Intranet Connections White Paper - Simple & Low Risk Intranet

Intranet Connections White Paper

Intranet Connections Intranet 2.0 software combines core intranet and social collaborative tools, helping you to increase employee productivity, communication, adoption, and engagement. Our philosophy is to bring you ease of use in a turnkey pre-built intranet environment. Show ROI benefits with quick deployment, ready-to-go applications, easy CMS, powerful search and minimal administration overhead.

Table of Contents

Intranet Overview | About Us

Core Intranet Tools

Home Page Portal Employee Directory

Alerts & Subscriptions Document Management

e-Form Builder Company Contacts Company News

Library Resources Active Directory

Intranet Stats

Intranet Tasks

Employee Hub Employee Training

Job Center Support Desk

Knowledge Center Employee In/Out Status

Event Calendars Company Store

Collaboration Tools Social Profiles

Open Publishing Department Sites Live Chat

Company Blogs Photo Albums

Discussion Boards Comments & Ratings

Quick Polls Suggestion Box

Multi Media Buy and Sell

Recipes

Added Benefits Ease of Use

Single Unified Search Extranet Capabilities Simple Licensing

Priced under $10k Intranet ROI

Intranet Connections Intranet 2.0 Software: White Paper Page 1

Intranet Overview | About Us

Intranet Connections is turnkey intranet software. We are easy to use and out of the box. We built Intranet Connections to be simple, to improve company communication and employee productivity. Our automated tools and utilities can streamline the management and maintenance of your intranet, allowing your valuable resources to focus on other company projects.

Intranet Connections customers: NASA Langley Research Center, 14 Mayo Clinic across the US, Sears Canada, American Furniture Warehouse, YMCA, the US Navy, Department of National Defense, Brother Canada, Standard and Poors, Lee Valley Tools, Sandals Resorts, Sleepmaster, Smith & Wesson, House Ear Institute, Tobyhanna Army Depot, Bank of Jamaica, English National Opera, 175 credit unions, 210 customers in healthcare. For more customers in various industries, and to read what our customers have to say about Intranet Connections, visit http://www.intranetconnections.com/sections/customers.htm

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Core Intranet Tools

Home Page Portal The home page is the first screen your users will see. Make the most of your intranet home portal by utilizing our widgets tool that pulls fresh new content from various applications onto the home page.

Also add external RSS feeds, custom message boxes, chat widgets, blog feeds, quick polls, conversation feeds, videos and photo slideshows Every user has a My Profile box where they can access their employee hub and profile

Employee Directory Offers a robust search of employees and feature rich profiles, including -- Photos -- Department Information -- Contact Information -- In/Out Board Status -- Live Chat -- Skills -- Personal Interests -- Job Descriptions -- Birthdays / Anniversaries -- Photo Gallery of Co-Workers -- Generate Email Lists -- Centralized & Searchable -- Sync with Active Directory


Alerts & Subscriptions Through the employee hub users can access site subscriptions and alerts. This notifies them of new or updated content in areas they have subscribed to. Alerts also shows you any comments on your postings, any replies to your discussion topics, any content awaiting approval, ticket status from the Support Desk

Auto-reminders tell you any upcoming Training Courses you have registered for

Document Management Our easy-to-use Document & Policies management is a robust tool that puts all of your company documents, policies and manuals in one spot

-- unlimited folders -- tree or flat view -- folder owners -- folder security -- content approval / workflow -- document archiving -- version check-in/out -- full-Text Search -- web Docs -- document tagging -- comments and Ratings -- document Widgets


E-Form Builder Build any type of HTML form within a simple, point-and-click interface - not a single line of code needs to be written. Employees can fill out the forms online; submissions are stored and viewed through the e-form application. Reporting, sorting filters, admin-only fields, interactive staged workflow, form response archiving and search. Design and brand your e-forms. Our cloning utility and SQL query fields fast tracks your e-form builds Watch your form take shape in the preview layout screen and tweak the fields and layout as you go

Company Contacts Share corporate contacts such as customers, caterers, stationary supply contacts, software, and hardware vendors – any contact that aids employees in their daily jobs. Can store basic CRM data -- contact Info -- web sites -- social media links -- company logo -- MapQuest | directions -- primary contact -- date of last correspondence -- notes -- flexible fields -- email distribution lists


Company News Read up on the latest company news is a top activity on the intranet. Share announcements and bulletins among employees. Keep everyone on the same page. Publish articles, press releases, employee-focused stories and milestones -- news archiving -- start and end publish dates -- embed multimedia and videos -- secure sensitive content

Library Our world is working towards a greener enterprise and the intranet can help immensely in that effort. In an ideal world our companies would be paperless, but just in case you still have books, magazines, and reference materials that employees need, our Library Check-in | Check-out feature catalogues your paper resources and helps you to manage and track who-has-what via the intranet.


Active Directory Manage users and groups in one location and have single user login with our Active Directory integration and real-time sync

Intranet Connections pulls up-to-date employee profile information from Active Directory and ensures that the contact information is always up-to-date, freeing up your intranet admin from routine user management tasks Granular controls allow you to limit the sync to particular OUs of a single domain, or populate from multiple domains in a trust relationship You can even pull in AD managers for the "who reports to who" feature of the Employee Directory

Intranet Stats Intranet Connections offers you an added package for our Stats Software Tool. Stats will track user statistics and activity

-- Track most popular areas -- What content is being ignored -- Who uses the intranet most -- Who contributes to the intranet -- Is usage increasing? -- Track an Employee’s Activity -- Build content audits -- Build custom reports

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Intranet Tasks

Employee Hub The Employee Hub is an area for employees to connect with their intranet. They can personalize, create widgets, view their bookmarks, manage content subscriptions and alerts Get the best of both worlds when it comes to personalization. Employees can set up their own subscriptions or admins can push subscriptions to users and groups.

Auto notifications shows training courses the user has registered for; updates on any of their Support Desk tickets; their content awaiting approval; and items checked out through Documents and the Library

Employee Training Employee Training is a robust and automated system for sharing training courses and managing student registrations -- Advertise upcoming courses -- Register or Waitlist via Intranet -- Automated Reminders -- Track Registrants / Waitlists -- Track Open Seats -- Bulk Registrant Updates -- Generate Email Lists -- Build Reports -- Full Student History -- Embed Video Teasers -- Comments and Ratings


Job Center A powerful built-in HR tool, the Job Center not only allows HR to easily submit and advertise new job openings but it has a robust built-in Resume Builder. Employees can keep their resumes up to date online and in the eyes of HR and management -- reduce recruiting costs -- reduce training costs -- find talent in-house -- career advancement -- streamline recruitment -- rate resumes -- start and end dates -- archives and reporting

Support Desk | Ticketing For smaller companies with a limited IT help desk, or for large organizations who want a centralized ticket tracking system on the intranet, our Support Desk software can help to streamline issues, track progress, capture resolutions, and report on historical data -- dynamically build e-forms -- create custom fields for searching -- search Issues & resolutions -- admin-use only fields -- add private & public notes -- robust reporting -- set up multiple support desks


Knowledge Center You can choose the authors and contributors of your intranet Knowledge Center, but it works best as an employee-driven global center of employee knowledge. Allow employees to contribute and collaborate on frequently asked questions, tips and tricks, how-to videos, or any other company knowledge that would be beneficial to store, share and search

In/Out Board Track the status of your co-workers or see the whereabouts of everyone in the company. Reception view, set future away statuses, modify the default status options and icons. Create in/out board widgets to view the status of your project teams, co-workers, managers, support techs or anyone else or group within the company


Event Calendars Our calendar tool features upcoming company events but you can clone to create unlimited calendars for unlimited uses, including resource booking or schedules -- Add Recurring Events -- Optional Conflict Checking -- Send Custom Alerts -- e-Invites to Co-Workers -- Send Events to Your Outlook -- Color Coding -- Two level organization


Intranet Collaboration

Department Sites Build sub-sites for -- Departments -- Project Spaces -- Team Sites -- Community Pages -- Tracking customers -- Anything you want! Super simple. Create sub-sites or copy existing sub-site templates. Build your navigation, design and theme your hub, add widgets and control the layout. Delegate management of sub-sites and choose to view-secure sites for specific groups and users

Live Chat As simple and easy as Facebook chat, you can engage employees with our intranet chat feature. An added bonus, you can create unlimited chat widgets to launch chat windows

Support techs, department reps, company receptionist, content publishers, intranet manager, training instructors, or any other list of users you would like to create a chat widget with

Send out broadcast admin alerts through the chat utility


Project Blogs Improve communication and collaboration on your intranet with the use of Blogs. Blogs can be leveraged to align corporate goals, build community and culture, and collaborate around projects -- create unlimited blogs -- single or multi-authors -- add blog members (users or groups) -- audit tracking -- review blog contributions -- review and approve comments -- content tagging -- built-in designer | CSS styles

Photo Albums Create unlimited online albums with our Photo Album tool. It is a snap to get your company photos, logos, graphics and videos onto the intranet to share with co-workers.

Add titles, captions, notes, copyright and other meta data information for searching on photos and images. Photos and graphics will automatically be resized on the fly to create thumbnail views, and employees can rate and comment


Discussion Boards Discussion boards are a popular forum because of the conversational tone and collaboration between colleagues

Creating threaded conversations can benefit teams and projects, and can even help to reduce email and chat conversations

Threads and replies are archived and searchable. Employees can subscribe to topics of interest and will be notified via alerts and email of replies

Comments and Ratings Enable comments and ratings within the various tools and give voice to your employees. An excellent way to encourage collaboration and participation


Quick Polls Build and launch quick polls onto the intranet home page

Employees can cast their votes and all responses are tallied instantly, showing a visual chart view of responses

Administrators and poll builders will be able to see how everyone voted and email the poll results

Suggestion Box Collaborative tools are all about conversations, ideas, collaboration and people. Suggestion Box is a great initiative that encourages employees to participate and share their opinions and ideas.

Add comments and ratings. Set up confidential or sensitive categories, and control who can view and submit suggestions. Enable content approvals on suggestions for added moderation


Media Embeds Intranet Connections offers an easy way to embed audio and video files within your intranet content -- Media embed from HTML editor -- Super Easy for Publishers -- Streams live with our Flash Player -- Upload Training Videos -- Post Webinars -- Share Employee Recognition Videos -- Embed a CEO Message | Home Page -- Share Snippets from Conferences -- Embed Media into Blogs Embed media anywhere on the site where you publish content with the HTML editor Super simple and an effective social way to communicate and share information

Buy & Sell A social tool that allows staff to post for sale items and other classifieds. The Buy and Sell can also be used for sharing babysitters, neighborhood restaurants, or any other social networking that could be useful for employees

Sharing Recipes Employees can post their secret family recipes, share good tips and recipes from the internet, search for recipes A-Z, bookmark favorites, handy quick print and option to email a recipe to co-workers. Even a holiday calendar and comments/ratings


Added Benefits Ease of Use

Simple and Easy to Use – these are the hallmarks of our intranet software. We strive for simplicity without limiting functionality. Intranet Connections is simple to install, has simple licensing (one cost, unlimited users, admins, publishers), is simple for employees to use and contribute to, simple to find content (no more than three clicks to content), and our software is simple to manage and maintain. Rapid deployment means saved costs. Simple = less headache, less cost, less training = quick implementation!

Single Unified Search

One of the problems emerging from social 2.0 tools and various information silo’s within the enterprise is that employees are having difficulty finding what they need – which wastes time, money and is frustrating for the employee. The power of Intranet Connections is that we give you the core intranet tools plus the social 2.0 intranet experience all in one central intranet portal for under $10k.

Having all of these tools in one consolidated location, your employees now have a single, unified source to search for the information they need to do their jobs better and more efficiently.

Extranet Capabilities

We have many clients who are using Intranet Connections as both an intranet and extranet environment. You can create an intranet to serve your employees and build an extranet for customers – within a shared content environment. Security on Intranet Connections is highly flexible, and logged in users will only see what they have rights to view, whether they be employees or your customers or outside partners.

Simple Licensing

We didn’t want a sliding scale for licensing that will continue to drive your costs upwards as you grow your intranet. With Intranet Connections, you have a one-time cost and you own the software. It resides on your servers or we can arrange for third party hosting; our licensing model covers all users – now and into the future. You can have unlimited publishers including all employees if you so choose. You can have unlimited administrators, and delegate ownership of department sub-sites and other areas of content without any additional costs.

Priced under $10K

The initial purchase cost for Intranet Connections is $8500US. This is a one-time cost for the software. An annual maintenance fee will begin upon your second year with the software and includes email and telephone support, as well as all upgrades and enhancements to your intranet site. Annual Maintenance is priced at $1450US (subject to change). Our intranet software development roadmap is driven by you, the customers, and you will have access to our intranet communities, extranet web site and our highly skilled and personable customer service and support.


Gaining ROI with Intranet Connections

Reduce the time it takes for employees to find company documents by placing them all in a central location on the intranet - with a unified, single advanced search and full-text searching The intranet can go a long way in attracting talent and keep them with you. Build community and corporate culture. Give employees the tools they look for in collaboration, networking and increased job satisfaction, and watch your turnover rate decrease Reduce the management of your intranet, stop the bottleneck of restricted publishing and let everyone contribute themselves, rather than tying up an IT or HR person to publish content Huge costs are incurred when recruiting and hiring new employees. Use the Job Center on your intranet to fill positions internally with people who already know the policies, flow and culture of your business Retaining your employee's knowledge beyond their employment is a soft cost that may be hard to quantify, but can provide huge gains for the company in the long run With buying out-of-the box, you save on not having to hire contractors, you can deploy quickly, you have minimal training to get employees up to speed, and you never have to worry again about finding, building, or maintaining new features and applications Encourage employees to share cost-saving ideas, or new revenue streams, for the company via the Suggestion Box. You never know, a million dollar idea could come from one of your employees

Reduce time and paper costs by having employees use electronic forms, route them to supervisors or designated management, sign off on them and store the form results - all electronically via the intranet Building a custom intranet is expensive. Use a rapidly deployed intranet that essentially manages itself, rather than hiring someone to create and manage an intranet for you. Free up resources to work on other projects that are valuable to the company If every employee saved 15 minutes a day in productivity by using the intranet; finding information they need quickly and efficiently, how much cost savings would that be? Automate and streamline the management of courses and student registrations by putting it all on the intranet. Free up the time of a your training manager to focus on course material, video how-to's and bring on new projects Create a leaner and more efficient IT help center by encouraging employee to use the intranet Support Desk tool, where they can submit issues, and track the status of their tickets Intranet Connections supports the Active Directory single sign-on model for intranet access. Push employee HR information into Active Directory and synchronize the data on your intranet. Create a focal point for information coming from other sources in the enterprise Provide better service to your customers by arming your employees and sales teams with streamlined information at their fingertips, and keep them current to industry news through RSS feeds


Contact Information

Intranet Connections intranet software by SQBox Solutions Ltd

230 – 1000 Roosevelt Crescent North Vancouver, BC V7P 1M3

P: 604-924-9770 F: 604-924-9740

General Enquiries: [email protected] Customer Support: [email protected] Web Site: http://www.intranetconnections.com/

Additional Resources

Check out our blog for intranet tips and advice http://blogs.intranetconnections.com

Follow our CEO on twitter for great value add http://twitter.com/carolyndouglas

Review the features of our latest release http://www.intranetconnections.com/intranet-software/newrelease/index.cfm

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