Re: Forums

We are establishing a collaboration system for a large nationwide grant of 
more than 100 organization/universities in the US.  Originally we were going 
to use OpenExchange to do so, but we would prefer to use OGo because there 
things we would like to enhance (such as adding basic gant chart generation 
for projects).  In the more closed system of OpenGroupware this will be 
difficult.   However, in our pilot tests, one of the most used and requested 
features were the threaded discussion forums.  Our users use this to have 
discussions among multiple people that are automatically archived and thread 
on the system and done so in a secure fashion.  While we could use mailing 
lists to accomplish some of this the security would be lacking, it is much 
more difficult to archive the mailing lists and ensure that only the correct 
people have access to the archives of a particular list.  Additionally,  it 
is more difficult for the "users" of the system to add and maintain an ad-hoc 
list...in fact since most of the discussions are science related and are 
trying to establish _new_ collaborations and contacts, most people wouldn't 
even be able to say who should be on a mailing list.  In a forum, they could 
allow anyone that is a users of the system read and begin to follow a 
particular forum or thread (or to limit this to a particular group if the 
material warrants it).  

While I understand that we can do notes through projects, this isn't really 
suited to what we want to accomplish, and would seem to be counterintuitive 
to the users in this case.  Most discussion are occurring outside the context 
of a particular project.

I hope this answers your questions.  I'd be happy to elaborate more.

Dustin

On Monday 26 July 2004 10:51 am, Helge Hess wrote:
> Dustin Machi wrote:
> > Are there any forum system planned for opengroupware or has anyone
> > integrated an external forum package with OGo?
>
> This might be related to
>    http://bugzilla.opengroupware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=535
>
> Could you describe a bit more detailed how you want to use the forum and
> what capbilities you expect?
>
> Thanks,
>    Helge

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