Public sites, private groups and organization of events with Open Atrium

At Nuvole we have always supported the idea that Open Atrium can deal with complex use cases. Modules like Spaces, PURL and Organic groups can push the limit of the platform far beyond being a simple-yet-powerful intranet software. We were already experimenting with building public websites and simple distributions-like mini-sites with Open Atrium for quite some time, but now the new Alfa Puentes project gave us the opportunity to blend together all those customizations in one powerful platform.

These concepts will be covered in more detail in the Nuvole DrupalCon Munich Training.

The Alfa Puentes project

The Alfa Puentes project's main aim is to enhance the international cooperation between the European and the Latino-American Higher Education environments by creating a community of teachers, rectors and other related stakeholders. The members of this community need to share data and information both online, using an intranet platform, and offline, by participating to a series of mid-size seminars and conference spread across the two interested regions. Given the diversity of this community, multi-language support was also a strong requirement.

Open Atrium to the rescue

The platform is organized in three main parts: a public portal, a series of private self-managed intranet groups and mini-sites for the organization of real-life events. Since it's developed on a single Open Atrium installation users of the platform can have different roles in each components, e.g., a rector can start a private discussion group while a project partner may help with translations.

Public portal

The portal is based on our mini-site features set, it contains information about the project, like funding periods and partners involved. All content is available in three languages: English, Spanish and Portuguese. Site managers can easily assign content translation to partners or collaboratively work on a specific section of the website. Even though the portal is implemented as a specific Open Atrium group type, the site look and feel does not resemble in any way its default theme: visitors perceive the portal as being an independent site.

All portal content is available in three languages:

Even though it is built as a group the portal does contain highly customized sections:

Private intranet groups

In a cooperation project it is essential to provide a platform where users can easily engage in a conversation and share relevant information: nothing can be simpler with Open Atrium. Each partner can start a private discussion group and can easily invite users to participate. To facilitate information sharing each group can be powered with our Atrium Folders feature, which provides a more user friendly and familiar way of sharing documents and files than the built-in Notebook feature. The language of each group can be set at its creation, chosen among English, Spanish and Portuguese.

Group owners can invite users to join a group by using powerful search tools:

Atrium Folders enhances the document sharing user experience:

Mini-sites for event organization

The mini-site features set also powers the creation and management of mini-sites for organization of events. Each event site is an independent Open Atrium public group, with a specific Spaces preset which, at every site creation, enables features like static pages, custom navigation menu pre-filled with default content, news section and a spotlight area on the front page. Each mini-site must also provide a customizable per-event registration form which will add specific information (like participation to dinners, workshops, etc...) to the usual user profile data. To implement such a functionality we have integrated the Webform module with Open Atrium, ensuring a smooth user experience in managing such a complex use case.

Managers can deploy and customize a fully fledged event website in minutes:

Users can integrate their profile with event-specific information:

Glue all together: the user dashboard

The default Open Atrium user profile section has been customized to be the starting point for the user to find her way trough the system. After the login the user is redirected to her profile page, from where she can have direct access to update her personal information, get to the groups she is member of and manage her event registrations.

Tags: Code Driven Development, Drupal Planet, DrupalCon, Open AtriumImage: