The most basic purpose of an Intranet is so we can publish documents or newsletters on a private network and make them only available to a selected group of people. Premier Agendas , an Education Services company in Langley, BC needed just that.

Problem with the bloated software

Most Intranet Applications are bloated with all kinds of fancy features that companies don't  even use. It takes more time to learn how to use a bloated application; it also requires more maintenance. All of those would cost a company extra time and money.

Every year Software vendors add more features to their products so they can justify Software Upgrades to their customers. Offering more features than a competition does is a strong selling point.

Back to the basics

Most content Management Systems have a reasonably good User Management System including what we call an Access Control List (ACL), meaning that published content can be restricted to registered users only.

These applications also come with an Asset Management Component used for uploading, storing and archiving files such as Word Document, PDF, movie clips, images, etc.

Therefore a generic web based CMS, with a little bit of customization, becomes a good enough Intranet Solution.

It is often against the software licensing agreements to make modifications to a Proprietary CMS, but the same restrictions do not apply to an Open Source CMS.

Solution

We used a Copy of Joomla! CMS, and modified its registration component so only people with the company’s email address could register with the system.

We also used a previously available design Theme, which was aligned with the Company’s branding guideline. We even managed to add a customized module, so Sales Consultants who were signed in, could track their client order histories.

Marketing staff were trained on administrating the application. This happened mainly over the  phone and email. More than 300 of Company employees successfully registered with the system, they didn't need any training.

Could any other Open Source CMS work too?

Yes. We could have used Drupal CMS, or even Wordpress to achieve similar results.

We used Joomla because we were already using it for Premier's Corporate Website. The data entry staff were already familiar with Joomla administration, so it was within their comfort zone. That reduced the training time dramatically.

Results

Within 2 weeks we had an Intranet up and running with a fraction of the time and cost of using a bloated proprietary Intranet application.

Using an open source CMS, client is now allowed to change and customize the system without breaking any licensing laws.

Best of all Premier was no longer locked-in with a single software vendor. There are many consultants and companies who offer Joomla! CMS support.