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By TurboChef on
Hi folks,
Drupal's a great package, I just can't get my hands around how I should use it. I'm wiping the site and starting fresh (after trying various modules, screwing up my DB a few times, etc.), and I need to create an Intranet site that has the following characteristics:
1. Organized by departments
The best way for my employees to think of where to get something is to think of where it comes from. Need computer help? Go to the IT Department. Need a tax form, go to HR. You get the idea.
I have classified my company into the following departments, grouped into what I call divisions at the head of every group:
Admin
- Finance / Accounting
- IT
- HR
- Legal
- Marketing
Residential (right now, no departments)
Logistics
- Procurement
- Shipping
- Receiving
Customer Support
- CSR
- Service Techs
- Warranty Admin
- Parts
Operations
- Culinary
- Sales
- Engineering
- Manufacturing
2. Multiple content types per department (or it's own menu item)
Now, here's the type of content that any or all departments will each have the potential of having:
- Photo Gallery (could be one shared gallery or each department could have one/several to themselves)
- Files (in a list, with keywords, which any user can download - includes video clips, PPT files, Word, Excel, PDF, etc.)
- Policies and Procedures (these can be "pages" I think - static HTML content)
- Tutorials (again static HTML with flash, or video clips)
- Employee Directory (I'd like this to be one big shared directory, but there may be directories for outside vendors - it needs to be easy to edit and show a grid of my chosen fields and sort by any field - so far, I've found no module to do this with).
- Task List (I think this can be categorized as "issues" in projects - that would probably work)
- Later on: Links in my main directory to other areas of the site (not necessarily made in Drupal), like a reporting system
So, my question to the experts: I don't get the whole taxonomy / vocabulary thing, but I have these departments and this kind of content. If you were me, and you had an empty site with no additional modules yet loaded and no data / content yet inputted, how would you organize this thing into a site that would have the departments listed as your main menu items, and have various, multiple types of content in each department (or have a type of content be listed on the same level as departments in the menu - like a Directory)?
Would you use taxonomy, and if so - what is classified as taxonomies - the content types, or the departments? Which modules would you add to make this easier?
Thanks in advance for your input - tips and links are welcome!
Seeya,
John @ TurboChef
Comments
Some thoughts I how I would organize it
Firs taxonomy would be one way to organize content. As you have outlined the site I would create at leat two vocabularies, one would divisions and departments and all single selected under Hierarchy.
So 'Admin' would be a term in the vocabulary and have a parent of '' while 'Finance / Accounting' would be a term with a parent of 'Admin'
And then I would have a second vocabulary to represent article types ('Policies and Procedures', 'Tutorials', etc).
At this point there is the question of where you want a link in the menu labeled 'Admin' to take you and what about 'Finance / Accounting'. What do you envision on these pages? I have a module in beta for example that allows you to show content related to a given vocabulary term.
As for the content types and module you might use.
Gallery - several choices
Files - there are modules that support this
Task List - I would try the task module (cvs though) I think the project module would be overkill.
Employee Directory - You might want to check out CiviCRM which can be integrated with Drupal and is part of the latest release of CivicSpace (a drupal based distribution).
module usage
You can do most of that easily with existing modules...
1. Departments: The best way I can think of to do this would be to use the Organic Groups module, otherwise known as OG. OG lets you specify which group is the "audience" for each post. Each group gets a page with a list of the latest content from that group, organized by content types.
2. Content Types: Flexinode. simple answer. You can create any "content-type" you would like, name it whatever, and add as many or as few fields that you need... it has many types of fields built in, like text field, text area, URL, email, even a color picker.
Contact Directory: It might not have all the functionality you need right now, but the "contact directory" module does allow for a site wide contact directory. Each user can add their own contacts, and set them to public or private.
Taxonomy and vocabularies are simply categories. Its called taxonomy because you can form relationships between the terms, like parent/child, synonyms, and related terms. Setting up and adding categories used to be handled only by admins, but in drupal 4.7 (still in cvs right now... you can download it from the drupal download page... just choose the CVS version instead of 4.6.) vocabularies can be set to allow "freetagging", where a user would type in the categories that each post has. If the category exists, it associates the post with it, if not, it automatically adds it for you.
Good luck.
__________________________
Jon Pugh
ThinkDrop Inc
https://devshop.support
https://thinkdrop.net
https://twitter.com/jonpugh
Thanks, folks!
OK, I have looked at Organic Groups, and it seems to be a big part of a possible solution. What I'd like to do is not have any page devoted to the divisions, but merely expand the menu to show the departments underneath when you click on it.
Then, when you click on a department page, it would be a summary or intro page that would contain links to the types of content in that department. So, for example:
I click on Admin, and it expands to the departments under Admin.
I then click on HR, and an HR page appears with links to various types of content I've added for HR (a static page with our Employee Handbook or a link to the document, or a list of all files uploaded using a file upload module with descriptions, or the Directory of employees (which might also be listed on the main menu along with the divisions).
So that's what I'm looking to produce. I need to get alot of this done in the next few days - hopefully your recommendations don't take alot of time (I know, I'm asking for a miracle).
thanks again,
John
Regarding the division level menu entries
Re: What I'd like to do is not have any page devoted to the divisions, but merely expand the menu to show the departments underneath when you click on it.
Depending on how you build your menu, you may or may not be able to edit the path. And even if you can edit the menu path, I do not of a value that means stay right here (you do have to provide a path).
On the other hand I think it would be useful to have a division specific page even if all it did was list the departments.