Intranet Management Software Blog

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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Recently, I was working on a news component to generate a “cloud” of News Channels in our Intranet to allow our users to navigate our news articles with ease. The “first draft” worked nicely - It generated a list of news channels from the system based on a users permissions and put them into a styled infobox - nice.

Having put this into the Claromentis Component Library, it was suggested by Nigel that we take this one step further… to modify the component code, allowing users to add in some additional parameters and generate a more commonly known tag cloud, including randomization of the results returned, with varying font sizes depending on the most popular channels - now we’re talking!

After some code changes and some input from Dan at Claromentis, the component was modified to generate something that looks a little something like this:

The view can be changed by editing the user parameters on the component code as mentioned above.

To view a full description of the coponent and how to implement it, see here: http://www.claromentis.com/wiki/components:news_cloud

Until next time,

Craig

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Designing for ALL of your users, without asking them all??

Having many hats within an IT team can have its advantages (and obviously its downsides!), but when facing the task of designing new visual interfaces for some 17,000 users, what are the vitals for a successful page layout and how do we cater for everyone?

Currently we have 18 visual interfaces across some two Intranets & nine Extranets, all of which are viewed by virtually the whole of our business. So how is it possible to incorporate all of the features for all of our users? It’s simply not an option. BUT, with good research and some carefully placed demonstrations and trials, we found that it is possible to capture user’s most important features.

As our business is driven by news, safety and corporate information, it is essential that we make available the information that the business needs as soon as they log on. On the flip side, cascading a lot of information as soon as a user logs in can be overwhelming which lead onto another key driver for our new interfaces - a users navigation when logged onto the system. Time and time again feedback appeared indicating that our Intranet was too “One way” – information was hard to put back into the system. Mentioning “News” above, we now have a “One-Click” route to adding news, which has been proven to increase the publication of delivering news on a day to day basis.

With these items in mind, and with the know-how of the Claromentis team, we switched to Java Searching – and boosted our search times to around 0.6 seconds. We simplified our menu structures to two levels and simplified our “People” pages to include an embedded left hand menu for easy navigation and making related pages easy to find.

So far, I think all I’ve alluded to is that our visual interfaces are the same as around 90% of corporate Intranets – BORING! So in response to this, we’ve added blocks of colour, symbolic icons for different applications, consistency in approach, JQuery powered gallery slideshow, easy application navigation from a JQuery powered application slider, and the easiest item for finding what’s mine – “My Desk”.

My advice for anyone designing a new visual interface for a large number of users is a four-step process. Keys to success are brainstorming, research, demonstrate and trial. Keeping users informed of change is always a key to success as they are the stakeholders in the use and growth of your Intranet. The Claromentis team were fundamental in providing accurate mock-ups and advice from other customers, a position that I hope we’ll all be in shortly to enable us to all share our ideas and findings.

One closing thought to a semi-inspiring blog, a couple of links to screen shots of our intranet homepage – to prove we’re moving forward with our Intranet.

“Dimensions” of Old à “Dimensions” Today

All comments welcome as usual,

Craig

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Social Networking vs Traditional Channels

At a meeting today we showed the designs for the new Innovate Corporate social networking application to a very significant client and the reaction was in my view extremely interesting.

The design was clearly great, the functionality of corporate social networking was absolutely acknowledged and the whole idea of bringing this out as a central application of Claromentis 6.0 – with all the new Ajax emphasis and other aspects is appreciated.

The main concern was one that we at Claromentis are going to have to thoroughly understand and plan for. “If Innovate is this easy, and employees really embrace it – what will happen to existing more corporate channels?”

This is a very valid concern in certain types of organisations. They focus considerable effort on consistent messaging and adherence to standards and quality initiatives – then along we come with a great way for all staff to cut through everything and just collaborate with each other to escalate whatever idea they find fascinating – providing an attractive and immediately responsive environment with content, resources and information that we have designed from the ground up to facilitate breaking through all barriers.

So Innovate is designed to cut through everything and foster idea creation through to innovation. But companies put up barriers and control systems for valid reasons.

If collaboration platform vendors like Claromentis facilitate tearing down walls to encourage participation, and that turns out to be exactly what employees want to embrace – as I could clearly see everyone in the room knew they would - it is dynamic, expressive and well designed - how will we then help our clients to maintain a balance between innovative cooperation and logical adherence to methodologies and approaches that have kept the business centered in its value proposition as defined by the management team and many years of experience?

Of course we would argue that complacence and standards are dangerous for any company in a fast moving world, where successful innovation can change the game in a remarkably short time.  Our job is to provide superior collaboration platforms.

But I do think it is true that free expression using corporate social networking must have a clear space and not simply be allowed to run riot with existing internal communications and controlled documents. This is going to be a very exciting space – as a result of the meeting today we decided that innovate will from the first release support a plug-in environment to allow hooks and behaviors relevant to each client. We will really enjoy working with our clients as they learn to create a balance between established practices and innovation.

Our client today actually maintains our nuclear submarine fleet – as one of its many business areas - and personally I would like to think that the relevant staff aren’t being encouraged by Claromentis corporate networking to just have a quick play this evening with a new idea to quickly see if it works…

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The recent personal ordeals of Danah Boyd at Web2.0 Expo resulted in a Blog that is a real revelation about what it is like to present at an innovation based event with a public-facing twitter stream projected behind you that destroys your connection with the audience and in turn your own self-confidence.

http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2009/11/24/spectacle_at_we.html

This blog of such an emotional experience fortunately links back to the excellent text that the actual presentation was attempting to deliver. Within that I just want to focus on one quote :

“Thus, the power is no longer in the hands of those who control the channels of distribution, but those who control the limited resource of attention”.

I continually explore this idea internally when we describe where Claromentis is heading and where intranets offer real value. I find the continual differential in the understanding of this message across different companies and cultures both puzzling and frustrating.

On the one sense of course this is just about push versus pull. In the wider world of the general internet, this is totally understandable - and indeed, almost verging on yesterdays news.

But in the world of the corporate intranet if we discuss these ideas it is as if we are promoting some brave new paradigm.

For many companies even creating a new intranet to ease the outward flow of communication feels like breaking some innovative ground - after all they are embracing a new, attractive, internet based platform to distribute their message.

They are just pushing.

Often they don’t measure value and engagement with their platform based on the fact that they offer such a broad choice of interactive communications that stakeholders are continually - actively - selecting which  information to pull from an ever widening choice of interactions, information streams and enriched media.

They just selectively push information to staff

As Claromentis starts the delivery process for Innovate - the central application of the Claromentis 6.0 platform - we are really optimistic that we are delivering tools that will promote corporate innovation through individuals proactively allocating their attention within a truly rich information stream that is a mile away from simply pushing corporate information.

Lets see if we are right, or like Danah our important message risks getting lost in the delivery.

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Document Management System with Submission Wizard.

Maintaining consistency and integrity of the technical documents is a business critical issue for Crondall Energy Consultant. Crondall Energy is a Floating Production System consultant which helps their clients in many areas ranging from Strategic planning, Market analysts up to Project Delivery and Training.

Claromentis Document Manager

Utilising built-in Claromentis Document Management system, we recently develop bespoke document submission wizard based on specification and guideline from Crondall Energy.

The document submission wizard is not only helping users submitting document into the right storage path (folder), it also automatically creates documents with the right name convention and automatic numbering system.

The same wizard can also be used to make strict control on making revision to the existing documents.

Home, Products Design, document management, intranet consultancy, user interface

Claromentis delivers a Corporate Social Networking site

We have just completed one of the most interesting project in the corporate social networking space. “PlanetExplore.com” A social media platform released for the outdoor clothing company The North Face. The community connects people, especially younger people, to the outdoors and in particular outdoor activities and events in their local communities.

Social Media Platform

PlanetExplore.com is a bespoke Social Media Platform leveraging Facebook platform and Mash-Ups, delivered from concept to idea in less than 3 months and already attracting more than 100 partners across the United States.  The initial launch is for the Bay Area with Denver and new York City to follow soon.

Some screenshots below:

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The Ajax component allows you to take any component already within Claromentis and Ajax empower it; harnessing a tried and tested JavaScript framework the Ajax component only marginally changes how you’d implement the original component within a template, and does almost all the magic for you.

It automatically breaks down the component into 2 states of information, firstly pushing something minimal to the browser, enough to function without actually running the component first, allowing claromentis to do the work in the background and provide a clean and much visibly faster approach to loading components.

Instead of having to wait 2-3 seconds for a component to load, the Ajax placeholder (a spinning icon to show that some work is being done) will be visible and behind the scenes after the page itself is loaded, it will then run and give you feedback from any component that has been empowered -fantastic for slower components that notably increase the loading time to your home page; It doesn’t matter even if it is an entirely custom component the Ajax loader will work with ANY and all claromentis components.

In addition if the component has a problem the page will still load - isolating the impact of any problems.

Ajax components are being used and tested internally by Claromentis now, and will be officially available with the Claromentis 6.0 Intranet Framework.

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Almost all of our potential and current clients come to us with some kind of existing technology based view of the software and solution world.

What varies massively is their attitude to – and internal understanding of – their own perspective.

In our case they are about to influence their company’s decisions and approaches to intranets, workflows, collaboration platforms and document management systems. With other software partners they will potentially bring the same perspectives to bear on very different projects.

It does seem to me that in most cases the perspective – or bias - as that is what it amounts to in practical terms  – that they bring is not thoroughly evaluated in an internal sense.

So basically potential clients might indeed understand their preference for certain approaches but they have almost never, as far as I can see, worked out whether these barriers are internally acknowledged but something they would like to explore the possibilities of escaping from – or a philosophy to which they are embedded for the long term because they have made fundamental decisions in favor of it on the basis of cost savings, recovery strategies or any other framework for increased efficiency or ROI.

When you think about it, this is quite extraordinary.

The most forward looking  companies are always looking for ways to break out of the technology perspectives that might in any way constrain their capacity to innovate. They want to break down barriers.

The bias that a company imposes on an IT selection process are in the new world increasingly far reaching.

As an example in the past the decision might have been purely on the type of database, because the back up and DR strategy favored one over the other or because of the availability of internal trained DBA resources. These are purely internal but highly justifiable reasons.

As the internet based software world changes and solution suppliers like Claromentis respond to this rapid progress, and it is certainly progress, we need to deal with the fact that a single supplier can now offer :

•    Mash up services
•    Database abstraction layers to support any database you need
•    Complete cross platform deployment from Linux to windows
•    Relatively low cost rapid development of complex internet based software
•    A choice of cloud based computing or perpetual licenses
•    Open source extendable commercially supported solutions
•    Complete independence of the branding layer over the business logic

So what value a technology bias of any kind in this brave new world of customizable solutions on any platform in any pricing and deployment model?

Old fashioned bloated solutions are on the way out – COTS solutions and open source extendable frameworks appeal to the modern way of leaving your perspectives on the doorstep, increasing innovation and delivering completely unconstrained value to the business.

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As Claromentis continues to grow in the scope and range of products and applications, the framework is being actively developed and enhanced by the use of components to provide flexible, configurable functionality for clients wishing to use them.

Just in the last week the following very useful components have been added :

Anniversary Intranet Component

The Anniversary component gives you the ability to summarily compare dates attached to users profiles within Claromentis through the use of metadata.

Once configured, not only can you change how far in the future you’d like to list events – up to one whole year from today, but also how many user anniversaries you’d like shown.

This anniversary component could be useful for anything from showing birthday information for employees, to listing anniversaries of employment with your company - there are lots of opportunities for configuration of this component.
 
File Review Intranet Component

The File Review component also through the use of custom metadata allows you to configure multiple options for ensuring that you always know what review dates are coming for your files.

This component allows you to change how files are listed and also what scope of listing to give. For example: you can also attach a reviewer to the component, and it’ll list also for the reviewer of the file; you can show review dates to everyone – ideal for a departmental vi.  The major advantage of this component is how configurable it is, you can show due dates to all, or just the reviewer, or just the owner, or even both the owner and the reviewer; on top of which you can change how far ahead it is looking for document review dates, and it will make it really clear to the viewers when something is overdue for review!

 
RSS Reader Intranet Component

The RSS Reader component makes reading news or events easy, be it from an external source such as the BBC or using your own internal RSS feed.

The component allows two modes of reading, one is a fixed feed experience – designed for when you want a feed readable by all without them being able to customize where it is reading from; the second makes use of custom metadata, allowing your end user to configure where the news is coming from, so that the component is always personal to them.

Interested clients should contact us – we have these components available on our development WIKI and we are currently considering if they should be included in the core distributive.

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