After weeks of waiting when Open Atrium was released, I was elated imagining that our knowledge documentation challenges would come to an end. Unfortunately, a week of work on it left me quite disappointed as this was not to be so!
What is our knowledge documentation challenge?
At Srijan we feel that knowledge captured real-time during project implementation and development is superior to any form of documenting post project completion. This is specifically true for “learning or knowledge gained” while writing specific pieces of code.
So, what exactly does not work with Open Atrium? What would I liked to change?
Primarily the workflow and relationship between Groups and Projects, and the associated modules such as Blogs, Documents, and so on. I’ve written an explanation below.
A. Groups–> Projects workflow
Open Atrium is currently organised as the workflow below.
Groups –>
———–> Blogs
———–> Documents
———–> Case Tracker –> Projects –> Cases
———–> Calendar
———–> Shoutbox
———–> Dashboard
For use at Srijan, I would like to see this changed to:
Groups –>
———–> Dashboard (all projects)
———–> Calendar (all projects)
———–> Projects –>
————————–> Blogs
————————–> Documents
————————–> Case Tracker –> Cases
————————–> Calendar
————————–> Shoutbox
This essentially means that Blogs, Documents, Case Tracker, Calendar and Shoutbox, should become project specific, instead of being associated with a Group, as it is currently.
B. Other generic features and changes
- Allow commenting on ‘Documents’
- Have an organisation wide holiday calendar
These workflow changes would really benefit us at Srijan, and help deploy Open Atrium for Srijan’s project-based knowledge documentation. I presume this would be the case for several other organisations globally as well.
At the earliest opportunity (free Drupal resources) we would make these modifications for our internal use. Any readers wishing to collaborate with us, please write in at business [at] srijan [dot] in.
Please share your experiences working with Open Atrium. We’re eager to hear.
6 Comments
Jeff Miccolis, August 29, 2009:
Rahul, I’m glad your finding Open Atrium useful. I’d like to address a couple of your points.
Regarding how you’d like to change project workflow; I don’t think atrium is much different that what your looking for. The ‘home ‘ page in atrium provides this ‘all project in all groups’ sort of space. We don’t provide a extensive calendar feature at this level, but there is a complete dashboard that includes the calendar. Aside from that you seem to want to limit a group to a single project, I can assure you that having multiple projects per group does prove useful, even if at first it seems like over kill.
Early versions of atrium did allow for commenting on documents, but this feature was removed. For documents that are used over a long period of time (like years) old comments become very confusing and it’s unclear when, by whom, and if comments should be deleted or incorporated in to the main document. What decided that we should allow people to write blog posts that have hard references to the document. Then time sensitive discussions about the documentation happen in a blog post, and documentation pages can be updated as a product of these discussions. To use this feature click the arrow to the left of the title of a document.
Hope this helps explain why certain things are as they are. Thanks for posting your review, and please keep posting your feedback.
Rahul Dewan, September 1, 2009:
Dear Jeff. Thanks very much for responding to this post. Perhaps, I did not communicate the main challenge accurately. I’ll try and clarify here.
I’m happy having multiple Projects under a Group. That would be required, for sure.
The key thing I feel needs to change is to have Blogs, Cases, Shoutbox and Calendar under a Project. Currently, these are under a Group.
I feel having a Project specific Blog/Shoutbox and Cases (ofcourse) would be much better and enable team knowledge sharing and documentation related to a project. For example, Shoutbox could then be used specific to a project for documenting small things which do not demand writing a Blog, while a Blog could become the medium of starting internal conversations on releases, learning, and so on (like Project specific blogs – practiced by several Agile organisations globally).
The IA/workflow for this would perhaps need to change to achieve this.
*What were the “use cases” that you had in mind while designing Open Atrium*? Perhaps, I have been using Atrium incorrectly; you think so?
Thanks,
Rahul
Suchi Garg, September 3, 2009:
Rahul, I agree with you here. Either we are not able to conceptualize the “group” in openatrium correctly, or there is some designing issue.
eg: If we want to use openatrium for project management, we might want to create groups like designers, developers. But, within those, we need to have common projects, otherwise how do the designers communicate with developers and viceversa on a common project.
As a workaround, i am trying this:
The group is actually the project and the project within that becomes redundant. This way, we have a “Project Calendar”, project docs etc.
For a knowledge base kind of a thing which is project independent, I am planning to create a separate group – say KB.
Will inform you on how this works.
Rahul Dewan, September 3, 2009:
Suchi, I feel, a “Group” needs to maintain the sanctity it currently has.
What needs to change is that Groups should have “Dashboard” and “Projects” under them as navigation elements; and then upon selection of a Project, the further elements, ie: Cases, Blogs, Shoutbox, Calendar must appear.
This would need a redesign. I’m talking to our partner design company http://www.icdindia.com to help have a re-look at the visual, and hopefully modify Atrium to suit our internal requirements.
Would like to certainly stay in touch with what you have up your sleeve. Have a demo online?
How’s the new workplace treating you?
Suchi Garg, September 7, 2009:
Yup – i do have a demo online – would send u the link to it later (via skype probably)
I know that keeping the sanctity of “Group” is a good option, but when we do need a Project dashboard/ a Project calendar/ a Project blog – then looking at the current atrium design this was the only way that seemed workable for us.
Anyway – do keep me posted of anything new that u might be able to design/ workout.
Azam Hamza, December 9, 2009:
Dear Rahul,
Thanks for sharing information,
Im a newbie i like to get some information,
pls advise how can i install Atrium on a windows pc. also pls advise is there anyway to operate it without a unique ip address. i mean with a normal broad band conection.
best Rgds
Azam
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