Intranet Management Software Blog

Recently there are many discussions among our existing clients and partners about possibility extending granularity of the permission in Document’s folder within Claromentis.

This is our current standard permission where having “Edit” rights to a folder means you simply have rights to add and edit both documents and sub folders.

Some of our clients think that current “edit” permission is not flexible enough, they would like to split simple “edit” into sub-folders and documents.

After digging into our enhancement request database, I discovered that this is just one of the many request around the same subject.
Some says that having permission to view content of the folder should be different from permission to view folder’s properties and audit of the folder (usage statistics).

Others want to have flexibility where not all users with edit permission can run workflow on the same folder.

For a second I thought, “Hey this is getting ridiculous!”  Let’s mock-it up and see what happen if we accommodate all of them:

Can you see something is definitely not right, usability has been compromised to accommodate more granular permission, causing complexity to perform simple task which in most cases we just want simple “Edit”.

This issue raise a philosophical question, “Are we all so stupid so everything has to be over protective?” What’s wrong with a low-tech solution called “discipline”.

My niece is going to celebrate her 1 years old birthday next week. She starts cruising, walking short distances from object to object, she falls often and has many bumps and bruises, but she learns very quickly.

Aren’t we always told that allowing one or two bumps is a good thing?

Solutions Design, document management, fun, humor, intranet software discussions, 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:

Home, Solutions Case Study, intranet 2.0, online collaboration, Social Networking, web 2.0

I am fascinated by the number of intranet components we have been developing recently for our clients.

Strangely no client has ever specifically asked for an analysis of user searching behavior – which puzzles me because if we are all concerned with user uptake then surely we should be monitoring, above all else – when they do and do not find what they are looking for.

This goes back to the ongoing discussion we are having at Claromentis about tagging, quality measurements and our continual challenge to deliver a very accessible information layer through a permission engine.

I am fascinated by the requirement here, and look forward to a debate about how to deliver this – even though no client has asked for it – but I still feel it should be fundamentally important to our client intranet project teams and sponsors.

I would like to propose that we develop a special searching monitor tool that does, as a minimum, the following :

•    Logs into new tables all searches – additional to the current audit log - for special analysis – primarily so that they are not overwritten in the same way as general audit information must be.
•    Delivers reports – probably via tag clouds /semantic analysis / stemming  or some other mechanism that can allow for variations in the actual entered search string – on what users are searching for
•    Saves the top 10 search results for that term, at the time the search was made

Now here is what I would like debate about – we need to track whether the user found what they were looking for. That of course, is far from easy.

My thoughts are the we should:

•    Track whether they click on a returned result – they may not have been pleased with the results of the click but at least they saw something in the search return that was sufficiently positive they clicked on it.

•    Compare this to users who did NOT click on any of the returned results.

•    Over time compare this for different groups and roles of users looking for the same search term – in case we are not making the correct information available to the users who need it.

•    Develop a concept of the “refined search” – so assume that if a user enters a new search within a few minutes – it is assumed to be another attempt to find the same information. Track this refined search term, compare that to the first – and a again report on the users that thought they had found what they are looking for after they had refined their search.

•    Compare that with any tagging or metadata for the resulting file they clicked on.

I would be interested in ideas from the community as to whether this makes sense and of course from our team if we could deliver an engine that provides our clients with an accurate measure over time of what users are looking for, and whether they found it.

The added dimension over time of whether the success rate in specific searches actually improves would of course by a fundamental goal here.

Solutions

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

Solutions Case Study, collaboration, commercial, document management, e-forms, intranet consultancy, online collaboration, user interface

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.

Solutions collaboration, document management, intranet consultancy, intranet software, online collaboration, Prod-Intranet, quality management software

I am still far from convinced that many companies in the SME sector really have a prioritized and executive level sponsored agenda to go after collaboration and the business benefits it can bring – but I am completely convinced that very few assess the costs of collaborative projects.

collaboration

I am becoming a great fan of the Harvard Business Review – and an article this month reviewed the case for walking away from collaborative projects – or rather establishing a framework for assessing their ROI against non-collaborative alternatives.

The essential idea is that companies need to think about the alignment of business value and collaborative projects - many areas of collaboration turn out to be expensive, have political agendas and simply do not deliver an adequate ROI in line with the business needs - compared with the lost opportunity of a simpler project requiring no sophisticated collaboration.

What I found striking about this is :

• In all the meetings I have had with clients and potential clients deciding whether to invest in Claromentis collaboration platforms over the last five years this has never, as far as I can recall – been directly raised. If it has been a topic it is us that have started the debate, not the customer.

• I still do not find that companies here in the UK are looking for intranet and extranet collaboration solutions founded on what I would view as the correct agendas. They are looking at information management challenges – which should really be the foundation and not the ultimate goal.

After so many years of being involved in this space there just seems to be a huge disconnect between what the real world at the SME level is doing – and what the IT and business press is talking about.

I do feel that the nature of Claromentis 6.0 will provide a massive opportunity for this to change for the better – a framework that is accessible to SME companies and that absolutely facilitates the transformation from ideas to collaboration to execution is long overdue.

Solutions collaboration

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.

Solutions Design, internal customer communications, intranet, intranet consultancy, intranet development, user interface

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.

Solutions cloud computing, development vision, intranet, intranet consultancy, software, technology, web 2.0

Recently we have been very involved in of course our plans for Claromentis 6.0 and all that will involve in terms of bringing web 2.0 into the corporate communication platform. This is really exciting.

At the same time we are being asked to design social networking platforms for companies, and this is really causing me to question the level of thought that the average UK company puts into these ventures from a business perspective.

Given the fact that these companies are basically SMEs and so are far from owning a global brand, they are normally not concerned with monitoring brands across social networks, which of course has significant value once you have a brand to protect and indeed leverage.

Instead what our SME clients are looking to do it to take advantage of a world that frankly, in my opinion, they don’t understand. They imagine that this is some low cost of entry platform to get themselves a significant audience to interact with.

The amazing thing is that it is!

But the approach needs to be very different from simply finding a way to interact with some massive and totally unrelated set of people on Facebook – or anywhere else.

Disconnected networks

So often the discussion starts with design, and how to make sure that people on “My new social network” will be able to easily find their previous friends from some “Other massive unconnected community” they belong to. We get a bunch of deign sketches, and minimal thought about the business and the potential consumers we might be able to reach.

In my view, and I am glad to say many others, “the way for a business to convert social networking into measurable revenue is to use the social networking approach to connect the business value of that company with unserved consumer needs”.

This means that significant effort for an average SME needs to go into determining exactly what the business value is that is appropriate for this medium, and how they can connect and interact with potential new consumers who share those values, but who are presently are either not customers or whose purchasing patterns can be influenced in a positive way.

Some of the people they reach in this new medium need to be empowered to become ambassadors through their genuine alignment with the brand – and so create momentum behind the network. They will be able to become innovators by interacting with the brand to create new value – or to extend the reach to geographies or verticals that the company previously was prevented from leveraging. That’s exciting.

What these new people will absolutely not be is some arbitrary ‘friend’ that technology makes it easy to log into something in which they have absolutely no interest at all.

Believe it or not they will just leave.

Solutions Social Networking

In some new content on our site this week we stressed the fact that when you purchase Claromentis to deploy a collaboration framework you are buying much more than proprietary software that might lose its value over the coming years.

Instead Claromentis is a true intranet framework – in essence what it creates is a standard set of interrelated web based content, processes and application files that are formed and configured into a collaboration structure to suit your requirements.

With the extensive customization possibilities in all Claromentis products, the open source extendable nature of the system, the API and Process Manager plug-ins this really is a world away from buying software and hoping it will suit your needs.

We point this out on “7 good reasons to consider Claromentis” – it is a theme that is becoming increasingly important as customers look for increased choice, flexibility and value.

Solutions intranet software