Business in a Box open source
productivity

MediaWiki

A wiki is the central repository for your company's knowledge and processes — it is the single most useful general tool for any business. This is your own "Wikipedia", where all information is available in one place, and easy to search, update, and track changes.

What is MediaWiki?

MediaWiki is the same software that powers Wikipedia. It's ideal for a structured, or semi-structured hierarchy of information, making it simple to create, and cross-reference articles. Anyone in your organisation can edit it, so it evolves with use, and because it is so easy to edit, people correct errors immediately, so it's always up to date.

Creating, or updating an article is simple (learning takes just a few minutes ). Formatting is sufficient for clarity, yet constrained  to encourage simplicity and speed. 

Why use a wiki?

Creating a documentation culture ensures that, by having one place to record things, there is also always one place to find things. This gives your organisation a "long-term memory", which is far better than the typical "insanely cluttered F:\ drive". Standard documents and templates can be added, and everything is interlinked and searchable. Secrets should have a pointer article. 

You can view the history of any article, track changes, watch edits, and revert errors. If necessary, individual articles, or the entire system can be restricted, though in our experience, giving edit-permission to everyone leads to an increase in quality and relevance. 

What is a wiki for?

new-user onboarding technical help and references processes and policies SOPs (such as how to work the printer and ink-replacement, or where to order supplies) templates and files minutes checklists howtos directory of people and contacts rotas and holiday-tracking branding information storing commonly-used files (e.g. logos in various sizes and formats) stationery templates (headed notepaper etc.) odds and ends (e.g. NDA templates, parking permits, business-card templates) brainstorming ideas temporary lists (e.g. who is going for office drinks this week?)

A wiki can also be a lightweight CRM system, or LMS, a Kanban board, project-management tool, a simple bug/issue-tracker, or a task-recording archive. It's often easier to read than a spreadsheet because items are not squished into small cells. Articles can embed howtos, and commented-options, for speed of edits.

The Neill Consulting advantage

MediaWiki is open source, so why not just download it yourself? We offer:

• A well-configured instance, with hosting, and backups.
• File downloads are protected, by default.
• Templating: an initial structure pre-populated.
• Standalone user directory, or integration with SSO.
• Training is available (we use it extensively, and have taught ∼500 others).
• Themed and branded for you.
• Much lower cost (compare e.g. Confluence, with its per-user pricing).
• Better privacy: your data is always yours, whether turnkey, or hosted.

Templating is particularly helpful: we've taken the best bits of our own wiki, generalised them, and included them in the framework. 

WordPress

Your website is your window to the world: how people find your business, learn about your products and services, connect with you, and securely buy from you.

What is WordPress?

WordPress is one of the most versatile and popular tools for website creation and content-management, from simple informational sites to complex e-commerce systems (with WooCommerce). It's powerful, and extensible, though there is a learning-curve.

Web Development (not only WordPress)

We can also design, build, and host websites, from basic information sites to complex transactional database-driven systems, and even warehouse-management systems. This includes responsive design, mobile-apps (Android/iOS), and PWAs (progressive web apps). We can also do content-design, hosting, API integration, and local analytics. We value technical correctness, ease-of-use, user-interface, and user-experience. .

The Neill Consulting advantage

WprdPress is open source, so why not just download it yourself? We offer:

• A well-configured standard installation, with hosting, domain, email, and backups.
• Content creation, graphic design, and editing.
• Search engine optimisation (SEO).
• Plugins, including translation, custom-extension development.
• Security: A+ grade HTTPS, with OCSP, avoiding CDN-leakage. 
• API Integration, including with RT: new customer enquiries and auto-response.
• Local analytics: no annoying cookie-consent banners required!
• Experience with WooCommerce, and back-end logistics.

Local analytics is particularly useful, compared to the Google analytics system. This protects users' privacy (from having their interaction with your website tracked by Google, a 3rd-party), and as a result, there is no need for the cookie-consent banner . Furthermore, because many users' browsers block the trackers, with extensions such as uBlock Origin, and Privacy Badger, the tracked data in G.A. would actually be wrong, missing much of the data that is locally available in the server logfiles. Better, open-source, privacy-protecting, more-accurate tools include: Analog, AWStats, Matomo, and GoAccess (recommended).

Request Tracker

A ticketing-system allows problems and tasks to be assigned, tracked, queried and resolved. This enables the streamlining, and partial automation, of workflow, and makes it easy to see, and prioritise, overall status.

What is Request Tracker?

Request Tracker (RT) is an enterprise open-source process-management solution. It performs the tasks of ticketing, and project management software, primarily designed for IT services, help desk, support, and internal task-tracking. 20 years of development result in a highly optimised system, designed for speed of use, reliability, and correctness.

Process management software combines workflow-automation with a central repository of intelligence and data relating to the controlled-processes. This makes them more reliable, repeatable, efficient, and scaleable, with better insights for management and continuous-improvement.

Why use a ticketing system?

Manually carrying out every process-step is only efficient when there is a small number of tasks that are bespoke, and which can be carried out by a single person in isolation. As the number of tasks increases, and larger numbers of interactions between multiple people need to occur, it becomes all-but-impossible to sustain in an efficient and error-free manner. This is where RT excels.

RT serves a variety of purposes in business, including:

• Ticket Management: track, manage, and resolve requests (or tickets) from users, customers, or internal teams. Create, assign, update, and close tickets.
• Custom Workflows: define and automate workflows, set up queues, triggers, scrips, and custom-fields to adapt the system to various use cases (e.g., bug tracking, service requests, enquiry-tracking, customer support).
• Collaboration: team message boards, threaded email communication, and shared access to tickets. Teams can work together to resolve issues efficiently.
• Automation: auto-ticket routing based on predefined conditions (queues, priority, etc.), automatic status updates, and escalation procedures to ensure that critical tickets are handled promptly.
• Reporting and Analytics: generate detailed, custom reports on ticket metrics (e.g., response time, ticket volume, resolution time) to assess performance and improve service quality.
• Permissions and Roles: fine-grained control over user permissions and roles — who can access, modify, and view specific tickets or information. This ensures sensitive data is protected, while enabling collaboration.
• Customizable Interface: tailor the software's appearance and workflows according to your needs, such as adding custom fields, templates, and notification rules.
• Integration: email, chat systems, and more to streamline operations and enhance functionality, while saving time, effort and cost.

RT is distinguished by how well it uses email as a first-class interface: you can create a ticket just by emailing the queue, and fully interact with tickets through email, if that is your preferred way to work. . Alternatively, you can use the web or forms interface, or call the API from other systems like WordPress.

The Neill Consulting advantage

Request Tracker is open source, so why not just download it yourself? We offer:

• A well-configured standard installation, with hosting, and backups.
• Analysis and customisation of your business processes, applied to your RT instance.
• Automated importing and exporting of data and reports.
• Integration with WordPress: new customer enquiries and auto-response.
• Bespoke applications, to simplify specific workflow tasks.
• Standalone user accounts, or integration with SSO.
• Training and support (we use this extensively ourselves).
• Interface customisation, themed and branded for you.
• Much lower cost (compare e.g. Jira, with its per-user pricing).
• Better privacy: your data is always yours, whether turnkey, or hosted.

Ticketing, especially with an email interface, is so much better than using a chatbot. If customers can't reach you right now, let them explain their actual issue, in their words, so that you can fix it. In the meantime, revert to them with an automatic reply to acknowledge, and route their query to the right person. There are many available ticketing systems: RT is one of the best and most established, and we have used this ourselves for many years.

Forgejo

Forgejo: the best shared tool for software development (and any management processes that use Agile/Kanban).

Nextcloud

Nextcloud: productivity software: file sharing, document-editing, email, calendar, chat/video.

Moodle

Moodle - for training, teaching, and conferences.

Keycloak

Keycloak: single point of truth for users, with integration for SSO, LDAP, OpenIDC, SAML, and IMAP.