Multi-User Blogs

Robin Good’s article about Multi-User Blog is a good overview of some of the more successful group blogs and touches on the different tools used to create them. (A full comparative report is also available for download.)

The most interesting portion is his discussion on project sites, based on work by David Siegel. The productivity benefit of such a solution is huge and would benefit any project based environment. My roles within the HRIS industry usually involve a large amount of both project management and project coordination therefore tools to assist with this are always of interest.

In reading the articles I begin to think that really what is being discussed is a version of an employee portal with project management features. An Employee Portal provides a secure, single point of interaction with the organisation, covering information, business processes, and people, personalised to the employee’s role, needs and responsibilities. A multi user blog will not provide the necessary environment to truely meet these needs of the business. Users will always need yet another tool to provide a complete solution. While for early-adopter type users this will never be an issue (as we will build the solution we need) but for mainstream aceptance we will need a “Microsoft-style” solution. It all comes down to the barriers of entry.

The type of features I would look for are:-

• Traditional Employee Self Service
• Traditional Manager Self Service
• Business Process Workflow
• Content and Knowledge management
• Document repositories (Corporate & Team)
• Project management tool integration
• Discussion Forums (Corporate & Team) – with Q & A section
• Chat rooms (Corporate & Team)
• Web based meeting infrastructure
• Share electronic white boards
• VOIP Phones and communication
• Blogs & Wiki’s (Corporate & Team)
• Users having the ability to share (through RSS) content
• Task & Calender integration

An example of this “Microsoft-style” solution is described by Lee Lefever of Common Craft where the solutions are seamlessly integrated with his “Wiki This!” feature. This type of integration across the features listed above would provide significant benefit to organisations use an employee portal.