The Digital Experience Platform blog covers the latest in innovative technologies to help you transform your business.
-
Cloud
December 13, 2019
Crafting Engaging Employee Experiences with CX Content's Employee Portal Solution
Co-Author: Lakshmi Gamapathi Chappidi, Member of Technical Staff, Oracle CX Content (Content and Experience)
Employees today demand exceptional experiences with their employers the same way that their customers expect them. In an era where more and more employees are working remotely staying connected to their employer has become critical. Employers are looking for new ways to keep their employees engaged. The statistics tell us that companies with engaged employees pull in 2.5x more revenues compared to companies with low employee engagement levels. (Hay Group)
So how can you bridge the gap from your company’s technologies and communications to engage your employees?
Employee portals. These are great gateways for employers to create open, consistent communications and resources for their employees no matter where the employee is located. Employee portals are a secure site (also referred to as an intranet portal) where you can easily share and discuss information within your company, connect different applications and incorporate online training to help your staff develop skills.
To have a successfully engaging employee portal it’s important to understand the needs of your employees and to keep them involved in the employee portal design process.
How Oracle’s CX Content helps in Creating an Intranet Website
CX Content is cloud based content hub which helps users to create, share and manage content among different channels. It also provides capabilities for website creation, collaboration, workflows for shared/created content. Essential features of intranet site like a secure site, internal discussions, responsiveness and more can all be implemented using CX Content’s capabilities. CX Content (Content & Experience) has provided several different template sample sites – we’ve discussed our Marketing Template and Supplier Portal Templates. CX Content now has an Employee Portal Template to help customers craft great employee experiences faster.
CX Content strong capabilities around the following core functionalities provide a strong foundation for the employee portal experience.
- Secure Sites: Sites created on CX Content can be made secure by enabling a secure site option available in properties of site. Sites can be given restricted access by enabling this option.
- Internal Discussions: The internal discussions functionality can be implemented by conversations. Users can have open conversations which are accessible by all and also can have conversations with restricted access.
- Responsiveness and adaptiveness: Users can hide components, stack columns in lower resolutions by setting responsive breakpoints for components and section layouts in site builder. Fonts, images, videos can also be made responsive.
- Content Customization: Users can customize the content on sites using different parameters. Old content can be replaced by new content dynamically by publishing new content to site channel.
Café Supremo Employee Intranet Website
Our new site sample has been added to our downloads page called Café Supremo Intranet – An employee intranet solution created using CX Content capabilities, built for a fictional coffeehouse chain, Café Supremo. Café Supremo Intranet provides a platform for providing trainings to staff, posting latest announcements, having discussions with other employees about café supremo, highlighting and showcasing best practices and providing the most relevant and important information to help Café Supremo employees do their jobs exceptionally.
Some of the key features used to build the site:
- Localization Policies – Localization policies are used to determine the languages a website can support. The localisation policy for Café Supremo Intranet uses English (en-US) as required language. You can easily add multiple additional languages and create translations for the site.
- Repository – A Repository is a storage location to manage digital assets and content items. A user needs to create a repository to store all the content to be used within site. If content used in two sites are same, then user can use same repository for both the sites. By publishing content items to selected channels, a user can maintain different versions of same content in different sites.
- Content Type – Content types act as a definition for content. Content types defined in the Café Supremo intranet include one for News Articles, Bios, and FAQs. As the name suggests each content type is defined for a different purpose with different fields and information. A News Article for creating content about Café Supremo’s news, Bio to show information about Café Supremo’s leaders in the People page and an FAQ to create content for a frequently asked questions section.
In addition, the Café Supremo Intranet sample shows how CX Content can be integrated with the Oracle Integration Cloud. The sample highlights how CX Content can be used with VBCS and PCS.
It is easy to enable integrations – Login to CX Content and click Integrations under ADMINISTRATION in the left hand navigation menu. In the Integrations page, enable the Process Cloud Service Integration check box to allow integration with Processes (in Oracle Integration). In the PCS Configuration dialog, enter the service URL to your PCS, a service user to use to communicate with PCS, and the service user’s password and click save.
Similarly, you can enable the Visual Builder Cloud Service Integration check box to allow the integration with Visual Builder. In the Visual Builder Cloud Service Configuration dialog, enter the service URL for Visual Builder (in Oracle Integration) and click save.
Here's a quick overview of how these integrations are used in the Café Supremo Intranet sample:
- VBCS Integration – There are two embedded VBCS applications within the intranet, a Calendar app and a training scheduler app.
- The Calendar app is being used to show upcoming events on the home page. In addition, Café Supremo event managers can add new upcoming events using the app.
- The Training scheduler app is a signup form that helps employees register for a new training. Employees can fill in a form and submit a request for training. Mangers can view the training requests and can act accordingly.
- PCS Integration – PCS integration is used for task management on the site’s Tasks page. A process is created in PCS through which managers can assign on boarding tasks to their employees. Whenever a task is assigned the employees gets an email about the task and it will also appear on the Tasks page. The employee can view and complete tasks from the tasks page.
Café Supremo Employee Intranet Website - Outline
Café Supremo Employee Intranet site contains six main web pages – Home, Training, Discussions, Tasks, People, and Help.
Home – This can be established so employees can view the latest news articles’ preview cards, important upcoming events and latest documents. Clicking on a news article preview card will show detailed information about that news article. The calendar app created in Visual Builder Cloud is being used to show upcoming events. Employees can view latest documents about Café Supremo in Lifestyle section.
Training – Here employees can view all the latest Café Supremo’ s training videos on the training page. Employees can also register for a new training through the VBCS Training scheduler app in the signup section.
Discussions – This enables employees to have discussions about new Café Supremo products. All employees have access to conversations shown on the discussions page but it can be configured to have restricted access. It is implemented using CX Content’s conversations capability.
Tasks – Here employees can view, and complete tasks assigned to them. Managers can also assign tasks to their employees by using an application created in the Oracle Process Cloud Service (PCS). By integrating Process Cloud Service (PCS) with CX Content, all the tasks assigned to an employee in PCS will be shown on the tasks page.
People – Here employees can view Café Supremo’s top leaders’ bio information.
Help – Here employees can search for any required information within the help. A content list component under the search bar returns all the FAQs that are related to the entered searched terms. Only a preview of FAQs are shown but a user can click to see full details.
Each page has a Café Supremo logo, which is quick link to home page and social media icons which act as quick links to Café Supremo’s social media pages.
Each page also has a navigation menu, custom component which has been configured to reflect page title and its link after a new page is added to site. It can also be configured to have a page and on click navigates user to an external link. User can also hide pages from navigation, if he doesn’t want to show in navigation menu.
Explore More Solutions
Excited to explore the Café Supremo Intranet sample template? You can download the Café Supremo Intranet sample template zip file here. You can upload the template into CX Content to create your own version of the site and then you can modify as per your requirements.
Check out Develop an intranet website for a detailed explanation on how to set up and use the template.
More information on CX Content’s latest developments can be found here.