Joomla! is a free and open source content management system used to publish web content. Included features are page caching, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, a search function, and support for language internationalization.
N/A
Orchard Harvest LIMS
Score 6.0 out of 10
N/A
Orchard Software in Indiana offers Orchard Harvest LIMS, a laboratory information management system dedicated to providing operational support and streamlining with rules-based decisioning, data analytics and business intelligence, and clear interfaces.
It seems with the release of Joomla! 4 that the weak areas have all been covered. Its always been good for the mid-level small to large business, the blogging was WP, and the large-scale enterprise was probably bespoke. But the new interface is so simple it seems pointless using WP when Joomla! is as easy and can then grow as big as you like. The Workflows feature which allows you to set up work pipelines easily is going to be a boom to any larger enterprise sites. Couples with the new API which I got to see at one of their user groups, is amazing. They were creating articles on one site then another site was taking the feed directly for just certain categories. Really blows your mind what you could do with that and the new workflows.
Harvest is well suited in a lab or a reference lab of about any size. You can customize the workflow with filters and permissions to ensure that the right people have the right abilities when they need them. I would say that it is not as great for locations that have multiple remote locations without great internet. Because of the underlying technologies, latency between client and server can cause havoc.
We use Joomla to build our websites and web applications because of its incredible intuitiveness and tools to make everything more manageable.
Its working environment is quite comfortable for my development team, and its web design resources significantly speed up our work when carrying out web development projects.
It allows you to use blocks to create and visually manage websites and divide them into different categories without programming knowledge.
Because Joomla's user community is smaller than WP, it lacks as many choices from 3rd party developers, meaning it can be a little more difficult to find the right extension for what you need to accomplish
Along the same vein, most of the best 3rd-party software for Joomla! is paid
Simple features such as Add to Menu and Cache cleaners should be adopted as part of the Joomla! core, though they are available as extensions
Joomla! could use a simpler and easier URL rewriting process
User Interface - The software is like 25 years old, and it feels like it. They have added some buttons and links to try to make it easier, but it's not as flashy as the SaaS applications that are being built these days. It feels like there isn't a lot of time spent on refining the features, just adding more to it.
Archaic Architecture - The application use 4D for the database. This means that you can't use SQL for queries, latency is a huge issue and there isn't a hosted option. You have to have your own in-house server to run the server application.
Client is an Application - We have workstations dedicated to managing the interfaces. These workstations have to run the application as a program and can not run them as a service. This means that if you want to apply Windows updates it required manually closing and re-launching the application.
Data Mining - There are some basic reports, but they do not really allow you to build complex reports about the patients or work being performed.
I gave it a rating of 10 because I just love how Joomla! works, how it is set up and how it handles many users. Also it is very fast, and there is no overload on the MySQL database or servers ever.
Joomla! 3.x is easily installed either manually or via a script provided by your host. It contains most of the tools needed to begin creating websites right from the start. Those features that it doesn't have are easily installed via links and buttons from the thousands of extensions available in the community
Today's Modern Joomla performs very well and is robust and durable. The pages load faster than they ever did in the past and Modern Joomla's integration into other software or systems has become seamless. Modern Joomla sites will last long and will stay running forever.
Between the core Joomla developers who are excellent at answering questions and providing support, you have a whole community of developers who work with Joomla and are happy to help fellow developers out answering questions and supporting the Joomla project. Out of the many communities I am involved in for open-source software, Joomla's community is by far the best.
Joomla has gone through tremendous growing pains. It is now better than ever. But before, when it was going from 1.5-2.5, the templates and plugins would break over and over again. If you don't understand what Joomla was trying to do back then, you might have a bad attitude toward it. Today, those pains are over and things don't break like they used to during that time period.
We tested other platforms like WordPress, Magento and some local CMS. But Joomla offered us better resources for generating content. Joomla is a CMS suitable for many types of projects, especially if you have several people editing content at the same time. It allows you to maintain visual standardization and offers many options for working with images. With its ability to control access to different articles, categories or even different components, it is a great tool, even if they are managed by different people.
We were looking into changing to another LIS but they failed to get things done and we ended up staying with Orchard. We are now in the process of moving everything to Sequoia since we have grown so much as a lab. I don't have any other experience with another LIS to compare to.
The support provided by Orchard Software for Harvest allows me to not have to worry as much about the system. I can grant them access to my system and trust them to work on the issue while I work on other issues.
The automation saves a lot of time for those in the lab. There have been a few times that the lab has been down for a couple of hours and having to catch up and enter the results from the instruments manually can take the rest of the day.
