During an intranet training session today that was focused on design, it really dawned on me how functional components and smart objects are becoming in the intranet software world.

As an example – in our own sales management we use Process Manager to manage our inquiries, until we open up a Sales Manager opportunity – with just one click.

Now on our sales publish page in our intranet staff get a live view of the incoming leads and their status – a simple Process Manager component gives a window onto that project that is always and instantly up to date, with direct access to every individual lead. The page also shows the live sales documents folder through a smart object.

We are also continually enhancing our components – for example the ‘most popular document’ (or pages) component is now being enhanced into a new version, at the request of a new client – so it displays on the intranet home page the most popular document for each user.

In fact I struggle to see what can limit the usefulness of this growing library of components and documents. Just today we decided that a most viewed topic in a forum can turn an administrator populated FAQ into a genuine FAQ – as it continuously reacts to show the genuinely most popular questions in any FAQ board.

Resources-Technical components

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.

Resources-Technical Claromentis, document management, Prod-Intranet, update, user interface

Working on application design or creation of e-forms, we often make check boxes or drop down selector. In most cases you probably don’t pay much attention setting up the default value of each choice you created. Should a particular checkbox is checked by default or unchecked.  How many items to be displayed per page by default, or which country or age group should be selected by default for instance.

According to behavioural economist Dan Ariely, any value which is set by default will greatly influence decision that majority users is going to make when filling out the form or using a piece of functionality.

For example in Claromentis we have news application with option to set a particular news item as ‘sticky news’.  The idea the sticky news will always be displayed on the Intranet homepage until it’s expired. It is a useful feature allowing an important news item remain visible to the majority Intranet users, otherwise it might get buried down quickly by not-so-important news.

What we didn’t realise the default value for the expired date is set a year in advance by default. For example if you submit a news on the 22nd May 2009, it won’t be off the sticky until the same date next year !

The problem is simple majority users are not even bothered to change the expired date.

The result, intranet’s homepage is filled with sticky news which should have been expired long time ago. In order to fix this problem, an Intranet administrator has to go through each news article and correct the expiry date, which was set incorrectly by majority users.

This problem won’t happen in the first place if the developer put sensible value when he or she typing the code for the news submission form.  Interestingly enough in a much larger scale any default value which may sounds simple can have a huge impact.

Check out an interesting video below (open in new window).

Resources-Technical Design, e-forms, fun, user interface

I’ve recently been tasked with developing a web-crawler for our clients at the Savannah Riverkeeper organisation. Their conservation efforts mean they have been manually looking through a long list of web-pages for new PDF documents of applications regarding the Georgia Savannah area, and this is something they wished to automate. This is the result:

The application will crawl a URL to a specified link-depth and automatically import new documents into a folder in Claromentis’ Document Manager. It also sends the relevant users notifications of new documents, and any problems encountered. This should really cut down the time needed for our clients to sift a range of sites for relevant new documents and notices.

There is a question I was asked about whether it was legal and/or  responsible to trawl other organisation’s sites in this way. Of course there is no way for a web server to know what sort of client is connecting apart from the User Agent (how the browser identifies itself to the server) and the IP address, so server administrators really have to take it as a given that their sites will be crawled on a regular basis. Anyone who’s looked at a website access log will know that Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft are constantly on the crawl for new content for their search engines to index. So legal definitely yes, and in this instance the end certainly justifies the means.

Using the Claromentis Framework and other FOSS(Free/Open Source Software) tools for these kinds of mini-applications makes Rapid Application Development easily possible, and I was able to get a working prototype and interface ready in plenty of time to meet the client’s requirements.

And who knows, maybe I’ll have helped save an important, useful and beautiful stretch of river in the process.

Resources-Technical web crawler

With 5.6 Claromentis now supports WebDAV – including the automated preservation of version control – to provide drag and drop file management in parallel with the rich browser based visual interfaces of Claromentis. For those that haven’t used this protocol you can read about it here

Set Up

Setting it up is simple, here on my laptop using Vista Add a network location by right clicking the computer icon:

I will then be asked to provide the URL of the Claromentis system that I need to manage I will also need of course to provide my access credentials for the intranet : Right away the new drive is available to me.

It appears like any normal drive, a very familiar environment for the user.

We can directly compare this with the rich browser based experience of looking at exactly the same document folder using the Claromentis visual interface through the browser – as the screen shot below shows :

This of course is just the central part of the document management interface.

What are the Implications?

Users that don’t need a graphical interface can just work with drag and drop on their PCs IT departments or users themselves do need to set up the shortcut to the file system on their local PC – so a slight disadvantage over strict access anywhere using only a browser that the Claromentis VI provides.

Claromentis have made sure that adding later versions of files using drag and drop in WebDAV does indeed create a new version of the file in the Claromentis system.

Lets look at this : I navigate to >testing >001 folders in both systems : Here in the Claromentis rich interface

Lets look at the individual file “summary.doc”

Using the interface :

I can look at the properties of this file as normal : here is just a part of the screen :

Notice there is no version TAB at all, as there is only one version of this document in the version controlled library of the Claromentis system.

Now without touching this file in Claromentis I decide to just open it in windows using WebDAV. Word fires up just like in any local directory, to me it is a local file system.

I then edit it, and I just save it from MS Word as normal – in this case I added some content relating to Voltaire.

Refreshing the browser back on my Claromentis interface – and indeed – I now have two versions of this document!

More details

I can of course just create a shortcut now on my desktop that represents the local file system – expressed as a normal folder – for the version controlled document management system of Claromentis.

I can also just drag and drop any file into it :

and there it is :

And after refreshing the browser – the file is there as normal for all users in the normal visual interface.

To complete this story – lets say a normal user in the rich browser based visual interface now searches for “Voltaire” – you recall that was the content I added locally – then dragged that file into the WebDAV folder locally..

The file is there – adding it via WebDAV still invoked the full automatic searching of content in the normal Claromentis indexing system.

Conclusions

Claromentis has always provided a rich browser experience for the manipulation of documents using check in and our icons, or renew functionality.

There is now an alternative for certain types of users  – or even certain tasks – where the ability to just drag documents into a “local”  folder makes life a lot simpler!  The browser based Visual Interface is always available – users can select the best environment for the task at hand.

I am sure certain companies will find this extremely useful.

Resources-Technical document management, version control, WebDAV

As you might noticed, Claromentis Intranet Manager uses BBCode in some of its applications such as Forum Post and News.

BBCode was devised to provide a safer, easier and more limited way of allowing users to format their messages. Programmer convenience was certainly another factor, as BBCode is very simple to implement.

Some implementations of BBCode have suffered problems mainly user interface, Intranet users have already become accustomed using WYSIWYG editor.

Claromentis 5.6 introduces new way to handle with this situation from the programmer point of view there is no drawback, it is still an old BBCode but users get a WYSIWYG interface.

Check out our screenshot below:

Resources-Technical Claromentis 5.6, Design, intranet news, technology, user interface

I have recently been working on one of our large clients intranet deployment in the USA and I wanted to write how amazed I am when I see a client finding different ways of customization our intranet software to suit their needs.

As of Claromentis 5.4, we have developed a new feature called Smart Objects. This feature helps Claromentis users importing content to their intranet pages from different sources within Claromentis, such as News, Forum messages and Document lists. No longer will users have to navigate to separate areas to see application files as opposed to web based content, for example. A dynamic view of disparate content and objects is possible from just one location.

This company is part of one of the worlds largest clothing manufacturers, and they are using our software to improve the communication between different departments within the organization, as well as simplifying the process of managing documents securely, all within one instance. Departments varies from variety of sources, such as Sales, Finance, Warranty, RD&D, EMEA and more… Without a doubt, a web based intranet solution like Claromentis was the best choice for an international company. Having its employees across the world makes the importance of communication and document management through the Internet was an appropriate choice.

Because Claromentis is permission based intranet software, it is possible to hide your content from different departments using the same intranet software. You simply create groups and roles within Claromentis and identify your content (documents and news) to be shown to a certain number of users.

As you can imagine, a company like this literally has tens of thousands of documents stored within the software, so making these files to be found easily is not an easy job. That’s where the Smart Objects feature is going to make this process a lot easier than our competitors’ solutions.

Let me explain how different parts of Claromentis can work in collaboration to solve complex intranet problems. In this example, I would like to share a document folder containing financial sales targets of this month and a list of products needs to be highlighted during sales campaigns. I would also like to share news belonging the sales department and I need to show all of the above content visiting the Sales Department home page.

In the above example, I am actually aiming to solve my problem by sourcing the content from the following corporate solutions.

• Document Manager
• Content Manager
• Permission Based Intranet Management
• Permission Based News Management

As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, Smart Objects enables you to show contents from different parts of Claromentis, and this is exactly how this client actually solved this complex collaboration issue.

1. Define Groups and Roles (SALES > Sales Managers | Sales Team) and assign users to the appropriate level.
2. Using Document Manager application, store my files into one folder created for the special sales campaign.
3. Change the permissions of all my files and make the “financial sales targets” viewable only by Sales Managers and the remaining files viewable by people belonging the SALES group.
4. Using Web Based Content Management Solution, create an intranet page and fill up the content areas, such as TITLE, SUMMARY, GOALS, REWARDS.
5. Using Smart Objects, embed the document folder containing my files into an appropriate space within my intranet page.
6. Again Using Smart Objects, embed the Sales news (blogs) channel.
7. Save the page and share the web address of the page with my staff.

What will happen is people who has an access to view the page I just created will only need to remember one web address (which can be pasted into an e-mail message) and when they click on that link, all of the information they have a permission to see will be visible to them. Remember that we have embedded one single folder containing both financial targets as well as documents containing products need to be highlighted? Because I set the permissions for my documents, Sales team will only see the files they need to see and managers will also be able to access the financial target documents, even though they are in the same folder and I have embedded that folder into my Intranet Page.

All within one single page. How Smart is that?!

Resources-Technical complex intranet management, document management, intranet, intranet blogging, news management, permissions, Prod-Intranet, smart object

For those of you that don’t already know, LAMP is an acronym for Linux – Apache – MySQL – PHP. It’s a collection of software that can be used to run servers and dynamic websites. It’s one of the most popular alternatives to Microsoft, and according to statistics provided by netcraft.com not only is Apache holding around 60% market share in the delivery/presentation of websites, but it’s thriving on the open source platforms and continuing to grow and compete (successfully) against Microsoft. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that any piece of software that can even compete (let alone lead) in its market against a super company like Microsoft has to have something special about it. Well, it’s no secret why the LAMP solution is so popular, it just works, it works well, it’s reliable, it’s robust, it’s resilient, and it’s free.

Without going into all of the nitty-gritty debates about why you should and shouldn’t base a corporate solution on an open source platform (there are enough of these debates on the Internet already), it’s not hard to realize why Claromentis run all of their development on the LAMP platform. The LAMP platform allows the development team to manage all aspects of their programming environment without relying on Microsoft to ensure the stability of that environment. Depending on who you talk to, avoiding Microsoft can be complete suicide, or a dream come true. Personally, I’m a believer in the statistics, and if 60% of the websites are running on Apache, my money is on that platform to deliver the best of everything. And I’ve never met a PHP developer who programs on anything else.

However, Claromentis doesn’t believe in limitations, so we let you decide which platform you wish to run the applications on. The Claromentis framework is compatible with LAMP, Windows, and ORACLE, so it works the way you do, integrating easily with your existing IT infrastructure.

For more information about Claromentis and the platforms it can run on, please contact sales@claromentis.com or call us on 01273 666 355

Resources-Technical apache, LAMP, Linux, mysql, open source, php, platform, windows

You can do lot of interesting stuff with Google Talk like get alert notifications, save bookmarks to delicious, manage web calendars, set reminders, write blogs, and so much more. Such features can be easily integrated into Google Talk through ‘bots’ which, in simple English, are like virtual friends who are online 24×7 and will always respond with a smile to your questions or requests

Here are some of the most useful ‘bots’ that transform Google Talk into a more useful program:

1. imfeeds@gmail.com – Add this IM Feeds bot as your Google Talk buddy and you’ll be able to read any blog or website that syndicates content via RSS feeds.

To subscribe to a website in GTalk, simply send a new IM message that says “sub abc.com” where abc.com is the address of the website / blog you want to read inside Google Talk.

2. friendfeed@imified.com – This secret bot lets you post to FriendFeed from Google Talk. You may submit either hyperlinks or text messages.

3. imified@imified.com – This imified bot turns Google Talk into a real powerhouse.

You can post bookmarks to delicious, send messages to Twitter, submit blog entries to WordPress, Tumblr or Blogger, manage events in Google Calendar, shorten long URLs, run whois and so on.

4. inezhabot@gmail.com – Like IM Feeds, iNezha bot helps you read feeds inside Google Talk but this is slightly more versatile. For instance, you can simply say “digg” and it will show a list of all feeds that match that search term so you don’t have to type (or copy-paste) feed addresses.

5. Translation – This is a free service from Google that helps you translate words from a foreign language into your native language. Just add the relevant bot (e.g. hi2en@bot.talk.google.com for Hindi to English or en2hi@bot.talk.google.com for English to Hindi) as your buddy, send him a message and it will get translated instantly.

6. Set Task Reminders – If you need to remember something important, Google Talk can send you reminders for that event.

Just add timer to your Twitter friend’s list and then add twitter@twitter.com to your buddy list in Gtalk. Now if you want to get a reminder after 50 minutes, send a direct message to twitter like “d timer 50 pick kids from school” and a reminder will automatically pop up in your Google Talk after 50 minutes.

7. Transliteration – If you want to chat in your mother tongue (like Hindi or Tamil) but feel more comfortable using the English keyboard, Google Transliteration bot will come in handy.

For instance, add en2hi.translit@bot.talk.google.com to you friend’s list in GTalk and all messages you type in English will get transliterated in the language of your choice. Available only for a few Indian languages.

Source: macsimumnews.com

Resources-Technical Bot, Google, Google Talk

Most of us are aware of “web standards” and its affects on creating “user friendly web based intranet software“, but it is very hard to say the same about the “e-mail standards“. Are the newsletters and announcment mails you send properly displayed on all e-mail clients? If you would like to know about it more, you can visit Email Standards Project website.

You can find very detailed information from Microsoft Outlook to Mozilla Thunderbird, From Google Mail to Yahoo! Mail and other web based e-mail clients. There is also a blog for this project.

Resources-Technical e-mail standards, web standards