Wiki-style Collaboration for Enterprises

Mindtouch Deki is an enterprise collaboration platform which allows employees to interact within the enterprise and easily integrate external web services

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

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Are you one of those who really like the concept of wiki but hate the fact that you have to go through a lot of work to integrate it with other application? Or hate the fact that most wiki skins suck and rarely give the feeling of an enterprise portal? If so, MindTouch Deki is for you. It is basically an enterprise collaboration platform which provides you a mix of social tools and web services. It comes with built-in WYSIWYG editor for users to easily create their own pages. MindTouch Deki has various pre-configured web services from Google, Amazon, Yahoo!, etc. These services can be easily integrated with web pages . It also allows users to create custom dashboards as well as reports.

Installation and Configuration
MindTouch Deki supports Windows Server 2008, 2003, Vista and Linux. Its VMware image is also available. We tried it out on a Win2k3 machine. Installing MindTouch Deki is easy. You need to just follow its installation wizard. Once its installation wizard is finished, it will launch its web configuration part. Here, first you need to select the language in which you want to setup the Deki and provide a site name for it. Next it will ask you to setup its Administrator account and its database configuration. For database you need to have MySQL server 5.

Once MindTouch Deki is installed you can log in with your administrator account and change the look and feel of Deki. To change the theme of Deki, go to Customize >Logos & Skins. Here you can upload your own logo, and choose from various skins shipped with Deki. You can also create tasks like user management, group management and role management. You can ban users on the basis of IP Address or username, restore deleted files and pages, and add new extensions.

Mintouch Deki comes with built in support for integrating popular web services like Google, Amazon, etc.

How to use ?
After logging in, users can create their own page, by choosing 'New page' option. Now on this page, if you want to add an extension, simply click on 'Extension'. This will open 'Insert Extension' floating window. Here choose the extension you want to put on the webpage. For example, if you want to share your Google Calendar, from Google extension, select the option 'google.calendar'. Here provide Google calendar feed URI, and if you want calendar to be displayed for a particular time, you can also specify the start and end date for the same to appear on your page. Similarly you can add other extensions, and in some cases you might need to download API of the extension separately to ensure it works.

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