Blog posts by Rob Folan2023-09-22T12:42:05.0000000Z/blogs/rob-folan/Optimizely WorldOptimizely For you Intranet/blogs/rob-folan/dates/2023/9/optimizely-for-you-intranet/2023-09-22T12:42:05.0000000Z<p>Having been at Optimizely and in the CMS industry for nearly 16 years I have seen clients’ intranet requirements go from a simple site just to house information that is easily accessible by employees, to a social media site that is the single hub of communication for a company, back again now to a simple site that just houses information. I feel both extremes miss the point.</p>
<p>An intranet at its core is a website. The only difference between a public facing website and an intranet is the audience. But increasingly both audiences are expecting the same thing. A website that looks good, is easy to navigate, but most importantly the site understands its visitors’ goals, and gives them relevant content. Aside from this not much has changed, we all want an Intranet that will provide self-service for our employees to improve productivity. But we need it to be secure, integrated, and flexible to adapt to today’s ever-changing world.</p>
<p>The technology behind the CMS has evolved. It has made the Intranet not only a great place to share general or organizational information, but also shares tailored information for employees. Specific content and messaging can be targeted at different employees based on location, title, role, or interest. This can now be automated as well, making it even easier to provide these tailored experiences. Beyond that the Intranet can be a resource for information within the company. Departments like HR can be assured that an employee has viewed content required by company policy and can encourage actions for those who have not. IT can see what people are searching for and what devices they are using. Education\Enablement can see what the topics of interest in the company are and can adjust their content creation appropriately. All this while assuring sensitive content does not fall into the wrong hands, and allowing employees to in the systems they are accustomed to through integrations.</p>
<p><img src="/link/a6be916833d44c209fc139efec4b42e8.aspx" width="1093" alt="" height="452" /></p>
<p>(Image: Unique views vs volume of topic graph in Content Intelligence)</p>
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<p>AI and Data have made these capabilities scalable and streamlined. Optimizely’s Data Platform can gather information about how your employees are interacting digitally with the company in the same way it gathers information about customers. Optimizely’s Content Intelligence can deliver targeted content to employees and provide insight into consumption and interest, this helps organizations spend time creating content that your employees need just like on your public facing websites.</p>
<p><img src="/link/d19b669bf69c4f10bbba12a7468e1a11.aspx" width="1046" alt="" height="488" /></p>
<p>(Image: User profile event tracking in Optimizely’s Data Platform)</p>
<p>Intranets need to provide four basic functions. The ability for your site visitor to find what they are looking for quickly: Search. An experience that is tailored to their needs and wants: Personalization. The ability for your audience to provide feedback on the experience and information you are providing them: Social Engagement. The ability to interact with internal systems, providing a single source of truth: Integrations. Securing these integrations and data to ensure access to based on roles and responsibilities in the organization: Security. Finally, you need to provide an easy way to create or add content to the intranet that keeps the information provided relevant and up to date: CMS.</p>
<p>As the Intranets of the world move forward, there will be an ever-increasing demand for tailored experiences, Integrations, Security, and as always fresh content. Employees want engaging experiences, the same they experience today in their personal lives. With the Optimizely DXP, it is easier now more than ever to deliver this experience. No longer do we need to create segments to deliver a tailored experience, we can use AI. No longer is it a one-way street when it comes to data, we can gather much more information now about our employees and their preferences. All this can lead to a better understanding of the employee and through this a better experience! </p>
<p> <img src="/link/2fb185a3760c4a25baf8b2397b1a94d2.aspx" width="956" alt="" height="363" /></p>
<p>Image: Funnel Graph of Form Submissions in Optimizely’s Data Platform)</p>
<p>Remember, an intranet is just a website. The only difference is the audience. Create a simple way to manage and update content easily (CMS). Make sure the content is easy to find (Search). Personalize the messaging (Content Intelligence) and provide a way to give feedback (Social tools). Finally gather data and iterate on your findings. (Optimizely’s Data Platform and experimentation).</p>Episerver For Your Intranet/blogs/rob-folan/dates/2018/8/episervers-cms-for-your-intranet/2018-08-20T14:55:27.0000000Z<!DOCTYPE html>
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<p> In my years working in the CMS industry I’ve been asked many times about Intranets. Many people believe an Intranet requires a separate toolset to build verses a public facing website, they are wrong. An intranet is just a website like any other, the main difference is the audience and the content. The purpose of your public facing website generally is to provide a space where you inform your site visitor and provide self-service to drive revenue or lower cost. This is the same with an intranet. You are providing a space for your employees to find information in hopes of improving their efficiency to drive higher revenue or lower operating costs.</p>
<p><img src="/link/543898cb9ee84381801a2b523c036c82.aspx" width="1040" alt="Image Mosey Intranet.png" height="496" /></p>
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<p> With an Intranet, just like a public facing site, you need to provide four basic functions. The ability for your site visitor to find what they are looking for quickly: Search. An experience that is tailored to their needs and wants: Personalization. The ability for your audience to provide feedback on the experience and information you are providing them: Social Engagement. Finally, you need to provide an easy way to create or add content to the intranet that keeps the information provided relevant and up-to-date: CMS. Episerver is world class in all these functions.</p>
<p><strong>1. Search</strong></p>
<p>The core of any intranet is providing a single space for your employees where they can find content that will make their jobs easier. This means aggregating content from across your enterprise and providing a single source of truth. Episerver Find does this very well. It allows for faceted search. Find can index content from other websites, databases or flat files and return the content in a single stream to the site visitor. It also allows content to be searched programmatically, enabling content to be delivered to a site visitor without them actively preforming a search. This can be used to create topic level pages, dynamic lists, as well as improving content relevance based on the information known about the site visitor.</p>
<p><strong> 2.</strong> <strong>Personalization</strong></p>
<p>Once you have provided space where your employees can go and find the content they need, the next step is optimizing the experience. No one wants to log onto an intranet and filter through all the content. Just like on a public facing site, the experience should adjust to who is looking at the content. This can mean many things. Permissions are very important and the first level of personalization. If you do not have access to something, you should never see it. The second level of personalization should be targeted content. This includes utilizing Visitor Groups in Episerver to promote content to different types of visitors. For example, bubbling up sexual harassment training documents to those employees who have not yet read them. The third level is utilizing machine learning. This allows for content to be personalized on an individual level to provide an optimized track for converting the visitor. On a public facing site this may be getting them to purchase a product, but on an intranet, it is providing your employee with the most up-to-date and relevant content so they can do their job effectively.</p>
<p><strong>3. Social</strong></p>
<p>Now that you have a single source of truth optimized for each individual in your organization, the next step is getting feedback. Just as in a public facing website, making sure what you are providing to the site visitors is what they want or need, should be a top priority in your intranet. This is where Episerver Social comes into play. The first basic tool social can provide is an avenue for your employees to rate or provide feedback on the usefulness of content or application. This lets the content contributors know if they are fulfilling the needs of the employees, as well as lets other employees know if the content is worth using. Social can also provide a space for collaboration. By utilizing the micro services on-demand spaces can be created, providing a place where content can be shared and worked on as a group as well as ideas exchanged. </p>
<p><strong> 4. CMS</strong></p>
<p>The foundation of all of this is the CMS. Without an easy to use CMS content entry is very difficult. When content entry is difficult, people tend not to add new content to the intranet, they will find spaces that are easier. If the intranet is not having content added to on a regular basis, then it quickly becomes out of date. Everyone has had an experience with an intranet, where they are looking for a document, but only find one that is a few years old. This wastes the employee’s time, and drives more users away from the intranet, further exaggerating the problem. This is why choosing the CMS for your intranet is so important. Just as your public facing website needs to be updated quickly and easily so your customers keep coming back for new information providing revenue, your intranet needs to stay relevant and up-to-date so your employees keep coming back and breathing life into this shared space.</p>
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</html>Ektron to EPiServer: My Authoring Transition/blogs/rob-folan/dates/2015/9/ektron-to-episerver-my-authoring-transition/2015-09-10T15:18:55.0000000Z<p>Spending the last seven and a half years as a Solutions Architect at Ektron before the merger with EPiServer, I know the Ektron CMS inside and out. I have been able to create some very complex proof of concepts as part of my day to day support for the sales team with relative ease. I was used to working in three different and distinct authoring environments: the WYSIWYG editor, the Smart Form editor (Ektron’s structured content. This allows for custom object to be created within the CMS), and PageBuilder (Ektron’s drag and drop interface for creating pages through the browser). <p>Ektron’s WYSIWYG Editor: <p><a href="/link/368518570f2a41fab8e666f8f0e2934f.aspx"><img title="clip_image002" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="clip_image002" src="/link/0af6dce65b274cdaa7bd06c558990a37.aspx" width="896" height="260" /></a> <p>Ektron’s Smart From editor: <p><a href="/link/f39d27e67e334073801d74084c540bc5.aspx"><img title="clip_image004" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="clip_image004" src="/link/caada74efc18420ea1cbe7290522a736.aspx" width="587" height="602" /></a> <p>Ektron’s Page Builder:<a href="/link/09690f29911f477dacebe13413ee0f18.aspx"><img title="clip_image006" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="clip_image006" src="/link/478059613e074bf8a885b9016783851c.aspx" width="610" height="297" /></a> <p>Each has their advantages and disadvantages. The WYSIWYG editor is great at giving an author ease of use by allowing them to maintain their content right within context of the page. Smart forms can be used for a variety of applications: custom data objects for rich internet applications, menu management, taking the burden of style off the author by only requiring them to fill in data, as well as web site configurations that can be maintained by authors. PageBuilder is the most visual way to manage content within Ektron allowing users to simply drag and drop widgets on to a wireframe to create a page. All of these make authors’ lives easier by giving them more access to manage different types of content within their site. They also provide developers with a myriad of tools to create rich websites that can easily be maintained by non-technical authors. <p>My comfort with Ektron and its many different interfaces made me a little bit concerned when I would have to begin learning the new Digital Experience Cloud offering formed by the merger of Ektron and EPiServer. There were differences on the surface and I needed to learn the ins and outs of this new CMS much faster than I had learned Ektron while still being able to create complex proof of concepts quickly for the sales team. <p>The first thing I noticed within the Digital Experience Cloud was that you are always working in page canvas and editing content right in the same view as a site visitor. This is very similar to Ektron’s in page editing, allowing me to utilize the WYSIWYG editor in context. But instead of only being able to edit unstructured content, I am now able to modify structured content as well. I can now drag and drop images, files, and blocks (similar concept to Ektron’s widgets) right into the same interface, bringing in the third authoring interface from Ektron: PageBuilder. The fact that there is a single interface to perform all authoring tasks makes learning the CMS and working on the web site that much easier. But being technical, I was concerned I wouldn’t have the same flexibility on the back end as I had in Ektron. I was wrong. I have much more! Although the author never has to leave the page to create or edit content there still is a structured view. This structured view is very similar to Ektron’s Smart Forms. It is showing me all the data that is part of this page including any blocks the user may have added. As a developer, I am in complete control over what data points are available, what tabs they are organized in, as well as what is required. In essence I am in complete control of the model. With the Digital Experience Cloud being 100% MVC.Net, I can create these models as I would in any MVC site. I can create different views and even utilize them as storage or configurations for the site. <p>EPiServer’s in page editing: <p><a href="/link/7f941e743290488ab363a778badb7902.aspx"><img title="clip_image008" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="clip_image008" src="/link/44e292047b5048a587685745138c6461.aspx" width="638" height="569" /></a> <p>EPiServer’s WYSIWYG editor: <p><a href="/link/883ab8c70e1447a8818474a64ba38d33.aspx"><img title="clip_image009" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="clip_image009" src="/link/d73757d12b4b458483f22418d258e897.aspx" width="709" height="392" /></a> <p>EPiServer’s Content Area and Blocks: <p><a href="/link/73d2c8f4586c412e93ba607eb581521f.aspx"><img title="clip_image011" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="clip_image011" src="/link/a20defa21150498da1ff81d975f5acad.aspx" width="747" height="236" /></a> <p>EPiServer’s structured content view: <p><a href="/link/a313923212c248f5af9c87416e28514c.aspx"><img title="clip_image012" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="clip_image012" src="/link/f481e6c18e9b47498ee5aa8e424d3139.aspx" width="425" height="710" /></a> <p>When creating a page type within the Digital Experience Cloud as a developer, it is just creating a model as you would in any other MVC.Net site. In the example below, when I created the new Page Type as part of my solution, it was assigned a GUID. This GUID will register the Page Type with the CMS and make it available for use by authors. I can control all aspects of this Page Type. I can dictate what Page Types can and cannot be used to create child pages within the CMS. What image is associated to the Page Type within the UI. I can control what data types and parameters I need to store as well as their presentation within the structured view within the authoring UI. Just by defining these parameters in my model within Visual Studio, the CMS will adapt, make the Page Type available to the authors, provide the appropriate editing tools, and store all data associated to the model within the Microsoft SQL Server database in the backend. <p><a href="/link/ba119864ebf84eada8264dd21c9ecfb4.aspx"><img title="clip_image014" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="clip_image014" src="/link/bb19180881e9445f9dacb00534df67bd.aspx" width="935" height="578" /></a> <p>I now find that I prefer the single, unified environment I have today in the Digital Experience Cloud, which really does bring together the best of Ektron and EPiServer in a single environment. It is a simple system to learn, use and expand. Authors have one familiar interface to perform their work, and as a developer I have even more flexibility in the backend to create a solution that is easy to maintain. It has truly sped up my ability to create custom proof of concepts with minimal code and effort. In many ways this for me shows to real potential for users moving to the converged platform – the best of both worlds and a whole lot more. <p><a name="_msocom_1"></a></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p>