Do your end users complain about having to use Content Manager (CM)? Unlock the potential of CM by revolutionising its user experience (UX). In this article we'll dive deeper into various user types within your organisation and explore solutions that cater to their unique needs. Review the risks associated with poor UX and discover strategies to mitigate those risks. Learn how implementing FYB apps alongside CM can streamline workflows, reduce learning time, and keep users satisfied.
What is user experience (UX)?
UX is how a person feels when interfacing with a system. This includes a website, web application, desktop software and basically any form of human/device interaction.
There's too many buttons and it feels complicated, the product was super easy to navigate, these are examples of user experience.
Why is UX important?
UX is important because it’s key to fulfilling the user’s needs. It aims to provide positive experiences that keep users loyal to the product, which in this case is Content Manager.
Additionally, a meaningful user experience allows you to define customer journeys that are most conducive to business success and in this case that’s storing and managing information appropriately.
Content Manager UX
Out of the box for a non-technical user Content Manager may feel overwhelming as it's a powerful system with so many features. It's not until they receive comprehensive training and gain months and years of experience that they understand the solution and how well it manages business information.
Unfortunately not every end user in your organisation will have endless spare time to learn and understand Content Manager but they need to be working together with the information management teams to appropriately store their information.
According to a survey, 88% of online consumers are less likely to return to a website after a bad user experience.
We’re not shopping in Content Manager but let’s put this into perspective.
Imagine if User A, Max was trying to save a new record into Content Manager, he had trouble finding the appropriate container to store it in, he didn’t understand the fields he needed to complete to capture the record. In the end he gave up, leaving it on his desktop.
Enter User B, Alice, who is looking for a particular record that she knows is in Content Manager, it takes her 5 different search attempts and an hour later she finds the record she needed. From the time consuming experience, she’s copied the document onto her desktop so she doesn’t need to search for it again.
What can we observe from these two examples?
Both users are frustrated and may not have the right skills to use CM. They both opted to leave important, maybe even confidential documents on their desktop and vowing to never go back into Content Manager. Yes this sounds dramatic, but what kind of risks could this cause to your organisation?
Could someone else get their hands on the information? Could the user keep referring to that document which is now old as it was updated in Content Manager.
How can you mitigate these kinds of risks and provide a seamless and enjoyable experience to ensure your users are handling information appropriately?
By introducing apps that work with Content Manager to maximise efficiency and user experience.
FYB Apps
FYB apps are alternative interfaces for users to access their information that’s all stored centrally and securely within Content Manager. They keep your users where they’re most comfortable, spending less time learning and navigating complex systems, whilst ensuring your organisation is meeting it’s compliance requirements.
User Types
Let's dive deeper into some user types you may have within your organisation.
ALEX DAVIS
Project Officer / Administration Officer
Challenges:
- Basic software knowledge – Using CM can be overwhelming and extensive learning time is required to save and locate information
- Day to day work is completed using various Microsoft products – finding CM overwhelming, Alex has trouble capturing information from Microsoft products into Content Manager
The Microsoft User Experience - FYB 365|2CM and Explorezel
365|2CM enables users to work out of SharePoint and Teams, collaborating on Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents whilst they’re seamlessly captured into Content Manager.
Adding Explorezel provides a federated search for users to explore documents across SharePoint, Teams and Content Manager from an easy to use simplified interface. There’s no daunting search building within Content Manager you can use simple keyword searches and result filtering to find the information you need across both M365 and Content Manager.
TAYLOR WILSON
Marketing and Public Relations Officer
Challenges:
- Unable to work without visuals – from reviewing marketing materials to choosing images, Taylor needs to be able to see things visually with 85% of her content being image and media based.
- Day to day work file types are outside of the standard Microsoft Suite - File types that aren’t necessarily well supported within CM
- She needs to get valuable information from her design software into CM - It would also be helpful to access key media from the design platforms.
The Visual User Experience - Mediazel and Drawings2CM
Content Manager wasn’t designed for a visual experience, when you’re searching and navigating it’s always text based results. Mediazel provides that visual search experience to get users like Taylor off network shares and onto Mediazel where media is stored appropriately and centrally within Content Manager.
Another visual experience option is Drawings2CM, a drawing management platform, enabling users to upload, view and manage drawings. One of the key features of Drawings2CM is the fact it has an inbuilt PDF rendering module for those users that don’t have drawing software, they’re still able to view drawings in the browser. It also makes it easy for workers on site. The same goes for Mediazel in this case, both apps are accessible on mobiles/tablets out in the field to view and capture media and drawings as required.
Both platforms have the ability to integrate with key design software. For Mediazel it’s Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign. Design materials can be saved straight into Mediazel and therefore Content Manager. You also have the ability to access media to insert into the design materials.
Drawings2CM is accessible within AutoCAD meaning architects and designers can capture drawings directly into Content Manager and open existing drawings to edit. Correct processes are followed which means drawings are checked out of Content Manager for editing.
Two simple ways for your users to work where they’re comfortable whilst seamlessly capturing the records they’re creating.
JAKE MILLER
Policy and Governance Manager
Challenges:
- Ensuring Governance, risk and control across the organisation
- Policy creation vs policy sharing – Jake understands that managing policies within CM is vital for version control, access and maintenance but has trouble keeping their internal intranet up to date with the policies.
- Dashboard, reporting and analytics – being a manager, Jake needs to report certain activities and spends a lot of time manually exporting information from Content Manager for this.
The Management User Experience - DocUControl and Reportilize
DocUControl is the easiest way to get your policies from Content Manager to the end user. The interface displays the latest finalised published version of any controlled document meaning there’s no double handling when it comes to getting information to the end user. They’re viewing the content straight from CM within DocUControl, following all access and security from CM, plus the acknowledgement feature enables users to acknowledge that they’ve read a policy with a timestamp.
Leaders know that part of their role is reporting and with Reportilize there’s no need to manually export data from Content Manager for reporting it can all be viewed as dashboards at any time as it’s live data. Reports can be scheduled regularly and emailed automatically, taking yet another mindless task away from your managers enabling them to put their focus back into their team and more important decision making tasks.
Benefits of a positive User Experience
- Get better compliance, less resistance, the easier it is to use the more likely your users are to capture the information and with FYB Apps users hardly notice the difference from their usual windows/Microsoft experience.
- Return on investment increased productivity. Users are spending less time worrying how to capture information and where to find it. They’re focusing on getting their tasks done in native applications that are relevant to them.
- Enhancing the things that matter no matter your role within the business. We had a wide range of user types today and I’m sure there’s many more we can come up with. For each user the experience is different and particular things are really important to them. It’s about finding these and providing them with alternative interfaces and approaches to make compliance easy.
In conclusion, nobody uses software because it has a good personality. Looks do matter in software and user experience is important for the successful management of your information.
