If they already use Microsoft Office (and especially if they already subscribe to Office 365) then Yammer is a service that is specifically designed to be a corporate social network at the Office 365 Mid-Size Business tier. I've never used it though and naturally it's a service, not something you can run yourself on your own hardware.
I've had some brief exposure to Atlassians Confluence software, which you can buy to self-host or pay for monthly per user as a service and it seems pretty good, though like all things it has a bit of a learning curve. I've only barely used it though, so can't say much about it other than people I work with have given it very high praise. It's probably better if you buy into the rest of Atlassian's suite of tools like Jira and Hipchat, etc but by itself I don't imagine it's too bad. Speaking of Hipchat, that might actually fit the bill. It's basically an IRC style private chatroom client, but depending on the plans you get (and you can even use it for free with unlimited users if I recall) when you attach images or files to messages, they stay in the system so they can be referred back to, at least for a time. If what they need is something more real-time rather than a long-term document storage/sharing system, then that might work out well for them. I use hipchat extensively at work for communicating with my team, sharing files, talking to clients, holding meetings, etc and find I rarely use anything else for sharing things, getting feedback or collaborating on projects. I can highly recommend it, and since you can trial it for free, if it sounds like it might fit the bill, I'd encourage you to investigate it. We also use their dev API to feed in info from our various monitoring tools for servers, software builds, support tickets, etc so it acts a company-wide notification system as well as shared communications platform. On 30 September 2014 15:12, d-...@hadrian-way.co.uk <d-...@hadrian-way.co.uk > wrote: > > > > On 30 September 2014 at 14:33 Ralph Corderoy <ra...@inputplus.co.uk> > wrote: > > > > > > Hi Terry, > > > > > I believe that the management are not really sure what they want in > > > terms of functionality so are looking for suggestions. We have > > > discussed this locally > > > > What's the nature of the information you want to share? Considered blog > > posts? One-line Q&A? A curated resource of information? > > That's part of the problem; they're not really sure. I think it might > function > as a newsletter in some scenarios, but with the ability to accept comments, > where appropriate. In other scenarios, it might be used to seed ideas, > with > inline drawings / photographs, etc to really get over the message. The > key I > think is engagement. When Groklaw was at it height it was generating > hundreds > of responses to each article, with ideas flying thick and fast. I don't > believe > a mailing list (as suggested elsewhere) will work like that for people who > aren't necessarily technical, whereas an active blog or Facebook type > solution > might, because of the multimedia element. > > As a bonus, it might also be useful to have the ability to collaborate on > documents etc. > > I think we are looking for suggestions to see what might be the most > attractive. > Does anyone have any experience of Corporate Social Networks (linux based > or > otherwise)? > > Terry Coles > -- > Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2014-10-07 20:00 > Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ > New thread on mailing list: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk > How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue > -- Andrew Montgomery-Hurrell Professional Geek Blog: http://darkliquid.co.uk Twitter: http://twitter.com/darkliquid Fiction: http://www.protagonize.com/author/darkliquid -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Tuesday, 2014-10-07 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ New thread on mailing list: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
