Content/Document/Project Management System - Which is right for my needs?

Question

So I just started an internship with this nonprofit company and it's pretty cool. My first assignment was to find a type of program that would work well for the company and its users. I and some team members just finished summarizing down what I think is a good list for the needed functionality. Before I started working, I've never even heard of content/document/knowledge/project management systems. So I've done a bit of research on many other programs and I've narrowed it down to Joomla, activeCollab, Basecamp, sharepoint and a few more. Which program out there would fit my needs the best? It doesn't have to be from the list I just wrote, those are just the programs that popped up first when I started searching.

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MUST-HAVE CAPABILITIES

Searchable Keyword search Advanced search: Ability to tag & search documents by different categories, for example, type of file (e.g. PDF, Word, etc.), service line (e.g., fundraising, strategy, etc.), type of document (e.g., deliverable, data set, etc.) In-document search

Categorization Simple navigation to browse all content Simple to set up and modify the tree/hierarchy used to browse content

Workrooms Provide each team a separate workroom to post their own documents Easy to navigate from team workrooms to the Toolkits (best if team workrooms reside in the same system the toolkits reside)

Version Control Ability to see which is the most recent file

Security Password protected Tiered security, i.e. certain permissions for certain users (to create workrooms, change navigation tree, change toolkits, view/post team files, etc.)

Multi-year support Easy to “archive” old workrooms or files so the navigation doesn’t become cluttered over time

Share across workgroups Ability for power users to access multiple team workrooms Ability to send docs from one group to another—or to the toolkits (by simple tagging or simple “submit” feature)

Uploading Ability to upload files to workrooms Ability to submit a new file for consideration for a toolkit (not a file currently in any workroom)

OPTIONAL CAPABILITIES

Messaging Opt-in notification of uploaded files or changes to existing files

Version Control Ability to see who has the file checked out

External Access Client access to certain documents

Within our website Users gain access from our website It looks like it resides on our website

Collaboration Tools Team Calendar Blog / Forum Instant Chat WebEx/Remote Presentation (for virtual team meeting)

Ratings 1-5 Star document rating (by user community) Searching & Sorting documents by rating (best documents display first in search results)

Simultaneous Edit Multiple people can edit the same document at same time

Workflow Ability to tag a file to be reviewed by another user (ability to “escalate” a file for review by someone else) Messaging alerts when a file has been flagged for a user

Answer 1

Basecamp. Even if it doesn't have all the features you think you need, it does what it is supposed to (37Signals loves to rant about too many features, you aren't gonna need it (YAGNI), etc.)

Joomla is a pain. Activecollab is a poor clone of basecamp (unless it has changed drastically in the year or so that its been since I tried to use it to get out of paying for basecamp).

Answer 2

Most of the features that you mentioned above are available for free using Plone, which is an application that runs on top of Zope. I actually built and deployed an instance of Plone for a non-prof that had a lot of the features that mentioned above. They features might not have had the same names, but you get a lot of the same functionality.

Here's what my users really liked about Plone:

• The ability to index the content of MS Office documents, so that people could search for documents based on content in addition to property and tags/keywords.
• Usability. The default theme for Plone isn't the flashiest thing that you will ever see, but it's usability is excellent.
• How easy it was the change the system and add new sites or functionality.

Here's what I liked about Plone:

• Zero licensing costs. I was able to implement features that usually only come in very expensive systems for free. And I'm aware of these types of costs, because I administer FileNet systems for a living
• It was very easy to install, upgrade, and administer. Please take that "pro" with a grain of salt if you're not a professional systems administrator :)
• Overall, it was just very easy to work with.

And here are my cons:

• If you need the web site to be accessible on the public internet, then your hosting costs may be higher-than-expected. It's definitely cheaper to set up a vanilla Joomla site than it is to set up a vanilla Plone site. Please note that you sound like you need a lot more than a vanilla content management system, so their may be no difference in hosting costs.
• Plone is built on Zope, and Zope is an application server. It's easy to set up and use, but it works a little differently than a lot of other web and application servers. If you're used to administering a LAMP stack, then this will be different (but not necessarily bad).

One final con is true with all modern content management systems: don't give your users enough rope to hang themselves. When it take 2 minutes to a wiki and a blog to a web site, then users expect you to add new sites all of the time. Every new site adds a lot of administrative work to your plate, so try and get as much functionality as you can from each site that you add.

Hope that helps!

Tom Purl