JotSpot Reborn !

Okay, a few months back I made a Google Apps wish list in the hopes that someday many of these will be heard by their developers - and it did! One of the things I included there was the early release of their wiki app from the company they acquired a couple of years ago (JotSpot).

JotSpot is a Wiki app where you can model your own applications that you may need like: directory, crm, inventory etc. and share it within your own small group. It was really a novel idea until they were acquired by Google. JotSpot has reincarnated as Google Sites and now forms part of Google Apps for your domain. So what exactly is Google Sites you say?

Google Sites is a "build-your-own-site" application where you don't actually need to do any coding at all. You can embed any available gadgets like: presentations, documents, or add file uploads capability, directories and news announcements. Surely, there will be more things you can do to make it conform to your business or personal requirements.

(a screenshot of our company intranet built using Google Sites)

Since our company is now under Google Apps, we are using it initially, as our corporate intranet site. It's like an electronic bulletin board where all company announcements, news, calendars, company policies and file downloads are posted. I would say that this is a very significant development for Google Apps for our domain because it bring together all the collaboration services like mails, documents and calendars into a single startup point. However, it required me some minor tweaking for me to be able to do that.

This way, whenever our employees logs into their mails or calendars (like: mail.acme.com), it wouldn't go directly to their respective mailboxes but instead it will be redirected and land first at our local company intranet. If it is not done this way, our intranet will just be another menu that no one will care to open and read so I made sure that the first thing they would see are our news.