CEIR at the anniversary DNUG: #DACHNUG50

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This year the 50th DACHNUG took place from June 13th to June 15th at the Rhein-Sieg-Forum in Siegburg, Germany. At this conference, users and providers of software related to HCL (the developer of HCL Connections and therefore also UniConnect) meet once a year. CEIR was present as part of the UCT project with a booth right next to the HCL booth. The booth was a big success and allowed us to have a series of very interesting conversations and ad hoc demonstrations of technology for interested participants.

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CEIR presented at ENGAGE 2023

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Once again, our team attended the annual ENGAGE user group conference and presented some of our research findings. Theo Heselsmans, Chair of the Engage User Group, invited us to the beautiful city of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, where more than 300 practitioners and power users met at the conference venue Felix Meritis, one of the oldest former observatories in Europe.

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HCL Domino Christmas Calendar App stimulates festive mood at the office

It is that time of the year again. December has arrived and, with it, the Christmas countdown has started. Much has changed in the world in the last years but some things stay the same. For the CEIR team at the University of Koblenz, the Domino Christmas Calendar App makes sure that the festive season is not forgotten.

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CEIR presentations at the CENTERIS -International Conference on ENTERprise Information Systems

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This November we had the opportunity to present our research progress at the CENTERIS -International Conference on ENTERprise Information Systems. All our five papers have been accepted! This is why Petra Schubert, Susan Williams, Simon Meier, Jens Alberts and Martin Just travelled to Lisbon to present four of their papers on the premises of Hotel Olissippo Oriente. In addition, Söhnke Grams attended the hybrid conference setting remotely to present his research from Germany. Together with CENTERIS there have been three conferences simultaneously since ProjMAN – Conference on Project Management and HCist – Conference on Healthcare Inf. Systems took place at the same time and location.

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CEIR attends the 12th Routines.Research.Community Workshop in Linz (AT)

Susan P. Williams and Jens Alberts from the CEIR team attended the 12th Routines.Research.Community (RRC) workshop Linz (AT) in September 2022. The workshop was funded and hosted by the Institute for Strategic Management at the Johannes Kepler University in Linz. The workshop had which had three central themes: More Digital? More Critical? More Open?

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Our first experiences using the Belsoft Community Manager

As mentioned in our blog post about the UniConnect update to HCL Connections version 7.0; not only did we update to Connections Version 7 but we also expanded our collaboration platform with the integration of various tools from Belsoft. The Belsoft Community Manager is already being used productively as new users of UniConnect are now being automatically added to the “UniConnect Community” when they register. This community is used to communciate important information to our users (e.g., planned maintenance work and updates). In the past, following registration to UniConnect users had to be manually added one by one to this community by our admins; this is now being handled automatically. Further, for over ten years, without extensive analysis of our databases we had no practical way to verify that everyone was (still) a member of this community. Thanks to the Belsoft Community Manager, we can now easily ensure that all users automatically become and stay members of the community and remain informed. In addition, the tool is saving a lot of time as invitations to join the community no longer have to be sent manually.

We thank our friends from Belsoft for their generous support. As soon as we have gained practical experience with the Belsoft Notifier, we will provide a further update. We believe the Belsoft Notifier will also help us improve our communication with users and improve knowledge sharing on UniConnect.

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Research on visual collaboration tools and their integration into enterprise collaboration platforms

The need for digital alternatives for training and development workshops has increased due to digital transformation, advances in digital workplaces, and the increasing number of people working from home or in distributed teams. This demand proved to be even more critical during the COVID-19 pandemic, when physical workshops were not possible, and digital solutions had to be found to provide remote access to business meetings as well as for delivering engaging and interactive workshops. Since working with a whiteboard is an essential part of most workshops and in the daily work of many employees, there is a need for a deeper investigation of visual collaboration tools that can be described as digital whiteboards. These tools offer graphical elements to visualise ideas and methods for facilitating collaborative work on a shared canvas or workspace enabling multiple collaborators to work together synchronously or asynchronously. This research is part of the DFG-funded project 2C-NOW (Collaboration and Coordination in Networks of Work) and the overarching CEIR research program. In the scope of 2C-NOW, the CEIR team is investigating transformations to work processes and practices in large-scale, heterogeneous enterprise collaboration platforms to obtain a deeper theoretical and practical understanding of how collaborative work takes place within the digital workplace in organisations.

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CEIR presents at the 20th European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work

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The team of the Center for Enterprise Information Research (CEIR) successfully submitted some of their latest work to the 20th European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (ECSCW), a single track conference on CSCW that took place in Coimbra, Portugal.

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CEIR team visit ENGAGE 2022 in Bruges

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After a very long time of online video conferences and online meetings, we finally had the opportunity to attend a physical conference again! Petra Schubert, Susan Williams, Söhnke Grams, Martin Just and Julian Mosen took the long way to Bruges in Belgium to attend the annual conference of the ENGAGE User Group. Theo Heselsmans, Chair of the ENGAGE User Group, invited participants to the brand-new Bruges Meeting & Convention Centre (BMCC) and prepared an impressive agenda with lots of great speakers from all over the world.

Our CEIR team was of course part of the great speakers and we presented two sessions: In the first session, Sue and Julian looked at the challenges of the long-term management of workspaces and collaborative content across their entire lifecycle from creation to destruction. How these challenges can be addressed, was shown with the help of an application we developed to support our team with the long-term management and persistent access to important online content. This application and a social bot called “Wiki Replicator” helps our team to keep track of wikis in HCL Connections. The session was concluded with a lively, interactive audience discussion about other participants experiences and their organisation’s requirements for support for the long-term management of digital workspaces and collaborative content.

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Upgrade: HCL Connections 7

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Dear UniConnect community,

We are pleased to announce an upgrade of UniConnect. Thanks to the support of our partner HCL, we are upgrading UniConnect from IBM Connections Version 6.0 to HCL Connections Version 7.0. Our members can expect the following improvements and new functions:

  • Various adjustments to the user interface.
  • Print content to PDF.
  • Community Templates: Thanks to this new feature, the UCT can offer you evaluated templates for your communities.
  • Creation Wizard: Guides the user step-by-step through the process of creating a community.
  • Files: Transfer ownership of your files to another user.
  • Orient Me: Updates in your network are highlighted with a new design.
  • Languages: Select your preferred menu language.
  • Video conferences hosted in Koblenz with HCL Sametime 11.5.
  • Connections Notifyer and Connections Community Manager: We would like to thank our friends at Belsoft, as their powerful admin tools make our work much easier.
  • Activities Plus and Huddo boards: Thanks to our friends from ISW, you can manage and assign tasks more effectively.

Please note:

This is an extensive maintenance job. UniConnect will most likely therefore not be available for the period from February 28, 2022, 8:00 a.m. to March 13, 2022, 6:00 p.m. (CET).

If you have any questions, we will be very happy to answer them: https://uct.de/en/contact/

Best regards from Koblenz
Söhnke Grams (Managing Director UCT)

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