Intranet Management Software Blog

We’ve been working on this feature for several weeks and now I am delighted to reveal what is “Discuss” to you all.

Discuss is chat feature built right in the Claromentis Intranet Manager. There is no additional configuration or chat client install like Yahoo, or MSN, it just works straight on your browser.

Simply click discuss bar to initiate Discuss and then choose the person you wish to have a chat with. You can hide the discuss window if you want to carry on working.

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Great to review and use the early releases of Discuss over the last few days.

Over the coming weeks we will be posting a series of blogs about this innovative intranet chat application to promote the ability for users to fire up real time 1 to 1 or conference chats with anyone online in the corporate intranet.

We have the first client review shortly and that is a great milestone - but both in its own right and as a platform for the upcoming major Innovate Application these are certainly exciting times!

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We now support Flash Videos directly in Intranet Content Managed publish pages.

The player is built-in.

This is available with the current build of 5.7

Prod-Content content management, flash, flv

Claromentis has been a fully localizable and multi-language system for a while now, but continuing my posts about incremental features in 5.6.5 it is great to see that the intranet news system, with all the channels and tagging features - is now also completely multi-lingual.

Multi Language Intranet News

In exactly the same way as the CMS system works in Claromentis, the identical URL will detect the users preferred language and if the news exists in that language display it for the user.

If news exists in more than one language the user can switch between them using the automatically generated flags.

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Business Cases, Collaboration Platforms and Innovation.

A  recent very good Cisco post on the next generation collaborative enterprise mentioned - amongst a great deal of interesting thoughts  on collaboration platforms and how they will change the way companies work - that ‘Priorities are set by clusters of experts that make decisions’. A comment on the post asked then asked the perfectly reasonable question : “how does the framework ensure these priorities are in line with the business goals?”

We getting similar thoughts from our customers, as we begin to show Innovate, the Claromentis 6.0 Innovation application. This relates to a previous post here where we were discussing the implications of collaboration platforms directly conflicting with the discipline of more controlled communication channels.

It seems to me that one possible way these different business structures can coexist is based on the difference between fostering creativity and enabling innovation. Or as Claromentis has described it the  ‘shout, collaborate, execute’ journey.

Creativity and Innovation are two very different things, and sometimes it seems to me that confusion in discussing the impact of Corporate Social Networking results from not being clear about which of these is actually being discussed.

In the well known quote from Theodore Levitt “Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.”

In essence creativity uses divergent thinking to create ideas that then feed into innovation. Innovation is the implementation of those ideas – putting them into action.

Collaboration platforms can really help to foster creativity by putting like minded people from different perspectives or locations in touch and so break down silos both internally and externally.

However when it comes to taking those creative ideas and executing to produce innovation – in a corporate space this will  in general terms require expenditure. Depending on the maturity of the company and the scale of the projects – these will generally need business cases – and these always set out the rational for where the project will generate value within a more traditional and documented vision of the business objectives.

So it seems to me that the next generation enterprise will be able to impose some control not by constraining the way collaboration platforms are used to innovate – but by managing the process that selects which ideas these platforms generate are turned into real projects.

The ideas and decisions made within fast moving collaboration platforms can be prioritised and set within more formal and longer term management goals – and indeed over time help to change these goals - by the continued discipline of business cases being required in practical terms to actually execute on an idea – to move from collaboration to the very much harder task of innovation.

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So I work for Claromentis and every so often I search in Google for that term.

To be honest this has been going on for a decade. Then this evening I get this :

The very top of the organic listing is dedicated to recent tweets. So is this just me? I had no idea this was about to arrive on the organic SEO scene.. and no I am not logged in!

Any comments?

Prod-Intranet

Image gallery is a popular application within the Claromentis Intranet product suite. There have been a number of recent improvements at the requests of clients, the most recent Intranet Manager build in 5.6.5 includes slide show functionality.

Previously images were just available in a number of images per page, and users navigated from page to page. They could review images directly or add to a light box,  to collections or a download cart as required.

Image Commenting

While this is acceptable in many use cases, the 5.6.5 release includes both a slide show function – allowing users to navigate rapidly within an album – and also adds commenting on images.

A good example of incremental usability and functionality improvements that we continue to make – often at client request as well as our own vision for where applications need to be. Intranet media management is an important part of the  deployment of our software for many clients, and we will continue to improve this application.

In the next Blog I will review more incremental improvements in the 5.6.5 monthly build - the ability to comment anonymously on news, and having configurable RSS feeds for news channels that opened up the possibility of including permissioned news into RSS feeds where required.

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I want to focus a few blogs on the recent release of 5.6.5 – looking at some functionality that came with this monthly build, which will be fully available at the end of January with the production release of Claromentis 5.7

As the first of these today we are looking at the in browser cropping for images with Claromentis.

This functionality enhances the use of images in both News and People Profile. Previously any editing of images had to be done locally before selecting the image for use in these applications.

Intranet News Image Cropping

In both cases the user can now directly crop the image in the browser, before confirming the image for use.

Screen shots above show this is use for both the news application and the people profile.

While these images focus on News and People, the same cropping functionality is available wherever inner file images are used - in any application, including bespoke work developed using the APIs.

A good example of incremental increase in intranet functionality that helps users by making things easier to accomplish, with no dependency on other software or skill sets.

The next blog will look at the image sideshow which is also available in Claromentis 5.6.5

Prod-Intranet images, intranet software

With the growing trend to offer videos as intranet content, especially noticeable recently for some of our manufacturing clients who have learnt that showing a trained engineer performing a task is a great way to train new staff in certain procedures – the issue of managing such videos within the intranet is becoming a hot topic.

Clearly we can enable the FCK editor to embed a pre-prepared flv ( Flash video file ).

However with the many recent enhancements in the intranet image management application of Claromentis, “Image Gallery” - which manages collections of images and allows processing on download to appropriate file sizes - we are now considering enhancing this application  to provide a youtube like environment natively within the corporate intranet.

We would do this by embedding a video processing unit within the system, so a video originating from anywhere ( Camcorder, iPhone, normal mobiles for example ) can be uploaded directly – and the system will convert and compress it to flv – and allow the user to set appropriate meta data as required.

These converted videos will of course be hosted within the intranet and its security systems – and available for embedding on publish pages in exactly the same way as images are now.

This is a reasonably significant task and before we add it the roadmap does anyone have any comments on how useful this would be?

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During early phases of intranet deployment, we are frequently asked by our clients “what do I need to prepare or plan in advance to guarantee a successful of intranet deployment project”.

In our opinion, an intranet project is all about dialog. It’s a dialog between ‘us’ the software vendor with our expertise and know-how and ‘you’ who know the most about your business or organisation.

Step1. Setup a Goal

The first step is determining the goals of your Intranet project. Why do you want an intranet? Some typical reasons:

• Improving and providing a communication and collaboration tool.
• Our existing Intranet is old and dysfunctional.
• Distribute corporate news (electronic newsletter)
• Providing self service staff contact details which are always up-to-date
• Make our company policies and procedures available online
• Sharing documents online instead of using shared drives
• Enabling staff to work from home
• Better searching and easier way finding key documents

Step2. Define the scope & audience

Have you got an answer for these questions?

• Is it just an Intranet for staff or it is also an extranet for partners and contractors?
• Do you want to allow your staff access to the intranet even when they’re at home or client’s site?
• How about mobile access?
• Have you asked representative from each department on what they want to see or get on the Intranet?
• How people currently finding information, which you think should be on the intranet? What are their common pains?
• Would you like to store sensitive information on the Intranet such as payroll ?
• What about chat and commenting? How open is your company culture?

Step 3. Build a SiteMap

Build a sitemap, using your favorite tools such as Visio or simply hand drawn, create draft of Intranet sitemap, typically the main branch are represented by each department, you can see various examples below:

Example Sitemap with colour coded permission

Example of Intranet Site Map using colour to identify launch phase

Step 4. What are key application do you want to use?

This step is simply determining what are the main application do you want to use on the Intranet, Claromentis provide these following applications,  you can simply choose which one to use.

News and Blog– Share and distribute company news and blog
Documents – Document collaboration with version control
Publish – Page creator, a content management system
People – Self service personnel database
Calendar – Shared company calendar
Image Gallery – Corporate image database
Bookshelf – Online Policies & Procedures
Policy Manager – Managing lifecycle of the company policies
Holiday planner – manage corporate holiday and absence
Room booking – book a meeting room and office facilities
InfoCapture – Electronic e-forms builder and workflows
Project – Manage project online
CRM – Opportunity Management

Outside these applications we built many other bespoke applications to suit your need

Step 5. Understanding Permissions

Permission Group & Role

A scalable intranet should have a strong permission system, it also helps to distribute information easily. For example you may want to have area where only people in your department can produce or edit its content while everyone else simply just view.

This can be done easily by setting up permission, ie : Roles, Group and Sub-Groups.

To make our job easier when configuring your system, have you got a Company org-chart available?

Step 6. Create Homepage Wireframe

As you know the homepage is the first page everyone is going to see, it’s worth the extra effort to design this carefully after all it is a gateway to all other content within the Intranet. Look at several examples for inspiration and decide what you want to see on the homepage, my advice is to keep it clean and simple.

UBS Intranet homepage wireframe

Colchester NHS Intranet wireframe

Step 7. Budget & Resources

How many users will be using the Intranet? Many Intranet software vendors  price their products by number of users.

Hardware, who is going to provide you with the hardware?  If you don’t have any we’re happy to source this for you or you can take the SaaS model.

Have you got an internal project team?  Usually we recommend a project sponsor, an internal project manager as the main contact, a technical contact, and a rep from marketing or communication as a minimum team - smaller companies might have fewer people involved.

Step 8. Timeline

Plan your project timeline carefully.  Each company is different - an Intranet can be deployed from 2 weeks up to a year, these are some key points worth considering which may cause delays:

• Sourcing hardware
• Getting access through your office network
• Finalising design
• Updating user list
• Content population
• Content migration.

Like everything else in life, execution is quick, preparation is the key so do your homework!

Step 9. Future plans (keep evolving!)

I’ve seen many intranet projects loose momentum after the initial launch phase. A successful intranet is something that grows over time, start simple and add new features gradually. Learn from  user feedback and implement user requests wherever feasible.

Small improvements can make a huge different - it’s like the breath of fresh air. Keep the original team and meet regularly for project reviews and brainstorming of new ideas.

Here are some ideas to think about once you have your initila intranet.

• Is there any business processes which can be done electronically?
• Such as overtime request, time cards, new hire.
• Is there a database, which is currently in Excel, and you think it will be much better if it is an online application?
• Any existing system, which can be better integrated with the Intranet?
• Thinking of deploying corporate micro-blogging? Online videos?

Step 10. Do it now!

This final step is the most important of all. You can make all the planning you need but without execution it is still a plan. Get the ball rolling now, gather your team, email them now, start researching or simply drop us a line to discuss your requirement, or book an online demo!

Good luck with your Intranet project!

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