ThoughtFarmer blogs atWikiConsulting.com

We’re pleased to announce today the release of ThoughtFarmer 2.4! It makes enterprise wikis friendlier and easier to manage than ever before.

Here’s a quick look at some of the new features.

Group pages with self-subscription

Create group pages for teams, projects and departments. Assign members yourself, or let users self-subscribe.

Share your current status

Let people see what you’re working on or what you’re thinking with personal status updates.

Synchronize ThoughtFarmer with Active Directory

Copy information back and forth between ThoughtFarmer and Active Directory with new 2-way AD synchronization. Select whether ThoughtFarmer or AD is the master for each field. Create custom data capture fields to sync a wide array of information.

Rebrand your wiki in minutes

Use ThoughtFarmer’s new Skinning Console to apply a skin in minutes.

Other changes

• Faster search — sub-second response times for most queries
• Faster page loading — we’ve minified more files and tweaked caching
• Better search results — keyword highlighting, stemming, full breadcrumbs for each result
• Better RSS reading — proxy servers and ATOM feeds now supported
• Improved UI — dozens of tweaks to the layout and presentation

All in all, 2.4 is a great release that we’re very proud of. But just wait until you see 2.5…

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Hosted software, cloud computing, SaaS. They get so much press you’d think that no one installs software on their private network anymore.

The reality, of course, is that behind-the-firewall software is a much, much larger portion of the market than SaaS — maybe 1000 times larger. It’s just not growing as fast.

ThoughtFarmer, as a web 2.0 wiki social software solution, is contrarian. Unlike most solutions in this space, we install behind the firewall. Why? Four reasons:

Speed. Applications on your network travel at full throttle. They’re not affected by internet congestion. And because they’re dedicated to you, they’re not affected by what the vendor’s other customers are doing.

Stability. When the software is on your servers, you don’t have to upgrade if you don’t want to. And there are never any surprise changes.

Security. Do you trust some 23-year-old in Palo Alto with your data? Me neither. I mean, he can have my email address and Flickr photos, but not my trade secrets. Behind the firewall is the safest place for your intellectual capital to live.

Single Sign-On. Software on your private network can integrate with your Windows log on. You get a secure, personalized view without ever entering a password.

(Hmm… they all start with an S.)

The main disadvantage? Software behind the firewall is usually more expensive. It takes more manpower to maintain the servers and to install and upgrade the application. But for most companies with more than a few dozen employees, the peace of mind is worth it.

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After the Office 2.0 conference, Darren, Nick and I were left with 322 business cards, 11 ThoughtFarmer t-shirts, 3 very expensive paperweights, and some cyberspace artifacts:

Clint Boulton mentioned ThoughtFarmer in his eWeek article on Collaboration:

I used JotSpot in a previous life, but I haven’t seen a whole lot of enterprise wiki action. So I was thrilled to take a peek at ThoughtFarmer, an enterprise wiki made by OpenRoad Communications. Designed to compete with products from Atlassian Software Systems and Socialtext as a Microsoft-based behind-the-firewall product, ThoughtFarmer’s interface looks almost like the Google News page…

Tris Hussey reviewed ThoughtFarmer in his Blognation post, “ThoughtFarmer Cultivates Something New for Intranets and Wikis“:

One of the cool companies I ran into at Office 2.0 is Vancouver-based ThoughtFarmer. Their tagline is “beyond wikis”, which you might think is corny (okay, that was the last farm pun) but when you see it in action you’ll see that ThoughtFarmer is something totally new and different.

Reichart Von Wolfsheild declared ThoughtFarmer as one of the top 3 product demos at the Office 2.0 conference. He sat through something like 43 of them (ouch), so he should know:

Lastly, the three best speakers (to me) represented: EchoSign, MindTouch, [and] ThoughtFarmer. Watch the videos of their demos from Office 2.0 to see why. Hint… passion, and knowledge of the product/service, the market, and the audience.

And finally, some Flickr photos:

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As online collaboration tools continue to permeate the enterprise, intranet managers need to make their intranet the hub of internal collaboration or risk irrelevancy.

Collaboration means working together to get something done. At a minimum, I think your intranet should facilitate the following three types of collaboration:

Instant Collaboration

Goal: Share ideas and get immediate feedback
Offline equivalent: Face-to-face meetings & phone calls
Online solutions: MSN Messenger, Google Talk, WebEx, etc.

Instant collaboration tools include instant messaging and desktop screen-sharing. Your intranet should provide links or downloads for these tools and instructions on how to use them. Advanced integration could include an indicator beside names in the employee directory to show who’s online.

Project Collaboration

Goal: Plan and execute a project
Offline equivalent: Status meetings & war boards
Online solutions: BaseCamp, Central Desktop, eProject, etc.

Project collaboration tools usually include a shared calendar, to-do lists, message boards and a file repository. Your intranet should link to your project collaboration tool and include suggestions on how to use it effectively. Advanced integration could include a personalized to-do list on the intranet home page.

Mass Collaboration

Goal: Ongoing sharing, learning and connecting with teammates
Offline equivalent: Team off-sites, workshops, conferences
Online solutions: Confluence, SocialText, ThoughtFarmer, etc.

Mass collaboration solutions make it easy to create, share, and find content. They include wikis, blogs, and social bookmarking. The best ones leverage the network effect to aggregate individual contributions in ways that create value for the entire organization. Your intranet shouldn’t be integrated with a mass collaboration solution. It should be a mass collaboration solution.

The intranet team should pursue ownership of all types of online collaboration and integrate them into a single portal. The future for intranets is mass collaboration.

Further reading:

• Collaboration Types: Part One, Two and Three

• List of mass collaboration applications

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