Great to start using Innovate!

As the screenshot shows you can now micro blog and follow users in your own personal channel from right within your corporate intranet – referencing files, documents, links to anything inside or outside the intranet.

Innovate in your intranet!

This is a great product for some companies that are prepared to open up this application to certain types of users to encourage innovation.

One great aspect is that using the interface engine you can enable innovate to exactly the kinds of users you want to based on any combination of individual users, groups, roles or extranet areas for suppliers or customers – but you can leave other users with a more Intranet 1.0 experience – all within exactly the same system.

Companies can also have as many channels as they need – again on a permission basis, so that the right users will be encouraged to communicate with each other and share best practice in their open areas of expertise.

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet, Products innovate, intranet software

So last week we had a video shoot in our office. This was fun – we got to meet Lucas and his very expensive camera. We also managed not to break the camera, and Lucas didn’t lose patience with us, and we generally got through the day having had fun and with only a few hundred bungled lines.

Video Shoot with Lucas at Claromentis

My point is that because of the video we actually had things in our office that we don’t normally have, like glasses to go with the champagne we have had in the fridge for 2 years, fresh flowers and a plate of oranges. Depressingly we still didn’t drink the champagne..

So after the video shoot we were in a meeting discussing all the new recruitment for our technical staff – amazingly we are taking on 6 more people – and trying to work out the ideal structure for core and custom development teams.

After much internal debate Mike started writing names on oranges, and then we all started rolling people about. The top row are developers, the second designers, and ‘JS’ is a front end JavaScript developer we haven’t hired yet.

Claromentis technical oranges

The point of all this is that sometimes interactive visual models really do help solve complex problems. Within a half hour or so of rolling fruit about we all left feeling we were absolutely clear on our plans for each team.

Personally I think in words, and so at the start I was a bit of a prisoner – but by the end I had to admit this really worked. Mike then added post it notes for tasks – of which just a few are in this photo – and this melange of fruit and paper really got results. We were even able to confirm our management structure by drawing stars on two of the oranges.

So I guess my message is that if you are ever stuck in a complex problem that will have impact on your company’s future and the careers of the staff, have faith when people reach for the fruit bowl – they might just surprise you!

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet, The Framework intranet software, plans

I had an interesting meeting with the MD of a potential new retail client last week who had allowed the IT systems used in his rapidly expanding company to gradually grow over time. This had just happened naturally, as he purchased systems to meet the separate functional needs of various parts of the business.

He is opening new premises regularly, and the business plan calls for this to continue and even accelerate.

Apart from the obvious need to try to make available accurate version controlled information and news to each new business unit, he shared with me that one of his main requirements for the intranet was simply to allow a single portal to provide access to the other systems.

He had done an internal audit, and his managers now require 17 separate log ins and passwords to access all the systems they need to do their job.

I realized that although all of our clients do use the Claromentis permission system and extensive single sign on support to provide gateway access to other web based applications, I had actually not really thought through how valuable this gateway approach is. Having discussed this with him we added a series of simple slides featuring ‘Puzzled Pete’ – the business owner of a small, growing company without dedicated IT support who feels that life had got to be easier than this!

Claromentis single sign on

It is one of those great features that is really easy to understand and also to provide – requiring a simple once only set up effort in the Claromentis config files and then allowing single sign on systems like Active Directory, Novell e-Directory, or others to just do what they are supposed to do – provide a single access credential for each user, and making it easy to keep up with new hires and staff exiting the business.

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet, Solutions, The Framework intranet software, single sign on

Carbon Trust – a company providing specialist support in cutting carbon emissions, saving energy and commercializing low carbon technologies – came to Claromentis to find the perfect Business Process Management solution to control the use of their brand.

Top of their list was a quality product, followed by seamless integration within their existing public website and a tight deadline.

On the surface, the project seemed simple – an approval process to determine the eligibility to use the Carbon Trust branding logos. But  Carbon Trust required a process that was undemanding and self-managed, a process which would automatically identify whether or not the requester was eligible to use Carbon Trust branding logos – focusing time consuming manual intervention only on those cases where it was genuinely required.

The application process starts

If the application is approved, the requester receives a notification containing a download link to the appropriate set of logos for their requirement, depending on the details supplied within the application.

Application in progress

The only manual input required is if the application pushes the request to review – this is where a member of Carbon Trust staff must decide on the eligibility of the application.

Carbon Trust required two interfaces: a public facing form to integrate within their website, and a portal for the staff to review the applications.

Business process reporting

Both of these were generated using completely core functionality of Business Process Manager.

In the words of the Carbon Trust project lead,

the Corporate Branding Inbox began life as reams of flip chart paper, stacks of post it notes and 2 tubs of lemon cheesecake! Claromentis then followed to take our ideas and make them into a reality that was beyond anything cheesecake thinking could imagine!

The project was implemented by Hannah Voice from the Claromentis support team who said

This project was a pleasure to work on from start to finish. The client knew what the business needed, provided well thought out workflows from their own workshops and answered all my questions with energy and a passion to get the job done under very tight deadlines. Great fun!

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Process, Services BPM, Business Process Management

We are making some final touches to the new Claromentis analytics center. With added features such as jQuery charts and application overviews, you’ll be able to zoom in on elements of the Claromentis system.

We aim to release the new analytics feature in version 6.1.

For a sneak peek, view the image below

Intranet-Extranet