Intranet Management Software Blog

One of the greatest visionaries was Leonardo Da Vinci, but what has always impressed me about so many of his ideas was that he spent an enormous amount of time and energy trying to work out how they could actually be implemented. During this process he often created multiple and of course compellingly beautiful sketches and models - even though at the time sometimes the appropriate technology to underpin his remarkable ideas did not yet exist.

Sometimes I think we have a lot to learn from this approach - working out what the intranet is for, how it is going to accomplish that and then adding great design as an integral part of the work in progress. It is very tempting to concentrate on design at the beginning, and then ask an intranet vendor like Claromentis to make the design work. In my view this approach has two possible disadvantages:

1. You might miss out some relevant functionality that can make a real difference, because the designers were not intranet specialists and so were not familiar with available features or strong in previous intranet project experience.

2. It is focusing on design and leaving out the details of how it might work - it is often precisely in these details that not only possible problems but also additional value lie.

In my view the intranet and collaboration vision should be about

1.    what the system is for
2.    how it is going to change the organization
3.    how it is going to increase innovation.

And it should absolutely include how we are actually going to get this done, as part of developing the vision itself.

Leonardo tried to the best of his ability to work the details out way in advance, even though the world was far from ready for some of his ideas. Just one example, in 1502 he designed a bridge for a project near Constantinople, 300 years before the basic engineering principals required to build it were accepted.  In 2001 the bridge was finally built, in Norway – 500 years after the drawing was made. You can read about it here.

Home intranets

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

My calendar view

Getting things done

Have you ever get into panic situation where your work is suddenly mounting, you feel worry that things may not get done, or you feel depressed because you know you are about to cause big disappointment for everyone?  Do you feel so much more positive as soon as you write things down on a piece of paper?  There is an old saying; if you share your problem things aren’t so bad as it sounds?

My job role

My role is an information architect (IA). I work daily with our business and technical consultants understanding client’s needs and their business problems. We’re working in a small team brainstorming debating ideas and deciding ‘the best approach’ on a particular issue for a particular client. In the back-end I have a trio: developer, designer and application tester ready to ‘get-on’ with it.

Challenging situation

Recently it has become quite a challenging situation. Amount of work shows no sign of slowing down; at the same time my trio is no longer solid with the departure of one of our team member.  Unfortunately I have to juggle with numerous tasks which require multiple skills.

Claromentis Shared Calendar

One tool which has helped me to get through this (believe it or not) is Claromentis Shared Calendar. We’ve been using Claromentis shared calendar in our Intranet system as our simple team to-do list. Each of us created a calendar, pick a particular colour and we simply share them. I have permission to create events on each calendar which I am using it to set tasks for my team.

We can easily see each other calendar or multiple calendars in one view. A quick access to particular combination can be done with one click URL allowing even quicker access. It solves classic problem knowing who is doing what and when.  Automatic notification is sent to appropriate person when an event is moved or changed which eliminates the need sending separate email around. I can quickly review my team’s workload.

Make sure things are scheduled

The idea is simply to make sure things are scheduled, it only takes me one click to assign task, the same way writing things down on a piece of paper. You can see at glance when things should be done or when you need to chase them. Shared calendar allows me to spread tasks into certain days instead of one big pile long list. A mountain of tasks suddenly becomes more realistic and achievable.

It has become our second nature just to set a task, pick a day when we can do it and you get things done easily. Sometime the best tool is the simplest one, you know it is working well when you don’t even realise it.

Products Claromentis, intranets, online collaboration, Social Networking

An Intranet specialist Toby Ward has recently published his webinar about the future of Intranet (so called Intranet 2.0), highlighting how web 2.0 and social media is changing the corporate intranet. Interesting…

Prod-Intranet intranet, intranet 2.0, intranet software, intranets, web 2.0

Many companies want to embrace Enterprise 2.0, the same spirit that leverage UGC (User Generated Content), but most of them are unsuccessful. The Company Intranet has been seen as a formal platform where the information is coming from top to bottom, approval required type information and majority of staff having ‘read only’ rights. The main question has been how to create a sense of ownership, collaboration, communication,participation, and excitement when the information is majority coming in one-way direction. Let’s admit it top to bottom communication is boring, who wants to read the latest CEO’s deal or corporate press releases and why should they get excited about it?

One of our clients came up with this idea,  a “Community Portal” where information is shared outside a rigid Intranet. An area where all users can create content and mashing up publicly available media such as personal Blog, YouTube Video or Flickr  Photos within “Community Portal” in a corporate Intranet.

The result? Brilliant! Some users are posting YouTube video from their latest field trip, pictures from Flickr album from recent staff weddings, or some charity work they did recently. The staff feel their work is appreciated by getting feedback & comments from others,  and the executive get a glimpse on what their staff have  done in projects and events that really engage them.

It’s far from the anarchy that most management are often concerned about. It’s fun, interesting, and it makes an Intranet a place to visit everyday.

Solutions Claromentis, intranet software, intranets, online collaboration

Sophisticated intranet and extranet permission systems that can control access in so many ways are rapidly blurring the traditional distinction between intranets and extranets.

It still remains true that extranets are different – we need to provide access to partners and the supply chain in a way the business can securely control and monitor – but actually with Claromentis key staff themselves are separated into access areas by role, group and individual permissions so there is indeed some overlap.

Here is the difference as we see it today:

• Extranet users need to be ring fenced from each other – we clearly do not want Partner A accessing pricing information for Partner B.
• Nor do we want users from Partner A being aware of the existence of users from Partner B.
• Co-branding must be automatic if required – the customer must with no effort be able to create a co-branded portal that provides the right environment for each supplier and partner.
• Hybrid access in terms of active directory or individual logon with a username and password. We must, and do, support mix and match access in terms of active directory automated intranet log-on for staff, and logon with username and password for partners.

Apart from these key differentiators, extranets are just one more permission bucket in Claromentis, which is exactly as it should be as the world flattens, and key users and contributors that can make a difference to any Claromentis customer might be employees of suppliers, partners or freelancers.

Products extranets, intranets, permissions

I today read with real interest what apparently is the first of a total of 3 articles on intranet journal by Paul Chin. I encourage you to take a look.

The theme is choosing between Open Source and Commercial intranets. He discusses the ideas that we have reviewed for such a long time when developing Claromentis, a commercially available and supported intranet system that is developed on LAMP, coded entirely in PHP, is completely customizable and has a comprehensive API for external PHP developers to extend our systems to meet the needs of their clients.

We are currently working with 2 major corporations, one in the USA and one in the UK, where open source developers are working with our own core team to provide significant functionality on top of our framework.

I will be very interested to read Paul’s conclusion - and to see if we at Claromentis really do supply, as we have always argued - a third way.

Prod-Intranet commercial, intranets, open source