Anneriek Limburg is a functional manager at the municipality of Epe. Their social intranet has 322 users, 200 of whom are active. Hans Volbeda is senior automation and functional application management at the municipality of Montferland, which has around 300 users on their social intranet. Both municipalities are busy seriously overhauling the digital workplace, providing all employees with a new work laptop. This was the perfect time for Anneriek and Hans to make their colleagues' working day a little easier.
Anneriek Limburg is a functional manager at the municipality of Epe. Their social intranet has 322 users, 200 of whom are active. Hans Volbeda is senior automation and functional application management at the municipality of Montferland, which has around 300 users on their social intranet. Both municipalities are busy seriously overhauling the digital workplace, providing all employees with a new work laptop. This was the perfect time for Anneriek and Hans to make their colleagues' working day a little easier.
All applications in one place
“Because everything is new for our colleagues, we wanted to offer one portal where you can start everything. We thought that was really nice,” says Anneriek. “Just all applications in one place and no longer having to worry about where to go.” Their renewed digital workplace portal therefore had to become a place where everything comes together, where you can start everything up.
This was also exactly what Hans was looking for — with two very important additions: the place must integrate with Embrace and be accessible to all applications, whether they are used online, on the municipality's network, or on the work laptop itself. “We are making the transition to the cloud and thus overhauling the entire IT landscape. Then we also want to be able to offer the end users, my colleagues, something. The integration with Liquit is therefore a solution that suits us very well.”
Clear and customized
In the meantime, Anneriek and Hans have started setting up the Liquit integration, so that all apps will soon be in one screen and in one widget, where, thanks to single sign-on, they can be opened with one click. “We even considered disabling the laptops' start menu so that all applications can only be launched via our social intranet,” says Anneriek, “but to avoid resistance, we chose to keep both options.” This way, employees can access the apps they need for work via their preferred route.
Instead of icons, it is also possible to show only the names of the applications in the overview. But Hans swears by the icons: “That's much more dynamic and fits better with the user experience we want to go to.”
And that's not all: employees can also group or “remove” icons from their overview themselves. “Of course, they're not really gone, but they're out of the picture,” Anneriek explains. “What you use a lot can be put together at the top and start it nicely from there.” In this way, colleagues can organize the application overview as it is most convenient for their job. In addition to saving a bit of time, this also results in more efficiency.
Social intranet boost
The fact that employees will soon be able to open all applications from the same place will also give a new impetus to the use of their social intranet. “Being able to launch all your apps there is another reason to start your day on the social intranet. This can help to naturally send colleagues who currently make less use of it there,” explains Anneriek. This means that the upcoming go-live of the Liquit integration a great time to draw extra attention to the social intranet.
This is also the case with Hans: “We are working with the communication department to get it done properly, because we will also get a new one look and feel. So now is the time to keep it interactive.” Employees receive a landing page where they are not only immediately informed about the latest news, the latest emails and what's on the agenda, but they also immediately have all the applications in view and can get started from there.
“Just all applications in one place and no longer having to worry about where to go.”
Testing — also with future users
In both municipalities, the Liquit integration is now running on the test environment of their social intranet. “Because we were able to switch so quickly with Embrace, we soon had something tangible. And that is really fun to see and show. It works like crazy!” says Hans. “What we have in mind is also going to work and, of course, we are very happy about that. The basics are already good, so now it's testing, testing, testing.”
To do so, twenty of Hans's colleagues will soon be able to sign up to work in the new environment. “In this way, we not only create support, but also give 'real' people the opportunity to test, because that's different from when IT people do that. Although they will have to accept that not everything works yet, because we haven't set up all 330 apps yet,” explains Hans. As a tip, he therefore suggests always viewing it from the user's point of view and keeping up with the times.
Off to the go-live
Anneriek and Hans' colleagues will have to be patient for a while before they too get the Liquit integration and be able to experience all the additional conveniences, because testing is still underway. Fortunately, that shouldn't spoil the (pre) fun, Hans knows. “You can tell it's buzzing and that's nice!”
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