I am currently reviewing the market for extranet applications (most likely ASP solutions) which are suited for typical web / marketing / ad agencies, and am not having too much luck finding many good cost-effective options.

The key things I would like the extranet application to do are:

1. Allow for projects & jobs to be set up within the system for clients, vendors & internal staff, assigning permissions to those users the relevant access permissions.
2. Allow alerts to be set up to allow for users to monitor activity, or be specifically alerted when a document is updated, creative is ready for review etc.
3. Allow anyone to add comments to documents or any media, as well as add comments / post-it like notes on to creative when reviewing.
4. Should include version control, file-locking etc. and ideally should support remote folders / WebDAV or equivalent allowing seamless integration with the desktop file system.
5. Extremely user friendly for clients especially, with simple interfaces, only relevant and required functionality, and ensuring good platform & browser support for clients.
6. Primarily web based application

So far, the players / services / software I have found are:

• Share Point - currently either a Microsoft application that can be run from and installed on your servers and is offered as ASP solution by many  (such as www.sharepointsite.com and www.hostbasket.com
• Lotus Workplace - IBM & Lotus product which is focussed more on being an enterprise corporate communication & collaboration tool.  Definitely not suitable for agencies as an extranet tool but a very good suite for large Enterprises, geat integration of document, communication & knowledge sharing.
• WorkZone - An ASP extranet solution, with services offered to a number of different industries. However, the solution appears to be too simple and too generic, and not industry focussed enough to offer the tools required. http://www.trichys.com/marketing/marketing-collaboration.vm
• Marketing Central - The clear winner so far, all the tools & applications needed, good thought and understanding of the industry and day to day processes of someone within the industry.  There is not mention of cost though, so that could be a sticking point (often is when they are not willing to broadcast the costs online).
  http://www.marketingcentral.com/site/agencies/agencycentral_technology.html
• InfoWit - seems good, but more focussed on a complete business management tool and not really that useful for client & vendor collaboration. http://www.infowit.com/benefits_C2.asp

So, does anyone have any comments on my findings / thoughts, and has anyone had experience with platforms / ASP solutions that would offer suitable functionality for an Extranet for a typical agency?

Cheers.

Matthew O’Riordanc: Lemon Foundation - Managed Network for Interactive Production & Designm: 07930 534 713d: 020 7071 8605e: w: http://www.lemonfoundation.com

Not had the time to go thru this list but there is probably something in here:

http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Scripts_and_Programs/Groupware_Tools/index.html

John

Checkout www.hotproject.com / Hot Project. This is a really simple system which is UK based and geared specifically around the UK advertising and web agencies work. We have also looked at www.basecamphq.com  which is quite good.