Wiki-style Collaboration for Enterprises

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.