“Compared to other generations, millennials tend to be more collaborative, are accustomed to working in teams & have a passion for pressure.”
-Joanie Connell, Flying Without a Helicopter: How to Prepare Young People for Work and Life
Millennials rejoice! I have seen the ECM platform of the future – and comrades, it’s a flavor we can all appreciate. eXo Platform, a user-centric, open-source social collaboration software, enables users to connect, collaborate, and publish real-time updates in activity streams and build a valuable knowledgebase via a productive and interactive social intranet. But the solution doesn’t stop there; it can also serve as an organizations document management system and integrates with many line-of-business applications. In plain terms: imagine the current ECM system you work off of with the look and feel of Facebook. And like social media, you can access the platform on the go with their mobile devices.
According to the BPW foundation, Millennials will make up 75 percent of the workforce by 2020. And, in the near future, if organizations want to get the best out of their newer generation of workers, they’ll need to provide platforms that complement their strengths. eXo Platform employs the strategy developers have used in the past: mimic a ubiquitous platform that most users will already understand. For this generation, Facebook and Twitter are the new Microsoft Outlook.
A Tour of the Future
Users create a profile resembling LinkedIn, with a touch of other platforms mixed in, including name, contact information, job title, skills, past work experience, and, yes… a profile picture. From the main screen, users can set their availability, add content, perform unified searches – retrieving hits on meta-data, events, tasks, posts, articles, and depending on configuration, external sources – see notifications, share status updates, and share files and links. And as with many other social media platforms, users have the option to mention (tag) other users in posts. Also included on the main screen is the Activity Streams – a derivative of a newsfeed or timeline – which displays relevant information such as posts from connected users, Spaces, forums, documents, polls, and much more in real-time.
The calendar function in social media will finally live up to its potential now that it has been moved into the professional space. This is likely a result of the difference in consequences between being fashionably late to a party and an important meeting. eXo’s calendar operates similar to iOS or Android mobile device’s calendar, capturing information from other connected calendars. Users can connect their calendars in eXo to display reminders, invitations, tasks, and more from different spaces’ or other individual calendars. Another useful tool in a user profile is the customizable Dashboard where users can add Gadgets for tracking metrics, feeds, statuses, and analytics. Together, these tools are the new approach to worker productivity.
Users can join Spaces – the equivalent of Groups on Facebook – to collaborate by sharing documents, tasks, events, Wikis, add applications, and more to accomplish their goals. In the Facebook-mimicking chat function, coworkers can strategize how to complete projects. Nifty abilities such as assigning tasks, uploading files, and sharing links improves the ability to work in teams, and consequently, streamlines business processes. The Wiki application utilizes a simplified markup language or WYSIWYG editor to forge unstructured knowledge. From an organizational standpoint, Wikis can be used to work as an internal reference for policy or product information.
Effective internal collaboration and communication capabilities are important, but neglecting to focus customers, contractors, and others is no way to go about conducting your business. eXo supports building an online community for external sources to access wikis, forums, calendars, and documents to instantly engage customers and the like through the built-in web content management capabilities.
Since eXo is built on open standards, it is very interoperable. That means organizations can leverage existing IT infrastructure against eXo to improve their business. Organizations can integrate their Active Directory, Open LDAP, or single sign-on systems to bolster security. What’s more, eXo Platform can be connected to a variety of line-of-business apps. The company includes an “add-on center” on their website, where organizations can browse and download free connectors. Extending the platform’s capabilities is possible thanks to application containers, APIs and Web IDE. Organizations can embed their own apps or gadgets in eXo Platform.
