Workbench "Always on the Job!"© software-as-a-service for social collaboration

Workbench "Always on the Job!"
Designed and Developed by
www.Bluedog.net

of Apple Computer, Inc.,

With Workbench, you have a single place to organize all of your
projects, web content, team communication and more. From
there, you can create new projects, maintain documents with
workflow and build custom business processes. Your staff,
customers, contractors and web site visitors have the ability to
collaborate, communicate, and interact online. Everything is
stored at your customized site in Workbench — as a fully
searchable, metadata-rich knowledgebase.
Users love Workbench because it helps them work together and stay in touch
without the steep learning curve. System administrators love Workbench
because it is configured in minutes without the need to manually integrate

Per-user price structure
for pay-as-you-go savings.
Want unlimited users? Opt for
the Server Appliance version!

different components, and there's no on-premisis hardware to support. The
key to Workbench's versatility is its unique architecture. Your custom instance
is made up of containers for content, projects, issues and more. A community
page may be used as a message folder, a real-time discussion forum,
document collection, a mailing list, a calendar, a directory of users, an RSS
aggregator, or any combination of these.
Bluedog runs a distributed installation across multiple servers in multiple data
centers, allowing unlimited horizontal scalability and guaranteed uptime. Or,
opt for the server appliance version, for "in your data center" peace of mind.

Bluedog maintains
SAS 70 Type II
certified, Tier IV data
centers for reliability
and security.

Workbench is...
• Content Management System
• Customer Relationship Management
• Answer Desk for issue tracking
• Project and Activity Management
• Workflow and Document Management
• Notifications, Shared Calendars
• Learning Management System, and
• Multi Utility Tables for custom shared databases.

Social collaboration
works when people
share knowledge,
frequently and willingl—
Workbench simplifies
the process!

How it works...
As soon as you sign up, your organization can start connecting content, people, and process. No software
to install, no costly servers or other technical resources are required. The result: fast deployment, greater
cost-effectiveness and improved productivity.
Workbench is designed, built and maintained by Bluedog in our secure data centers, with fail-over for
99.8% guaranteed uptime* and regular back-up of your data. Export your data anytime, as well. Import
data from Word, Excel, SQL, HTML, or other sources.
Security of your data is our primary concern — and a core aspect of our business model. Is your money
safer under your mattress, or at a bank? Trust your data to our round-the-clock guards, intrusion
prevention, and sophisticated encryption.
SaaS Delivery, Or Enterprise Appliance for "In Your Data Center" peace-of-mind
Workbench is accessible from any PC or Mac connected to the internet running a modern
browser, freeing you from the burden of managing infrastructure or client software
(software as a service, or SAAS). Get up and running in minutes, not days or weeks —
and minimize support costs and frustrations associated with in-house platform-specific
software. Want your own deployment? We deliver a fully-configured Intel-based enterprise
appliance server for unlimited number of users. Just rack, configure network
address, and get productive!
Discover the Benefits of a Unified Work Environment, Online
All content, activities, messages and other data are captured in Workbench's single collaborative
environment. Your users can access all modules and data they have permissions for. Leverage singlesign-on with an enterprise LDAP or Active Directory — the common user interface components
means everything your users need are available at the click of a mouse. On-screen tutorials and
intuitive navigation help users to quickly become experts at sharing knowledge.
Enterprise Class Service-Oriented Architecture
Bluedog understands that there may be other systems you need to plug into
your enterprise. We provide several integration options to leverage the Cloud
— web services, Java APIs, SOA, mobile computing interface via the
iPhone and custom integration with 3rd party solutions. Workbench is 100% Java, built with
WebObjects, MySQL and Apache.
*Subject to the terms and conditions of your service level agreement — see www.bluedog.net for details. The Powered By WebObjects badge is a trademark
of Apple Computer, Inc.,

Features and Benefits
With Workbench, you stand to benefit in five major ways when you subscribe
to our software as a service (SAAS) instead of purchasing a software license:

1

Save money and lower IT costs; enjoy economies of scale; and pay as you go.

Social collaboration means
communicating, managing, and
sharing — over the internet, in real
time, with staff, customers, vendors
and other stake holders.

Save time: Eliminate many of the typical implementation tasks associated with

2

installing, customizing and maintaining licensed software -- Workbench is already up
and running in our data centers. Deployment time is minutes, not days, weeks or
months.

Focus your technology budgets on competitive advantage rather
than infrastructure. Liberate your organization from supporting high-cost, time-

3

consuming IT functions, such as purchasing and supporting server infrastructure
necessary to install and maintain the software in-house; Providing the equipment
redundancy and housing necessary to ensure security, reliability, and scalability, and;
Maintaining a labor-intensive patch and upgrade process.

Gain immediate access to the latest innovations. With traditional licensed

4

software, you typically wait for the next release to benefit from the latest innovations or
to move your organization to a new browser or operating system. Given the cost and
complexity of moving to a new version, it may not even be practical to upgrade each
time a new release becomes available. With a Workbench subscription, you benefit
from innovations on an on-going basis. As soon as a new or improved feature appears
in the application, you can begin using it -- for no additional cost.

Be a part of a community of interest. Purchasing a traditional software license

5

is very much an individual affair. When you subscribe to Workbench, you become a
member of a community that has the application at the center. Bluedog changes the
relationship between us, the software vendor, and you, the customer. There's a
convergence of interest between customer and Bluedog that’s more intimate than that
expressed in the world of conventional on-premises applications: we constantly monitor
how our customers are using the application. Customers easily benchmark themselves
against their peers. This awareness translates into improved usability, performance, and
functionality.
As a Bluedog customer, you benefit from your peers in a way that you’re less likely to
do with an on-premises implementation. Workbench customer user communities thrive
and are an excellent source of best practice tips, templates, and add-ons.

Get your team working together,
whatever time zone your people
may happen to be in.

One place for all your data
including web content, persons'
contact info, shared schedules,
projects and documents.

Track progress from your
desktop, and get real-time reporting
on activities, issues, and results.

People-centric document and
content management means
sharing knowledge intuitively—as
part your business processes.

Project and Activity
Management. Invite coworkers, contractors and
customers to collaborate on
projects. Manage projects with
linked calendars, documents,
invoices and milestones. Project
management utilizing Earned
Value and Balanced Score Card.

Content Management. Store,
control publishing with automated
workflow, localize content in any
language, versioning, comments, and
publishing documentation such as
news articles, technical manuals,
operator guides, policies, regulations,
and marketing brochures. The
content managed may include HTML
or text files, image media, audio/
video files, Word, Excel or PDFs, and
Web content.
With Answer Desk, solve
customer issues efficiently.
Create canned responses
and publish solutions
directly to an online FAQ or
knowledge base. Use for
help desk tickets, or to
manage stakeholder
inquiries.

Document management.
Securely store and distribute
documents such as marketing
materials and contracts. Share
with remote workers, customers
and contractors. Write workflows
to automate business processes
such as edit, review and approval.
Compare versions, check in/
check out.

Contacts and CRM. Import your
contacts and create meaningful
descriptive tags on the fly; more than a
simple contacts list. Leads, campaigns,
and tickers means a customer
relationship management (CRM) solution
for small business. Directly integrate
project management, reviews, help desk
and billing. Capture sales leads directly
from a web form. Manage prospects
from quote through to sale. View sales
pipeline values, goals and next sales
actions.

Calendars and Events.
Schedule meetings across your
business and visually track
project progress and earned
value; more detail than simple
calendar. Subscribe to calendars
using Outlook or iCal.

Blogs, Forums and Community Pages.
Use personal blogs, wikis, dicussion forums
and community pages with a global
comment system that improves discussion
on your site, and connects conversations
across the web. Save information posted on
a particular topic for other people to search
at any time -- the perfect environment for
informal knowledge sharing. Everything that
gets posted is archived, searchable, and can
have comments and tags for additional
metadata filtering. The fact that the
discussion isn't in real time means that
heated arguments can be moderated,
resulting in high-quality knowledge sharing.

High-performance, multiprotocol service-oriented
architecture, multithreaded Java-based engine. Built on open
source platform
Standards-compliant web browser interface access to
notifications, calendars, content, documents and everything
else. Authenticated SMTP for remote message submission

Notifications are
provided in the Status
view and at the user’s
option via email.

Multi-Utility Tables
enables you to construct,
share and report from
custom databases you
design.

Built-in full text index for fast
searching of all content. Full
document, multi-context search
across your entire intranet,
including documents, customer
notes, projects, calendar items and
sales actions.

Workflow and business process automation through a rules
engine. Design case management processes.
Server-to-server replication. Users in any number of domains
can be spread out across any number of Citadel servers,
allowing you to put data where you need it, and enabling
infinite horizontal scalability.
User-configurable public and authenticated "community
pages”, wiki-like content contribution, and discussion forums.
SSL/TLS encryption for all protocols. Security is role-based —
define a group in Admin, assign privileges to that group, and then
add one or more users to the group.

Transform institutional culture
by capturing knowledge, automating
business process workflow, and
facilitating interpersonal collaboration.

Time Sheets, Invoices, Direct Expenses.
Know exactly where your employees work
hours were spent. Capture every billable
event. Remote access for contractors. Create
detailed invoices directly from time sheets,
project milestones and product catalogs.

Uncover opportunities and bottlenecks in your
business with real-time reporting. Set common
reports as dashboard widgets. Track key
performance indicators with dashboards across
your business. Receive alerts and customize
views.
Metadata based on Dublin Core ontology; freely
editable. Tags, content ratings and user profiles work
with Bluedog's Recommendation Engine to
automatically serve up the right information.

BlueDog
KM Portal
Concept Map
BlueDog's approach integrates the three
aspects of knowledge worker interaction
in the web-enabled world: email, the web,
and cross-functional teams. Our solution
captures the content that flows through
existing communications channels, and
provides a unified archive for email,
documents, discussion and task
coordination. Our solution is Java-based,
and runs on NT and various Unix platforms,
using a SQL database as the persistent
datastore.
Administrators define privileges for users,
such as who can view certain content or
who can create and edit topics. Labels are
assigned to content (authors can apply
these metatags and the system will apply
some automatically) to facilitate construction
of the knowledge base.

Users can add, edit and classify content
in the web interface. Messages can be
sent directly to the KMportal, where they
are automatically classified and catalogued.
The KMportal will dispatch messages,
digests of messages, and task activity
summaries to designated recipients. Users
and administrators can create groups (lists
of email recipients). Two way email flow
makes the KMportal easy to integrate with
existing work flow.

From the web interface, users can view
threaded or blog-style discussions. A full
text search function can be used to find
any related items of content. Documents
uploaded to the Reference Library can be
searched by the user-supplied metatags.
By converting email messages, web and
other content into a searchable, classifiable
database, the KMportal becomes the
foundation of a knowledge management
system that doesn't tax the user.

Users can post content directly to the
KMportal. Documents, we links, email
messages and other raw content can be
assigned classification codes. A user rating
system is built to refine future searches,
and a FAQ-style glossary can be
constructed to facilitate research.
http://www.bluedog.net

Email Based Message Handling

Web Based Portal

Task Based Workflow

User defines a new topic, initiating a

Fully searchable database of all

The administrator designates who can

discussion thread, and defining a list of

content. Metatags can be assigned

assign tasks and who can classify and

email recipients. If the user

to documents uploaded to the portal.

edit content. Automatic alerts can be

has administrative privileges, topic

User access privileges define what is

defined when trigger events occur.

preferences such as public/private,

viewable. Users can choose blog or

Email routing, list management, and

archive date, and other settings

threaded discussion views of topics.

automated message classification are

can be defined.

All reporting and administration is handled

built in.

in a user-friendly browser interface.

BlueDog
KM Portal
Concept Map

KMportal user
Review user feedback;
review document history;
audit version control;
review search engine performance
data; review session audits and
traffic reports.

Activity Monitoring
Version control tracks changes to
content, logs transactions, and
incorporated user ratings of
content to improve the quality
of searches. Other systems can
broker KMportal requests, such
as LDAP queries.

User logs on at secure page (SSL)
Based on permissions, the user views
content personalized for his/her group,
projects, and preferences. Users can
dispatch messages to other users and
groups (represented as lists).

Web Server

Document uploaded to KMportal
Other Email Recipient

Application/Database
Server
Email Server

Message
sent to users
and to KMportal

User Database

Content Database

KMportal
--Provides views of data based on user
permissions (set by administrator)
--Full text search of Content Database
repository, including metatags of documents
--Weblog or threaded discussion views of
messages archived to the system
--Public and private access defined for
content

Other Email Recipient

Bluedog's
MessengerDog
Concept

Web portal for message archives,
human-interaction and rules and
notification management.

MessengerDog features a Message Portal that enables
organizations to exchange confidential or sensitive
email with customers and partners over a secure
platform. Combining an enterprise-class email
management system and Web portal technology,
Bluedog’s solution enables users to instantly share
information and conduct crucial business without worry
of identity theft, liability, or negative publicity.
• Use LDAP or Active Director for user accounts and
Single Sign On
• Protect and archive email in a secure server, rather
than routing across unknown systems
• Track and manage all messages for complete
customer records
• Eliminate end-user confusion with an intuitive pointand-click browser interface
• Leverage existing investments with an integrated
framework, web services and portal
• Integrate with Workbench knowledge base to provide
consistency and accuracy across all agents, while
customizing communications to fit varied needs
• Design responses that address specific business rules
• Apply branding standards to forms and responses

Automated Message Processing
MessengerDog contains the ability to automatically
route, forward, parse and otherwise process incoming
messages -- and outgoing messages as well.
Routing and post-receipt processing functions are
provided by the Rules Engine. English-like routines can
be drafted to respond to new incoming messages and to
perform operations on outgoing items. Scheduling
means scripts are executed on a schedule or when
messages arrive, change, are read or archived.

Task-oriented workflow and business
rules

MessengerDog includes two types of workflows. One
is the Simple Workflow which is content-oriented,
enabling you to define a simple approve-reject
workflow for message handling. The email templates
and notification business rules are helpful to notify all
the concerned people involved in the workflow
process.

Implement complex workflows by chaining tasks
with multiple approve and reject steps and other
business logic. Advanced Workflow supports taskoriented scenarios, with business rules you write.
Create a work flow, attach content, parse in-coming
message content, and route to multiple recipients. A
dashboard view of all your notifications and tasks is
available. You can track notification chains to closure
using the web portal interface in Workbench.

Content
Management

Workﬂow
Real-time
Reports
EVM & Balanced
Score Card

• Staff
• Customers, Constituents
and other Stakeholders

Secure
Messaging

Projects

Issue Management

Documents

• Vendors and Contractors
• Sales Leads
• Any website visitor

People
Directory of in-house or external
experts; shared journals and blogs;
collaborate with team and
community pages; save discussion
forum threads into the knowledge
base; role-based user
management.

Calendar Events
Learning management; shared
calendars; subscribe in Outlook or
iCal; registration for events;
Learning Management System and
training management.

Task Assignments
Track progress towards goals;
delegate help desk tickets; track
staff and outsourced resources
with time sheets; keep all
communication and documents
related to activities in one place.

Bluedog has been
building knowledge
worker applications
delivered via the internet
since 1998. Our team of
talented technologists
support customers from
small businesses to
multinational
organizations.

Workbench "Always on
the Job" and all content
© 2009. The Bluedog
trademark is owned by
Bluedog Ltd. (Ireland)/
Bluedog Inc. (US)
www.bluedog.net

Workbench "Always on the Job!"© software-as-a-service for social collaboration

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