DorjeM

Jane McConnell's Global Intranets Survey is out. Jane has also just released the free 'Trends' summary of her larger Survey. As part of the Trends summary she provides the table of contents for the Global Intranet Survey - so I took the liberty of analysing the Table of contents to see which topics she gave most pages to [see the image above]. I realise this isn't very a scientific way of looking at the survey - there is a huge wealth of useful information in it but it was kind of fun so I thought I'd share it with you. Notably, though there are a number of graphs in each section, the quotes throughout make for some very insightful reading particularly in the SharePoint 2007 appendix. As one of the peer reviewer's for the Survey this year I've been looking at a copy for a while now and I like it. The survey is well worth purchasing because it can provide a lot of support for intranet business cases and justification. It is also good for helping you asses ch...

Hi there, During the recent Intranets Live web conference (October 2008) I heard Shiv Singh talking about how Avenue A Razorfish had used a specific tag on Delicious to drag an RSS feed of useful links onto their intranet. He also mentioned a similar thing using a special tag on Flickr images, and using that to drag an appropriate photo roll onto the intranet. I was intrigued so thought I'd do some rough research to see if such a thing was relatively easy to do. Initially I thought I'd look at the technical requirements - from what I found it wasn't going to be too difficult to do with delicious and very easy to do with Flickr. From there I progressed to some water cooler interviews to see what response might be, I picked staff I know are web savvy to ask my questions of. Their response was positive so as a final check of - was this a good use of my time and resources I did a quick poll of a sub set of my users. 7% of intranet users were given the option of replying to the ...

Huge list of examples where social networking tools / sites are being used to improve the image of companies globally   http://www.beingpeterkim.com/2008/09/ive-been-thinki.html   Thanks to James Dello for the link

I'm slowly being moved from my "twit is an important aspect of the twitter name" point of view   http://davidallgroup.com/files/Twitter101Guide-DAG.pdf   has some interesting pointers and famous case studies.   DorjeM

Michael Sampson's book 'Seamless Teamwork' is now available from Amazon and should be hitting the book stores in New Zealand prior to Christmas. Michael's book focuses on how to make the most of SharePoint once your organisation has decided to go down that path. Michael talks about how Seamless Teamwork is the How part of the equation while his Seven Pillars paper focuses on the What. For intranet teams globally this will be a great book to get your hands on, to help ensure you are delivering the most effective solution you can. DorjeM

I've just been up from 4am until 6am and watched the sun touch the harbour out the window. Yep yet another joy of living at the end of the earth - and why you ask ? Well today was the first IBF (Intranet Benchmarking Forum) Intranets Live event . I live blogged - thanks for the inspiration Michael Sampson - the event. A first for me so apologies to those who I was recording for any mistakes, they are mine alone. Overall an interesting session - shame it will cost so much to attend following sessions. Kellogs walk through Talk with Shiv Singh about intranet wiki Talk with researcher about wikis Intranet doctor takes a look at BT and Corus intranet issues CapitalOne intranet manager interview Interview with Yammer CEO , enterprise twitter 200 attendees from more than 20 countries, including a few hardy souls from the south pacific. There were several technical hitches that meant we couldn't see Shiv Singh's presentation and didn't get to hear Jane McConnell at all...

Talking to Yammer CEO - David IBF found that Yammar has helped glue IBF togeather David was COO of PayPal Then started Genie - family tree social networking site Got more than 30 employees so wanted a way to solve email overload and keep everyone connected. We liked twitter - but everyone sees your updates, very hard to limit to those with same email domain as you. IBF use skype and email as well as Yammer, 40 in team globally. Helps allow questions and feel a sense of community Nic Price - feels like a little bit of intranet outside the intranet on the cloud Q David what is the market for Yammer A We want Yammer to spread virally, make money off yammer as an enterprise product. Empower employees to communicate - free for users, enterprise can gain control by paying for admin tool access. Q What is the payment model ? IBF pay nothing at present A That is OK, effectivly it is a free trial period $1/user/month is what you pay for admin tools Q Some companies felt annoyed by users signing...

Catherine Murphy (intranet manager) from CapitalOne Q How did you end up as intranet manager ? A Fell into it, knew person implementing portal and he gave me the job. Over time fell into overall management of it. Q CapitalOne intranet flavour A More interactive, representative of our culture open and collaborative. We have blogs, wikipedia. Looking for better way to connect people. Our portal helps support cultural integration [screen shot] Q Proud of ? A Ease of getting to things from the home page, people find things quicker and easier, they use search less Q Platform ? A Oracle web logic Q What bad things happen to Intranet managers ? A Getting caught up in intranet content, rather than being able to keep focus on strategic goals. I prefer to spend time on future design, usability, productive functionality. Part of the change where communication is opened up between staff an associates, means it's easy to loose focus. Q Economic crisis ? Had an effect on your role ? A In a warpe...

William Hudson of IBF shows intranet patients from Corus and BT Talking to Chris from Corus Working with consultants to turn portal into an intranet news / tasks / favorites Corus keen to get some expert advice from the Doctor William - double level navigation Problem with this type of navigation e.g. www.smart.com Mouse movement from one big to small nav means that second tab is accidentally moused over and that changes the menu items in the second level Problem is that people move mouse in straight line which causes the problem. All done with javascript - this causes problems with speach recogntion packages e.g. Dragon This means that Dragon doesn't work - so accessibility isn't good. Architecture needs to take this into account assistive technologies. Patient 2 - BT Problem - too much colour and too many banner ads BT Intranet manager - worried that banner blindness is an issue Paper by Benway + Lane (10yrs old now) but a real issue e.g. on BT page 'Yipee' and 'S...

Emma Trent interviewed by Paul Millar talks about what a wiki is and how they're useful. Q why not a gimick ? A users of wiki's engage much more than using a CMS Q most successful wiki ? A Software development firm using Twiki, problem is very hard to get into companies to see how they're being used Q How do you get critical mass ? A Users with high technical knowledge find it easier, companies with cultures of collaboration find it easier Publish Post Q How do you keep it safe ? A You have to invest in management - many people have control of content so the work is shared Q Interesting Wiki questions currently A Getting users to participate and encourage collaboration - "Very very hard, and requires changes to culture"

Shiv Singh from Avenue A Razorfish 1.5 years ago redesigned Avenue A Razofish using mediaPedia Lots of staff were blurring lines between personal and work lives, so we actively encouraged it. Integrated Flikr into wiki - posting to Flikr with a specific tag means that the photo shows up on the work wiki page. We also integrate delicious - tag with a specific tag and it automatically gets shared with the organisation Anyone can edit any page - HR very concerned pages would get vandalised "none of that happened, if you trust your employees they will do the right things" There were a lot of page edits - in any month pages are edited around 10,000 times 6000 visits / month 100,00 - 120,000 page views / month We provide all the standard intranet functionality - plus flikr and delicious plus editing which all means the intranet is their own. About 2500 staff, 7 countries, 20 cities Question from Paul Millar (Host) - financial crisis causing you to question social aspect of intran...

Host Paul Millar from IBF First up Kelloggs intranet manager Stuard Cochrane 4 years as intranet developer 3 years as intranet manager 4 Intranets - by global region Stuart in charge of European intranet 5 Business partners / 4 Developers 4000 users ASP.NET CMS SQL Server Database Wikis blogs forums - possibly delivered by SharePoint 2009 Intranet sits within IT Strong HR and Corporate comms steering group NoticeBoard - fast moving changes (15 notices / week) corporate NoticeBoard - articles 1 or 2 / week, from Corporate comms Hot Links - Key strategic initatives / strategies - so staff are aware of these ideas everyday Products Promotions - three key initatives European Vacancies - so that staff can recommend their associates faster than via recruiters, very tangible return on investment K Values - our key corporate values Went live 1.5 weeks ago Will then survey via intranet Some usability via IBF SEARCH - Ashley Position was to design and develop new search Search wasn't on ever...

Recently I have been asked what sellers should set as their minimum reserve for listing an item on www.trademe.co.nz - New Zealand's version of Ebay. So I thought I'd post how we worked through this - while not directly related to intranets 'all things are connected'. Example - Toby is using TradeMe to test the market for a new kid's product he has developed, Do it yourself tree houses for the 3 to 7 year old age group, Toby's Tots Tree houses. Tree House kit - cost to manufacture NZ$80 Profit per kit Toby would like - NZ$20 As at 3 Nov 2008 TradeMe will charge Toby 6.9% for a successful sale under NZ$150 Toby is keen to make the most of the options available to promote the TTThouses so he has decided to pay for the following per item listed Feature combo - NZ$3.95 Subtitle - NZ$0.55 One extra Photo - NZ$0.10 Scheduled end time for the auction - NZ$0.25 Reserve fee (so he can set the reserve) - NZ$0.25 Toby figures on the following being his labour time costs ...

I'm trying a change to the font size in reaction to Wilson Miner's post about ' relative readability ' Which is based on Oliver Reichenstein's Easy 2 Read Standard I haven't got the kinks worked out but first up I think it makes things easier to read. DorjeM

A couple of nights ago I was up at 2am to listen to Gerry McGovern (www.customercarewords.com) and Rolf Molich (www.dialogdesign.dk) talk about how they quantify task measurement. I've listened to a couple of Gerry's web casts in the past and I think this one really made a very good compromise between providing useful information, and promoting the products Gerry sells via Customer Care Words. The following is my take on what Gerry and Rolf were trying to get across. Two really useful little things to begin with - a user click takes 4 to 5 seconds and to gain executive traction show user experience before and after. Gerry spoke about failure of intranets based on tools and content. Circa 2000 IT managed an intranet full of tools and the post 2000 intranet stuffed full of content managed by the communications team "like giving a pub to an alcoholic" - Gerry McGovern Gerry sees intranets today being TASK focused - the task solving t...

This is a summary of information relating to the recent 8th Annual Intranet summit. Some feedback from delegates via the Kiwi Intranets group - http://onlinegroups.net/groups/kiwi_intranets/ Michael Sampson blogged most presenters at the summit - http://www.michaelsampson.net/2008/08/brightstar-8t-1.html Dave Lane's presentation on Open source Intranets - http://pres.egressive.com/intranet_summit_2008/ Mike Riversdale presented and provides his comments and talk here - http://www.miramarmike.co.nz/intranetconference Chandima Kulathilake spoke about SharePoint and corporate governance - http://www.chandima.net/Blog/archive/2008/07/25/speaking-at-the-annual-strategic-intranet-summit-in-wellington-new-zealand.aspx I've provided comment on some of my thoughts around the event - http://dorjem.blogspot.com/ Red Shoe Girl, who attended has some comments on her impressions of many of the speakers and what their talks meant for her - http://wordpress.com/tag/8th-an...

Aaron Resting in a recent post on A list apart http://www.alistapart.com/articles/mappingmemory gives a very thought provoking look at the framework we view what it is to be intranet professionals through, and what it could mean to change that framework. How do you see yourself ? architect or cartographer ? Or something in between perhaps ? Aaron's musings tie well with the last sentence of an article by Elizabeth Marsh (IBF) from July http://www.intranetlife.com/intranet_benchmarking_for/2008/07/employee-direct.html In it she muses, in the last sentence, on how formal the term intranet is, compared to the reality of what intranets as concepts / things actually achieve. The area of language and how our ability to document in words what it is we, intranet professionals, do is something that I feel has importance for us all. If we can get our heads around the words then we'll find it easier to articulate the value we deliver to those who control the organisation...

The recent intranet summit in Wellington New Zealand showcased some wonderful presentations, by some very smart folks. The event was blogged by Michael Sampson for those of you wanting more details Of the hundreds of slides shown three really stood out from the crowd. Invariably the context was very important. The first was the following [souce: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrfrosted/568102079/ ] The second was from Grant Margison of www.informationleadership.com who showed the following slide prior to discussing SharePoint and it's role in an organisation's information framework. [source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/k-ron75/243290502/ ] The third was an image created by Greg Comfort who had co-opted the Jan 1973 cover of National Lampoon to illustrate how very important it is to not rely on a big stick. Giving staff compelling reasons to visit the intranet is a much better idea. [image: Greg Comfort | idea: google images ] One thing I'm keen to provide in f...

I was just listening to Paul Reynolds (http://mcgovernonline.blogspot.com/ ) on National Radio ( http://www.radionz.co.nz/ New Zealand's PBS) talking about www.Kiva.org and www.peoplesnetworknz.org.nz the quote that spoke to me was                   "Building it is easy, the tools are way in front of our imagination"       CONFIDENTIALITY: This email (including any attachments) may contain confidential, proprietary and privileged information, and unauthorised disclosure or use is prohibited. If you received this email in error, please notify the sender and delete this email from your system.  

I'm keen on saving the world Here are a couple of things we as intranet managers can do Get your developers to use YSlow (add on for FireFox) to help them optimize your intranet.                 http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/ The less CPU cycles you use, the less power and heat generated - which means a better world One way you can do that is by making your images smaller Take a look at the 'Image Optimization' power point available from the following blog post. http://developer.yahoo.net/blog/archives/2008/06/performance_geeks_velocity_conference_oreilly.html :-) CONFIDENTIALITY: This email (including any attachments) may contain confidential, proprietary and privileged information, and unauthorised disclosure or use is prohibited. If you received this email in error, please notify the sender and delete this email from your system.

I've often been frustrated in the past by not having enough skill with image editing programs to be able to create the cool loading graphics that I see on other sites, because the site I'm working on has a background that isn't white or black.   The solution is   http://www.ajaxload.info/   You tell the tool what you require in the way of spinner, there a quite a few options, tell it the background color and hey presto you get given - I say given - a loading animated gif which would normally take hours to create.   Nice   :-) CONFIDENTIALITY: This email (including any attachments) may contain confidential, proprietary and privileged information, and unauthorised disclosure or use is prohibited. If you received this email in error, please notify the sender and delete this email from your system.  

Wonderful resource for those who find color selection challenging at the best of times (myself included)   http://kuler.adobe.com/   Just saved my bacon for a tag cloud, representing staff skills and their abilities with those skills.   DM CONFIDENTIALITY: This email (including any attachments) may contain confidential, proprietary and privileged information, and unauthorised disclosure or use is prohibited. If you received this email in error, please notify the sender and delete this email from your system.  

The problem Server 2003 running IIS 6 and providing website / intranet search functionality using the default indexing server service. Office 2007 files weren't showing up in the results for intranet searches. Lots of information about getting this working on SharePoint MOSS SQL Exchange and other platforms but not a server with little installed on it. Even downloading and installing the "2007 Office System Converter: Microsoft Filter Pack" http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=60C92A37-719C-4077-B5C6-CAC34F4227CC&displaylang=en didn't get things working. The solution Well the filter pack was close but a registry change was required as well. Thanks to Microsoft Premier support staff for making this connection. Full story My server is using indexing server and wasn't showing results for Office 12 Office 2007 x extension files e.g. docx The server doesn't have SharePoint or SQL or MOSS or exchange or Office 2007 inst...