What do you think about the intranet site that Renee developed for the bureau using Google Sites?

[Renee]

Please give me feedback on the intranet site that I developed over the
past week. Renee

[Charles Kinney]

Very, very nicely done,  with a more information and features than I attempted in the Hearings Unit site and case-specific sites. This creates a good learning opportunity on several counts; for example:

1. Can we successfully generate useful internal discussion with this wiki-like approach?  
2. Will Google Groups work as a good discussion medium?
   
3. Can we use the same approach for other projects?
   
4. Your site appears to enable migration of a piece of the internal OSE web site to Google Sites.  Can you begin to re-direct users from iDrop to the Google Site ITSB site?
   
5. Two of us have now successfully created a template-based web site with relatively few hours of work. How much time would it take by less IT-oriented folks for their own work groups?
6. On the theme of "eating our own dog food," can we use this technology for our own purposes -- exactly as you've started to do for ITSB and I for HU, maybe also for Quality Council -- in order to contemplate wider deployment?
   
7. What -- if any -- aspects of commercial, licensed software (e.g., Office, in particular) can be replaced with use of Google Apps?  I'm not sure if there are any yet, but perhaps there are some (particularly where sophisticated formatting or capabilities of Word, Excel, or PowerPoint are not required).
   
8. If we encourage wider internal deployment, what, if any, standards would be appropriate to consider for consistent look-and-feel?  Or, should we "let a thousand flowers bloom?"
9. I assume you are using a free Google account.  At what point do we subscribe to Google Apps, even on a limited basis.  My understanding is that there will be different behaviors between some free and paid Google Apps, perhaps with regard to security, sharing, and domains that we use.  We if anticipate wider use, it might be wise to subscribe on a limited basis to understand and deal with paid Apps behaviors and options.
10. On the application-front, can we consider some quick-and-dirty, do-it-yourself "work flow" applications with Google collaboration tools?  

By the way, in my work with Sites, Groups, and Docs, I discovered minor anomalies (aka "bugs"), for which there are easy workarounds. E.g., depending on the construction of URLs for documents uploaded into Docs, Sites appears to garble URLs in certain circumstances.  Shall we use these tools to document and share those?

Again, nice work!

 

[Martinez, J.Renee, OSE]

Charlie – These are excellent and appropriate follow-up items on our pilot experiences with Google apps.  I plan to replace the ITSB content on the iDrop with the new site (as a link) in the near future once I have trained my staff on how to submit content.  At this point, all the content is public information and not sensitive.  I really like your idea of using the technology to facilitate the workings of the Quality Council. Doing so will further test the functionality and ease of use.   Regarding workflow applications, perhaps the Quality Council could identify a simple workflow (e.g. expense reimbursement request) to automate using this technology as a pilot for administrative cost savings.

Renee

[State Engineer]

i did it for a reason 

[Carlos Atílio Manuel]

add me on whatsapp 938367212