Claromentis Intranet Software Blog

Choosing the right name for your intranet is probably one of the most exciting tasks for the Intranet Development Team. (By the time I am writing this I am still struggling to choose name for my baby, perhaps it’s not quite the same

I am seeing there are few interesting patterns based on what our clients decide at the end, here is some example:

1. Greek mythology

Intranet system named after a Greek gods and goddesses, or Greek influence  is definitely the most popular.
Athena - from the Greek goddess of wisdom, the arts, industry, justice and skill, It is the name of Intranet system at Nominet UK.
Atlas -  Atlas was made to bear the weight of the heavens, or was it the earth, this is what will become our own Intranet, and perhaps we’re hoping atlas can help us bear the weight of daily project work and pressure from clients.
Odyssey – An ancient Greek epic poem attributed to Homer. Is the name of intranet for Prometheus Real Estate Company, keep it in-line with Greek theme.
Eureka – (I have found it) exclamation used by ancient Greek scholar Archimedes, appropriate name for Care UK intranet, it certainly has scholar and research flavour to it. Care UK  is hoping their intranet will become  the source of finding information for the entire organisation where every member of staff can say ‘eureka!’.

2. Net-isation

Putting ‘net’ at the end of a choosen word seems quite popular, it’s a hint to network, transmission, exchange information.  Here is some popular example  Infonet, datanet, skynet.

Or you can simply attach the company name with ‘net’ such as intranet for Hanover housing is called the h-net.

3. Synonyms & Popular Culture

Intranet is a virtual place where information is stored; recently many companies are pushing collaboration and application through their intranet. Given this nature these are of popular word to represent the Intranet itself:

he Matrix - Albany Group named their Intranet “The Matrix”  apart from influence from popular sci-fi movie, in cyber culture matrix also means the Internet and other networks that flow into it are altogether.

Nexus - One of the most popular name for the Intranet adopted by many clients. It comes from the Latin “nectere” meaning “to bind.”. The Intranet is a collaboration hub.

Dimensions - Babcock Infrastructure Services named their intranet “Dimensions” Perhaps their vision is to make a multi-dimensional working space.

Basecamp – is the name of The North Face intranet where they visualise their intranet is the a basecamp of outdoor lifes.

4. “My”

Adding “my” in front of company name emphasise on the sense of belonging and ownership. There are several companies who named their intranet with MY+Company name, such as  MySunPower  or  MyGFI.

5. Play with words & accronyms

Tiggle – is a clever acronym from “Tussauds Intranet Global Gateway Linking Everyone” – an Intranet name for Tussauds Group.

Inflo – Interesting play on word. It sounded like “Info”, Inflo is the name of the Intranet/Extranet system of Prefered Brands where they do flooring franchise business.

I am hoping this post will inspire many companies who are thinking about choosing name of the Intranet, why not runs naming competition to find out who came up with the best idea within your company.

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After applying permission to a folder or document, have you ever wonder that you need to make sure the right person can view the document? Let’s say you added Group:Marketing, until now there is no to find out who are the member of “Group Marketing for instance” unless you have to navigate away to ‘People’ application and run a search or filter.

But now in 5.6.1 we’ve got a nifty solution. It’s called “View effective permission”, as you can see you can now review the permission on every single permission dialog box to make sure the right people has the right permission.

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Recently we have just completed a web-based job processing application based on Claromentis Sales Manager. For us this is one of the prime examples how a CRM application such as Sales Manager can be tailored to suit specific requirements.

The application is designed for Total Support Group - one of UK ’s largest service provider specialising in satellite/terrestrial antena installation, helping them managing and sorting jobs which has to be distributed through 6 regional support offices through post-code recognitions.

Built-in Claromentis strong permission system allows each regional office to view only the jobs relevant to their region while the head office can monitor them all in real time.

Next time when you buy a digital set-top boxes for your television and having an engineer to install it, it might be one of the many jobs managed by Claromentis. A small contribution to get UK goes digital by 2012.

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Claromentis Interview with Sean Boos -  Information Technology Director of Preferred Brands.
Burnsville, Minnesota.

Hi Sean, tell us a little bit about Preferred Brands

Preferred Brands is the parent company to some of the interior design and decorating industries’ leading marketing companies. Included are such brand leaders as Floor To Ceiling – a network of over 200 independently owned and operated retail showrooms located throughout the U.S. Each store specializes in offering a combination of flooring, kitchen & bath products and decorative accessories,best suited for that particular market. Also included in the Preferred Brands family is World of Floors, a leading flooring retailer, primarily serving Michigan and the upper Midwest.

Who were the intended users? How many of them?

We have 200+ dealers throughout the US.

Did the portal itself have a project or codename?

We call the portal: InFlo

What applications were most useful or essential in this project?

Document management and forms were probably the most important things.

What was the user response and take up of the system?

We found that the users have been very responsive to the new portal.  They have found the address book to be very helpful along with the instant messaging.

Is your business more efficient? Have fundamental processes changed?

We have 100’s  of vendors that we do business with which translates into tens of thousands of products which all need pricing files.  The indexing/search and meta data features have been a pleasant surprise within the portal.  The really allow us to provide detail custom properties for each file which makes finding what you want a snap.

Were you under any deadlines – if so what was the nature of them?

We had an extremely tight timeline.  We had our national show in February and InFlo was the primary focus of the show.  All  products tested were becoming disasters in the making.  What we typically found through our testing, was most portals did a great job of providing a hierarchical security model for one business unit, but when you starting to add more business units to the portal the security model really didn’t do what we wanted.
I contacted Claromentis 2 months before our show.  Although I was very reluctant that anyone could really pull this off in 2 months, Nigel assured me that, while the timeframe was tight, Claromentis could meet our deadline.

Did the project meet your deadlines?

Yes.  We actually had it live a week before the show

How involved were you in the design process?

Other than supplying some ideas, most of the design process was done by Claromentis

Do you have any comments on the final design?

As far as the UI, we gave our ideas to the Claromentis design team and after a few revisions, we got it done in about a week.

Do you find the system easy to use from an end user point of view?

We’ve had very positive responses from our end users.

How did you find the Claromentis pricing model?

Pricing, like most small businesses, is a very important part of the equation.  Compared to other portal solutions, Claromentis was the best value for with probably a better feature mix.

“InFlo has allowed us to become more efficient in both time and money.  In these difficult economic times, being able to stretch your dollars if very important.   It has allows us to focus more on our core services and products and better serve our dealers.” Sean Boos.

Would you have any advice to companies considering Claromentis? Were there any special factors that were part of your selection process?

Claromentis is a very flexible platform.  I come from more of a development background and I was amazed at how much I could integrate with the system.

Thank You Sean, we appreciate your time.

Learn more about soluton for franchise based company

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Claromentis Intranet & Extranet manager provides several ways to collaborate and share information within an organisation. We have application called ‘Documents’ (Document Management System), ‘Publish’ (Content Management System) ‘Wiki’, and our new member of the family ‘Bookshelf’ (online policies & procedures).

In early phase of intranet deployment we frequently being asked by our clients, “Which tool is the best to share and collaborate a piece of information or should we  just stick with an existing company shared drive?”.

There isn’t one solution to all problems

The good starting point is to be aware of the pros, cons and applicability of individual tool available.  Unfortunately as an Information Architect we always says “There isn’t one solution to all problems”. The idea is by having the right solution (with right technology) to a specific problem, we can make everyone’s lives easier.
Let’s start with…

Shared Drive

Typically before an organisation deploys an intranet they have existing growing unmanageable shared drive(s). Shared drive is relatively easy to setup but it suffers from these issues:

• No version control - You ended up having similar files with version number scripted at the back of the file name for example:  “MyPresentation_ver2.doc” not to mention the frustration of someone overwriting the file you’re currently working on.
• Searching – Does everyone feel that it is easier to search information on the internet than on the share drive?
• Limited Access - When you’re not in the office, say on the road or working from home,  you either have to use slow & complicated VPN software or not having access to the company files at all.
• Security – There is no easy way to setup permission on a shared drive, typically it opens to everyone or if you have permission it’s so complicated to set up and configure.
• Audit - You can’t easily check who did what, when and where.
• Duplication – since a single physical file cannot exist in two places at once, you ended up with duplication everywhere.

Documents – Document Management System

Claromentis document management system is designed to address all of the common issues with company Share Drive. The heart of it is the application called ‘Documetns’ It provides built-in version control, searching & indexing, permission layer, easy access, and many enterprise features.

What are the Cons?

• It is not suitable for managing extremely large files. (Larger than 30Mb)
• Files are kept in native format, which means users need to have the application to open / view and edit the file.  For instance not all users within organisation have AutoCAD software needed to open a *.DWG file.
• Speed to upload and download the file stored in Documents are limited to the speed of your network / internet connection
• Extra steps may be required to edit a file. Typically you have to download it (temporary), make changes and upload them back in, although we have several solutions to make this relatively painless such as webdav.

Publish – Content Management System

Using publish, users with no web publishing skills can collaborate & create web pages easily.

• Better access - Information displayed as web pages are widely accessible. Users don’t have to download the file or installing software to view. They can simply read them online.
• Information Hub - everything can be connected in publish page, link to documents, link to other pages, or links to external website. For example you can create a health & safety page which may have link to ‘health & safety assessment guide.PDF’ which is store in Documents as well as link to HSE websites.
• Mash-ups – Publish allows you can embed rich media such as online videos, podcast, web widgets and much more.
• Enterprise features– Publish has everything you need to manage online content, from built-in version control, security & permission, reminder, audit trails, multi lingual and much more.

It may sound like a good idea to convert all documents into publish pages, but there are several points to consider:

• There is not much point converting complicated document such as spreadsheet into a publish page, you probably better of store them in Documents and just link it from a publish page.
• Content for publish page should be relatively short, concise and to the point. Remember the information is designed to be read on the screen just like web pages.

Wiki

A wiki is designed to enable everyone with fast and volatile collaboration. Claromentis integrates with Media WIKI, one of the most popular open-source wiki software. Wiki focuses on fast and real-time collaboration by minimising complexity in content creation. There are several issues to remember here:

• Wiki tend to have open access for everyone - You have to keep sensitive and proprietary data off the wiki.  Avoid posting sensitive data such as financials.
• Wiki syntax to learn, Wiki may focuses on simplicity but there is whole new syntax to learn. Wiki is typically very popular within IT department but what’s popular in one department may not be suitable others.

Bookshelf

Bookshelf is the application behind Claromentis Quality Manager; it is the latest addition to the information layer suite. Bookshelf is designed specifically for managing Company Policies & Procedures. It allows online procedures creation making sure that there is one version of the truth across entire organisation.

• Bookshelf allows company procedures and policies to be maintained online allowing true collaboration of subject matter expert.
• Once the policies or procedures are created online, it can then be read online or exported in various format such as MS Word and PDF.

Summary

These are just a few of the tools available in Claromentis Framework. There isn’t one perfect solution to all problems but at least you can choose ‘the best kit for the job’.

Any comments and feeback welcomed.

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There are not many example Intranet designs available for review, perhaps because of the nature of the Intranet which is for internal consumption only.  There is no reason why Intranet can’t be functional as well as  attractive & pleasing to use, after all who wants to work all day on a badly designed system?

In the show case below we present 5 Intranet designs powered by Claromentis Intranet & Extranet Manager.

MySunPower - SunPower Intranet (USA)

MySunPower hompage is filled with 4 most recent company news. Main navigation is located on the left, while sidebar on the right provides easy access to company calendar, worldtime  & corporate portals such as Competitive Intelligence & Community Portal.  These are also great examples of bespoke development with the Claromentis API to add value to the information layer. CEO blogs are fed through the lower right box.

The Matrix - The Albany Group Intranet (UK)

The main area of Albany Intranet displays a greeting box, scrolling notice bar , latest news and what’s new box. On the right hand side there are shortcuts to various application, world time & calendar widgets. The design is clean, sharp and enhanced by glossy glass fx.

Eureka - CareUK Intranet (UK)

Clean and simple - Care UK intranet focuses on searching in the middle area. Users are encourage to search information while the most recent company news is displayed at the lower box. The sidebar provides a selection of jump links to other applications or areas within the intranet.

Basecamp - The North Face Intranet (USA)

Basecamp - Accessing The North Face Intranet you will be greeted by a welcome video. Latest blog posts  are displayed on the homepage and the illustration provides user with a shortcut to each individual departmental homepage.

Athena - Nominet Intranet (UK)

Athena - The nominet’s intranet uses “tile-design”, each individual tile is a window to further information. The design is very web 2.0-ish, it looks friendly and inviting. It is good example where an intranet can be beautful as well as functional. I am having too much fun navigating around beautiful icons and tile designs!

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10. Run Survey / Poll

It’s quick and easy to do, launch regular survey to get user’s feedback on almost any subjects, for a change try to create survey outside corporate agenda, pick casual topic related to everyday life, political debate, sustainability issue, or entertainments here are some ideas:

• Cool movie of the month
• Casual Friday? (yes no)
• Choose company smart phone? (iPhone or Blackberry)
• How do you travel to work?
• How’s your weekend?
• What do you think of Gordon Brown?

Survey and poll are easy to deploy

9. RSS feed

Embedding relevant RSS feed to departmental page is one of the easiest ways to get fresh news delivered to your page. RSS news from HSE (Health & Safety Executive can be added to the corporate Health & Safety Page, or an RSS from popular design blog is perfectly suitable for Creative department homepage for instance. It’s not only help member of your department aware of what’s going on out there it also help staff from other department know more about what you’re doing.

The North Face Intranet homepage with RSS and Video cast

8. Enable commenting

Everyone likes commenting. Sometime reading people’s comments in a blog is more interesting than the actual post itself. We want to hear what people say at the same we like to be heard. Staff’s comments can be invaluable to the improvement of the business and organisation as a whole. In Claromentis commenting can be enabled for documents, news, and publish pages.

News article with comments

7. Classifieds (Craigslist)

Have you ever noticing communal pin board next to the kitchen is full of classifieds, from selling used car, sharing apartments to cheap concert tickets. Having an electronic version of classifieds right in the corporate intranet can help users coming back to the system.  If you still like the pin board, you can print it out of your intranet and post it there!

Classifieds

6. Treasure Hunt

Yes a treasure hunt. Simply hide content within the corporate intranet and run a competition to find it. One of our clients had tried this and it was a success. It’s definitely a fun and exciting way to get users familiarising with the intranet without a boring training.

Prize winner for the intranet treasure hunt

5. Business Dashboard

Businesses are surrounded with data; but they are sharing one common problem. They are not visual enough to draw our attention.  Claromentis dashboard application allows you to generate data visualisation in a form of graph / chart from any data source as long as they are accessible. This can be business statistics, KPI (Key Performance Index), weekly sales figures, real-time number of visitors, stock chart, and much more.

TSG Intranet with business dashboard

4. Up-to-date Content

The essence of a corporate Intranet is storing and finding information, if users can’t find information they want accurately & effortlessly, it almost guarantee that they won’t coming back. The reality is always harder than theory but you can’t underestimate the importance of having the most up-to-date information on the Intranet.

"Content is King"

3. Develop Persona while improving usability

Check your stats & analytics, ask users and identify 3 main areas which are frequently visited on the Intranet. Create attractive shortcuts to access these areas and you are developing persona at the same time improving usability of your corporate intranet.

IPO Intranet homepage with 6 big buttons

2. Implement built-in apps

Claromentis offers business-ready built-in applications which can be implemented straight within a corporate Intranet. These applications include room booking, image gallery, holiday & vacation planner, group calendars, forums and course planner.

Image Gallery application - Care UK Intranet

1. Business processes

Having your business process built right into the corporate intranet is the number on the list. It transforms corporate intranet into something much more than just communication & collaboration platform. The intranet becomes an indispensible business application where day-to-day business processes sit on top of information layer in a single integrated system. Claromentis provides several products such as Process Manager, Sales Manager and Project Manager all can be implemented directly within your Intranet.

Claromentis Project Manager

Have you tried one of these within your corporate Intranet ? Please share your experience.

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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.

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This article below is written by  Rob Reith our Country Director in Australia which I found it intereting 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

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It is a shocking reality, many major corporations still running their entire business on Excel.  Let’s admit it,  Excel is being used on almost anything,  from managing company database, claiming our expenses, accident reporting or perhaps ordering lunch ? Don’t get me wrong Excel is a powerful tool but it gets over-used in business.

Recently one of our clients, a major out-door clothing brand is taking a leap from a tired, out-of-control spreadsheets to a complete web application. We developed a store audit application where a tech rep who visited retail stores can write, and sending an audit report directly to the central database through a web form.  Appropriate finance managers will get notification allowing them to complete the financial details. Data submitted are audited, stored in central database, accessible through corporate Intranet, ready to be extracted by appropriate managers for monthly or quarterly reporting with a simple click.

Now try to get that on Excel !

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