How Are You Using Open Atrium 2?

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TetraMiller's picture

When you have a flexible framework like the new Open Atrium, it means that the possibilities are endless for how people can use it. Now that Open Atrium 2 has been out in the wild for a bit, we're hearing that it's being used for everything from intranets to learning management systems, collaboration platforms to portals. We would really love to hear how people are using it, if you're willing to share. That way we can continue to build new ideas and best practices as a community.

If your organization is using Open Atrium 2, feel free to share your story. Happen to have a blog post or screenshot of your site that you'd like to share? Feel free to link to it!

Comments

potassiumchloride's picture

In addition to using the intranet and collaboration features, we are using Open Atrium 2 as the platform for developing a custom project management and ticketing system.

How does your project management / ticketing system work?

dsnopek's picture

Hi!

I was just wondering how your project management and ticketing system works? How does it differ from Open Atrium Work Tracker? Is it going to be Open Source or otherwise publicly available? I'd love to check it out. :-)

Thanks!
David.

custom content types

potassiumchloride's picture

Hi dsnopek,
We tried Open Atrium Work Tracker but it wasn't far enough along in late spring/early summer (it was an alpha release) and it became clear we were going to have to customize so much that it wasn't going to be worthwhile. Looking at it made me realize we could build our own with similar features but we wouldn't be dependent on another module's development cycle, so we just started building.

The core is some custom content types: project, task, ticket, work log. These are hierarchical in our usage, so one project can have many tasks, and each task can have many tickets. There are entity references from work log to ticket, from ticket to task, and from task to project. We use taxonomy to add project type, task type, and ticket type fields, as well as priority and status fields, for each content type. The work log content type is what we use to log our work on a particular ticket, so it has a body field and some other fields for pay period, hours worked, etc. and we've got two computed fields on the content type that calculate the actual cost of that work, based on the user's rate (stored in the user profile). This structure will allow us to roll up costs at ticket, task, or project level.

Because the system is so specific to our university's needs, we didn't start out with any plans to make it available. However, I suppose if there is interest it is something we could explore. If you have more questions, please ask!

Thanks for detailed response!

dsnopek's picture

Thanks for detailed response!

Well, Open Atrium Work Tracker still is an alpha release. :-) It will likely hit beta soon. But, actually, your data model is so completely different, I think you made the right choice creating your own tracker. Work Tracker only has Tasks and uses Open Atrium Sections to group them.

What underlying modules are you building on? For example: Are you using Time Tracker for your work log? Or Comment Alter for updating Tasks? Or is it all custom?

I'd love to see your code just to compare technical approaches! :-) However, I'm not personally interested in actually using it, given my investment in Work Tracker.

Thanks again!
David.

These are hierarchical in our usage...

LoganGuy's picture

I don't understand how to associate multiple content type nodes to one parent node like multiple tasks to one project using entity reference. Does one reference the entire content type or reference each field? Would someone point me in the right direction?

The only related topic I can find on the web is by using the Node Hierarchy Module. I am waiting before I try this module because no one mentioned it here. I would like to do this the right way.

regards

entity reference

potassiumchloride's picture

Hi LoganGuy,

If you using the built-in Work Tracker, then you should be able to create many different tasks for a single project.

If you are trying to build your own configuration, you just need to use a regular entity reference field type. For example, inside the Task content type, you would add an entity reference field that references the Project content type. Then, when you create a task, you select the appropriate project from a list. You can create as many tasks as you wish, and many of them can be assigned the same project. In that way, you will end up with a project that has many associated tasks.

You can use views to display any project fields on your task page, but you don't reference individual fields from the task, just a project.

You don't need Node Hierarchy module.

Project form

LoganGuy's picture

Perhaps I have it wrong, but I wanted to be able to see a created project and have a list of created clickable tasks visible on the project form as well as have the option to create more tasks for the project. Our organization would not be able to create a task and then assign it to a project. We have more than 250 projects they would need to choose from.

Entityreference prepopulate

potassiumchloride's picture

Sure, what you describe is do-able.

You would want to install Entityreference Prepopulate so that you can place a "Create Task" link on your project page and have the project field set automatically when a user creates a task.

aslan.kanzas's picture

Your approach sounds ideal for people whose requirements go deeper than David's excellent Work Tracker. Are you able to share your work?

Humming along

potassiumchloride's picture

We are using the system on a daily basis, and it is working well for us. I'm a site builder with no experience sharing work. How would I do that?

Committee support and management

jlscott's picture

I am re-developing my orgRight service (See http://orgright.com, which is currently D6 with a many custom modules) in D7 based on OA2.

I expect to opensource this, and will consider making it a distribution in its own right unless it is a simple process to build it on top of a standard OA2 install.

Release target is Q1 2014.

open source projects

BertVK's picture

I just installed OA 2 to keep track of my open source hardware projects.
Like any maker I have more ideas than time to build everything. To keep track of the different ongoing projects I will put all info in OA.

If any project takes off and I have people who want to contribute, I can give them access to the space and have a central system to keep track of all information and communication.

For the moment the default modules are all I need, but if the need rises I will create custom modules and release those in the wild.

Intranet use

michubu's picture

I use the Open Atrium 2.0 for our company intranet, to share documents and content, events as well as communicate. Am trying to figure out how this will be used as a Learning Management System since am in the education industry. Thank you guys for this brilliant system

Moodle combination?

henkvancann's picture

Dear Michubu,

You might like this blog here: http://btopro.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/rumblings-of-the-drupal-lms/. It has a good evaluation and further reading section.

Kind regards, Henk

Intranet

tibu's picture

I'm planning to use Open Atrium 2 for our kindergarter and school parent community to share news, events and important documentations on the site.

Although OA1 seems to provide a more out-of-the-box solution I'm working with OA2 as future support is more important for me ever it is more work to get the site ready.

handbook and ideation

autopoietic's picture

I'm looking at using OA2 as a edtech knowledgebase (using subscriptions for new content by group and tags).

Also hoping to use the site as a combined ideation and issue tracker, thus covering potential projects and existing project maintenance.

Used OA1 heavily for the notebook functionality, currently not finding it easy to replicate this in OA2 without going too far away from out of box atrium (preferable). In particular looking for hierarchal menu for documents like in docs.openatrium. Any tips would be welcome :) https://drupal.org/comment/7801945#comment-7801945

About and Ideation feature

yamenmarquez's picture

Hi @autopoietic i'm planning to use OA2 in a similar way, I have a particular interest in a ideation feature too, it will cover since the call for ideas stage until the conversion to propose ideas into projects, it will include voting and maybe points earning for the users who participate. I'm thinking in two content types 1. A call for ideas and 2. the Idea itself, and maybe add an entityreference field to the OA2 documents content type to the Idea content type for all the knowledge discovery processes that may take place around the conversion of the Idea into projects, or handle it through comments and attachment to those comments.
So i would like heard about your approach to your ideation feature and maybe share some work.

Thanks in advance
PS: Please forgive my English written and not a native English speaker.

Re: About and Ideation feature

Niklas.G's picture

Working on a nonprofit site that help other nonprofits and social entrepreneurs to start and run their projects using crowdsourcing/funding. The solution will help people/organizations through all phases a business/project goes through. This includes problem definition, idea and concept development, start up, growth, establishment, upscaling and change.

@ yamenmarquez, @ autopoietic I'm also interested in finding a good solution for ideation, I will begin to look at

https://drupal.org/project/ideation
https://drupal.org/project/answers

Best regards

video demonstration of creating the wiki

potassiumchloride's picture

If you want a demonstration for how to set up the menu for a knowledgebase or wiki, watch the first 20 min of this demo video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfStOxR9p0s. It will walk you through the steps Mike Potter outlined in the comment linked above.

Open Atrium

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