Oracle, can you improve your poor usability please?

I’m still concerned with the poor usability of Oracle’s applications that BT uses e.g. Oracle Universal Content Management and eBusiness Suite.  I am working with Janus Boye to highlight the benefits of good usability with software vendors and reduce costs to organisations through lost productivity.

Would you like to help us to improve usability standards and the poor usability of Oracle’s applications?

I’ve posted about this before.  I highlighted the poor usability of applications; why basic usability isn’t built in from the start; how you can improve applications; improving application usability and why Oracle use terms users don’t understand.

BT has a strategic relationship with Oracle to rationalise its technology so reducing costs and standardising on the applications we need to use for our work.  Oracle’s relationship with BT takes into account our technical and security needs but doesn’t focus enough on the user experience with their applications.

Poor usability = loss of productivity.  It only takes an extra few minutes each time someone uses an application to be multiplied by the number of people (BT has over 100,000 people) to quickly become a large unnecessary cost.  And then there are the extra costs of helpdesks, training and guides.

I really want Oracle to set the benchmark on great usability to give them a competitive edge and encourage BT to want to use even more of their applications but no one at Oracle seems that interested.

I have tried to involve the Intranet Benchmarking Forum but they are not interested sadly.

My next blog will cover the usability standards BT has developed when we buy and develop IT services that need to be complied with.

Who uses Atlassian Confluence?

Another month, another tool to test for publishing formal content it seems!

You may recall I posted about using WordPress last month.  Well the proof of concept was a success.  WordPress is a very, very easy tool to use.

However BT has other tools already in a similar space such as Atlassian Confluence which has technical and security advantages for BT.

So, BT is now testing Confluence as a publishing tool for micro intranet sites in August in line with BT’s intranet plans to replace our existing publishing tools.

BT already uses Confluence for collaborative content.  The aim would be to publish different types of content on the same platform and make them distinctive to users and apply the appropriate standards to each type.

If we can succeed with this we really will have a winner!

Have you used Confluence for this type of publishing?  Do you know anyone who has please?

I would love to hear about what your experience has been so far.

Training publishers to understand intranet standards

When I posted last week that ‘all intranet content is not the same’ I promised to post about how BT educates its intranet publishing community to have a common awareness and understanding of the importance of our publishing standards.

All publishers of formal content in BT must do the basic training courses before they can publish formal content on our intranet.  Each course takes about 30 minutes to complete on-line and should be repeated every two years.

These courses cover our publishing standards such as accessibility, usability, information management, etc.  You need to pass each course – just doing them isn’t enough – with an 80% pass mark.

Publishers who do not use a content management system, plus service owners and template designers, also have to do the advanced training courses.  These cover how standards need to be embedded in their site design.

Content management system publishers use templates which have these features built into them before use such as global navigation bar and meet AA accessibility standards.

All publishers of formal content need to do a one-off training course for the content management system you are using (e.g. Obtree, Teamsite).

Your views are important!

I have just finished completed Jane McConnell’s annual intranet survey.  This will give me and anyone else globally with an interest in intranets an invaluable insight in to what is happening with other intranets.

I know how important it is to get as wide and balanced a view with my own surveys of BT Intranet users.  The feedback – both positive and critical – helps shape my thoughts and plans for the future.

If you want to take part but haven’t registered for an invite from Jane yet, please contact her.  You have until the end of August to complete the survey which will take you about 1 hour to complete.

Go on!  You know you want to………… 🙂

All intranet content is not the same

I have realised that I’ve blogged about BT’s intranet strategy; our blogs and wikis; publishing tools and our 2009/10 action plan.  But so far I have not covered the different types of content that people publish and use on our intranet in much detail.

Content on the BT Intranet is divided into four different types, to enable information to be managed appropriately and allow users to separate fact from comment.  A fifth category covers services, which are online processes where people do tasks to fulfil their roles.

The categories are:

Formal

Formal content is authoritative, reliable & up to date.  People will able to use it with confidence, knowing it is current and relevant.  It is usually information that has a large audience, probably line of business or BT-wide.  

A limited number of people can edit the information, with access controlled by permissions.  People have to undergo mandatory training and need to ask permission to publish.  Usually one person will have clear ownership.

Formal content will usually be found on a web site that is managed via the content management system.  All of the publishing standards are mandatory for formal content.

Team

A group of people will usually own team content, with shared responsibility for editing and ownership.  It can be permission driven, with editors clearly identified, or it can be open for anyone to edit, and possibly require a managed environment.  Team content will usually be for a defined audience, which in some cases could still be all of BT.

Team content will usually be found on one of the collaboration platforms, such as SharePoint.  Most of the online publishing standards are mandatory for team content.

Crowd

Many of the publishing standards are optional for personal content and will be managed by the publishing platforms.  People do not have to undergo mandatory training and do not need to ask permission to publish.

Crowd-sourced content is community owned information, with an open environment for anyone to edit and contribute.  The management of the information is less stringent because low levels of trust are required.

Many of the publishing standards are optional for crowd content and will be managed by the publishing platforms, such as BTpedia.  People do not have to undergo mandatory training and do not need to ask permission to publish.

Personal

Personal content will usually be opinion based content, owned by an individual, who will be the only editor.  It will have very light governance but will be open to a wide audience who can comment on the content.  Personal content will be on platforms such as Blog Central.

I’ll post about the training our publishers need to do for some types of content next.

Really Simple Publishing – that’s what we need!

I am a great user of RSS – Really Simple Syndication – and you can use it to know when I have updated my blog with a post or comment if you wish to.

I believe we need the same for any web publishing  – RSP: Really Simple Publishing – so publishing content is as simple as sending an email.

Why?

Well it removes many barriers that prevent the right people from being able to publish.  It will also reduce the total cost to your organisation of web publishing while gaining all of the benefits.

RSP would save BT the:

• cost of training of people who need to publish
• cost of technical support as people won’t need help
• reduced time to make changes and make them live much quicker
• delays while changes are emailed to someone skilled and trained in using a more complex publishing tool
• reasons why the owner of the content couldn’t publish it too.

That’s why BT is testing out publishing tools like WordPress to achieve the full value of our intranet and meet BT’s intranet strategy and plan.

All those in favour, reply and say ‘Yes!’.