Internal Messaging Software

Question

I have a retail client that has 150+ employees and has asked me for a recommended solution to his need. All employees log into dumb terminals that connect to a Windows terminal server.

He would like to have a system where he can send a message to every employee (e.g. recall information, important policy information, etc.) that would work like sending an email to every employee (mass email). However, Internet access is limited (whitelist only) and he wants avoid providing software and services like Hotmail and IM.

Before I go a head and suggest a custom software project to create a database driven message system is there anything I can take off the shelf to solve this problem.

Desktop software is preferred by the customer but a web or intranet based solution is ok too.

UPDATE I forgot to mention the following points.

These messages could be large documents about recall information. The ability to attach a document (like with email) would be a huge plus.

Also not every employee works everyday so they would have to be able to get the messages the next day they work (just like email). Instant messaging won't be enough here. The messages need to be permanently available for future use.

Answer 1

'Openfire':

Openfire is a real time collaboration (RTC) server licensed under the Open Source GPL. It uses the only widely adopted open protocol for instant messaging, XMPP (also called Jabber). Openfire is incredibly easy to setup and administer, but offers rock-solid security and performance.

Openfire supports (as you can see here) "XEP-0013: Flexible Offline Message Retrieval" which is:

This specification defines an XMPP protocol extension for flexible, POP3-like handling of offline messages. The protocol enables a connecting client to retrieve its offline messages on login in a controlled fashion, without receiving a flood of messages. Messages can also be left on the server for later retrieval.

Answer 2

Setup your own Email-Server for the intranet. If your boss does not need any instant messanging features to allow inter-employee-communication AND you want to store the attachments and the messanges permanently, then this is your only real option, imho.

Answer 3

In Mircrosoft Office, there is an Office Communicator my company uses to provide instant messaging on their network. I believe it works in conjunction with an exchange server but am not entirely sure.

Answer 4

This has been done before so no need to reinvent the wheel. A quick Bing search turned up these results:

http://www.bing.com/search?q=enterprise+im&form=MSNH14&qs=n

And a Google search turned up these:

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=enterprise+im&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=Ch94UQLkkTPjvH4vwygSA17imAwAAAKoEBU_Q0JoS&fp=f1d213528c0ee2df

Answer 5

IRC might be a good solution for this. We're using it in our company (okay, agreed, we're 8 people). It's easily setup and can handle that amount of clients easily, additionally you can set room-topics, have private chats and broadcast messages to everyone on the network.

Edit: Okay, message storing is a little problem here...

Answer 6

Pidgin + bonjour

Answer 7

It's pretty low tech, but for short messages you can't beat net send from the command prompt.