Deutsche Welle Intranet

Under the direction of AG Berlin, AOE media implemented a new Intranet on TYPO3 basis for Deutsche Welle. Specially developed extensions enable the integration of new work and information tools for staff intercommunication.

To facilitate inter-staff communication and keep its employees informed, Deutsche Welle has for several years run its own TYPO3-based company intranet. This intranet was entirely reworked for the re-launch: navigation was optimized by a newly developed concept and design, the available content was re-structured. The site is now markedly more user-friendly, barrier-free and in conformity with BITV standards for public services.

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Several features were introduced for the first time into the Intranet: an interactive forum, a chat system, a staff list with integrated and optimized search, a photo gallery, a questionnaire tool, a meal-planner a document list and as adapted or reworked version of the news pool. To this end various TYPO3 extensions were specially programmed while others were adapted and extended.

A particular highlight of the site is the new access rights authentication system, which is based on an NTLN connection (the Windows Server authentication). Background: for the Bonn (DW) and Berlin (DW-TV) offices, different windows versions were implemented as domain server. However, TYPO3 runs on an Apache server and is therefore switched prior to the other two servers. Access controls for the interactive forums or chat rooms have to ensure that no anonymous contributions are posted and that no one gets in from outside the system. To this end a particularly secure system was implemented with authentication and staff data comparison via CSV file and TYPO3 MySQL databank import. AOE media developed two new extensions to manage the TYPO3 authentication, which are introduced upstream from each module requiring registration. The username is read out of the HTTP header. If this is already in the MySQL databank, the user is granted access to the desired area. If not, then he is sent to a login page. Staff data are drawn daily from the Windows domain servers, written into a CSV file and exported to TYPO3. An extension was also programmed to read the user data from the CSV file and write it into the TYPO3 MySQL databank.

The Intranet is used by the 1500 staffers at DW every day at a rate of 2-3 visitors per second. Thanks to the new system, users can now be automatically logged in and authenticated via NT4. The entire project took two months to realize and all those involved are very happy with the results.