During my first 3 blog posts I discussed the Social aspects of Corporate Intranets (Social Intranets overview, Personalization and Profiles). I focused on the benefits that these solutions had for the company to share information with their employees as well as what the benefits were for the individual employee. With this post, I wanted to dive a little deeper and start to describe the "Groups" aspect of the solution.
While the screenshot below focuses on Ektron's Social Solution, there are other vendors that also offer Intranet/Community Solutions. This post is simply focused on the importance of leveraging these tools.
Below is a screenshot of a Group that is located on our demo site. You will see that this group is specific to Marketing, and all the "group specific" information is located down the left navigation.
All functionality is specific to each group:
1. Members & Activity - This will outline all of the people that are associated with the group and provide you with the ability to "friend" them directly.
2. Dashboard - This provides a personalized area, a true destination, where the manager can customize the look/feel and drag and drop widgets into the area - custom reports, Salesforce, Twitter, blog RSS feeds and other like information.
3. Documents - This is the area where the collaboration will be centralized. Who did what, when? You can rate documents, review them and add comments and automatically send the document to other people and/or groups. The specific functionality within this area is truly another blog post entirely.
4. Calendar - Highlight specific meetings or events to the group. You can also mash-up other calendar within your group specific calendar. We have also included iCal functionality within all of the calendars, which is a great feature.
5. Discussion Board - I think that we all understand the importance of allowing people to interact and engage with one another, both one-on-one and within groups..
6. Blog - Write about hot topics that are more than just a discussion point.
7. Photos - From mock-ups to personal photos, allow your group members to add photos that are specific to that group. Did you have a team meeting off-site and want the photos to be private to your group? Then put them in here.
The middle of the page will display the most recent activity that has happened within that group, document edits, activity streams, blog posts, image uploads, any activity that is specific to that group can be noted here, front and center.
To the right you can display your current members, most recent visitors or whatever information that you wish to highlight. This version obviously highlights specific members of that group.
Below we have highlighted the member's activity stream that is specific to that group. Other members can comment on the specific activities or post their own activity.
As you can imagine, this area is very powerful for your current and new employees. A study by Forrester Research reported that 93% of employees use an intranet or company portal at least weekly; 73% regularly turn to their corporate intranet for accessing the information they need.
By providing the resources for your employees to gather, collaborate and innovate with one another, you are creating a more efficient workforce. What are your thoughts; will this work on your Corporate Intranet?
Here is also a short list of Intranet case studies, http://bit.ly/bdNHKH
While the screenshot below focuses on Ektron's Social Solution, there are other vendors that also offer Intranet/Community Solutions. This post is simply focused on the importance of leveraging these tools.
Below is a screenshot of a Group that is located on our demo site. You will see that this group is specific to Marketing, and all the "group specific" information is located down the left navigation.
All functionality is specific to each group:
1. Members & Activity - This will outline all of the people that are associated with the group and provide you with the ability to "friend" them directly.
2. Dashboard - This provides a personalized area, a true destination, where the manager can customize the look/feel and drag and drop widgets into the area - custom reports, Salesforce, Twitter, blog RSS feeds and other like information.
3. Documents - This is the area where the collaboration will be centralized. Who did what, when? You can rate documents, review them and add comments and automatically send the document to other people and/or groups. The specific functionality within this area is truly another blog post entirely.
4. Calendar - Highlight specific meetings or events to the group. You can also mash-up other calendar within your group specific calendar. We have also included iCal functionality within all of the calendars, which is a great feature.
5. Discussion Board - I think that we all understand the importance of allowing people to interact and engage with one another, both one-on-one and within groups..
6. Blog - Write about hot topics that are more than just a discussion point.
7. Photos - From mock-ups to personal photos, allow your group members to add photos that are specific to that group. Did you have a team meeting off-site and want the photos to be private to your group? Then put them in here.
The middle of the page will display the most recent activity that has happened within that group, document edits, activity streams, blog posts, image uploads, any activity that is specific to that group can be noted here, front and center.
To the right you can display your current members, most recent visitors or whatever information that you wish to highlight. This version obviously highlights specific members of that group.
Below we have highlighted the member's activity stream that is specific to that group. Other members can comment on the specific activities or post their own activity.
As you can imagine, this area is very powerful for your current and new employees. A study by Forrester Research reported that 93% of employees use an intranet or company portal at least weekly; 73% regularly turn to their corporate intranet for accessing the information they need.
By providing the resources for your employees to gather, collaborate and innovate with one another, you are creating a more efficient workforce. What are your thoughts; will this work on your Corporate Intranet?
Here is also a short list of Intranet case studies, http://bit.ly/bdNHKH
I agree with you about a huge role of company's intranet, but with growth of online business infrastructure and ecommerce derivatives, priority falling more on secure "intranet inside internet ".
Great Franchise cooperation between Social and Media Intranet, in a long run, is a beneficial for freeing up corporation's workload.
Rick, Will,
Thanks for your comments. Security is a key to any intranet. hopefully it will only empower your employees and create a more intelligent and satisfied workforce.
Mike