Skip to main content

Intranets Live Feb 09 - Land of the Nokians [part 2]

In part one of my Intranets Live Feb 09 event coverage I talked through Nokia's "News hub" front page, news item comments and Nokia's use of the Kyte platform to deliver video for multiple devices/platforms from a single source. I also talked through William Hudson's discussions of image use on intranet pages.

Here in part two I'm going to cover Nokia's personal profile pages.


Nokia Personal Profiles

Angela Huffman from Nokia used the last segment of Intranets Live Feb 09 to share the personal profiles the intranet delivers for each employee.




Angela outlined that the current look feel and functionality was being reviewed and there were plans to "share more information and improve searchability". Angela outlined how the interface was changing from tabs to "FaceBook like portlets".

For Nokians the 'presence' indicators available via the intranet are very very important.



The system draws information from multiple sources SAP, project mangement databases and existing legacy systems e.g. skills



The profile also allows users to enter a large ammount of free text into the 'Person profile' tab. The goal here was to provide a searchable location for less formal information that staff may want to share with their collegues and for information that couldn't be dragged from legacy systems e.g. Current activity / projects the person is working on at present. This was due to the fact that different divisions use different project management software.

Angela was then very kind to address quite a few questions that had come in during her two sessions. I noted only a few.
  • Overall the intranet is built on a domino lotus notes base
  • Delivers visibility to information from multiple systems
  • Photo is from security badge but staff can submit their own, which is moderated to ensure it is a photo and not a cartoon character
Several of the others who were co hosting commented that this was a very comprehensive staff directory and that the personal calendar integration, plus current physical location were very innovative.

In my mind providing information on when the person you're looking for is available, if they're busy, really starts to get to the useful pointy end of presence (busy, free). Because when I want to collaborate with someone it is useful to know that they're busy but it is so much more useful to know that they're busy on holiday for 3 weeks rather than out to lunch for an hour. Great work Nokia.

Richard Dennison, senior manager Social Media at BT, rounded out the event with further great comment and insight. On the topic of 2.0 Richard suggested that when trying to introduce 2.0 into the enterprise go for evolutionary change not revolutionionary change. "Pitch the benefits not the hype". Richard was a great co-host and added a lot to the value of the whole event for me. I had to laugh out loud when I read Richard's post from November 2008, as it is exactly what I've just experienced writing up these two blog posts LOL

Finally for this post a little on the technology that Intranets Live is being delivered with, which I really like.
IntranetsLive uses Microsoft Office LiveMeeting for their virtual events. One of the nice features is that people can listen via the web or phone call in. This does put the web listeners at a slight disadvantage in that they can't easily participate in the verbal conversation and have to use the Q and A panel - which is not that nice an interface, but it does lower the cost of participation substantially - unless of course you've got a SkypeOut account and call one of the toll free numbers for $0. One other nice feature of LiveMeeting that the IBF team are using is hold music prior to the event.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

To setup rails on IIS and enable it for multiple Applications. START Server 2003 Enterprise Edition SP1 IIS 6 RUBY Install ruby 185_22_rc2.exe You don't have to put it in c:\ruby I created the following folder c:\webdata\ruby, then ran the install. Run install into c:\webdata and say "YES" to deleting the existing ruby directory. During the install I ticked SciTE and Enable RubyGems Took 10mins 1000s of files Ruby GEMS Install Ruby Gems 0.9.1 (don't change it from the defaults) Extract zip file to temp directory, then double click setup.rb, does the default install (about 5mins) Then run at the command line gem pristine --all c:\> gem pristine --all I tried to install Ruby Gems in a particular directory, but couldn't get it working because if you use the command line SET command to put a value into GEM_HOME when the ruby gems installer setup.rb reads the registry it doesn't account for the fact that values in the registry contain double b

Yammer and puddles

Recently I was asked " What are the top 10 points you think are important to get across to staff at all levels in an organisation about Yammer? " My initial reaction was "Tough ask", mainly because I've seen great write ups on what organisations get out of Yammer but very few that talk directly to the user benefits. Many articles give the usual cop out "users can't see the point, until they get it" I admit I was in that boat when I started using Twitter, a public micro blogging platform. But just like they said "once I used it I got it". What they didn't say was that it took a while and it suits certain people better than others. So as with all things in the social media space, be aware that culture change not the technology may be your biggest challenge. So what does Yammer, a microblogging platform for organisational use , do for real employees that is compelling enough for them to spend the time to "Get it" ? First off Y

Role Title on profiles

Today one of the people I follow on Twitter asked the following question. @ChristySeason Asking all #intranet tweeps: Does your company publish employees' titles on your employee directory/look up/phone book? In following Intranets Live I've been lucky enough to see some great intranets. As such I was able to reply to Christy with the following Nokia do Deloitte do (see the end of the post) Christy's question also prompted me to document my own intranet's profile page. The following image is from the view other's get of my profile. When I look at my profile I see every item that is recorded. I'll save you from that, another post perhaps, if you're interested. DorjeM PS a couple of Vendors I've been reminded of, thanks Crhis and Carolyn, also have screen shots of their profile pages on the web: ThoughtFarmer - intranet software - slideshow of screen shots and Intranet connections - software solution