Online Forums
- 1. Why participate inan online forum? The goal of participation: Tap the enterprise brain Aggregate inputs Precipitate valuable outcomes Enable employees From Enterprise 2.0 Overview by Billy Cripe
- 2. Online Forums Whatthe benefits are
- 3. Knowledge retention Alorry load of knowledge is lost in people’s inboxes. When people leave the firm, their knowledge leaves with them; their mailboxes are deleted. Online support forums are well-organised repositories of members’ knowledge. People go, but knowledge stays.
- 4. Messages are threaded In mailboxes, messages are separate and are available to only one person. Online forums consolidate messages from all users under threaded topics and replies.
- 5. Knowledge sharing Themore people who post topics and replies, the more knowledge is enhanced and dispersed -> many to many.
- 6. Support is spreadamong many Forums which focus on specific tools or functionality can have multiple moderators to spread the workload of replying to topics.
- 7. Alerts and ratingsIn many forum software solutions it is possible to set alerts against individual postings and forums. Ratings allow users to rate which topics/replies were particularly informative/useful.
- 8. A secure environmentEach forum can specify specific user members Non-office-based members can login securely Wide ranging permissions and roles can be set for members
- 9. Powerful keyword searchingThe search features are as easy or as ‘advanced’ as you want to make them.
- 10. Build new relationships People who wouldn’t normally contact each other could make worthwhile work and even social contacts using an online forum.
- 11. Summary of BenefitsReduce number of calls raised to Infra Seed FAQs to the Knowledge Base Stronger connections and awareness of expertise among employees Virtualization of employee skills and knowledge Empower employees to contribute and innovate Knowledge retention and re-use – a corporate memory Ability to dynamically create and sustain productive, virtual teams Increased employee satisfaction by feeling involved with the firm Reduced employee support costs – employees support each other Drawn from Jamie Pappas Re: Building the Business Case for Enterprise 2.0
- 12. Examples of onlinesupport forums The SharePoint Products and Technologies Forum is a subforum of the main Technet Forums . The WritersNet discussion forum at http://www.writers.net/forum/ The Neptune Arbortext Editor, has support forums at http:// www.ptc.com/support/arbortext.htm