A while ago I read an article about Slack versus Discourse and how they could go hand in hand. Slack for direct communication (for example when a server is down that manages important processes) and communication on Discourse for the bigger picture: discussions on how to improve business processes, for example.
I mainly come across articles about communities and how Discourse can help with that. Look at companies that offer a community for their customers, such as fly.io, that have a community around their product(s).
Now I wondered whether the application is also used internally within organizations/companies, what kind of organizational structure they have and how the application is used.
Think that discourse can mainly be used in flat organizations, where you have (almost) no hierarchy.
Yes, it can be extremely effective in this use case. I would even describe it as transformative! However, don’t underestimate the work that comes with this – particularly with companies of 10k+ people!
Legal
Confidentiality between customer projects must be protected. If you are hosting outside of your own premesis you’ll likely need to arrange third party agreements with vendors as well – they often won’t have agreed to their information being shared outside of your premesis. The bigger the company, the slower and more frustrating this is. Nobody using the platform will be understanding when you say “we can’t talk about that here until legal sign off” – and that will be for months at a time. You’ll need to have a lot of patience, caution and probably someone in the legal team who can commit a few hours per week to the project(particularly during the first year).
Moderation
If you’re willing to go through that effort then you also need to consider the challenge of moderating your colleagues. If you’re not comfortable saying no to your boss, your boss’s boss etc then you’ll need to work on that – they will pressure you to do things you shouldn’t. Likewise, you’ll end up being a villain to some of your colleagues even though much of the moderation is legally required.
