Intranet Management Software Blog

I come across an issue regularly when creating Infocapture (Process Manager) projects…

How to name the statuses appropriately?

I’ve so far concluded the following;

It depends on the project that you are creating

• How complex is the project
• How critical is the process that the project will control

It depends on the audience of the project and who will be interacting with the project

• Users with limited technical understanding or IT competence may require very simple status titles to ensure that they are not confused
• More technically competent users may be confused by a very simple status naming convention

It depends on the workflow within the project

• If the work flow is very simple, you are likely to  have statuses that reflect this.
• If the work flow is complex (perhaps even requiring an approval process), your statuses will be used to assist in the implementation of this.

Here is an example I’ve just run into…

The first status of almost every project is something along the lines of…

• New
• Submitted
• Received

All of those first status titles tells the users a single value of where the issue/ticket is at… but it’s static… it doesn’t say what it’s awaiting for…

What does “New” mean…other than it’s new… Who’’s attention is it pending?  Is it pending attention at all?  Does it require approval?  If so, by who??

Sure, we can send notifications to the person it’s pending some attention from, but what about everyone else who see’s this… what does it mean to everyone else?

In an attempt to provide clarity on this to all users, I tend to create statuses with a dual title…

• New - Pending IT
• Submitted - Awaiting Approval
• Received - Being Processed by IT

However, in doing so, I think it’s easy to potentially get carried away and end up with a status such as…

• New - Pending further information from IT before being approved and sent to HR

My solution - A compromise…

1. Chose clear and meaningful statuses that are targeted to the audiences that will be involved in the project.  “Dual statuses” help achieve this… (see examples above)
2. Try not to define static statuses such as “New” or “Approved” - These are only likely to mean something to a percentage of the overall audience.
3. Use the description fields within the form to describe the work flow and process to all users.
4. Be clear in your notifications to users about what they should be doing in order to get the ticket moved forward

I would be interested in hearing alternative opinions and approaches…

Prod-Process e-forms, infocapture, processes, statuses

Having involved with many projects in various scales, I can see that in general there are 3 types of projects:

1.  A project with no vision

A project with no vision is a bit like life without a purpose. The project exists for the sake of having the project itself. It is almost destined to be doomed even with enough resources to make it happen. There are too many IT projects failures, many of which are due to this problem. Of course no one wants to admit there is no vision, of course they can pretend they have a vision or basically borrow one from someone else - but normally they are just too abstract and meaningless.

2.    Project with vision but no execution

Good, now we are one step closer. We have clear vision for the project but the problem is we don’t know how to execute it. Having a vision without plan and execution is just like having a good idea with no outcomes.
We know how hard it is to execute good idea, and a good idea remains just a good idea until it has been executed.

3. Project with vision and execution

Right, I think we nailed it this time; we’ve got the clear vision and know exactly what needs to be done to execute it.  As we all know having a clear plan and the right resources to execute it is a great recipe to a successful project.

At the end of the day the outcome of successful project heavily depends on execution and control.  We all know things aren’t work according to the plan. Determination, passion and continuous control is perhaps worth more than the vision itself in the real world. The Japanese called this “Kaizen” (Continuous Improvement).

Services development vision, internal customer communications, intranet project manager

Deploying an intranet within organisation can be a complex project. The fact is that a single system has to be created to cater for requirements from individuals with different needs and objectives.

During the Intranet project implementation we often have brainstorming session with representatives from each department and we ask them what is an ideal intranet according to them if they can ignore others and only focus on what they want to see and get from the system.

Here are some interesting examples of intranet design according to their brief.

Executives

Business performance and KPI is something that Directors and executives have inside their head all the time. This type of busy folks don’t have enough time to drill down the detail, they simply want to see everything at glance without hassle.

Designer/Marketing

The look and feel is something that this type of audience cares the most. Sometime they are a bit too creative for their own sake, ignoring the main purpose of the site.

Legal & HR

Distributing information efficiently, securely and compliant is more important than everything else. This is an example of intranet design according to them.

FootNote:

Claromentis supports multiple visual interfaces, enabling the creation of completely different intranet experiences according to the type of user. In most cases we always ended up with a compromise, not the extremes like the examples above.

Home Design, humor, user interface

Some time ago content management system controlled pages in Claromentis, like many CMS systems, used to be largely flat. You created content, you built links to other version controlled information – for example in documents within the document management system – and you tried to make sure that over time the page stayed fresh and helpful to users - and of course that the links didn’t get broken because someone deleted the document without telling you.

With good templates they were still effective – but they were, I think,  kind of flat.

I just want to outline some of the CMS changes in the post 5.5 Claromentis platform that make content managed pages much more multi-dimensional.

They have made a real difference not just to our clients but also our own intranet so I am going to use that as an example:

Smart Objects

Smart objects take some other part of Claromentis – the document management system for example – and produce a dynamic permission based view of it from within the content managed page.

So for example on our own sales page we produce a view of document folders- sales collateral and information for our partners. These are truly dynamic views – the objects are seen through the visitors eyes and so look different according to your permissions in the DMS – no links are needed, nothing is static.

Components

These can be included on templates to include equally dynamic views of a business process that is set up and configured using Process Manager.

So on our sale departmental home page there is a real time view of people accessing our demo site, and we can dynamically click on any of these sales leads to automatically, for example, create a company Opportunity and contact record in our sales manager CRM system.

We can also of course include permission sensitive menus within the template for such a departmental home page - again a dynamically changing set of resources that makes perfect sense for that department and reacts according to the permissions of the user.

When we describe these changes they are probably hard to imagine, but the difference in the freshness and deep functionality that can now be presented using CMS is absolutely massive.

Prod-Content content management, intranet software

Mike shared an interesting comment with me today. He was asked the question “how do I change my intranet notifications settings to avoid pop-ups?”

His response was effectively to try to determine  “what kind of user are you?”

By which he just meant, there are several answers to this, and I need to know what you actually mean by the question, and your own experience and training, to give you the most appropriate answer. Such a simple question but in fact in Claromentis there are several completely different ways to do this:

1. As a normal user, I can just go to “My settings” and select ‘email’ rather than     pop  ups, from now on Claromentis will send all of my notifications to email.
2. As an intranet interface designer, I can just create a child interface that I can allocate to whichever users I wish – by group, role, individuals or any combination – so they can never change their notifications settings from anything else but emails in the first place.
3. As a server administrator, I can change a config file setting from a pop up to a floating DIV within the page :

   $cfg_allow_background_IM_check = 2;

For anyone interested this is explained on our Intranet WIKI

This is of course such a simple question about a very small piece of intranet functionality. Imagine the range of answers to a question like “How can I effectively distribute HR information to multiple offices where policies are different..”

Home, Services ease of use

It may seem counter intuitive but I have been wondering recently if choosing to deploy an intranet via software as a service might sometimes decrease the realized ROI.

At Claromentis we offer both purchase of a perpetual lease for our software solutions, and also deployment through software as a service. We have done so now for many years.

While SaaS is very attractive for many companies, especially the SME sector, it is very clear that after 2-3 years the companies have paid the same as if they purchased the software, but own nothing and are still facing the same monthly payments going forwards. This is completely acceptable as a financial solution – flexibility and the lack of Capex requirements are valued highly, and for understandable reasons.

My reason for this post is that I have noticed a tendency in SaaS intranet deployments for the project initiation to be taken less seriously. Not always but sometimes.

It is as if the fact that the project is not requiring material investment to get started means that sponsors and stakeholders do not think so carefully of where the value lies and are more inclined to just go with the project flow without questioning every decision to ensure they are correct for the business.

The net result of less well thought out deployments is usually less value.

The flip side is that in the early phases of an intranet project post launch, we might see more willingness to make changes and learn from experiences, as the initial decisions are made with less commitment? This of course could be a positive aspect of SaaS deployment.

I would be interested to hear of any experiences from the intranet community.

Home intranet software

One of the greatest visionaries was Leonardo Da Vinci, but what has always impressed me about so many of his ideas was that he spent an enormous amount of time and energy trying to work out how they could actually be implemented. During this process he often created multiple and of course compellingly beautiful sketches and models - even though at the time sometimes the appropriate technology to underpin his remarkable ideas did not yet exist.

Sometimes I think we have a lot to learn from this approach - working out what the intranet is for, how it is going to accomplish that and then adding great design as an integral part of the work in progress. It is very tempting to concentrate on design at the beginning, and then ask an intranet vendor like Claromentis to make the design work. In my view this approach has two possible disadvantages:

1. You might miss out some relevant functionality that can make a real difference, because the designers were not intranet specialists and so were not familiar with available features or strong in previous intranet project experience.

2. It is focusing on design and leaving out the details of how it might work - it is often precisely in these details that not only possible problems but also additional value lie.

In my view the intranet and collaboration vision should be about

1.    what the system is for
2.    how it is going to change the organization
3.    how it is going to increase innovation.

And it should absolutely include how we are actually going to get this done, as part of developing the vision itself.

Leonardo tried to the best of his ability to work the details out way in advance, even though the world was far from ready for some of his ideas. Just one example, in 1502 he designed a bridge for a project near Constantinople, 300 years before the basic engineering principals required to build it were accepted.  In 2001 the bridge was finally built, in Norway – 500 years after the drawing was made. You can read about it here.

Home intranets

I was at a meeting today with some key staff from one of the UKs largest companies, kicking off the deployment of Claromentis for the holding company.

The deployment is for 10-20,000 staff, and during the meeting the CIO made an interesting side comment about smaller collaboration systems, saying “who needs an intranet when you only have 200 users – you can just shout”.

This is something we have often discussed internally as very small companies deploy intranets and collaboration software – in fact the smallest Claromentis license is for just 25 users – at which level you would think you wouldn’t even need to raise your voice.

But of course some very small companies in terms of staff numbers – such as consultancy practices we have worked with – might have onsite and global staff in almost as many locations as they have people – as teams are deployed to various client offices to provide professional services. These individuals, by the nature of their job, absolutely do need secure web based access to version controlled best practice guidelines, white papers, templates and collateral from the company intranet.

Using out of date information can adversely impact their ability to provide advice that represents the current view of their organization – and conversely not being able to write results back to the intranet will constrain the growth in IP of the company as consultants gain expertise in their relevant sectors. So in these, and many other similar cases, intranets for very small companies become very meaningful and material to the company’s ability to deliver results.

As we have engaged with companies to provide social networking portals we have of course come across the theoretical limit of Dunbar’s number – the supposedly cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain a meaningful and stable social relationship.

These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person. A commonly referenced limit for Dunbar’s number is 150.

On that basis maybe the CIO today had it just about right – in the hopefully unlikely event that you have no other friends outside work then once you get over a couple of hundred staff you absolutely do need some technical help to remember who they all are, how they relate to each other and what they all do.

Standing by the water cooler and shouting is officially no longer an option.

Home, framework-bus intranet, SME

As one of the greatest socialites the world has ever seen Oscar Wilde once said that “there is only one thing worse than being talked about – and that is not being talked about”.

A tidy few years later Seth Godin said you should turn a sales funnel upside down, and create instead a megaphone for people to talk about you – eventually creating sales people from customers.

Since then a lot of sites and online techniques have sprung up or evolved to help us do just that.

The modern world is now full of communication channels and collaboration software that promise a plethora of networked interactions. The basic idea is that this should allow some kind of sense and wisdom to eventually float to the top, much to the satisfaction of the mere mortal looking for useful stuff.

New techniques have become verbs, verbs have become absorbed into the daily vernacular of the nimble fingered - and within just a few years new activities have become so fundamental to peoples lives that not understanding that you can “create an ecosystem out of tweeting about your blogs” now marks you down as some kind of a luddite – even though Twitter was only established in 2006.

However Seth Godin also said that “functionality is the new marketing”  [ source : ‘small is the new big’ ] which I personally took to mean that you do actually need a great something or other to create genuine waves to get  you talked about. And that’s what I personally find a little  frustrating about some of the current ways to network and promote your stuff. They basically are often empty of innovation, and seem to be trying their best to enable people who have nothing to say to be talked about.

It seems as soon as the world finds a way to enable great functionality to float to the top for you and I to find easily – someone else will hire a bunch of cheats to get their stuff there instead of yours. “Rank it by incoming links?” – pay people to create incoming links. “Build great networks?” – form sites where all sense of effort and value based networking is lost and instead allow people to spam everyone all over again.

It takes a huge amount of effort and skill to actually create something that really is functional enough that it should be shouted about. People who do that will be hard working, creative, often burnt out and generally fascinating – and they probably wont have time to nurture any kind of an ecosystem out of anything , even though they are actually creating something that other people will indeed shout about – because it is actually great and that’s what counts.

Oscar Wilde also said that “Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast” and on this one I am with him completely.  If you are working that hard to actually create something that might become great you need to find the time each day to just stand up, clear your head, learn from your bruising mistakes and start again – perhaps we should have a quiet reflective coffee and leave tweeting about our blogs to others – chances are that they will enjoy it and do a very much better job than I ever would.

Home collaboration, Social Networking

Document Auto Monitoring

There are actually 4ways to automatically get notifications when documents are updated in Claromentis. Three of these are available on the front end and one in admin.

All of them have their place and it is worth running through them to clarify the different functionality and usage, as some customers are unclear on the specific differences.

Different Notification Icons

Send Notification : a fast way to send a notification about the document to any permissioned group within the set of hose who have at least view perms. Easy to use dialog box allows you to add comments, and automatically populate description, link to details and link to view.

Basically you should use this when users seem to have lost awareness that this really useful document already exists.

Start Monitoring

Will monitor all updates until that users stops it. Set by the user, this is used when the document concerned is very important to you, and you want to be notified of all changes from now on, not just the next one. This will continue until you click again n the “stop monitoring” icon.

Notify me when this document is updated

This will only notify you the next time it is updated. You can of course then go back in and repeat the process. Normally used when you are not sure if continual updates are going to interest you, and wish to defer that decision until next time.

Document Auto monitoring – set in admin

When auto monitoring is enabled and the “auto monitor” check box for a document is set, everyone who viewed that document is automatically subscribed to get notification when the document is updated.

But only once.

However if they respond to that notification, and look at the document again, then they will automatically be subscribed to be notified the next time it is updated.

This is actually very useful document management functionality – it allows administrators to suggest a document is important for a group of users, without spamming them with too many notifications – if they ignore the update the first time they will not be notified again.

Conclusion

As always it is a question of choosing the most appropriate method for each document and user – keeping a balance between ensuring you are informed of updates to important documents, and avoiding getting too many notifications.

Prod-Document document management