Having moved passed an almost irresistible urge to break into metaphor/song regarding Kathmandu climbing their ‘information management’ mountain, we’re feeling quite chuffed with our self control.

The outdoor clothing and equipment retailer – and iD client since 2008 – has tested us at every turn. Puns, similes and other ill-considered jokes such as ‘weathering the storm’, ‘withstanding the elements’ and ‘paddling their own canoe’ have proved equally difficult to ignore, but we have arrived safely at the end of their case study without being too cheesy. We think.

For safety’s sake, we’ll keep this short…

With 90 stores and counting throughout Australia and New Zealand, Kathmandu is one of the largest and most recognizable retail chains of its kind. Plans to expand operations meant they needed a way to better communicate with stores. With new outlets opening every few months, Kathmandu was on the lookout for new and improved ways to properly support their retail network, including streamlining the management of internal processes and reporting – integral elements of any successful retail business.

The retail giant selected Intranet DASHBOARD (iD) with the aim of enhancing operational efficiency and getting the business fit for battle on the global stage in the years to come. Read the full case study, and get all the gory details of exactly how they did it.

Phew…we made it.

Australia Council for the Arts (ACA) has stepped up to the social media mark and integrated micro-blogging phenomenons Twitter and Yammer into their iD intranet.

NB: We were forced to exclude Yammer from the headline, not for want of trying but simply because the verb associated with using it evades us at this point.  ‘Yamming’? ‘Yammering’? Either way, we simply could not afford a faux pas here.

ACA is the Australian Government’s arts funding and advisory body, responsible for the allocation of over $158 million annually in funding to arts organizations and individual artists across the country.

In the only known parallel drawn between them and the National Rugby League (NRL) – other than the matching sized acronyms – they have both recently upgraded to iD 3 and are doing some very exciting things with the new functionality available in the latest version of iD (see Friday’s blog post).

A client since 2008, ACA recently enlisted the help of the iD team to do a complete redesign of their intranet to coincide with their upgrade. They wanted to re-vamp the site’s look and feel, with the goal of pulling more people to the intranet, engaging them in an interactive experience and ultimately keep them coming back.

Having previously struggled with employee uptake of the intranet, ACA saw the release of iD 3 as the perfect opportunity to turn things around create a brand-spanking new site their employees would actually want to visit.

Click on the image below to see the new design for yourself.

Big thank you to ACA for allowing us to use this screen shot.

A wise man, following an undoubtedly long period of profound self-reflection, once coined the phrase “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.

Of that great man, we know only three things for sure:

1. He is most definitely single.
2. He has never seen an episode of ‘Pimp My Ride’ and/or ‘Extreme Makeover’ – whether or not he is better off as a result is a discussion for another time and place.
3. He has yet to experience iD 3.

While we trust your current version of iD is in perfect working order, the latest version of iD is our biggest release to date and we simply couldn’t live with ourselves if we didn’t share it.

iD 3 includes a host of exciting new functionality – some quick highlights being an all new CMS, powerful enterprise search engine and flexible role-based security model to name a few.

At the risk of sounding like a bad infomercial, there’s still more…

Other great reasons to upgrade include:

• Enhancements have been made across the board to our already comprehensive suite of 40 business applications;

• You’re paid up and proud, so why not take advantage of it and get your users working with the best version available;

• Upgrading now will mean future upgrades are even easier & support queries can be logged and processed more efficiently.

Click here to check out all the exciting new features and enhancements available.

Clients including VLM Airlines, Superpartners, Healthscope, Kathmandu and the NRL have already upgraded and are enjoying all the new functionality the latest version of iD has to offer. Upgrading is easy, much gentler than a face lift and much cheaper than turning a Datsun into a Porsche – simply fill out the upgrade form and we’ll be in touch to discuss the next steps.

They say first impressions last. If so, the National Rugby League has put themselves in good stead for the future, with an all new login screen for their iD extranet. A client since 2008, the NRL has worked with the iD team from the get-go to create a unique look and feel for their sponsorship portal – reflecting their corporate branding and reinforcing the ‘personality’ of the organization for users.

They recently upgraded to the latest version of iD and naturally wanted to re-launch it looking better than ever. That’s where we came in. The iD Design Team was enlisted as official style counsel, with a whole host of new styling options at their disposal in the latest version of iD.

The extranet re-design started with their login page. While for most, the login screen may seem like little more than a stepping stone to the central system, in the case of an extranet it is the mandatory first stop for all users. Put simply – branding begins here.

Stay tuned for more details and screen shots of the NRL’s new extranet.

A big thank you to the NRL for the screen shot below.

Disclaimer – This article in no way suggests you turn your ‘eback’ on traditional textual content for your intranet. Words included in this article such as ‘carousel’ may encourage a fun theme park notion, leading the more impressionable among us to seek a ‘higher level of interaction’ and communicate to users through a series of brightly colored pictures only. While ultimately hilarious, this is not a wise idea. Think of it this way – just because your liturgical dance skills would put a mute Olympic ribbon-twirler to shame does not mean you should stop talking.

So to reiterate – great content is always going to be one of the most important factors in keeping intranet users engaged. That said, including exciting visuals and interactive functionality is another great way to enhance the overall user experience and push previously underrated intranet pages into the spotlight.

To set the scene – your boss has returned victorious from a phenomenally successful sales expo with a series of high resolution images so majestic and thought-provoking you will be fielding head-hunter calls from The National Geographic for months to come. They would like you to share them on the intranet, and have visualized them sliding smoothly/gracefully onto the screen.

With iD CMS, available in the latest version of iD, this is one request you can fulfill with ease using iD CMS’ HTML component.

Click here to read more »

Note: This is one for the CSS-savvy (cascading style sheet) among us.

As any truly stylish individual will tell you – if you can catch them between latte’s, sample sales and Davidoff Slim’s – variety is the spice of life. Sure you have your basics – dependable, crowd-pleasing items that go with everything, but a truly fabulous wardrobe is one with much more than just black; it needs at least a few unique, standout show-stoppers.

iD CMS’s Formatted Text component is one such wardrobe.

The Formatted Text component enables authorized users to create page content using a WYSIWYG rich text editor. The WYSIWYG editor comes with a predefined set of styles and formatting options that authorized users can quickly and easily apply to their text. Cue a fabulous coat thrown over an otherwise dull outfit.

What you might not know is that this set of styles can be further customized and expanded to suit your particular needs – enter some highly sought after tailor. Text styles are all defined in the ‘Theme Style Sheet’; for now we’ll use one of our default themes – the lovely ‘Classic 3’ – to demonstrate how to make changes.

Click here to read more »

Let’s set the scene – we’re all in sunny Santorini, the pearl of the Aegean Sea…

Now you have returned from your undoubtedly fabulous day dream and/or the travel agent, we can resume.

So consider for a moment now that your servers are a lone donkey responsible for delivering precious cargo to your users every day, perched safely at the top of this gorgeous volcanic island. Before these dignified and hard working creatures can brave the steep cobble stone steps, you need to load them up with cargo and unwitting/uninsured tourists.

Ask yourself – would you load all your cargo in a single side bag, leaving the other empty and your precious Ass off balance? Or would you share the load evenly between both bags and ensure the safe and efficient delivery of goods?

The answer is simple – balance the load. (End metaphor)

Click here to read more »

Content Management aficionados and budding social butterflies, J.Boye, are at it again – holding another of their fantastic events next month in London. Peppered over several fabulous locations around the globe, J.Boye events have conquered what we have coined as the Triple I Effect – being interactive, informative and interesting.

This particular event – Intranets At Work – is aimed at helping intranet professionals push their corporate intranet to the next level, with some real-world insights from companies who have fought and won the internal communications battle.

Register now using discount code ‘intranetdashboard’ and receive 20% off your ticket. Spots are limited so get in quickly to avoid missing out.

The Details:

When - 22nd Septmember, 2010

Where - Central London, Venue TBC

For more information, visit: http://www.jboye.com/events/intranets-at-work10/

Qantas subsidiary, budget airline, our client and all round crowd pleaser – Jetstar – know a thing or two about the challenges of catering to a dispersed workforce. At any given time,  they could have anywhere up to three quarters of their 3000 strong team on the move and in the skies.

To combat the difficulties, and subsequent inefficiencies associated with having an office that spans the Asia Pacific region, Jetstar purchased Intranet DASHBOARD (iD) in 2007 – signaling the birth of JEN (Jetstar Employee Network).

Since then, they have worked with the iD team to improve their intranet and ensure its ongoing success. It now forms an integral part of their business, with employees depending on JEN to make their often hectic lives easier. With limited time to access information critical to their job, ease of use is critical in keeping users coming back to the intranet. Jetstar needs to ensure employees can rely on JEN as the central hub of activity within the business – the place to go to get things done.

Jetstar recently worked with the iD Team to set up Single Sign On (SSO) capabilities for their users. Employees logging on externally to any of Jetstar’s internal systems are now required to login through JEN to do so – effectively establishing the intranet as the front door to the organization. Once employees have been correctly authenticated against Jetstar’s systems, they must pass a 2 factor authentication process developed specifically for them by the iD team. SSO ensures external access to Jetstar’s internal systems is a simple and secure process for employees – perfect for a workforce on the move.

SSO’s secondary function at Jetstar is to enable login credentials to be shared with their other internal HR systems. Once a user has logged into JEN, credentials are passed on to connected systems so that when a user clicks a link within the intranet, they are automatically authenticated and can move seamlessly into the new system without being required to login again. With SSO, users move seamlessly between applications without ever appearing to leave the intranet.

For more information on Jetstar’s intranet, see our Case Studies page.

We can all agree there are few things more frustrating than getting lost. The fact that most of those things will actually only happen to you after you find yourself lost is even more incentive to stay on the straight and narrow.

Thankfully we live in the age of the GPS, and can have our route mapped out and even narrated to us by a gender of our choosing, in a soothing international accent. Your intranet users are not so lucky – they face navigating the online world without the help of their trusty Tom Tom.

Before this terrifying thought has you running back to a paper-based office, there are a number of easy ways to guide your users around your intranet with ease. Navigation comes in a number of forms such as Search, Bread Crumbs Bars, Quick Links, Navigation Bars, the list goes on…

For now let’s focus on Navigation Bars.

Click here to read more »