In the first two parts (SCN: A company´s knowledge base system, part 1, SCN: A company´s knowledge base system, part 2) about this topic I described why would I like to use SCN as a company´s knowledge base apart of how I use it now. Especially what already exists on SCN to help me get where I want to go. I would not change the things how they work today. I suggest implementing some minor enhancements to enable people to use SCN in the new way. I promised to describe the enhancements that would allow us use SCN the way I suggest and I deliver below.
How is a user linked to a company
If I ask for a “company view” on SCN users and content, there must be a way how to link together the users and the companies (employees and employers). The link between the user and the content is firm and clear.
At the moment, there are following ways how to link a user with a company:
- Company link in one´s business card is a soft one: you can name your employer in your BC, you can name your employer´s website, but if you slightly change the name, nobody minds and if processed by the a machine it would mean you work for somebody else than your colleague who changed your employer´s name in another way.
- There is another link between a user and a company. There is some kind of aggregation filter which allows you to click on the name of a company in the list of contributing companies and get a list of “all” the contributing employees. Employees are collected from the list using their email, I believe. If one changes his/her email, he/she would disappear from this list.
- (Do we have a bulletproof link between the user and the company for the S-users? I am not sure how a S-user is created, there must be some kind of partner/ customer ID as a part of the registration form. Is it so?)
Even if this is not 100% bulletproof, it could suffice. So no changes needed here.
P.S.: if I am wrong, please let me know, I will correct the text.
Transitive link: between a piece of content and a company
We know how to link a user with a company and it is clear how a piece of content is linked with its author. Now we need to be able to access the content authored by the employee of a company (follow the transitive link I mentioned in the headline: from company to the piece of content through the author).
Unfortunately the way how to access the content from the list of contributing companies described in the last blog does not work. You cannot filter the content by the company (I still don´t believe it. This is SCN and so it would expect to be able to filter down to SAP people contributions for example. SAP employees are supposed to provide more pieces of content than other users and I would bet on a higher quality of such content. That´s why I would follow content I would access using such filter…).
For the feature I suggest the filter on companies working the same way the SCN category filter works is essential. This way I would be able to access directly the content I want. Example: All ABAP blog by SAP employees. If one could see the attributes of the “view” in the URL (as parameters), then it would be easy get exactly the content you want. For the example with ABAP blogs by SAP the URL could look like this: http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/knowledgebase.jspa?company=sap&type=blog&category=abap. That would be nice, wouldn´t it?
More and more features comes into one´s mind
Now close your eyes and think about even more features that would make this “company view” on content much more useful and friendly. For example:
- RSS feeds that would allow users to follow the content (by company/ category/ type)
- Tags and folders one could use to create the personal collections of useful pieces of content (such feature would be cool to have regardless the company point of view!)
- (Combination of last two) RSS feed that would let me follow the content tagged useful by the people from my company
- Example: let´s say you (as a manager) get a new employee. You know what do want the new employee to learn, where he/she could find the materials (on SCN, of course). You have tagged all the useful materials when you have found it, so now you have collections of materials the new employee can use himself/herself to start the learning process. Isn´t it cool? I wonder if the future is bright and such scenario would be possible one day..
Please let me know, dear reader, what do you think. Would you find something like this useful for you?
Have a nice day, Otto
