We have the need for a simple Topic & Reply system to address an issue in our company. So I’d like to implement a message board system like this one for our employees.
That actual problem is related to supply chain issues (maybe you haven’t heard, but some parts have become hard to get).
The current “system” is an email from purchasing, to engineering about needing an alternate for a part that they cannot get. More often it is needing an alternate for a component on a sub-assy we purchase (stuffed PCB, wire harness, etc…)
This results in an uncontrolled and divergent chain of emails and replies from different people, often not replying to the latest message in the thread. Very unmanageable.
I was thinking that I could use:
“Categories” to specify the product groups (as they have different engineers that work on them)
A “Topic” would be a new issue
“Replies” are the comments the engineers, production and/or purchasing adds. These would be like the replies in a email chain.
The “Solved” feature would indicate the issue has been resolved.
We’re currently trying (and failing) to manage this with an Excel spreadsheet. But there’s no control on the “fields”, and only one person can make edits at a time.
So on to my question …
What is involved in setting up a system like this? I’m not looking for step by step instructions (although I’d gladly take them), but some pointers to resources for implementing this.
Some criteria:
We’d have like 10-15 users max
Have windows servers, SQL and MySQl available
Would like to be able to support pictures in the posts
Don’t need any of the bells and whistles (Badges, emoticons, voting, etc… )
Must be entirely hosted on our network.(Management demands this)
Depending on what access you have to Microsoft products, you could use a MS form as the request tool, that form uses a Power automate to create a Sharepoint item in a list or even a Azure DevOps ticket. Both of those items can be assigned to people as an action item that would be traceable.
With DevOps you get 5 users for free but can have unlimited “stakeholders” and if you have VS Pro or enterprise you can use DevOps without consuming one of the free license.
Not quite the answer to your question but its a different way to solve that problem.
So, they want to write their own version of Slack or Teams because they think it’s more secure on-prem? Even though every healthcare breach happening right now are on-prem attacks?
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that either on-prem or cloud are more secure. Both have their risk challenges. Cloud is not guaranteed to be more secure. On-prem is not guaranteed to be more secure. To use hosting posture as a measure of security is faulty and actually puts company assets at a higher risk of compromise. It’s been a real challenge to educate management that Zero Trust strategies should lead the security discussion and not hosting policy.
If it absolutely must be on-prem, look into spinning up a linux server with apache and mySql, and then add forum software. About 20 years ago I did this with my personal webhost (was on their hosting, not on-prem, but really no difference) and phpBB. I’m sure things have changed, but it should be straightforward. Probably simple to do with docker…
Sounds like a job for Epicor Collaborate. Wait, you don’t use Epicor.
You could always use what EpiUsers uses, it has API’s you could leverage it all without even using their UI but you can also modify it all, its open source.
Im sure you can find a docker image with someone who already bundled it all and spin up docker on your LAN and be ready in minutes.
Look for:
Docker Images (Turn Key)
Vagrant Images (Turn Key)
The beauty is, if you are running on Windows you dont have to clutter your IIS Server with Postgres, Ruby etc… The Docker basically virtualizes it (bubble, dmz zone whatever you want to call it).
We actually do this internally for our documentation system. It’s only available internal to the network, self hosted on our own linux server. We have the cheat code that is @josecgomez however, so that was fairly simple for us. (When I say us, I really mean “Him”).
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