I've had a couple design meetings with Northstudio re the development of the SoTL portal. There is a Drupal-related platform called Open Atrium which seems to match our user requirements quite well. This is a good thing because it means less $ for development, but we're still sorting through some details to make sure we're not heading down the wrong path.
Here's a summary of features and how I see them (
in orange text) used for this project:
- Projects are created within groups. I envision a group could be created for each new research project.
- Any number of projects can be created within a single group. Potentially a group could become a research focus, with several projects within.
- Cases are specific issues within a project that can be assigned to a member. This has potential for breaking down research tasks.
- Events can be created within a group. Possibly as a way to record milestones, and also schedule meetings.
- Books can be created within a group. They are like simple pages that can be organized in a hierarchical fashion. Potentially as a way to co-author. I'm looking into these options further.
- Blog posts can be created within a group. Other members can comment on the post.
Features that are included with the items above:
- Notifications when new content is added or existing content is edited - sent to members of the group.
- Messaging from one member to either another member or a number of members.
- Calendar view and feed to manage events.
One drawback with Open Atrium is that it is not designed to be a public facing site. Out of the box users would need to create an account to view content. I know we touched on private versus public nature of the site during earlier conversations, mostly as it relates to comfort level for contributors. What are your thoughts on this?