freeflow deploys Open Atrium Drupal to deliver a custom, web-based Intranet for the Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions

By Rowan Price August 09, 2010

As a data management and software development firm, here at Freeflow we've been very keen on using Drupal to build online applications. One shining example of Drupal-as-an-application is Open Atrium, an online intranet, project management and collaboration tool released by a firm called Development Seed. In the past year, we've learned a lot about Open Atrium, or "Atrium" as we refer to it, thanks to a major customization of it for the Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions. (Also, it hasn't hurt that we use it to manage all of our internal client projects).

Like the international development orgs for whom Atrium was originally developed, our client was a globally distributed group of individuals who needed a way to collaborate securely and easily online. In fact, our client was essentially multiple clients in one, comprised of researchers, advocates, and consultants from many different organizations.

Open Atrium best satisfied the client's key requirements -- document management, project and task management, a calendaring and event system, and internal message board functionality. In addition, because Atrium is open source, it offered almost limitless customization.

Before doing any work, we evaluated a number of competing products and solutions, including Alfresco, Feng Sky, Project Spaces, Confluence, Sharepoint, and Wisehive. We even considered Drupal-Basecamp and Drupal-Alfresco integrations. However, Open Atrium best satisfied the client's key requirements -- document management, project and task management, a calendaring and event system, and internal message board functionality. In addition, because Atrium is open source, it offered almost limitless customization.

Of course, it wasn’t simply a matter of flipping a switch. We encountered a number of challenges to working in Open Atrium and customizing it to the Alliance's needs. Several custom levels of access and permission were needed. Freeflow developed custom Drupal modules to extend roles and permissions, creating, for example, a custom “observer” role giving a user the ability to witness a group’s activity without being a member of the group (Atrium, like many intranet system, lets itself be divided into discrete groups, and makes heavy use of Drupal's “Organic Groups” module to do so).

We also enabled Single Sign On between the Atrium site and the public facing web site and heavily customized the reply-by-email messaging functionality (we contributed some of those changes back to the Atrium project). Lastly, to encourage the group to actually use the tool, we performed a wide array of interface enhancements, substituting terminology that made the most sense to the group. We're happy to report widespread adoption of Atrium by this group, and we continue to recommend Open Atrium to our clients and anyone else looking for a web-based intranet and project collaboration tool.

Further reading:
The platform: Drupal
The product: Open Atrium
The clients: Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions
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