24 Ways to Enhance IBM Connections with XCC – Web Content & Custom Apps Extension
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The document discusses ways that IBM Connections and XCC can be used to enhance internal communications and collaboration. XCC allows organizations to create a single point of truth on their intranet by publishing all content in one place. It enables internal communications teams to design comprehensive intranets, curate employee generated content, and engage with employees. XCC also makes it easy for business units, top managers, and community managers to create and maintain customized landing pages.
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24 Ways to Enhance IBM Connections with XCC – Web Content & Custom Apps Extension
- 1. TIMETOACT GROUP Im Mediapark 2 50670 Cologne, Germany +49 221 97343-0 [email protected] www.timetoact-group.com © Copyright TIMETOACT GROUP 1 / 9 24 Ways to Enhance IBM Connections with XCC Create a Single Point of Truth with IBM Connections and XCC – Web Content and Custom Apps Extension Customers & Partners New User Onboarding Community Managers Top Managers Business Units Engage Employees Anonymous Users Employee Relations Tools Menu Mobile Users Intranet as a Service IT Managers Employee Magazine Chairman’s Office Custom Apps Forms & Workflows Curate Content Internal Communications Personalization & Targeting Branding & Design Application Integration Single Point of Truth Usage & Adoption CFOs
- 2. TIMETOACT GROUP Im Mediapark 2 50670 Cologne, Germany +49 221 97343-0 [email protected] www.timetoact-group.com © Copyright TIMETOACT GROUP 2 / 9 Internal Communications – Design, Create and Maintain a Comprehen- sive Intranet Internal Communications can use a special community to create and manage their con- tent and publish it on XCC based Intranet home and landing pages. XCC pages can be set up and customized easily, using a set of grid templates and choosing from over 30 XCC widgets. Internal Communications can set up and maintain a navigation between the XCC pages, providing employees with an intuitive user experience for surfing the organization. The XCC pages and the content of the widgets can be targeted to the employees by their in- herited LDAP attributes (e.g. Business Unit or Location). Moreover, XCC pages can be per- sonalized by an employee’s individual preferences. Just an example: Internal Communications integrates a calendar widget on the Intranet home page, containing all events personalized to each employee. That means every em- ployee is able to see corporate events and the events for their respective business unit and location. The IBM Connections and XCC based Intranet has some unique advantages over any Intra- net, which relies on separate platforms for communication and collaboration: Information Architecture – Create a Single Point of Truth Using separate platforms for Internal Communications and Collaboration confronts au- thors and users with difficult choices: Where are they supposed to publish and where should they search for content? Some managers will choose to communicate through the Web CMS based Intranet website, while others will choose to communicate through the collaboration platform. Content overlap, redundancy, inconsistency and governance prob- lems are the inevitable consequence of multiple platforms on the Intranet. With more than one platform, it is practically impossible to create a Single Point of Truth. Internal Communications – Listen to and Engage with Employees With XCC, Internal Communications can turn the typical one way communication into a real dialog with the employees. Here are some examples: Enable employees to like and comment on all available information. Bring specific forum discussions and / or ideas to the employees’ attention with prominently placed widgets on the Intranet homepage. Observe and analyze the employee base sentiment through comments and question- naires. Engage employees with a picture competition, for example ask employees to upload their pictures with the new company logo and let all employees vote on the best pic- tures. See video https://youtu.be/Fg-eh1zHg6Q Internal Communications Single Point of Truth Engage Employees
- 3. TIMETOACT GROUP Im Mediapark 2 50670 Cologne, Germany +49 221 97343-0 [email protected] www.timetoact-group.com © Copyright TIMETOACT GROUP 3 / 9 Internal Communications – Curate Content Not only can Internal Communications create and publish content with XCC (as with any other Web Content Management System), they can also curate content. In other words: Internal Communications can select an employee's blog post and publish it prominently on the Intranet home page or on the landing page of a business unit or location, and thus recognize and reward the employee’s contribution. See video https://youtu.be/RbqZ6Ukq93c Internal Communications – Personalization & Targeting XCC admins are able to target users with content specific to their interests, according to their inherited LDAP attributes like Business Unit, Country, Location or Management Level. Users can personalize their experience by setting their individual preferences. Personaliza- tion and Targeting both work on an XCC page and on a widget level. See presentation http://www.slideshare.net/timetoact/xcc-personalization Internal Communications – Online Edition of a Print Employee Magazine With XCC, Internal Communications can create an online representation of a printed em- ployee magazine – either as the printed magazine appearing periodically or in continued delivery form. The online representation of course adds value to the printed magazine, as it provides a feedback channel for employees. Divisions, Branches and Locations – Create and Maintain Landing Pages XCC makes it much easier for divisions, branches, departments and locations to create and maintain their own landing page on the Intranet than any traditional Web Content Man- agement System. Almost all Web Content Management Systems are built and optimized for the Internet and are far too complicated for occasional Intranet users. IBM Connec- tions is much simpler to use. Any employee can create a blog post or edit a wiki page without any special training. With traditional web CMS, Internal Communications is mostly unable to effectively delegate the maintenance of the long tail of the departmental web pages. With XCC on the other hand, Internal Communications are able to set up a de- partmental page, include it in a divisional or in the global navigation and assign mainte- nance very effectively to managers or assistants of that respective business unit. Top Management – Communicate Authentically and Effective With XCC, top managers have a choice: Either they allow Internal Communications to re- phrase and publish content on their behalf or they create and publish content directly and just ask Internal Communication to direct attention to their post with a prominent placing on the Intranet home page. This way, top managers can engage in a more personal way with the employees and still get the attention they deserve. Curate Content Personalization & Targeting Employee Magazine Business Units Top Managers
- 4. TIMETOACT GROUP Im Mediapark 2 50670 Cologne, Germany +49 221 97343-0 [email protected] www.timetoact-group.com © Copyright TIMETOACT GROUP 4 / 9 Chairman’s Office – Engage with Employee Base With XCC, it is easy to set up a special page allowing a company’s chairman to interact with the employee base: Introduce the chairman with his bio and an interview. Publish the chairman’s latest ideas, priorities and thoughts prominently. Allow employees to dis- cuss issues, provide ideas and have the chairman’s office help the chairman with the workload. Community Managers – Architect and Design your Landing Pages XCC enables community managers to easily create, customize and maintain landing pages for their community. They can choose a predefined layout from a variety of templates and arrange the most important content according to their preferences. They can also include content from sub communities or other relevant communities at will. Files and links in widgets can be individually selected and sorted. Introductory information and important posts can be published in a fixed position. Introduce the community team by their role, using the People Selector widget. Display all events from the main and the sub communi- ties with the Event Calendar widget. Interactive elements help driving user engagement. Community landing pages can either stick to the community navigation or cover the whole width and replace the original community navigation. See video https://youtu.be/fPksMAuJ2SE Employee Relations – Document Guidelines and Rules With XCC, Employee Relations managers are able to document and maintain guidelines and rules and make them easily accessible to employees as part of the Intranet. Guide- lines specific to a business unit or location can be published on the respective landing page only. Via the employees’ comments the guidelines and rules can be constantly im- proved and honed. New Employees - Onboard New Employees with a Wizard XCC makes it easy to create an onboarding wizard that acquaints new IBM Connections users with a step by step guided tour. Let the employees know why the company invests in a Social Intranet, what is in it for them and how they can use it. The acceptance of the Intranet guidelines and the enrollment progress can be documented. See video http://youtu.be/Kc7qqVzQG9U Chairman’s Office Community Managers Employee Relations New User Onboarding
- 5. TIMETOACT GROUP Im Mediapark 2 50670 Cologne, Germany +49 221 97343-0 [email protected] www.timetoact-group.com © Copyright TIMETOACT GROUP 5 / 9 Anonymous Users – Information Access Provide a read only access to selected Intranet content, of course with your company’s distinctive corporate design. And the website is fully responsive too. All Users – Tools Menu Always Available Keep most frequented and relevant tools readily available in a fly-out page throughout XCC and IBM Connections. The fly-out page can contain any widget. Examples are: people search, emergency help, time tracking application, weather forecast, company stock, links or Intranet preferences. Mobile Users – Participate in the Intranet from Mobile Devices The entire Intranet is accessible with the IBM Connections Android and iOS apps. No pro- ject required. See video http://youtu.be/jv4CrO4DQHE External Users – Create a Branded and Simplified Experience With XCC, it is possible to create and customize a landing page for external users. The landing page could provide introductory information and reduce or limit complexity to the required functionality. Of course, the resulting Extranet can be branded in the corporate design. Branding, Corporate Identity & User Interface XCC is built with the latest Internet technology such as Bootstrap, Fontawesome, IndexDB, JQueryUI and RequireJS. With standard CSS knowledge it is possible to adopt the design of the XCC pages to match corporate identity and design guidelines. See presentation http://www.slideshare.net/timetoact/xcc-layoutoptions Anonymous Users Tools Menu Mobile Users Customers & Partners Branding & Design
- 6. TIMETOACT GROUP Im Mediapark 2 50670 Cologne, Germany +49 221 97343-0 [email protected] www.timetoact-group.com © Copyright TIMETOACT GROUP 6 / 9 Application Developers – Integrate Legacy Apps XCC provides the iFrame, the HTML and the Clipping widget. The iFrame widget supports either retrieval through the user or through the server. The HTML widget has an integrated CSS, HTML, JSON and JavaScript editor, which supports di- rect code editing without copying the code to and from an external application. The HTML widget is able to post and process REST calls from other applications and dis- play the results in a custom format. Via the integrated JavaScript Event Handler Frame- work, widgets can communicate with each other (e.g. a CRM widget “talking” to a ERP widget). The Clipping widget supports users without developer skills in integrating parts of other websites into their own XCC page. The Clipping widget can either use crop marks or CSS marks to select relevant content. See video http://youtu.be/GMvT-fUBg1g Application Developers – Custom Widgets with XCC API Application Developers are able to create their custom widgets and make it very easy for their authors to integrate content or functionalities from other applications. We have plans to build widgets that allow selection and display content from any Notes database. Application developers can share and exchange their custom widgets with other custom- ers. See presentation http://www.slideshare.net/timetoact/xcc-api DIY Application Developers – Integrate FEB / Citizen Apps (Forms Experience Builder) XCC provides two widgets that simplify the integration of FEB forms or FEB response sets. Forms can utilize any information available in the user’s IBM Connections session, i.e. the user name, mail address, business unit or location will be filled out automatically, improv- ing data quality. The response sets can be formatted by the DIY developer applying a widget specific CSS. New forms can be opened from the response set. With these capabili- ties it is easy to develop small applications like an internal market place. Or like “Open Po- sitions” that need internal approval. With XCC, it is possible to integrate these applications to these open positions seamlessly into the Intranet and route them to the HR depart- ment. Increase Intranet Usage & Adoption XCC provides many ways to consume, contribute to and maintain the Intranet. The struc- ture is most important for new employees, occasional users and silver surfers. The thresh- old to contribution with liking and commenting is very low. Liking, comments and content creation all appear in the activity stream and thus secure a high awareness. The content creation and maintenance is much easier than with traditional Web Content Management Systems. Delegation to line of business is very effective. When each business unit has one person in charge of maintaining its landing page as part of the Intranet, then each busi- ness unit automatically has one IBM Connections power user. Intranet usage typically in- creases by 100 percent and more. Application Integration Custom Apps Forms & Workflows Usage & Adoption
- 7. TIMETOACT GROUP Im Mediapark 2 50670 Cologne, Germany +49 221 97343-0 [email protected] www.timetoact-group.com © Copyright TIMETOACT GROUP 7 / 9 On Premises and Cloud – Intranet as a Service XCC is available for both IBM Connections on premises and as a service for IBM Connec- tions Cloud. On premises or cloud – initial setup can be achieved in less than an hour. See presentation http://www.slideshare.net/timetoact/xcc-cloud IT Managers - Reduce Complexity XCC dramatically reduces Intranet complexity, as it eliminates the need for an extra Web Content Management or Application Integration platform and meets all requirements for platform integration. User interface integration, activity stream integration, @mention In- tegration, full text search integration and single sign on are given, no projects required. Chief Financial Officers – Reduce Costs Eliminate Web CMS costs for selection, purchase, implementation, integration, training and running another platform besides IBM Connections. Summary Knowledge Workers embrace Enterprise Social Collaboration and Networking platforms like IBM Connections. The problem is, that Knowledge Workers are only a small minority in most companies. Many employees will not partici- pate in an Enterprise Social Collaboration platform, either because they are occasional users or because they are intro- verted. Separate platforms for communication and collaboration however cause content overlap and inconsistency, attention fragmentation and governance problems. With more than one Intranet platform it is practically impossible to create a ‘Single Point of Truth’. XCC adds structure to IBM Connections and makes it thus easily consumable for new, occasional and unexperienced employees. With this IBM Connections extension it is easy to create and enable use cases for all types of users, e.g. internal communications, blue collar workers, common staff, community managers, department managers, senior managers, customers and partners. It lowers participation barriers and activates the employee base. In short: XCC helps you to get the most out of IBM Connections. Intranet as a Service IT Managers CFOs
- 8. TIMETOACT GROUP Im Mediapark 2 50670 Cologne, Germany +49 221 97343-0 [email protected] www.timetoact-group.com © Copyright TIMETOACT GROUP 8 / 9 What our Customers Say “After only 90 minutes training, even our IT layman were able to create great landing pages for their departments. That’s absolutely incredible!” Alexander Ramseger, Berge & Meer Touristik GmbH (Travel Provider, Germany) “With IBM Connections and XCC we can create a more agile Intranet.” Arey Zargham & John Merlino, Tufts Health Plan (Insurance, USA) “We created an ideal information architecture that seamlessly integrates internal communications and collaboration in a hybrid Intranet. Our new Intranet has been perceived very well by our employees. As it turned out, the integrated in- ternal communications simplifies and accelerates the adoption of IBM Connections within the employees.” Manfred Meindl, VAUDE Sport GmbH & Co. KG (Fashion, Germany) “XCC revolutionized our Intranet entirely! Now, relevant content can be populated completely intuitive within seconds and is globally accessible. It is a real innovation.” Eva Martinez, Lapp Holding AG (Cables Production, Germany) “This innovative solution brings additional value to an IBM Connections environment, allowing our customers to ele- gantly integrate their internal communication’s content into their social business platform. IBM and TIMETOACT to- gether, a partnership to accelerate social business.” Jason Roy Gary, CTO, IBM Social Software Foundation (IBM, USA) “Information and collaboration platform are perfectly integrated into a user-friendly and powerful intranet.” Willing to talk to potential customers, ask for contact information (Retail Customer, Germany) “In order for Pilz Connections to succeed, it was important to offer all employees simple and clear first steps into the world of social business. The TIMETOACT solution enabled us to avoid reservations and acquaint users with the concept of knowledge management.” Jürgen Fischer, Pilz GmbH & Co. KG (Automation Technology, Germany) “In an off-time minute (during a break) I installed XCC in our acceptation environment. Everything went smooth, no problems during the installation.. (like you said).” Remco Angioni, Saxion University of Applied Sciences (Education, Netherlands) “XCC has transformed IBM Connections into a complete intranet environment. With XCC we are able to combine the social features of IBM Connections with the functionalities and look & feel of an intranet.” Sander Zwart, ilionx (IT Solutions, Netherlands) “XCC brings internal communication on whole new level. With gathering most valuable content in one place and pre- senting it in modern way, XCC helps to increase users' awareness about company's life and improves onboarding pro- cess for new employees. And this is only a small part of XCC capabilities.” Marcin Kasa, Axxiome Group (Financial Services, Poland) “With XCC the launch of IBM Connections was much more effective. XCC has increased acceptance of our Intranet and is an indispensable tool for us.” Carolin Strunk and Stefan Schindlbeck, Ostdeutscher Sparkassenverband (Banking, Germany) “Employees do not have to go anywhere else, everything is in one place.”< Willing to talk to potential customers, ask for contact information (US Government Customer) “XCC is a congenial extension of IBM Connections which increases user acceptance substantially.” Wolfgang Ponesch, Raiffeisen Bank Bregenz (Banking, Austria) “There is a huge gap from the traditional intranet to a modern social intranet. XCC is the bridge between them: It makes the shift more comfortable for the employees.” Sven Bradtke & Henning Müller, Sparkasse Rostock (Mutual Savings Bank, Germany) “We have never been able to evaluate any product as fast as XCC.” Georg Probst, Lantal (Production, Switzerland)
- 9. TIMETOACT GROUP Im Mediapark 2 50670 Cologne, Germany +49 221 97343-0 [email protected] www.timetoact-group.com © Copyright TIMETOACT GROUP 9 / 9 More information is available at http://connections-apps.com/xcc +49 221 97343 0, [email protected]