Altrincham –UK Interact, a leading supplier in intelligent intranet software, announces the release of Interact Intranet version 4.9 – a significant update to Interact Intranet, which includes Interact Teams, Improved Microsoft Outlook Integration, Collaborative Image Galleries and Real-Time Twitter Integration amongst its new technologies and tools.
enterprise 2.0
Satisfying Your Gen X and Gen Y Intranet Users
With the boom of tech-savvy employees in the workforce, companies are in search of unique engagement tools to keep the Gen X and Gen Y employees interested. In Dana LaSalvia’s article called “Building an Employee-Enriched Culture with Social Media” she wrote that “organizations should think about integrating companywide marketing messages and upgrading their employee’s recognition programs to be more virtual.” To do this, implement an intranet! An intranet will improve employee culture and collaboration and act as a central portal for important company information. When you position your company online, you are catering to a large group of Gen X and Gen Y employees.
An intranet is a virtual solution to inform and connect with your tech savvy employees. To do so, utilize Dana’s Electronic Tool suggestions on your intranet:
Blogs provide a platform for a constant flow of communication. It is a low-cost, easy-to-use method to implement. Keep content rich and employee-centered.
RSS Feeds (a.k.a. Real Simple Syndication) provide a stream of information for employees and can act as an update alert for recognition program news.
Widgets are small applications that can be installed and executed by an end user. Create a recognition wizard or a tip-of-the-day widget to supplement any program type.
Podcasts (or non-streamed webcast) are a series of digital media files that can be downloaded through Web syndication for training modules, off-site seminars and integrated communications.
Six Tips for a Productive Intranet
Peter Barron is an Intranet Connections Fan; he provides significant feedback on our blog, Linkedin and Facebook pages and speaks candidly about our software as it applies to his organization. Over the past ten years, Peter has managed the Rio Rancho Public Schools intranet, which is internally called “Rionet”. With over 20 school district departments that use the rionet, Peter targets applications and widgets that make the intranet process fast and easy for thousands of users. We recently interviewed Peter to find out what makes his intranet so successful, and today we are delighted to share his responses with our intranet community.
Here are Peter’s six tips for an efficient intranet::
1. Time: Seeing as Rio Rancho is a school district, the majority of intranet users are teachers. Teachers are incredibly busy with students during the day and they lack freedom of time to peruse their intranets. In order to overcome this timing issue, Peter leverages the notification capabilities of the “rionet” with subscriptions to departments that the teachers have invested interest in. This subscription service has been a big push for Peter and the Rio Rancho Schools because it decreases searching time on the intranet by targeting topics of interest for the user.
2. E-forms: Teachers must attend conferences, so Peter created PDF e-forms for them to request conference admittance and funding in rionet. Directly from their classroom, teachers fill out the request form, and it is processed right away.
Quoting IT: Throw caution to the wind with Enterprise 2.0
"The more I learn about Enterprise 2.0, the more inclined I am to encourage companies to throw caution to the wind: buy (or build) some well-designed lightweight tools that take advantage of emergence and game mechanics, find a few leaders willing to lead by example, and go live."
- Andrew McAfee, Enterprise 2.0 the Indian Way, AndrewMcAfee.org, April 7, 2011.
Interact Answers: A collaboration feature available on Interact Intranet
Interact, a leading supplier in intelligent intranet software, today announced the release of Interact Answers - an innovative and unique new crowd-sourcing feature which drives productivity by allowing users to post questions on the intranet and receive accurate solutions, using Interact Intranet’s intelligence store and the knowledge of other users.
The easy-to-use feature is available in the core system of Interact Intranet version 4.8. Once a user posts a question on the intranet, Interact Answers will attempt to provide a solution to the question. It firstly uses its intelligent capabilities to supply information that it thinks will answer the question, then Interact Answers will recommend colleagues within the company it believes can help with the question. These ‘experts’ are notified of the question and the question is then open for all employees to answer.
Interact Answers drives internal collaboration as all employees begin to collaborate to answer the question successfully and it unlocks knowledge in the company. Interact Answers prevents relying on internal emails to ask questions, where the answers can be quickly lost and the right answer is not guaranteed. Productivity is boosted as less time is spent searching for answers and it also allows staff to ask an open question to the company if they are not sure who to direct the question to.
Simon Dance, Product Manager comments:
“Interact Answers is an intelligent collaboration feature that grows the more it is used. As users begin to answer questions, a knowledge store is created so vital company information can’t be lost and can be easily searched for.
“What makes this feature unique is that Interact Answers intelligently suggests solutions to the questions asked, using the information already contained within the intranet. It then goes one step further by recommending an expert within the company it believes can help you with that answer.”
Quoting IT: Enterprise Collaboration
"Enterprise collaboration projects are almost always risky propositions. Storing and sharing information, potentially across departments and across the world, holds unquantifiable rewards for the business. Yet, if these rewards can't be realized by individuals, then the project risks failure."
- Matthew Sarrel, Tapping the Positive from Social Networks for Enterprise Collaboration, eWeek, November 15, 2010
New intelligent tagging features in Interact Intranet 4.7
Interact, a leading supplier of intelligent intranet software, has announced the availability of Interact Intranet Version 4.7. Highlights from the latest release include new @tagging and #tagging features making it much easier to quickly and easily link content and increase content findability.
The '@ tagging' feature extends the benefits of Interact Intranet’s ’Clever linker‘ tool, which was released earlier this year to provide a quick and easy method for content authors to link to other content within Interact Intranet including documents, events and people. Typing ‘@’ before any word launches a dynamic instant search for content within the intranet making it even easier to create internal linkswith no need for a complicated interface. This innovative collaboration feature enhances intranet content and increases user engagement.
The '# tagging' feature gives intranet content authors and commentators the ability to add keywords to almost any searchable content such as blogs, discussion boards and individual user comments, thus creating greater context. #tags automatically appear as a hyperlink to information relating to the #tag and are ranked higher in search results than conventional word searches.
Intranet Connections 10.5 aims to bring simplicity to intranet administration
Vancouver, BC -- Intranet Connections has released the newest version of its Intranet 2.0 CMS platform with the aims of reducing administration overhead for intranet managers and simplifying the design of site navigation. Intranet Connections version 10.5 targets small to medium size businesses wishing to have SharePoint-like functionality, but without the price tag or management overhead.
Carolyn Douglas, CEO of Intranet Connections, “Our focus is on ease-of-use and providing SMB’s with an out-of-the-box intranet that they can implement themselves. Version 10.5 provides intranet administrators with a simple solution that is easy to install, implement and manage on an ongoing basis, without the need for custom development.”
A key enhancement in the new release is the addition of a revised menu builder that features a drag and drop interface to manage site navigation. The redesigned interface allows administrators to add a horizontal menu to their site, create drop down menus, add menu headers and relocate menu items from the left main to the site header directly through the site interface. The new menu builder provides more flexibility to intranet managers wishing to customize their information architecture in a simple manner.
This latest release also builds on the popular tagging feature with the addition of a new content tag management interface. The robust tag administration area simplifies routine tag management tasks such as creating tag groups, moving tags between groups and finding tags with dynamically filtered search results. Admins can pre-populate and organize commonly used tags so that end users can easily tag and find relevant content.
Also included among the other features of v10.5 are an upgrade of the HTML editor to improve accuracy when composing complex document layouts or pasting from Word, an extranet friendly security model to simplify user-rights administration on intranet/extranet implementations and a new Multiple File Upload tool for improved ease-of-use, stability and performance.
Content Management Technologies: 26 Alphabetical Tips to Spell Success
Content management technologies advance so quickly that it’s hard to keep up. From enterprise content management (ECM) to electronic document management (EDM), business process management (BPM), business intelligence (BI), EDRM (electronic document and records management), records and information management (RIM) and more, technology increasingly resembles a bowl of alphabet soup. So many acronyms are floating around that it’s hard to know what order to put the letters in and what they’re supposed to spell.
Whether you’re scanning files for historical reference, providing information access via a customer portal, or are in the midst of enterprise-wide process automation, there are standard steps you should take that will help you to succeed. No matter what acronym your solution spells or what your goals are, these 26 steps should be applied and revisited throughout your project implementation. If you miss one, your project might turn out a bit differently from what you are hoping for. How and when you use each tip is up to you, but be sure to use them all!
Align your business and IT goals. Some of the greatest project failures result from a mismatch. IT’s role is to support business objectives, but IT resources are often stretched. Educate each other. Negotiate.
Budget carefully. Software and hardware alone don’t represent Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Customizations, disaster recovery planning, training, and testing carry costs. Plan accordingly.
Collaborate with all of your department managers. Set enterprise goals even if you’re starting with a departmental project. Think globally. Otherwise, you‘ll find yourself reworking projects unnecessarily.
2010 Enterprise Trends in Content Management
What are the enterprise trends in content management? This past month, I've given a lot of thought on the evolution of content management and social media in large organizations. Perhaps the amount of time I've recently spent on the plane traveling both coasts of the United States gave me too much reflecting time on this subject. Most of us have understand the impact Enterprise 2.0 has had on enterprise content management, yet I feel like we're missing pieces to the puzzle. Luckily, there are a lot of smart people out there giving us clues to what the current enterprise trends are with content management.
I had the privilege to sit on a panel of CMS experts at this year's DrupalCon conference in San Fancisco. The topic was focused on enterprise trends in both content management as well as social media. Besides myself the panel included Bryan House, Acquia, Joe Bachana, DPCI, and moderator Jacob Morgan, Chess Media Group. The session was part of the business track of the Drupal conference and I was quite pleased a large number of people in the audience were looking fot not just Drupal solutions but any business solutions they could take back to their company.
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