Intranet Management Software Blog

Prod-Quality, Products, Resources-Technical

The functionality of the solution set in Claromentis intranet framework are so large now that we often spend considerable time during projects, and especially at inception – in choosing from various options in order to meet a business need.

Since the Claromentis business framework also includes a complete intranet API, we also need to consider whether a bespoke application to meet the client need is the best solution, as opposed to the superficially ‘easier’ route of configuring an existing application to meet the requirement.

This is particularly the case with e-forms, which for many simpler business needs can indeed be configured to meet a requirement as initially expressed to us.  This is basically because many small applications are based on collecting data, moving along a process and notifying participants of significant events that need their attention – exactly the space Process Manager occupies.

When we are making these decisions we are in general terms trying to balance 3 disparate needs :

• Project risk – configuring and localizing an application is a relatively simple and certainly time limited process that does not involve scope creep, whereas developing a bespoke intranet application takes time and resources.
• Budgets – applications need to be licensed, this might be commercially inappropriate for the number of users that need access.
• Flexibility as a solution for future requirements – we have learnt that there is always a phase 2, and after using the solution in phase 1 the client may well drastically change the application requirements – it is so much easier to evolve a bespoke application.

Technology selection factors

What we are finding is that we are emphasizing flexibility more and more as we continue to engage with intranet clients around the world. And because we can now give so many examples and speak with the confidence that comes from working in this space for 10 years now, we are noticing that clients are increasingly listening to us.

The result is that they do take slightly longer to get to phase 1, they take more risk, and generally may spend slightly more to get to the first release  – but the platform for their success is built on the solid foundation of an intranet application that was built from the ground up to meet the need, and can grow without constraints to continue to serve the client well.

If, as is so often the case – phase 2 is considerably different to the initial requirements – the client in the end saves money as well as getting exactly what they need – since the changed specifications do not require us to start again.

In the fast moving web based intranet world where there are almost no technological limits, building for possible feedback and change requests is basically too important to ignore.

So in the longer term it seems that time and time again actually focusing on flexibility can minimize budget and project risk, rather than increase them. Another great lesson.

E-form Services, Home, Products bespoke development, e-forms, intranet software

Old and New Intranet

About UBS

The United Bible Societies (UBS), a collective name for 145 Bible Societies working in over 200 countries and territories is launching a new Intranet using Claromentis Intranet Manager.

New Intranet

After sending out questionnaire and running a focus group to improve Intranet, Claromentis and UBS Communication team working together to make the new intranet richer but easier to use and faster to find the information.

UBS also introduced several new application built within their Intranet such as contact directory for all members, document management and multimedia such as online videos.

The new intranet is also multi-lingual, The system is designed to detect user’s language preference and display the right information and interface in their native language.

User’s Feedback

User’s feedback so far has been really positive.

“I love the new look website. God bless you for the good job. Its much easier to navigate and its also easy to find the past stories. Absolutely love it. Will definately send more stories this year. God bless you all.”

“A big thank you to you and your team for their work so far on the UBS intranet site.”

“I’ve just given a detailed presentation to our global senior management team and it went down extremely well. They were particularly impressed by the design (‘clean, easy to use, familiar for people using sites such as Facebook’) and by the layers of permissions that are now possible and will enable us to do so much more with the site.”

Hamish Bruce – Communication Manager at UBS.

Home, Partners, Prod-Intranet, Prod-Project, Products Claromentis, extranet, intranet 2.0, intranets, multi-lingual, online collaboration, web 2.0

Image Credit: Disney & Wikipedia

I’ve just got back from watching Tim Burton’s remake Alice in Wonderland in 3D. What a visual masterpiece with amazing attention to details. It feels like immersing into an art form created by 20th century design technology.  I couldn’t believe that original animation, which I watched in my childhood, was created in 1951; even more amazing the story was first published in 1865!

You might be asking, what this movie has to do with Intranet Blog?

Before the Internet

Well the idea of internal communication is not new, since the beginning of civilization people are gathering and exchange knowledge, ideas and collaborate in many forms.  Remember pen and papers?

Your first Intranet

Your first intranet might be old fashioned by today’s standard, you might hate it, It is slow, looks ugly and doesn’t do what you wanted to do. Updating information is painful and there are many more.
But hey, this is a milestone just like the first Alice movie for the first time words comes to live, we may not have 3D technology just yet but hand drawn animation does the job!

Your Intranet – “Remake!”

Fast forward today the Internet is now teaming with real time collaboration, social networking, web application to do almost anything you can think of, computing power, cheaper storage, faster broadband, multi-touch and portable devices, which blur the boundaries between PC, laptop, & phone.

Claromentis is currently developing cool new communication tools with codename “innovate”.  We will be launching this application with an exciting release of Claromentis 6, leveraging what’s possible in web technologies.

Just like the visual masterpiece of Alice in Wonderland, perhaps it’s time to make your Intranet a communication art form.

Products Claromentis, Design, fun, intranet, intranet 2.0

We’ve been working on this feature for several weeks and now I am delighted to reveal what is “Discuss” to you all.

Discuss is chat feature built right in the Claromentis Intranet Manager. There is no additional configuration or chat client install like Yahoo, or MSN, it just works straight on your browser.

Simply click discuss bar to initiate Discuss and then choose the person you wish to have a chat with. You can hide the discuss window if you want to carry on working.

Home, Products development vision, discuss, intranet

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

There has been many post on the subject related to permission lately, and I want to show a hidden ‘gem’ in the admin panel of Claromentis Document Management which is going to help us monitor and manage permission better.

Complex Permission System

Claromentis Document Management System has comprehensive permission system, which means you can define permission by extranet area, role, group down to individual users. The permission can also inherited from the folder above as well as applied on the individual file itself.

Access Report

When you logging in to the system of course you can only see the document that you are allowed to see, but as you know from admin you can see all files.
As a document administrator you may be asked by your manager to create a report showing what a particular user can see or not see on the system.

They might be a business partners or contractors, while you want to make sure they have access to the information they need, you want to make sure there is no permission leak. You don’t want the corporate sensitive information exposed to this type of users.

What’s new in Claromentis

We created  a new functionality called  “Document Permission Report” and it is available from admin panel from Claromentis 5.6.3 onwards.

Under utilities in Document Panel click on “Document Permission Report”
Where you can select a user and get the permission report instantly, you can also export it to CSV format.

Screenshot

Home, Prod-Project, Products, Resources-Technical Claromentis, document management, online collaboration

As an integrated framework that provides significant applications it is great to see how easy it has become to link between them – and how pragmatic and useful the resultant functionality is for companies.

One great example is the use of Claromentis for managing a customer relationship – from initial lead processing, through to sales management and onto the implementation using Project Manager. In all cases the integration is simple, effective and efficient.

• Lead processing : managed using InfoCapture auto responders and using notifications and SLAs – the leads are responded to and useful information provided. At any stage manual interaction can take place, and auto responders are then set on hold. When gates are passed and the lead qualifies as relevant and appropriate – one click generates a company, opportunity and contact record in the relevant Sales Manager territory.

Direct Integration

• Sales Management : from this point all relevant information, activities and documents are captured as the new account moves through a customizable sales cycle.

• As soon as the project is approved, a direct link form the sales Manager record is generated to the new Project in the correct Programme in Project Manager to deliver the products and services that have been ordered.

For completeness the project metadata can link back to the Sales Manager records – so there is no need to duplicate relevant documents and data in project manager.

This level of integration and support is a pleasure to use and really offers the sales and project managers an integrated platform of information on which to ensure success for both our company and our new clients.

In our own company as we continue to accelerate our rate of customer acquisition this platform also allows us to scales up our delivery side with no loss of quality. It is becoming one of the most critical sides of our business as we continue to grow – which is particularly satisfying when we recommend this approach to our own clients.

Products efficiency, integration, Prod-Intranet

Claromentis is happy to announce that we have added couple of new features to the Image Gallery application in 5.6

Create a new collection of Images: You can create your own Image gallery collection, which contains selected images of your choice, by clicking on “” link

Follow these simple steps to create your set of collection: Click on “Create new collection” link for creating a new collection. Specify a title for the collection, select the required images and save collection

You are ready with your favorite set of images

Products

Claromentis is happy to announce that we have added a couple of new features to the InfoCapture application in 5.6.

1.    HTML field type: HTML field type can be used as a WYSIWYG editor, which helps a user to insert click-able links, allow text formatting, insert an click-able email address link within an InfoCapture form

2.    Codename: Codename is used to simplify the URL for users to list, add, view or edit issues in InfoCapture forms.

Example:  You have an Infocapture project to collect information about suppliers.  The project is called “Suppliers”, and the Codename is specified as “suppliers”.

The original URL that would be used to list all forms submitted in the “Suppliers” project is:

http://forms.claromentis.com/intranet/infocapture/issues.php?project_id_select=*id*

Replacing *id* with the ID of the “Suppliers” project.

This is too often a long a complicated URL for users and admins to remember.  This is also not particularly user friendly.

With the use of a Codename, an alternative (and more user friendly) URL is automatically created as:

http://forms.claromentis.com/forms/suppliers

This ensures that the end users are not confused or mislead by any URL that they are sent via email or linked to from other areas of the site.  The practicality of this is self explanatory!!

Products