Office Medium is a web-based collaborative suite and office intranet built with the open source Drupal. It is easy to use and comes with several useful features (especially in the social aspect) that the small business users will come to appreciate. I were introduced to OfficeMedium a while back and my first impression is that it is well designed with plenty of useful collaborative and social features. When you first logged in, you will be greeted by the dashboard. This is where you can get an overview of what happening in your business social area.
The interior of OfficeMedium is organized into several sections, namely Tasks, Events, Calendar, Contacts, Resouces, Files, Polls, Shoutbox and Blog. Each section plays an important role.
Tasks allows you to create to do lists and track the progress of your work. Events shows all your upcoming events and the Calendar allows you to schedule appointments and add events. There is also a group calendar where you can view your colleague’s schedule. The Resources, Files and Polls sections are some of the useful collaborative tools while the Shoutbox enables you to update your status so your colleagues/clients know what you are busy with.
Client management
The best part about OfficeMedium is the integration of client management into the software. You can create a limited user account for your clients and allows them to participate in the collaboration/discussion process. The limited user account give the client permission to view/submit tasks, events, and files, and are only allowed to see content and data that is meant for, or created by them. It is more like Google wave, but with more flexibility and usability.
One caveat – Not able to backup data
While OfficeMedium provides a great platform for the end user, there is one thing that I am concern of – the inability to back up your data. Unlike your self-hosted intranet where you can keep everything in your control, Office Medium does not provide any way for you to backup all your data (Perhaps it does, but I can’t find any backup option in the interface). That means, if one day they were to close down, all your data will go down with them. If you keep plenty of confidential data online, this is definitely a cause for concern. Office Medium is currently priced at $6 per user and comes with a free 512MB account. Extra space can be purchased at $1 per Gb per month. New users get a 1 month free usage before they are required to pay the subscription fee.
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