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I'll see your Drupal and raise you one better: how about using Drupal/OpenAtrium?

You may recall the previous Presidential administration made headlines by replacing the Clinton administration's IBM/Lotus Notes Domino email/groupware servers with MicrosoftExchange (and presumably SharePoint also, but I'm not gonna go there).

The current Presidential administration of course had to ditch that Microsoft crap as fast as it possibly could. Obviously, continuing to use it would become a political and legal liability. They chose to use Drupal/OpenAtrium. Using OpenAtrium2 on Drupal 7, you too can enjoy a smartphone-enabled responsive intranet, with a minimum of development and budget.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a Drupal OpenAtrium developer (and am looking for my next project, so am available for private discussions). In fact at the same time it went public that The White House uses OpenAtrium for their project management and collaboration requirements, I delivered a similar collaborative project management intranet to NYSE Euronext. It was used by teams at the Amsterdam, Paris, and New York Exchanges while I was there. Before others also realized, I ascertained my assignment put my development efforts (and bug-tracking/feature requirements) in direct competition with Atlassian JIRA, so I took JIRA head-on. Just before Christmas a meeting was held, and I was told a Sr. VP at NYSE had decided my OpenAtrium development of a few weeks was superior and thus more desirable than JIRA, and I won(!) the competition. I was told then NYSE would use my OpenAtrium, and ditch JIRA, because my OpenAtrium Atrium development after only a few weeks could clearly beat JIRA requirement per requirement, while being much more user-friendly, and with a (dare I say) sexier GUI.

Alas, it was not to be (for me), and ultimately JIRA won, and I lost, and was soon out of a contract also. But still! I was a contender, dammit! All I got to work with was a bunch of Microsoft Office tools, Windows, and we were graced to also use FireFox. I delivered a Drupal application to NYSE overnight using my own VPS at Linode, with zero budget out of fear of job-loss. Previously, NYSE loved their 2-D spreadsheets and email, for project management. I requested early-on to be allowed to import their spreadsheets into a 3-D relational MySQL (drupal) database early on and was told "No". After several weeks passed, of no progress made by me to answer the report-requirements/questions posed of me by NYSE bean counters despite my best efforts with Microsoft Excel and %$#@! pivot tables, I asked my boss again, can I import the data into MySQL? I was then told yes, because that info was due weeks ago, was very late, and I was otherwise about to be fired. I worked all night and less than 24 hours later, all was imported into Drupal and I was able to report on and answer every question posed upon me. A week later, that Drupal database became a Drupal/IOpenAtrium intranet, and evolved into a very popular project management and collaborative tool. The #1 feature was: MULTITASKING. No longer did all my colleagues have to take turns updating the single spreadsheet, one at a time, with their totals at 5 o'clock, before they could go home! This was a huge hit from the staff. Meanwhile NY loved the spreadsheet import/export feature I implemented for them (HAD to have that to get approval). The Drupal (spreadsheet) sheetnode module is better (and sexier) than Google Docs IMHO. NYSE thought so too. For awhile there, I beat JIRA at NYSE using Opentrium, and I'm very proud of that.

FWIW, I have code for responsive video content-types about 85% finished, based upon the video.js open-source player.

CiviCRM is extremely good at what it does, and works with Drupal, as well as Joomla.

I like Drupal a lot. Drupal is like LEGO bricks you can build anything out of, and if you install CiviCRM on top of Drupal, that's like building the Millennium Falcon Star Wars Edition LEGO along with a spaceport for it. If that interests you, then also add OpenAtrium to your short list of things to check out too. In fact you can combine them if you want and they'll give you complimentary functions, however you might also find OpenAtrium is good enough for your CRM needs. Or you might swap out CiviCRM from your OpenAtrium platform as described, and use RedHen CRM instead.

Whatever direction you choose for CRM, I hope you'll give OpenAtrium consideration towards your requirements, (that is what the White House uses for its workgroup collaboration too). It's a good Space Dock Platform to hold your calendaring, notifications, public/private docs, etc.

http://openatrium.com/
http://redhencrm.com/
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog...

Pro-Tip: In a lot of places where I have introduced OpenAtrium, when I get around to installing the sheetnode module, and everyone gets collaborative spreadsheets, I often hit a home run. The spreadsheet usefulness and ajax is extremely good.

https://drupal.org/project/she...

http://openatrium.com/

It's a great point. I wonder if Google will release the code - or perhaps someone will just take the design and write web-compliant code. ;)

You might be interested in OpenAtrium. Never used it but it looks awesome.

Then use Atrium or Acquia. Both provide turn-key social sites built on Drupal.

The point is, these guys are going to be spending 90% of their time writing behind-the-scenes functionality to make everything work, and 10% making it look good and easy to use. Drupal already provides the first 90%. If they really believe in open source, they could be contributing to work already done and making it better -- and end up with a better product than they could do on their own.

Sure, these guys are young and have time to waste. More power to them. But when their pet project is gone and forgotten, Drupal and projects built on Drupal will still be around. That is the whole point of open source

Open Atrium is a multipurpose intranet/project management system built with the open source CMS Drupal. It's easy on the eyes and since it's just a fancy distribution of Drupal it can potentially be extended in almost any direction. Worth a look, sounds like it could address all your needs.

But then again it also sounds like Microsoft Office Live Workspace could also meet your needs. I'm not sure how complicated you want to get.

There is a Drupal distribution built specifically for that purpose: http://openatrium.com/ There's a lengthy article about it in the December issue of Linux magazine: http://developmentseed.org/blog/2009/nov/09/open-atrium-featured-linux-magazine which should help you get started.

It features groups, calenders, blogs, documentation and an issue/task tracker right out of the box.