and for $9/mo I have unlimited server, website, and bandwidth for my own projects.

If your group already knows and is comfortable with FTP maybe you can work both in conjunction.

Again, if you set up the remote computer you're going to have to manage it. This means adding removing users, upgrades, patches, etc.

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

telekinetic

I as well would take a hard at Basecamp (and actually, go check out the rest of the 37signals projects (particularly campfire and backpack) to see if they fit any of your needs), but also, do not underestimate the power of Google Apps for collaboration, especially now that they are officially out of beta.

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twisted no more

Jinn

Whatever you do, make sure what you're doing is secure. I know that you might not be dealing with the most confidential or business-critical data, but its still immeasurably important. I'm a software security and penetration tester by day and insecure FTP is my favorite thing to see in organizational security audits. Plain text usernames and passwords make things so easy. No 'sploits necssary, just grab their username and password and wreak havoc like you're them.

Use SFTP if you must use FTP - there are tons of great tools out there that provide SSL or SSH tunnels for otherwise insecure FTP.

Also, another one of the primary concerns in enterprise security these days are when corporations roll out VPN solutions or otherwise grant access to internal devices and services to random employee X working from their home computer. You've got to accompany it with some sort of assurance that the home user's computer itself is not compromised.

__________________
"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel