Intranet Management Software Blog

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

Home, Partners, Resources-Technical components, Tag Cloud

What's that coming over the hill?

Good Afternoon!

As most of you regulars will gather, this is my first post for the Claromentis Blog so please go easy on the comments!

Having worked closely with Claromentis for a little over a year now, and after many discussions with Nigel and Team regarding “What’s coming in Claromentis 6.0“, it seems to me that a growing number of companies are introducing “Social and Business” sharing across corporate intranet sites. On recent occasions I find myself sifting through reams of RSS feeds in my inbox and thinking “The team would be interested in that - I’ll send it on”. With this in mind, it is with great anticipation I acknowledge the introduction of the Claromentis “Innovate” application coming in the not so distant future, which only enforces this need for sharing information with colleagues.

Having seen a preview of the new “Innovate” application only yesterday, one question burns in the back of my mind - How will this work for intranets with many users? To give this more meaning, we currently support a mere 2000 users on our main Intranet including Staff, Contractors, and Clients, located from the highlands of Scotland to the very lowlands of Cornwall. Our users operate across a quite complex layer of permissions on content, roles and groups that I will only imagine a roll-out of this type of application can lead to a multitude of challenges. Will there be a need for an engineer on one of our operations sites to share in my “Idea’s Space”? Unlikely, but just maybe… At the moment, I believe that the best way of understanding how this will “slot into” our Intranet model will be down to an in depth understanding both our business model, and the full extent of the “Innovate” applications capabilities, as well as its boundaries.

When brainstorming our ideas for Visual Interface updates a few months ago, we looked widely at the cyber world for ideas of how large companies had used their websites to display meaningful content, with the ambition of enriching and shaping our users web experience of the Intranet. Feedback we received previously hinted that maybe our users experience was mainly “One Way”. In our early mock-ups, we included the “What Am I Working On” box - A user’s ability to share what they are currently working on with all other users of the intranet - and found that our senior user’s reaction to the “Social Networking” approach left them with a heavy mindset of “Facebook” type applications taking over the intranet. I think that “Innovate” will largely encompass all of the best parts of a more collaborative approach to sharing information while maintaining the integrity of a corporate image. Only time will tell…

The only piece of advice I can throw into the pot while starting promotion of an application of this nature is to be mindful of existing user’s thoughts of “Innovate” replacing key applications such as “News”. I know that the user’s of our intranet rely on our “News” system to deliver key information across our business and a phased replacement (If there is to be one) of these key applications is a must.

I think that in conclusion to the above, the “Innovate” application will introduce a whole new level of collaborative working for our colleagues to better share information across our Intranet, all-be-it with its difficulties and significant cultural changes on implementation, with the idea of sharing ideas live online being quite scary to some.

All comments welcome.

Craig

Partners Babcock, Collaborative Working, Customer

This article below is written by  Rob Reith our Country Director in Australia which I found it interesting although in some deployments Claromentis can indeed co-exist with Microsoft SharePoint.

Claromentis over SharePoint

While there are many reasons why a company would want to select Claromentis over SharePoint, we have produced this handout to highlight the critical differences between the Claromentis and SharePoint Knowledge Management solutions. In the context of this handout, a Knowledge Management Software system covers the following functionality;

-    Intranet software;
-    Extranet software;
-    Content Management software;
-    Document Management software;
-    Customer Relationship Management software;
-    Project Management software; and
-    Electronic Forms software.

Work with the owners of Claromentis

Did you know that when you are dealing with Claromentis, you deal with the owners of the business? As part of the original team to build Claromentis, our clients have direct access to the owners and developers of Claromentis. This allows clients to have a direct say into the development roadmap. This is in contrast to SharePoint resellers who have no vested interest in the software and are unlikely to be able to contact Microsoft for urgent changes.

Work with the owners of Claromentis, and be confident that your voice will be heard at the top

Work with the Knowledge Management Specialists

Did you know that Claromentis only works in the field of Knowledge Management? We live and breathe knowledge management and are active in knowledge management conferences and forums. This is in contrast with many SharePoint resellers, who offer a wide range of software solutions, and will not have the degree of specialty as Claromentis.

Work with the Knowledge Management specialists and get better results

Work with more features

Did you know that over and above the Document Management, Intranet, Extranet and Content Management features, Claromentis also offers Project Management and Customer Relationship functionality where SharePoint does not offer either?

Work with the Knowledge Management software that offers more

Work with flexible technology

Did you know that Claromentis runs on Windows or Linux giving you flexibility whereas SharePoint runs on only their own proprietary server and code? This means you have complete control over your IT environment and ensures your Total Cost of Ownership remains low.

Work with software that puts you in complete control

Work with better Electronic Forms Management

Did you know that Claromentis offers an International Standards Organisation (ISO) compatible and integrated electronic forms module where with SharePoint it is optional? In our experience, forms are critical for any size company, and that’s why we include them out of the box.

Work with the company that understands business

Work with integrated Search

Did you know that while Claromentis offers a fully integrated and advanced searching feature, SharePoint charge separately for their search engine?  Image 1.11 shows the complexity of the SharePoint solution (notice the multiple components that have different licensing conditions) which can cause budgeting and resourcing issues as your organisation grows.

Work with a company that keeps it simple and scalable

SharePoint Pricing Structure

Partners Claromentis, commercial, intranet, intranet consultancy, software

As the Claromentis reseller in Australia, R&D Knowledge Services have the privilege of talking to many interesting and varied companies. A recent discussion with a pharmaceutical company brought up the issue of not only how companies go about creating new documents, but also about how the software is compliant with FDA an TGA regulations.

We all know Claromentis offers exception capabilities in regards to document management (audit, version, granular permissions, roll back, searching etc etc) but in these highly regulated industries, the complainace and validation of such systems is of equal importance.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Australian TGA (Therapeutic Goods Administration) require manufacturers to comply with stringent conditions to ensure integrity of the drug approval process. 21CFR is of particular importance, and we are currently working to ensure Claromentis passes these tests. More to come as we tread down this validation path.

Partners fda, tga, validation

Claromentis as a company recently embraced 5 core values that form a foundation of all of our approaches to our projects, and to our work with partners and suppliers alike.

Choice : this expresses itself in several areas, but is certainly one of our main values.
Any Operating system, any browser, any database, any delivery mechanism , any language.

Design : all of our interfaces area a pleasure to work in. Corporate software should be attractive, welcoming, intuitive and inspirational.

Clarity : we believe that most business challenges and IT solutions can be either clearly communicated in simple language or else are a distraction for all concerned.

Risk Management Our engagement model working through a proof of concept before significant funds are committed ensures that we minimize your risks in selecting Claromentis as a partner.

Fun to work with. We deal with complex information and process management issues – these should be important to your business – solving them should be an enjoyable process of working with talented people that can together make a difference.

I was in an all day client meeting today with a range of stakeholders in a complex Portal project that involves various private and public sector companies and organizations. And my conclusion from that experience is that the most valuable of these 5 values, particularly in the early stages of any project, is Clarity.

Time and time again we are able to engage people with diverse backgrounds, understand their requirements and explain the possible solutions in a clear, concise and meaningful way.

All of the other values build on a solid foundation of a clear understanding of the business requirements. There is no point having fun working together if the business definitions are unclear – fun would soon turn to tears. So although being clear takes effort, focus, patience and communication skills I personally believe it is our foundation for all projects.

1 Corinthians 13:13 And now stays faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

Nigel : Claromentis Blog : Choice, Design, Clarity, Risk Management and Fun : the greatest of these is clarity.

Partners clarity, values

The world is a challenging environment right now, but for Claromentis it is full of opportunity as our cross platform, commercial but open source extendable information management solutions continue to be adopted around the world.

This global opportunity brings with it several challenges for us:

• Making sure we provide the partner channel with everything they need to promote Claromentis in their own language and culture. This involves localisation files, user guides and web site content translation just to get on the first page.

• Making sure we are sensitive to understanding the partners abilities – when all of the communications with us is in for them a foreign language and if we are not extremely attentive this can lead to considerable misunderstandings and incorrect perceptions.

• Recognizing that in many parts of the world we as a company do not yet understand which of our solutions are the most appropriate to add value to the local customer base.

• Being very aware that we are not aware of the alternative solutions available in that country, and so need to embark on a discovery process with new partners in each new area.

• Trying to set and maintain a suitable pricing model for our customers, partners and ourselves.

But despite these challenges this is just such an enjoyable process. Working with customers and partners from other countries and cultures brings all of us a special interest. We so enjoy meeting our partners and customers from around the world – it adds to all of our lives in so many ways.

Partners global, partners

Pudsey the bear took a trip to the Claromentis office in Brighton this week as part of a fundraising campaign run by our client CareUK.

Pudsey traveled a total of around 450 miles on his trip to Brighton, and was reported to be suffering from tiredness at the end of it all.

Pudsey Bear said “It was a long trip, but I’m glad I took it.  The Claromentis Intranet Software is a great application framework and I’m pleased I was given the chance to see where it comes from.  I’m really tired after the trip, but to watch the sun going down over the South Coast was an amazing experience and I’m glad I did it”.

Claromentis looks forward to Pudsey returning again sometime in the near future.

Pudsey Visits Brighton

Partners brighton, charity, Claromentis, fun