Due to the overwhelming response we’ve received for both the Melbourne and Sydney Showcase Luncheons, we have decided to add a showcase in Brisbane.

NB: We’ve also had enough of Melbourne’s so-far poor attempt at Spring, so are very much looking forward to a quick stopover in the Sunshine State.

So if you are looking for a fabulous intranet and a free lunch, you have come to the right place. Register Now

the details:

12.30pm – Wednesday 24th November

Caulfied Room, Quay West Suites – 132 Alice St, Brisbane 4000

Unlike John Farnham’s farewell tour, ours will actually be coming to an end. If you can’t make it this time round let us know, and we’ll keep you posted on when we’re next in town.

A special shout out to our Australian-based iD fans – registrations are now open for  iD 4  Showcase Luncheons, scheduled for November.

The iD 4 Showcase luncheons are a great chance to see iD in action, including all the new functionality the latest version has to offer. Our team will be on hand to showcase all the highlights of iD 4 and answer any and all of your questions.

All that plus a delicious free lunch makes for a great afternoon so Register Now to secure your spot.

But wait, there’s more. No, sadly it’s not steak knives. We’ll do you one better – just for attending you’ll go in the draw to win dinner for 2 @ ROCKPOOL.

the details:

Melbourne – 12.30pm, Tuesday 9th November

Westin Room 3, The Westin – 205 Collins St, Melbourne 3000

Sydney – 12.30pm, Tuesday 16th November

Gloucester Room, Quay West Suites – 98 Gloucester St, Sydney 2000

Breaking News – Members of our Marketing team were yesterday granted a temporary leave pass to escape the office for a few hours.

While the hectic weeks leading up to a significant release usually see staff bid farewell to their loved ones, surrender keys to any fast-moving mode of transport and substitute sunlight with high potency Vitamin D tablets, an exception was made in this case.

Never fear, before war cries of  ‘release the hounds!’ start getting thrown around you should all know – it was an educational venture.

They attended the book tour for James Robertson’s newly released ‘Designing Intranets – A Guide to Creating Sites that Work’. James is the Managing Director of Step Two Designs, who provide consulting and mentoring services around intranets, among a variety of other things.

James shared some really interesting insights around what he feels goes into making a great intranet design. We won’t spoil the book for you – you can get your hands on a copy here – but it’s definitely worth a read, and would be a great resource for any budding re-designers out there looking for a little inspiration.

There really aren’t a great deal of resources out there giving intranet teams real-world insights into what makes a good intranet, great. As James pointed out yesterday, there seems to be a cone of silence when it comes to intranets; we’re all a bit afraid to get nosey.

Having never been fans of silence and as huge advocates for nosiness, we are with James – the more of us that get talking, the better our intranets will be. At the risk of ripping off what may have been a tag line for a United Colors of Benetton commercial – together we do better.

So get talking…what do you think goes into a great intranet?

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.

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.

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)

Read more »

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.

Read more »

They say change is as good as a holiday – and while most of us would be inclined to vehemently disagree that swapping office chairs with Jim from Accounts or switching up your screen saver is quite as thrilling as a week in the Bahamas – the theory does have merit.

So if sponsoring a company trip to a swim up bar in the south of Mexico isn’t your idea of responsible allocation of budget for this fiscal year, why not inject a little daily change into everyone’s life via your intranet?

New and updated content can appear on your intranet from a range of sources at virtually any time. Without a formal way of notifying users, valuable new information risks going unnoticed – particularly relevant considering the advent of applications such as iD CMS and the new Front End Security model in iD3.

Using Notifications and the News application, you can now conveniently display a feed of modified content in the layout of a subsite, ensuring your intranet updates quite literally make headlines.

Read more »

Living in the age of the increasingly mobile workforce, secure external access is becoming an integral element in the success of any intranet. Employees need your intranet and the business-critical information it contains to move with them in order to do their job – wherever it might take them.

The main concern for organizations looking to set up external access to internal systems is security. Considering the sensitive and strictly internal nature of the information contained within your intranet, you need to be sure only valid users are accessing it.

If you have iD set up to be externally accessible over the internet, you can restrict access to the Admin interface to your specific internal IP Range. This adds an extra level of security, not to mention peace of mind, by preventing any ‘outsiders’ from accessing the Admin interface and trying to guess your password. This is especially useful when you know you’ve been a little less than creative when selecting one.

All you’ll need is access to the webserver, and someone with a basic knowledge of IIS. The steps below will be different if you’re using IIS6 or IIS7, but let’s start with 7…

Read more »

Is your People Search searching more than people?

One of Intranet DASHBOARD’s most popular and frequently-used applications is People Search – a virtual phone book for your organization. People Search can be used to quickly and easily locate the relevant contact details of any iD user within your Active Directory.

Active Directory however, includes an enormous amount of information – not all of it relevant to your particular search. It may for example, include contact details for all employees of an affiliate organization, or even “non-people” contact data, such as the details of a particular office or branch of your business.

If you want to ensure the only results returned are for people of the living, breathing kind, there is an easy way to prevent any “non-users” appearing in your search results. If you’re currently using ActiveDirectory security mode, you can do this using LDAP Restrictions.

Read more »