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I'm curious to know how other companies have communicated information to the user community about Windchill changes (e.g. new functionality, new FAQ entries, new or changed documentation). The last thing we want to do is send more email to the users. I see a lot of value on using the existing UI for more of a pull system for that information. I'm thinking banners, ticker-tape style text at the bottom of the UI, some visual way to let the user know that there's something new that may be of interest to them. I'm sure that there a ton of other creative ways to do this.
What have you done to effectively disseminate information to the user community that isn't too intrusive and that will actually get them to view the information? Thanks.
Joe,
We modified the splash screen that the users see while they are logging in. We put relevant information on that page, and change the colour of part of the text to catch their eyes.We alsoupdate a field that says when the last change occured.
Transient information (maintenance,...) is removedwhen it becomes irrelevant. Permanently useful informationis cumulated in a file they can access with a link on the splash screen.
In Reply to Joe Priest:
I'm curious to know how other companies have communicated information to the user community about Windchill changes (e.g. new functionality, new FAQ entries, new or changed documentation). The last thing we want to do is send more email to the users. I see a lot of value on using the existing UI for more of a pull system for that information. I'm thinking banners, ticker-tape style text at the bottom of the UI, some visual way to let the user know that there's something new that may be of interest to them. I'm sure that there a ton of other creative ways to do this.
What have you done to effectively disseminate information to the user community that isn't too intrusive and that will actually get them to view the information? Thanks.
We are on 9.1 M030. We have 20-30 users across two sites at present. Most of our communications are for system administration purposes.We use a combination of an global Windchill user email list and the alert banner to communicate short-term information like necessary server restarts, check in reminders, etc.
The alert banner is very effective as it can be enabled or disabled via a text file (html snippet) without restarting Windchill. It appears on every page in Windchill so the users will see it any time they access a Windchill page. This really helps when Windchill is configured to default to the last page accessed instead of always going back to the user's home page. The alert banner is JavaScript so it could be changed to display your ticker tape suggestion. However, many users consider flashing or scrolling text to be a distraction. We found simply displaying the message as static text in red gets their attention.
We also use JConsole and the Active Users MBean to see the current active Windchill users. We call individual users if they are still on the system when we are ready to shut down the server.
This isn't exactly what you are requesting and I'm getting off topic. I have seen several larger companies who maintain a separate"community" web site listingcorporate standards, help, FAQs, calendar,etc. The alert banner can include a URL to the community site and notify users of recent changes in the community web site.We haven't connected the two in our implementation yetbut our preference would be to link to the community page directly from the Windchill banner where "E-mail this page", "Help", and the other persistent links reside. Maybe someone who has already linked the two can share their example?
Matt,
I am implementing the alert banner on our development system using the production environment setting. However, it seems that we need to restart windchill in order for the .txt file to update. Am I missing a step?
Thanks for any help you can provide.
In Reply to Matt Meadows:
The alert banner is very effective as it can be enabled or disabled via a text file (html snippet) without restarting Windchill