Collaborator 1.38.0 — "Service desk" tool, files in tasks of Individual Plan, news text in email dispatch and many more
We released Collaborator v. 1.38.0!
In this release:
- Requests for professional development
- Service desk for automation of business processes
- Attaching files to Individual Plan tasks
- Administrator’s chat without user confirmation
- Displaying news text in email
Give employees the opportunity to confirm their qualifications through requests, add files to Individual Plans, attract employees to read news through email dispatch. More details in this digest:
1. Requests for professional development
Career and professional growth of employees is a very important component of the organization’s activities, business continuity and constant development. By due support of staff professional ambitions, business gets access to the most valuable resource on the market – motivated employees who can move the company forward. In fact, the keys to career growth lie in the hands of the employee himself – the company supports him, gives him the opportunity to prove himself in work environment and to receive the training, which is necessary at every stage of his career for effective performance of employee’s duties.
Depending on the length of employment, skills and other criteria, employees can have a different professional level. Therefore, each position has different categories (grades) with its list of requirements that an employee must match.
Let’s look at the algorithm for using the “requests for professional development” functional by in large retail network.
The sales assistant who has worked for three months may apply for a career promotion to “1st category sales assistant”. The request is reviewed by the manager who makes the appropriate decision: approves the request and assigns a development plan for this position (Individual Development Plan in Collaborator) or rejects if the employee does not fit the requirements.
Here is how this is implemented in Collaborator:
The mentioned sales assistant goes to the Professional development page. All the requests ever submitted by the user (and its’ statuses) are displayed there.
Next, he chooses the position that suits him and submits request:
In our case, this is the “1st category sales assistant”. Having opened the application, the sales assistant studies job description and qualification criteria for obtaining the position. Then he compares his skills with the criteria and decides whether he is suitable for this category. If so, he should file the request for review and wait for the result.
Further, all depends on Administrator or manager (responsible person is defined by the company). The notification about new request appears in the “Moderation” tab.
The page with a list of submitted requests is displayed there. You can see the request sent by our sales assistant.
Administrator decides whether the employee meets the criteria. Then he approves the request and assigns the Individual Development Plan (IDP).
If the applicant has met all the criteria of the category or has successfully passed all the tasks according to the IDP, he will be promoted to “1st category sales assistant”. His new category will be displayed in the list of his requests.
We described individual development plans in one of previous digests::
2. Service desk for automation of business processes
A new “Service desk” button appeared on the user dashboard. This tool allows you to optimize the standard operational elements of your company’s business process.
Thanks to this functionality, you can configure communication between different service departments and business units: it-service, logistics, supply and sales, marketing, HR, etc.
Let’s look at sample service request in details:
The marketing department run out of some stationery materials. Any person from this department can create a request with a list of all the necessary stationeries and assign it to a colleague who is in charge for the supply.
When specifying all the items, you need to consider the type and priority of the request. Depending on the importance and urgency, you can set a priority from low to high. You can also select the person responsible for execution (a specific employee or a specific department), depending on the type of the request. Appropriate executors are pulled from the list automatically – there is no need to select a candidate from the list of all company employees.
In our case, the request is assigned to an office manager. He will be notified by email, that a new request has been received.
When the stationery materials are purchased and delivered to the department, the office manager can leave a comment in the request (for example, “Instead of gel pens I bought ballpoint ones.”) And closes it.
If during execution, it turns out that another employee is responsible for purchasing the stationeries, the office manager can send the request back or redirect it to the person responsible for this type of request. When the request does not imply a specific executor, the request falls into the responsible department, and the head of this department decides which of his subordinates will be in charge for request execution.
The whole process (the recipient’s response, his actions and status) can be traced in the My requests tab:
Closed requests are sent to the archive.
3. Attaching files to Individual Plan tasks
We continue to improve the functionality of the Individual Development Plan. Now the user can add files to his task. It can be a report, a presentation, a book or a document for study, an audio file with a lecture, etc. You can attach several file types to a single task. The quantity is unlimited.
List of supported formats:
| jpg png jpeg gif xls xlsx odt doc docx |
mp3 zip rar 7z swf ppt pptx pps ppsx |
Adding of file is possible both when creating a task or editing it.
4. Administrator’s chat without user confirmation
The user must send a request and receive a confirmation to start chatting.
In the current release, we simplified this rule for Administrator. Now he does not need to send a request – Administrator can immediately start a dialogue with the user.
5. Displaying news text in email
One of the tasks that business sets for HRs and coaches is to involve staff in the company’s life and culture. News and company updates, descriptions of various activities, rules, changes, etc. are regularly published at company’s internal corporate and training portals. Such activity helps employees to be aware of what is happening in the company. Unfortunately, even such an unobtrusive format as corporate news does not always find its readers. According to statistics only 40% of employees regularly read corporate news.
How can you interest and “push” users to read the news? A simple and effective solution from the toolkit of internal marketing is implemented in updated Collaborator. Now when the user receives an email newsletter about the news published in the system, he can read the beginning of the article. If he wants, the employee can continue reading right from the message by clicking on the link below the text.
The first line of news is displayed (first 100 characters).
It is similar to Gallery resources in email notifications:
If you missed the last digest, you can read it by clicking the link – Collaborator 1.37.0 — Canceling of tasks via employee profile, column with assignment type, “funnel” in report and other update
Do you have any suggestions or a bright idea, which can make Collaborator even better? Then write to our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/lmscollaborator/. And, perhaps, your idea will be realized in the next release.
Best regards,
Collaborator team.
