Noodle Knowledge

The benefits of Intranet training are near limitless with the ability to reach employees whether they are across the street or across the world.  Noodle provides effective employee training tools allowing your business to customize the experience and cater to work groups or individual needs.

Gear Content to User Work Groups

Management can quickly create programs by organizing multimedia content and linking them from a single page portal.  A seamless launch of applications aid in training users.  Incorporate a Calendar so employees can follow the same schedule, sign up forms  and detailed instructions to complete and check off assigned tasks.  Noodle’s  Document  Manager has sub-folders to group training videos, handbooks, policy outlines and much more.  Reports can provide progress evaluation.

Make Experts out of Users

Content is current, updatable and relevant.  Create a forum for interaction allowing users to share experiences and tips.  Lead discussions and compare thoughts.  Offer quizzes to test knowledge and insure the information was retained and can be applied to the workplace.  Then, showcase the skills of employees in your Company Headlines. Provide certification and reward for completion.  To highlight a job well done assign a new Expertise.

Schedule Flexibility and Access to Materials

Self-paced multimedia instruction engages users and allows them to learn at their own speed, skimming areas where they are strong and investing more time in their areas of weakness.  No time is wasted retraining.  Users can track their status and move forward quickly becoming more efficient and effective learners.

The material is there to refer back to at any time

Effective Intranet training can increase memory retention, refresh course material and keep employees up to speed.  Material can be printed at their discretion.  Save time by including a question manager to highlight frequently asked questions categorized by departments or subject.  Offer highlights in an easy training company newsletter.  Make it fun, rewarding and interactive.

Use your Noodle to lower the cost of training an employee, When you measure output simply and visibly, the numbers will speak for themselves.  Allow employees take initiative to strengthen their talents and build corporate wisdom.

This is a perfect opportunity to look at your Intranet and the processes that accompany it.  Here are few suggestions on how to review your Intranet strategy.

Survey Says

The users are the most important part of your Intranet.  The people that use it every day to find important information and obtain corporate wisdom from it’s contents.  Create a simple 5-10 question survey to ask questions that will help point you in the direction of what areas are working and what areas are not.  The survey should me mandatory for all employees who access the Intranet.

Stats

Ensure you have a good look at the stats for the Intranet.  Key metrics to look for are:

What pages are being accessed the most
What pages are being access the least
What features are popular based on traffic
What department is getting the most use from the Intranet

Who are your champions?

By looking at your stats and the results of your survey you should be able to find out who your champions are.  Champions play an important role in improving your Intranet and getting more people involved.  They are a valuable resource that will help your Intranet be successful.  Think of them as your Intranet ambassadors.  Have them write a page or blog about why they use the Intranet and how others can benefit like they do.

New Technologies

Summer is the best time to look at the market and see what new technologies or features are available for your Intranet.  For example micro blogging has become very popular with Intranets or integrate a group chat tool for a few months to see what works and what doesn’t with your user base.  Using the results of your survey and stats will help you decide what new features you should try.

Putting it all together

As Fall approaches you will need to use the data you have collected to update and optimize your Intranet.  The survey will tell you what is working and what is not.  Anything that is not working needs to be removed or updated so that it does.  Your Intranet champions will have been interviewed and encouraged to evangelize the benefits of the Intranet and you will added few new features and technologies that will help your company experience the benefits of a finely tuned Intranet.

This process should be done every year to keep your Intranet a value creator for your company.

-Enhancements:
* 10 languages added
* Option to crop or pad thumbnails
* Whitelist IP’s for controlled access
* SMTP port and password options
* Photo Portlet now shows thumbnails
* Import/Export Backup entire site
* Faster loading user list with dedicated search

-Bug fixes:
* redirect if remember my password cookie and password changes
* calendar weekly repeating was hitting the safety
* loads export/import bugs
* routing reloading the wrong frame from one of the views
* deleted items not showing up
* DataManager>reports> editing a radio button will not save state
* import/export whole site fixes
* Forum Portlet was still showing if folder was deleted
* UploadedFile memory leak (failed to close io stream)
* better image support (no more pink png thumbs)
* links app/folder now deletes if there is a portlet pointing to it
* delete not showing on DataManager with routing
* LDAP now can use different domains
* upgrade deadlock on mssql

To upgrade your version of Noodle please contact support.
If your Noodle is hosted with Vialect your site will be upgraded automatically.

We recently added Leigh Anderson to our team and she has been in training for the last two weeks.  Leigh will be part of our support group and soon will be answering phones and emails.

Instead of going over all the technical issues we train people on I thought it would be more interesting if we listed some of the characteristics we feel is important to our ongoing success.  Every team member at Vialect must have these 5 characteristics.

Listening
In some cases new employees will try to prove themselves by interjecting with comments or suggestions, of course we encourage this but listening to fellow coworkers and customers will help shorten any learning curve.  Understanding why something is done is more important than how something is done.

Focus
Multitasking is a word that is used way too much and we see it on resumes all the time.  What it usually means is you do many tasks poorly instead of one task great.  We prefer you focus on one task and do it great.

Attention to Detail
This may be related to focus but it deserves mentioning.  The details are what makes something great.  Doesn’t matter if you work in design, support or sales, pay attention to the details.

Organization
This may seem like a common sense point but if you are unorganized the previous points will all be lost.  There are many tools today to help you get organized.  We like to use Noodle.:-)

Don’t have a Know-it-all Attitude
Be open to learn new things.  Every day we learn new things and technology is almost never black and white.  Every job requires uniques skills and knowledge so be ready to learn.  You should know more today than you did yesterday.

Feel free to welcome Leigh to the team!

The site now has a simple yet elegant look. All the information is easy to find and showcases our product and success stories.

Our Blog is now a main navigation item as we feel it is an important piece of our customer communications and will evolve in the future with more people from the company contributing to it.

We hope you enjoy the new website and look forward to hearing your feedback regarding the update. Would love to hear your comments or suggestions.

As a Canadian we understand the relationship but it nice to see it summed up in this wonderful video by Tom Brokaw.

“Geography has Made us Neighbors
History has made us friends.
Economics has Made us Partners
and Necessity has made us allies”

President Kennedy

The US Miitary calls their social network TISC.

“TISC” (the Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation) is a new iteration of APAN, the All Partners Access Network, which was developed by the Defense Department a few years ago. Initially, the military was using APAN to communicate across borders, particularly in countries without sophisticated communication technology. Even in third-world countries, Internet connection seemed to be frequently accessible, so the APAN system was built to work over the Internet, to facilitate the sharing of classified files, as well as things like coordinating calendars.

Check  out the full article here.

Perhaps it is simpler to define Enterprise 2.0 as a practical focus on creating, managing and governing business communities within the framework of social media. Overall, Enterprise 2.0 must be value added to a business. Because of this, the key benefits offered by it and are of critical importance.

Productivity – productivity is increased by allowing easy access to information and streamlining the communication process
Knowledge – Through the use of “Wiki” like pages, information is readily available to users of the system
Communication – Enterprise 2.0 allows for increased communication through social media like outlets.
Modernization – the emergent technology represented by Enterprise 2.0 systems is the future of business
Transparency – because information, data and knowledge is readily available, Enterprise 2.0 increases the transparency of a business

Enterprise 2.0 manages to provide these benefits, and more, through the use of simple and intuitive tools.

Wiki – software that encourages the creation of content by users. Hyperlinks are supported, as are cross-links. Easily edited, Wiki portals are the perfect method for sharing knowledge across an organization.
Blog – Blogs, originally developed as a sort of public journal, are an excellent model for today’s businesses. Through interaction, such as commenting, audiences can participate in discussion relating to a variety of business topics.
Voting – Perhaps the most simple of all social media tools, voting mechanisms can be used to provide feedback on ideas and concepts.
Agents – a type of query or search functionality that runs, 24/7, in the background. Agents allow relevant information and date to be delivered quickly and can be filtered through the use of unique user preferences.
Relationship Building – Social networking sites are known for their ability to develop and foster relationships. Enterprise 2.0 brings this trend to the business place.
Social Network Analysis – SNA provides a framework that allows businesses to visualize the way that work is performed throughout their organization. This information can identify potential bottlenecks as well as uncover ‘extra’ effort by employees through the number, strength and even volume of interactions and connections.

At the end of the day, Enterprise 2.0 marries the needs of business owners with the ease of use and reliability of social media. By providing a platform that employees are familiar and comfortable with, employers set in motion an environment that will encourage change, growth and productivity.  The tools utilized by Enterprise 2.0 allow businesses to grow and change with the times and technology and can foster positive change for the future of business both large and small.

What’s New in V6.8?

New Feed View Interface for Folders
Shows by Date or A-Z
Upload Multiple Files (supports Mac & PC)
Upload Zip Files (unpacks Automatically)
Download all files in a folder option
Folder Description Panel
Folder Information Panel
Inline Comments for files
Check Out Documents
Check In Documents (Option to create new version or overwrite)
Versions show inline on Feed View
Send Link to file via instant Messenger
Image Thumbnails in Feed View

What’s New Subscription Feature
Users can subscribe to Noodle to receive What’s New (daily, weekly or as it happens)

Add calendar events from the Merged Calender interface.

Search Speed greatly improved

We hope you enjoy these new enhancements to Noodle