eXpanded Media was requested for constructing a platform for the management and processing of what’s called the ‘competence measurement’ as defined by the Copernicus initiative of the Belgium Federal Government. This platform should enable the subscriptions, selections, planning and consolidation of test results, processing and reporting for examining Federal Government staff in a highly automated way.

eXpanded Media has chosen, together with Selor, to use OpenText’s Livlink as an integral solution. Livelink is not only used to manage the extensive documentation that is generated by this process, it also enables the complete automation and interaction with the different Federal department through its strong workflow engine.

There was a tight deadline of 2 months to have the system operational from the time Selor approved the construction by eXpanded Media.

Selor is a subsidiary of the Federal Personnel and Education department and is responsible for selecting and recruiting Federal staff. In lieu of the Copernicus initiative, Selor was assigned to measure all Federal staff on PC competences and job-related skills. The challenge was to test a huge amount of staff in a very short time frame. Not only the tests themselves, but also the inscriptions, validation, invitation, planning, results consolidation and reporting have to be organized. Furthermore the process allowed for training and a second test in case the candidate would fail the first attempt. The training and test would than be organized with yet another subsidiary (OFO) but the exchange of candidate information and tracking result had to be centrally kept and managed on this platform under the control of Selor.

Selor opted for a platform that allowed management and automation of the complete process, yet flexible enough to adjust when required. Also it was desired that the system was scalable enough, but in functionality and extensibility for future purposes such as implementing cross departmental (E-) communities Knowledge Management and facilitating a project and service based organization.

eXpanded Media together with Selor, chose Opentext’s Livelink technology to built the solution. eXpanded Media is a certified partner and competence centre for Opentext in Belgium; amongst others performed successful integration of Livelink at UMICORE.

In the Selor case Livelink was used to construct an extensive workflow that contained all sequential and parallel steps that were required to manage this complex process end-to-end. The different Federal department (FOD’s) needed to subscribe their staff where after the requests were to be validated, a planning to be made (taking different languages, resource availabilities etc. in account), followed by populating the different test platforms with exam-data, invitations distributed, tests conducted (controlling absences) and results consolidated. And finally published for the FOD’s in a secure and access controlled way.

eXpanded Media was responsible to map the business process into a functional end technical model within Livelink. This was done in close collaboration with Accenture that analyzed and described the overall process in a ‘blueprint’. After this elaboration the implementation and integration efforts were taken care of by eXpanded Media as well. The system is operational as from January 2003 after an elapsed implementation time of 2 months.

Livelink is best described as integrate suite of application that makes up a full Collaborative Knowledge Management platform. This includes the accessibility and distribution of information throughout an organization as well as to and from external parties (Customers, partners, suppliers, teleworkers, etc.). Information in this context is a wide term. Objects such as E-mails, task assignment, documents, website content, discussion threads and many other forms that represent ‘knowledge’ can be captured, processed and distributed. Through an efficient management of all these information flows, the information participants and consumers can focus on what’s most important: the core business. This will yield a greater efficiency and productivity along with an increase of quality and service to Customers (internal en external). And other business participants alike, typical Building block for a Knowledge Management (and readily available in Livelink) system are:

Document Management:

• this includes extensive version control with check out-reserve-check in paradigms.
• enables the concept of compound documents making it easy to decentralize and decompose large documents ensuring each component can be processed separately.
• implements a sophisticate access control for a group and individual level and on each type of object (at folder, subfolder, document levels).
• a real time on the fly rendering of the document for on screen viewing without the originating application or plug-in to be available on the Client terminal (browser).
• on top and above the traditional folder-file structure the ability to change and personalize the classification of the document which will result in different and personalized tree-like views on the document repository.
• a complete tracing of performed activities on document yielding.
• a comprehensive Audit log with full reporting functionality. This makes it simple to provide necessary proves for ISO or other certified companies.

Search:

obviously all this information must be easily and efficiently searchable; a logical structure and classification scheme are merely the first means for browsing the information. Next to a full text search as well a document attributes or meta-data (author, creation, modification date, title, version or own defined meta-data, etc) is available. Also a natural query language helps to define the search criteria without the need to combine key search phrases with AND’s and OR’s .

Groupware/Collaboration:

this aspect is what Livelink differentiates from other groupware platforms. The main functionalities (not exhaustive) are:

• notification agent: for each operation in Livelink that interests a knowledge consumer, an e-mail notification with attached hyperlink and description will be sent. This is fully configurable per users.
• discussions: forums can be instantiated throughout any logical area within Livelink (given that the user has sufficient privileges). This may replace the traditional e-mail conversation that normally occurs and represent a substantial amount of knowledge that is lost.
• task and workflow: this functionality implements as an easy-to- use drag and drop graphical interface, allows to automate the most complex business and allows data to be controlled to travel from one functional step to the other (via forms, documents, comments, assignment fill in boxes or action). Each step again is subject for complete audit and access controlled and will assign a task to the role, group or person that is either predefined or derived from a previous step's data or action. Even authentication per step is an included feature.

Data Management:

beside documents, content or process related information Livelink can interface to external repositories, manage records, interface with the main ERP systems for end-to-end business processing or exchange data via XML or doorway technology to other platforms like Documentum, Lotus Notes etc.

A suite of specific add-on modules is available to provide a solution far virtually any business requirement one can imagine that related to the Collaborative or Hyperlinked organization. In the event it is not covered, through certified partners Livelink offers an open API and further down a complete Software Development Environment that enable partners to develop modules for specific functions that will be certified by Opentext for future compatibility with product upgrades.

Click here to view the previous case.