Configuration

After installing Open Intranet, you can customize it for your organization. This page covers the most common configuration tasks.

Site information

Update your site name, email address, and slogan in the administration panel:

1. Log in as administrator.
2. Navigate to Configuration > System > Basic site settings (/admin/config/system/site-information).
3. Update:
   • Site name — displayed in the header and browser tab
   • Site email — used as the “From” address for outgoing emails
   • Slogan — optional tagline shown in the header area
   • Front page — the default is /news-homepage (the news feed); change this if you want a different landing page

User management

User registration

By default, only administrators can create user accounts (admin_only registration). To change this:

1. Go to Configuration > People > Account settings (/admin/config/people/accounts).
2. Under Registration and cancellation, choose:
   • Administrators only (default) — admin must create each account
   • Visitors — anyone can register (useful for open intranets)
   • Visitors, but administrator approval is required — users register but need admin approval

Adding users

To manually add users:

1. Go to People (/admin/people).
2. Click Add user.
3. Fill in the username, email, password, and assign roles.

Roles

Open Intranet comes with these roles out of the box:

Role	Permissions
Authenticated user	View content, comment, use reactions, bookmark, search, view documents, and access the employee directory
Content Editor	Create, edit, and delete content (news, events, KB pages, basic pages), manage media, and manage taxonomy
Administrator	Full access to all configuration, content, users, and modules

Optional recipes may add additional roles (see Optional features below).

Email configuration

Open Intranet uses Drupal’s mail system. For a production deployment, configure an SMTP server:

1. Install an SMTP module (e.g. SMTP Authentication Support↗ or Symfony Mailer↗) via Composer:

   ddev composer require drupal/smtp
   ddev drush en smtp -y

2. Navigate to Configuration > System > SMTP Authentication Support and enter your mail server settings.

Without SMTP configuration, the site uses PHP’s built-in mail() function, which may not work reliably on all hosting environments.

Optional features

Open Intranet ships with optional features packaged as Drupal recipes. Each recipe adds a complete feature — content types, views, permissions, and sample content — in a single command.

Applying a recipe

ddev drush recipe:apply recipes/<recipe_name>

After applying a recipe, clear the cache:

ddev drush cache:rebuild

Available recipes

Recipe	Command	What it adds
Courses	recipes/openintranet_courses	Learning management with courses, lessons, enrollment tracking, and progress indicators
FAQ	recipes/openintranet_faq	Frequently Asked Questions content type with a categorized listing page
Ideas	recipes/openintranet_ideas	Idea submission and voting system — employees can propose ideas and vote on them
Inventory	recipes/openintranet_inventory	Asset and inventory tracking with items, locations, and assignments
Kanban Board	recipes/openintranet_kanban	Kanban-style task board for visual project management (experimental)
Kudos	recipes/openintranet_kudos	Peer recognition system — send kudos to colleagues
Room Booking	recipes/openintranet_rmb	Room and resource booking with a calendar view; adds a Room Manager role
SSO: Keycloak	recipes/openintranet_sso_keycloak	Single Sign-On via Keycloak using OpenID Connect
Consultation Process	recipes/consultation_process	Structured consultation workflow with ECA automation; adds reviewer roles
Demo Content	recipes/default_content	Sample content (news, events, KB pages, users, groups) for evaluation and testing

Tip

You can apply multiple recipes. They are additive and do not conflict with each other.

Single Sign-On (SSO)

To integrate with your organization’s identity provider (IdP), apply the Keycloak SSO recipe:

ddev drush recipe:apply recipes/openintranet_sso_keycloak
ddev drush cache:rebuild

Then configure the OpenID Connect settings:

1. Go to Configuration > People > OpenID Connect (/admin/config/people/openid-connect).
2. Enable the Keycloak provider.
3. Enter your Keycloak server details:
   • Client ID
   • Client secret
   • Keycloak base URL
   • Realm
4. Save and test the login flow.

Note

The SSO recipe is pre-configured for Keycloak, but the underlying OpenID Connect module↗ supports other providers (Azure AD, Google, Okta, etc.) with additional configuration.

Theme customization

Open Intranet uses a Bootstrap Barrio subtheme with SCSS. The starter theme is located in web/themes/custom/openintranet_theme/.

To customize the look and feel:

1. Edit SCSS files in the theme’s scss/ directory.
2. Compile with the included Gulp setup:

   cd web/themes/custom/openintranet_theme
   npm install
   npx gulp

3. Adjust theme settings at Appearance > Open Intranet Theme > Settings.

Key customization options:

• Logo — upload your company logo via the theme settings page
• Favicon — replace the default favicon
• Colors — edit SCSS variables in scss/_variables.scss
• Layout — Bootstrap Barrio supports various layout options (sidebar position, container width)

Search configuration

Open Intranet uses Search API with a database backend. Search is ready to use out of the box, but you may want to adjust it:

1. Go to Configuration > Search and metadata > Search API (/admin/config/search/search-api).
2. The default index covers all major content types.
3. To reindex content manually:

   ddev drush search-api:index

For large installations, consider replacing the database backend with Solr↗ for better performance.

Cron and scheduled tasks

Drupal relies on cron for background tasks (search indexing, email sending, cache cleanup). Configure cron to run regularly:

Using DDEV (local development)

DDEV includes a cron add-on. To enable it:

ddev get ddev/ddev-cron
ddev restart

Using system cron (production)

Add a cron job that runs every 15 minutes:

*/15 * * * * cd /path/to/openintranet && vendor/bin/drush cron

Manual cron run

ddev drush cron

Backups

Open Intranet includes the Backup and Migrate module. Configure regular backups at Administration > Configuration > Development > Backup and Migrate (/admin/config/development/backup_migrate).

For DDEV-based environments, you can also use:

ddev export-db --file=backup.sql.gz

Performance (production)

For production deployments, enable Drupal’s built-in caching:

1. Go to Configuration > Development > Performance (/admin/config/development/performance).
2. Enable Page caching and set a max-age (e.g. 3600 seconds).
3. Enable CSS and JavaScript aggregation.

Next steps

• User Guide — learn how to use the intranet features
• Creating Content — how to create news, events, and knowledge base pages