Intranet Management Software Blog

Tomorrow is the start of a new financial year – and I wanted to start a thread of where we are, what we can look forward to and what the world is offering Claromentis as a company as we look into the future.

It is difficult to really think about what’s important amongst all of the projects we are involved in around the world, but it is an exercise that I think is worth going through at times like these.

We have engaged with some of the worlds largest companies - and some of the smallest and most passionate. We have worked with companies form California through to Australasia - including engagements in Europe, the Middle East, Russia and Australia.

We have accomplished all of this with no debt and I believe have been true to our values at all times.

Here are some highlights from my own perspective : hard to chose as they were :

• We have increased both sales and margins against all expectations in the current global economic situation.
• We are welcoming 4 times as many new clients per month as we were at this point last year.
• The world is moving away from vendor lock in platforms like .net and more and more looking for the commercially supported, open source leveraged platforms like Claromentis to deliver real value and innovation.
• We can look forward to all our plans for Claromentis 6.0 and leveraging the corporate intranet version of web 2.0 with genuine excitement and pride.
• We are starting to build the team we need and we are beginning to embrace the realities of virtual working as a relevant way of life for our staff.
• We are improving all of our processes and quality management to ensure our customers are increasingly pleased with our software, our services and our engagement models.

I would be interested in what the upcoming ( current in 30 seconds! ) financial year brings for each of us. What personal challenges are we facing – what excites us all in our work and what lesson we are learning along the way!

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With the Beta Programme well underway with clients, I thought it would be fun to look at the newest Project Management code - dealing with Resource Allocation Management.

I experimented with manual allocation of resources according to task skills - and I have to say that I was impressed with how easy it is to define tasks skills and allocate resources accordingly.

Prod-Project intranet project manager

With 5.6 Claromentis now supports WebDAV – including the automated preservation of version control – to provide drag and drop file management in parallel with the rich browser based visual interfaces of Claromentis. For those that haven’t used this protocol you can read about it here

Set Up

Setting it up is simple, here on my laptop using Vista Add a network location by right clicking the computer icon:

I will then be asked to provide the URL of the Claromentis system that I need to manage I will also need of course to provide my access credentials for the intranet : Right away the new drive is available to me.

It appears like any normal drive, a very familiar environment for the user.

We can directly compare this with the rich browser based experience of looking at exactly the same document folder using the Claromentis visual interface through the browser - as the screen shot below shows :

This of course is just the central part of the document management interface.

What are the Implications?

Users that don’t need a graphical interface can just work with drag and drop on their PCs IT departments or users themselves do need to set up the shortcut to the file system on their local PC – so a slight disadvantage over strict access anywhere using only a browser that the Claromentis VI provides.

Claromentis have made sure that adding later versions of files using drag and drop in WebDAV does indeed create a new version of the file in the Claromentis system.

Lets look at this : I navigate to >testing >001 folders in both systems : Here in the Claromentis rich interface

Lets look at the individual file “summary.doc”

Using the interface :

I can look at the properties of this file as normal : here is just a part of the screen :

Notice there is no version TAB at all, as there is only one version of this document in the version controlled library of the Claromentis system.

Now without touching this file in Claromentis I decide to just open it in windows using WebDAV. Word fires up just like in any local directory, to me it is a local file system.

I then edit it, and I just save it from MS Word as normal – in this case I added some content relating to Voltaire.

Refreshing the browser back on my Claromentis interface – and indeed – I now have two versions of this document!

More details

I can of course just create a shortcut now on my desktop that represents the local file system - expressed as a normal folder - for the version controlled document management system of Claromentis.

I can also just drag and drop any file into it :

and there it is :

And after refreshing the browser - the file is there as normal for all users in the normal visual interface.

To complete this story - lets say a normal user in the rich browser based visual interface now searches for “Voltaire” - you recall that was the content I added locally - then dragged that file into the WebDAV folder locally..

The file is there - adding it via WebDAV still invoked the full automatic searching of content in the normal Claromentis indexing system.

Conclusions

Claromentis has always provided a rich browser experience for the manipulation of documents using check in and our icons, or renew functionality.

There is now an alternative for certain types of users  - or even certain tasks – where the ability to just drag documents into a “local”  folder makes life a lot simpler!  The browser based Visual Interface is always available – users can select the best environment for the task at hand.

I am sure certain companies will find this extremely useful.

Resources-Technical document management, version control, WebDAV

Over the past few years there has been tremendous noise about the benefits of cloud computing, but in reality many businesses are still struggling with the idea.  From what I heard there are 3 main concerns:

Where is my data?

It’s a human nature that we still pretty much need physical contact. The idea that our data will be located among millions of others somewhere which we don’t know exactly is scary.  Some might still think our data is equivalent of piece of paper stored in unknown place with millions of other papers.

Security

We all heard the benefit that could computing in a managed infrastructure will guarantee security, from the latest patches of the OS up to cross-continental back-ups. Most organisations are still concern about security of cloud computing even though it is a safer than leaving it in your office and you find out the next day the office was flooded.

Change

One issue related to cloud computing is the concern of IT Downsizing. As more and more services related to IT become outsourced and centralized many IT jobs will become obsolete. Some says cloud computing will flourish in current economic situation but in the other hand businesses are facing difficult decisions.

Share your thoughts
Do you think cloud computing is suitable for your organisation? Share your thoughts and read more about claromentis model of software deployment.

Solutions cloud computing, development vision, intranet, intranet consultancy, software, technology, web 2.0

Claromentis is happy to announce that we have added a couple of new features to the InfoCapture application in 5.6.

1.    HTML field type: HTML field type can be used as a WYSIWYG editor, which helps a user to insert click-able links, allow text formatting, insert an click-able email address link within an InfoCapture form

2.    Codename: Codename is used to simplify the URL for users to list, add, view or edit issues in InfoCapture forms.

Example:  You have an Infocapture project to collect information about suppliers.  The project is called “Suppliers”, and the Codename is specified as “suppliers”.

The original URL that would be used to list all forms submitted in the “Suppliers” project is:

http://forms.claromentis.com/intranet/infocapture/issues.php?project_id_select=*id*

Replacing *id* with the ID of the “Suppliers” project.

This is too often a long a complicated URL for users and admins to remember.  This is also not particularly user friendly.

With the use of a Codename, an alternative (and more user friendly) URL is automatically created as:

http://forms.claromentis.com/forms/suppliers

This ensures that the end users are not confused or mislead by any URL that they are sent via email or linked to from other areas of the site.  The practicality of this is self explanatory!!

Products

Claromentis 6.0 is all about getting the best from web 2.0 and social networking, and moving it into the enterprise network through appropriate data visualization and the concept of “corporate communities”.

Claromentis Innovation Lab for 6.0 platform.

The concept of corporate ideas moving from initial expression seamlessly through collaboration to execution is also  fundamental – as are design philosophies that will provide the ultimate corporate 2.0 cross platform user experience. As well as many other features the platform includes walls, moods, i-phone support and URL tagging and rating. It is a platform designed for innovation.

We will be making available a lab for interested developers and designers to participate in this venture : here are some of the key areas that we will provide support for and encourage both the open source community and commercial developers to participate in:

•    developing intranet 2.0 components and widgets
•    developing methods of measuring user connectivity and interaction
•    designing data visualization techniques to express corporate web 2.0 interrelationships
•    providing alternate design concepts for all aspects of our code
•    interrogating the data volume to produce metrics for executives
•    individual expression in a corporate environment

Interested participants who are not developers or designers will also be welcome to interact with ourselves and the extended Claromentis community – either as consultants or providing core expertise on any aspect of facilitating innovation through applying web 2.0 techniques to corporate communities.

The lab will be available from May 1st 2009 – everyone interested is encouraged to contact Claromentis using info@ to ensure you can participate in this cutting edge venture.

We are really excited by the concept of the Claromentis Lab and the corporate community platform in general – and look forward to working with a wide range of talents to ensure this is a significant innovation platform applicable to a wide range of businesses around the world.

Home corporate community, innovation, web 2.0

We seem to have hit some round numbers.

We have been trading for 10 years, we now have around a million lines of source code and just this Sunday we reached the ten thousandth request in our customer support portal.

Good or Bad? - I think the first two are easy – trading for 10 years has given us an enormous amount of customers, lessons and perspectives – a million lines of core code is just what it takes to deliver a modern collaboration framework with the breadth of functionality of Claromentis.

I also am convinced that to have 10,000 conversations around our software with a very animated community is a hugely positive milestone.

Our challenge is to manage them all, allocate the appropriate resources and ensure that issues are resolved and enhancement requests analysed so that the intranet software moves on for the continued good of the user community.

What is interesting is just how many ’round numbers’ of technical staff do we need to accomplish this?

Services intranet software

My calendar view

Getting things done

Have you ever get into panic situation where your work is suddenly mounting, you feel worry that things may not get done, or you feel depressed because you know you are about to cause big disappointment for everyone?  Do you feel so much more positive as soon as you write things down on a piece of paper?  There is an old saying; if you share your problem things aren’t so bad as it sounds?

My job role

My role is an information architect (IA). I work daily with our business and technical consultants understanding client’s needs and their business problems. We’re working in a small team brainstorming debating ideas and deciding ‘the best approach’ on a particular issue for a particular client. In the back-end I have a trio: developer, designer and application tester ready to ‘get-on’ with it.

Challenging situation

Recently it has become quite a challenging situation. Amount of work shows no sign of slowing down; at the same time my trio is no longer solid with the departure of one of our team member.  Unfortunately I have to juggle with numerous tasks which require multiple skills.

Claromentis Shared Calendar

One tool which has helped me to get through this (believe it or not) is Claromentis Shared Calendar. We’ve been using Claromentis shared calendar in our Intranet system as our simple team to-do list. Each of us created a calendar, pick a particular colour and we simply share them. I have permission to create events on each calendar which I am using it to set tasks for my team.

We can easily see each other calendar or multiple calendars in one view. A quick access to particular combination can be done with one click URL allowing even quicker access. It solves classic problem knowing who is doing what and when.  Automatic notification is sent to appropriate person when an event is moved or changed which eliminates the need sending separate email around. I can quickly review my team’s workload.

Make sure things are scheduled

The idea is simply to make sure things are scheduled, it only takes me one click to assign task, the same way writing things down on a piece of paper. You can see at glance when things should be done or when you need to chase them. Shared calendar allows me to spread tasks into certain days instead of one big pile long list. A mountain of tasks suddenly becomes more realistic and achievable.

It has become our second nature just to set a task, pick a day when we can do it and you get things done easily. Sometime the best tool is the simplest one, you know it is working well when you don’t even realise it.

Products Claromentis, intranets, online collaboration, Social Networking

Recently we have been very involved in of course our plans for Claromentis 6.0 and all that will involve in terms of bringing web 2.0 into the corporate communication platform. This is really exciting.

At the same time we are being asked to design social networking platforms for companies, and this is really causing me to question the level of thought that the average UK company puts into these ventures from a business perspective.

Given the fact that these companies are basically SMEs and so are far from owning a global brand, they are normally not concerned with monitoring brands across social networks, which of course has significant value once you have a brand to protect and indeed leverage.

Instead what our SME clients are looking to do it to take advantage of a world that frankly, in my opinion, they don’t understand. They imagine that this is some low cost of entry platform to get themselves a significant audience to interact with.

The amazing thing is that it is!

But the approach needs to be very different from simply finding a way to interact with some massive and totally unrelated set of people on Facebook – or anywhere else.

Disconnected networks

So often the discussion starts with design, and how to make sure that people on “My new social network” will be able to easily find their previous friends from some “Other massive unconnected community” they belong to. We get a bunch of deign sketches, and minimal thought about the business and the potential consumers we might be able to reach.

In my view, and I am glad to say many others, “the way for a business to convert social networking into measurable revenue is to use the social networking approach to connect the business value of that company with unserved consumer needs”.

This means that significant effort for an average SME needs to go into determining exactly what the business value is that is appropriate for this medium, and how they can connect and interact with potential new consumers who share those values, but who are presently are either not customers or whose purchasing patterns can be influenced in a positive way.

Some of the people they reach in this new medium need to be empowered to become ambassadors through their genuine alignment with the brand – and so create momentum behind the network. They will be able to become innovators by interacting with the brand to create new value – or to extend the reach to geographies or verticals that the company previously was prevented from leveraging. That’s exciting.

What these new people will absolutely not be is some arbitrary ‘friend’ that technology makes it easy to log into something in which they have absolutely no interest at all.

Believe it or not they will just leave.

Solutions Social Networking

Inspirational talks from Don Norman found on TED. There are three ways in good design which makes people happy. Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about  our core values Design, Clarity, Risk Management & Fun to work with, which are going to be the main focus for the future big release of Claromentis.

Services core values, Design, user interface