Intranet Management Software Blog

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

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

During early phases of intranet deployment, we are frequently asked by our clients “what do I need to prepare or plan in advance to guarantee a successful of intranet deployment project”.

In our opinion, an intranet project is all about dialog. It’s a dialog between ‘us’ the software vendor with our expertise and know-how and ‘you’ who know the most about your business or organisation.

Step1. Setup a Goal

The first step is determining the goals of your Intranet project. Why do you want an intranet? Some typical reasons:

• Improving and providing a communication and collaboration tool.
• Our existing Intranet is old and dysfunctional.
• Distribute corporate news (electronic newsletter)
• Providing self service staff contact details which are always up-to-date
• Make our company policies and procedures available online
• Sharing documents online instead of using shared drives
• Enabling staff to work from home
• Better searching and easier way finding key documents

Step2. Define the scope & audience

Have you got an answer for these questions?

• Is it just an Intranet for staff or it is also an extranet for partners and contractors?
• Do you want to allow your staff access to the intranet even when they’re at home or client’s site?
• How about mobile access?
• Have you asked representative from each department on what they want to see or get on the Intranet?
• How people currently finding information, which you think should be on the intranet? What are their common pains?
• Would you like to store sensitive information on the Intranet such as payroll ?
• What about chat and commenting? How open is your company culture?

Step 3. Build a SiteMap

Build a sitemap, using your favorite tools such as Visio or simply hand drawn, create draft of Intranet sitemap, typically the main branch are represented by each department, you can see various examples below:

Example Sitemap with colour coded permission

Example of Intranet Site Map using colour to identify launch phase

Step 4. What are key application do you want to use?

This step is simply determining what are the main application do you want to use on the Intranet, Claromentis provide these following applications,  you can simply choose which one to use.

News and Blog– Share and distribute company news and blog
Documents – Document collaboration with version control
Publish – Page creator, a content management system
People – Self service personnel database
Calendar – Shared company calendar
Image Gallery – Corporate image database
Bookshelf – Online Policies & Procedures
Policy Manager – Managing lifecycle of the company policies
Holiday planner – manage corporate holiday and absence
Room booking – book a meeting room and office facilities
InfoCapture – Electronic e-forms builder and workflows
Project – Manage project online
CRM – Opportunity Management

Outside these applications we built many other bespoke applications to suit your need

Step 5. Understanding Permissions

Permission Group & Role

A scalable intranet should have a strong permission system, it also helps to distribute information easily. For example you may want to have area where only people in your department can produce or edit its content while everyone else simply just view.

This can be done easily by setting up permission, ie : Roles, Group and Sub-Groups.

To make our job easier when configuring your system, have you got a Company org-chart available?

Step 6. Create Homepage Wireframe

As you know the homepage is the first page everyone is going to see, it’s worth the extra effort to design this carefully after all it is a gateway to all other content within the Intranet. Look at several examples for inspiration and decide what you want to see on the homepage, my advice is to keep it clean and simple.

UBS Intranet homepage wireframe

Colchester NHS Intranet wireframe

Step 7. Budget & Resources

How many users will be using the Intranet? Many Intranet software vendors  price their products by number of users.

Hardware, who is going to provide you with the hardware?  If you don’t have any we’re happy to source this for you or you can take the SaaS model.

Have you got an internal project team?  Usually we recommend a project sponsor, an internal project manager as the main contact, a technical contact, and a rep from marketing or communication as a minimum team - smaller companies might have fewer people involved.

Step 8. Timeline

Plan your project timeline carefully.  Each company is different - an Intranet can be deployed from 2 weeks up to a year, these are some key points worth considering which may cause delays:

• Sourcing hardware
• Getting access through your office network
• Finalising design
• Updating user list
• Content population
• Content migration.

Like everything else in life, execution is quick, preparation is the key so do your homework!

Step 9. Future plans (keep evolving!)

I’ve seen many intranet projects loose momentum after the initial launch phase. A successful intranet is something that grows over time, start simple and add new features gradually. Learn from  user feedback and implement user requests wherever feasible.

Small improvements can make a huge different - it’s like the breath of fresh air. Keep the original team and meet regularly for project reviews and brainstorming of new ideas.

Here are some ideas to think about once you have your initila intranet.

• Is there any business processes which can be done electronically?
• Such as overtime request, time cards, new hire.
• Is there a database, which is currently in Excel, and you think it will be much better if it is an online application?
• Any existing system, which can be better integrated with the Intranet?
• Thinking of deploying corporate micro-blogging? Online videos?

Step 10. Do it now!

This final step is the most important of all. You can make all the planning you need but without execution it is still a plan. Get the ball rolling now, gather your team, email them now, start researching or simply drop us a line to discuss your requirement, or book an online demo!

Good luck with your Intranet project!

Home Claromentis, collaboration, Design, extranet, intranet, intranet consultancy, intranet development, intranet project manager

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

Deploying an intranet within organisation can be a complex project. The fact is that a single system has to be created to cater for requirements from individuals with different needs and objectives.

During the Intranet project implementation we often have brainstorming session with representatives from each department and we ask them what is an ideal intranet according to them if they can ignore others and only focus on what they want to see and get from the system.

Here are some interesting examples of intranet design according to their brief.

Executives

Business performance and KPI is something that Directors and executives have inside their head all the time. This type of busy folks don’t have enough time to drill down the detail, they simply want to see everything at glance without hassle.

Designer/Marketing

The look and feel is something that this type of audience cares the most. Sometime they are a bit too creative for their own sake, ignoring the main purpose of the site.

Legal & HR

Distributing information efficiently, securely and compliant is more important than everything else. This is an example of intranet design according to them.

FootNote:

Claromentis supports multiple visual interfaces, enabling the creation of completely different intranet experiences according to the type of user. In most cases we always ended up with a compromise, not the extremes like the examples above.

Home Design, humor, user interface

We are really sure now that we are making the whole process of selecting a design for  a new Claromentis Intranet just too difficult for the typical company that joins us. For a certain type of company, with the relevant skills and indeed ambitions the existing process is fine – but not for many!

Precisely because Claromentis can easily be given a design that can be completely bespoke – exactly what you would like it to be – we have  encouraged clients to think hard about what they would like the design to be.

But actually it seems that most new companies would prefer that we just tell them!

So we going now through an exciting process to develop questionnaires and models that will allow us to present the new intranet customer with a great design at the first pass – and then just let them comment on it and make minor changes.

What are the positives :

1.    The client gets an intranet with a great and relevant design, fit for purpose, in very little time.

2.    We know from experience most customers refresh their designs in year two or three anyway, after the experience of actually using it.

3.    The client can focus on content, functionality, training and deployment issues – which is probably the best use of their time.

The truth is that we now know this is the best for all concerned – but we still find it difficult to move away from a completely bespoke and individual design for each client – because that is such a strength of Claromentis.

I am reminded of the fact that in previous engagements with intranet clients over the years we should say that certain clients just did things “because we can” – perhaps this is seeing our own process in exactly the same way. Just because we can deploy a completely individual intranet design for every customer does not actually mean that we should!

Services Design, intranet software

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

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!

Home Design, fun, intranet, intranet development, intranets, showcase, web 2.0

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

Inspirational talks from Don Norman found on TED. There are three ways in good design which makes people happy. Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about  our core values Design, Clarity, Risk Management & Fun to work with, which are going to be the main focus for the future big release of Claromentis.

Services core values, Design, user interface