Joomla as an Intranet & Extranet Solution

I have been looking for scripts to build a intranet or/and extranet website, after several hours of searching I found some interesting web scripts.  I found Alfresco, Open Atrium, MediaWiki, LifeRay and a few others and installed most of them. I was pleasantly surprised but also slightly scared by the sheer amount of features that were enabled out of the box. Then came the thought, why not use something that I use every single day in my job.

By the way, Intranet is generally defined as an information system for posting and sharing information that functions in much the same way as the general Internet, except that the information is restricted for people within the organization: employees, managers, board of directors, etc.  An Extranet is simply an Intranet the allows select access to groups or individuals outside of the organization: vendors, partners, clients, etc.

Joomla as an Intranet & Extranet Solution

More and more companies also, our customers are realising the benefit of using an Intranet to communicate with their staff and customers. In the past this has often meant a large investment in bespoke products such as MS SharePoint. But now “web market” offers a variety of ready-to-implement products, or solutions, so you can build yourself something like with the Lego bricks using extension for your favorite CMS.

My mission was to develop a list of the necessary elements for this type of “web page”:

  • Not let anonymous users view all content (restricting access to content)
  • Manage private/protected files into folders, and allow the access to the folders/files only to specific users
  • Create a time limit to access the files
  • Enable varying levels of viewing, adding, and editing rights across differing authenticated user roles
  • Enable different/custom menu configurations based upon users permisions
  • Redirect users after a successful login attempt to selected page
  • Easy and secured mechanism for uploading files/documents
  • Have a calendar of events (training courses, team building)
  • Simple reservation system
  • Every user could add this own avatar (his photo)
  • Login modul will be in the top of every page
  • Tabs for presenting modules or/and articles Email as Username (no more stupid username)
  • *Mobile ready

Is therefore came a moment to make a selection of extensions:

  • JomSocial with all his plugins, and modules (www.jomsocial.com) + extras
  • J!Extranet (beesto.com/products.php?id=6)  – But I’m not yet fully convinced, because I remembered that Docman (joomlatools.eu) can also manage documents across multiple categories and subcategories, give users permission to upload, download or edit documents. So, could be good enough.
  • Tabs Manager GK3 (tools.gavick.com/tabsmanager.html)
  • Email as Username (lunarhotel.co.uk)
  • ..I still wondering which component to choose for conference room reservation ?

If you are looking the template for your intranet website check our themes.

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This article was first published January 4th, 2011