Tags: suggestedideas


It's been about six weeks since we released version 1.5 of IdeaJam and one of the key new features we added was the Dashboard. On this page we show you the current status of your ideas and we also make some suggestions of ideas that you may be interested in reading and voting on.

A few people have asked how we build the suggested ideas list for you. Well basically we take your past activity on the site and extrapolate from that the areas that you are most interested in. To do this we take a combination of three different elements - the ideas you create, the comments you make and the votes you cast. Each of these actions is associated with an idea which has an IdeaSpace and also a set of tags, so we are able to build up a list of the tags and IdeaSpaces that are most frequently associated with actions that you take. You'll notice that when you hover over a suggested idea you can see why that idea has been suggested to you; either because it's a favourite tag or a favourite IdeaSpace.

The more that you use the system, the more accurate the suggestions will become. So if you're looking for a new way of seeing the ideas that your community are creating, then maybe this will help you.

Posted by Matt White At 12:12:31 AM Location London | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: products

Posted by Bruce Elgort At 09:54:49 AM Location Vancouver, WA | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: awards beacon ibm ideajam


Media Contact
Gayle Elgort
+1 (360) 450-5022
gayle.elgort@elguji.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

IBM Recognizes Elguji Software, LLC for Outstanding Achievements in Business and Technology Excellence

VANCOUVER, WA – JUNE 9, 2009 – Elguji Software, LLC was named winner of the award for Innovative Collaboration Solution with Lotus® Software in the 2009 IBM Beacon Awards competition. Elguji’s IdeaJam software was awarded this prestigious award for delivering outstanding value and innovative approaches to helping clients address unique business challenges.

“We are very proud to have won an IBM Beacon Award this year,” says Gayle Elgort, President of Elguji Software. "We are thrilled to see more and more companies around the globe using our idea management and innovation software to change the way they do business - all of this in a tough economic environment.”

The IBM Beacon Awards are an integral part of IBM’s PartnerWorld program, which provides industry recognition, increased visibility and promotional opportunities to IBM global Business Partners.  Members of IBM PartnerWorld benefit from global marketing and technical enablement initiatives to drive new revenue and market opportunities through the delivery of innovative business solutions.  

“We use IdeaJam as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution to support online collaborative events for our clients." says Kate Morrison, Principal, Vulture Street Innovation Software & Services, Brisbane, Australia. "The well-thought-out design of IdeaJam means we can use it to facilitate idea generation, voting and discussion for groups ranging from hands-on engineers to arts and humanities scholars. It really is a flexible and powerful tool for groups of any kind, and the Elguji team provide an excellent level of customer service and support.”

The IBM Beacon Awards recognize excellence in the development and delivery of solutions and services that Business Partners deliver to clients around the world.  More than 340 nominations were judged by a team of leading industry journalists, analysts and IBM executives, who selected winners and finalists in the 22 award categories.

"IBM is dedicated to helping our global Business Partners deliver innovative solutions that enable our joint clients transform their business operations," said Rich Hume, general manager, IBM Global Business Partner Organization.  "Elguji was recognized in the Innovative Collaboration Solution with Lotus® Software category based on their technology leadership and commitment to delivering customer value.  This award is a testament to their commitment to delivering on IBM's smarter planet vision."

For more information about the IBM Beacon Awards, including descriptions of the winning entries and details about the finalists, please visit http://www-1.ibm.com/partnerworld/pwhome.nsf/weblook/2009_awards.html.

To learn more about IBM PartnerWorld, a comprehensive program that offers marketing and sales resources, training, certification and technical support to help create new revenue and market opportunities for IBM Business Partners, visit http://www.ibm.com/partnerworld.

About Elguji Software, LLC

Elguji Software, LLC, is a member of IBM PartnerWorld located in Vancouver, Washington, USA. Elguji specializes in Web 2.0 and social networking software development. Visit http://www.elguji.com for more information.

With Elguji Software's IdeaJam, customers can:

- Collect ideas from employees on cutting costs, new products/services and new work processes
- Solicit feedback and suggestions from employees, customers and partners
- Run innovation contests and competitions
- Gather and manage feedback on new product features and services
- Use the power of "crowd sourcing" to rank ideas and allow the best ideas to rise to the top
- Solicit immediate input from employees at any level and from any organization quickly and easily

IBM and Lotus are trademarks of IBM Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. IdeaJam is a trademark of Elguji Software, LLC.

###

Posted by Bruce Elgort At 09:38:43 AM Location Vancouver, WA | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: ideajam versions


Prospective IdeaJam customers frequently ask for a "version history" of the product to help them in their evaluation process. Looking at the version history below reinforces our commitment to keeping the product fresh, incorporating the ideas of customers and those of the IBM Lotus Community. The first version of IdeaJam shipped on March 28, 2008 and next week we will be releasing V1.5. I have to say that I am very proud of the team behind IdeaJam.

The amount of effort, long hours and dedication that have gone into creating the product are rewarded by continuing growth of our customer base. We have only just begun this journey and the opportunities for us, an IBM Lotus micro-ISV look even more promising. All of this couldn't have happened without the programming mastery of Matt White and the sales expertise of Gayle Elgort.

And now on to the version history. (here it is as a PDF)

IdeaJam Version History

Version 1.5 (Spring ’09) - May 4, 2009

• Quick Login - You can now login from the sidebar, rather than having to load the full login screen
• Flash Charts - The Statistics page now defaults to use Flash charts. If you use these new charts, then the scheduled agent BuildCharts can be disabled.
• Support for Danish Characters in search field
• Improved handling of Replication/Save Conflict documents
• Dashboard - New Dashboard Page for authenticated users that highlight suggested ideas and the most recent activity for the user's ideas
• New RSS Feed for following all comments in a specific IdeaSpace
• Twitter - Added simple Twitter integration a new "tweet" is posted whenever a new idea is added to the IdeaJam. (Only supported on Domino 8+ servers)
• Lotus Connections iWidget - The CSS for the Lotus Connections iWidget is now customizable via a CSS file
• Blog and Web Widget - The CSS for the Blog and Web Widget is now customizable via a CSS file
• Google Gadget/Notes Sidebar Widget - The CSS for the Google Gadget/Notes Sidebar Widget is now customizable via a CSS file
• Lotus Connections Icon - There is now a Lotus Connections icon for the IdeaJam iWidget
• Help - The default help page now has more detailed help information

Version 1.4 (Winter ’09) - February 28, 2009

• Advanced Search - Search by IdeaSpace, Sub-IdeaSpace search, dates, tags and more.
• Reporting - Export search results to Excel, CSV or XML.
• Web Administration - manage, configure and customize your IdeaJam from a web browser.
• Archiving - Rules based archiving allows you to have one or more rules that determine when and which ideas get archived.
• Delete Ideas from the Web - IdeaJam administrators can now delete ideas from the web.
• Custom IdeaSpace and System Messages - You can now provide custom text messages that appear below IdeaSpace names to assist users. These messages can be easily dismissed by the user. System administrators can create new messages where they have the option to force them to re-display to users who have dismissed them.
• Improved Tag Clouds - Tag clouds now appear on all pages. The XPages version tag cloud will show tags on an IdeaSpace by IdeaSpace basis.
• IBM Lotus Domino XPages Support - For customers running IBM Lotus Domino 8.5 they can choose to run IdeaJam using XPages or classic Domino HTTP.
• Color Coding of Comments – Comments made by System Administrators or by IdeaSpace Administrators will now be highlighted.
• Comments Allowed After Status Changes - Comments can now be added to an Idea even after it has moved into the In progress status.
• Status Changes Recorded In Comment History - When the status changes on an idea, it is recorded in the comment history of the idea.

Version 1.3.4 - December 20, 2008

• Added IdeaJam license checking, including expiring trial license feature
• Added User Profile security recalculation agent

Version 1.3.3 - October 31, 2008

• Added language files for English (GB), Dutch/Flemish, French, German and Italian.

Version 1.3.2 (Fall ’08) - October 12, 2008

• Added ability to sort and filter ideas on a user's profile.
• Unvoted now allows users to select an IdeaSpace
• Added "LinkJam This" button on idea form.
• Added "Favorite Ideas" function.
• Added new admin view for User Profiles to allow easy deletion of user profile documents for IdeaJam Administrators.
• Allow users to choose which language labels should be displayed in. The default is still controlled from the Contol Panel, but now users have the ability to
• choose from other languages you may choose to offer by editing their Profile.
• Added choice for users to receive emails when a comment is added to an idea that they have commented on.
• Added Company / Location fields to the User Profile.
• Added new RSS Feed for Favorite Ideas, which monitors the favorite ideas and any comments added to them.
• Added support for multiple attachments on an idea including non image based files.
• Added "Internal Description" field to Idea form in the Notes client.
• Changed Control Panel save process to allow non Managers to update the ACL Roles.
• New Agent (UpdateACLRoles) must be signed by an ID that has manager access to the database.
• Changed tags to be comma separated rather than space separated (this allows multi word tags).
• Added iPhone support for IdeaJam. (Requires the iPhone.css stylesheet to be copied from the template into your IdeaJam database).

Version 1.2 (Summer ’08) - July 9, 2008

• Added configuration to control the number of items in What's Hot on the sidebar
• Added configuration to control Statistics, Tags, Unvoted and My Profile in the header menu
• Improved uniqueness of statistics chart names
• Added configuration to control where temporary files for statistics get saved (requires edit and save of control panel document)
• Added validation to force Description to be added to a new idea
• Added Change Password button to user profile (requires addition of LANG_PROFILE_CHANGEPASSWORD to Language documents)

Version 1.1.5 - June 22, 2008

• Added new version of "Who Has Voted" when reading an Idea (requires new Entries in Languages and CSS docs, and a design replace of Votes and Main Database). These changes apply to IdeaJam version V1.1.4 and earlier:
• Language Doc: Add New Line for LANG_FORM_VOTING_HELP="Show who has voted"
• CSS Doc: Add New Line for #showwhohasvoted {cursor: pointer;}

Version 1.1.4 - May 26, 2008

• Added ability to create a new Reference Data document to support addition of IdeaSpace sub categories

Version 1.1.3 - May 18, 2008

• Changed votes by date and week charts to only count Promotes and Demotes (ignoring No Opinions)
• Made the display of Header Stats configurable in the Control Panel
Version 1.1.2 - May 4, 2008
• Allowed the configuration of where the user gets sent after logging out of an IdeaJam site
• Added the DenyNotesAccess feature to the IdeaJam Votes Database
• Changed the In Progress, Complete and Rejected statuses of Ideas to only be available to Administrators
• Added full CoExEdit support for the Notes client interface
• Added Change Email Feature (Requires LANG_GEN_CHANGE_EMAIL_ADDRESS be added to the language file)

Version 1.0 - March 21, 2008

• Initial release of IdeaJam

Posted by Bruce Elgort At 06:16:13 PM Location The Internet | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: news ideajam


In this weeks edition of the Vancouver Business Journal I was quoted in an article about Web 2.0 and social software:

Vancouver-based Elguji Software LLC creates and sells social networking software. Its flagship product, IdeaJam, is a virtual suggestion box that allows businesses to collect ideas, solicit and manage feedback and use the “wisdom of the crowd” to rank ideas.

The application has won several awards for its innovative approach.

“People are already talking about your company,” said Bruce Elgort, adviser to the Elguji team. “So you should give them a place to talk and talk with them.”

Elguji offers IdeaJam on a per-server license basis ($12,000 per server), or on a Software-as-a-Service basis, in which the application is hosted off-site on the Internet for $1 to $5 per user.

...

Elguji tests its own software at a public website, www.ideajam.net, where customers can comment on IdeaJam and make suggestions for improvements. “We’ve added 140 features based on customer feedback,” Elgort said.

Read the entire article >

Posted by Bruce Elgort At 08:00:36 PM Location Vancouver, WA | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: Features


This morning, possibly not the best choice of day given that it's April 1st, we released the latest beta of IdeaJam to the public ideajam.net site.

There are three fairly visible changes that you may notice immediately. The new "quick" login, to save you having to go to the classic login screen, the new Home Page and we have also replaced the default statistics page with some new Flash charts.

There are also several changes that we've made behind the scenes. We have managed to reduce the number of scheduled agents that are required to keep IdeaJam running, which will save on some server performance. We've added better handling of Replication/Save Conflict documents and there is also now some simple integration with Twitter, so that if you are running a public facing IdeaJam you can notify your followers when a new idea has been posted.

So check out the site, and as always, let us know what you think. We listen to every piece of feedback and are always trying to improve the product in the ways that will be most useful to our customers.

Posted by Matt White At 12:54:06 AM Location London | Permalink | Comments (2)

Tags: twitter facebook


If you are on Twitter and/or Facebook you can follow the Elguji Software team. We will be tweeting and posting to Facebook all things Elguji including new product features, new releases, speaking engagements, new products and more:

- on Twitter
- on Facebook

Posted by Bruce Elgort At 11:03:47 AM Location The Internet | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: ideajam

Posted by Bruce Elgort At 11:50:58 AM Location The Internet | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: ideajam


Back on February 25, 2009 Roland posted an idea on IdeaJam.net where he suggested the following:

I fully admit that when I go to IdeaJam, sure I'll vote on some ideas and make comments, but what I am really interested in is what is happening with MY ideas. I want to know what new comments were posted on my ideas and which of my ideas are hot or not so hot since since last time I logged in. Bruce and company most likey have their own private admin views for this. Right? This will save us the time of having to click on all our ideas to see if any of the comments are new. Then we can spend less time being self-centered and more time being altruistic and contribute to the community.

Well, in response to Roland's idea and for those of you who voted for it here is what we have created:


The top section will list your ideas, the number of votes, comments and the last activity date. If you hover over the title of an idea you will see a pop-up box which contains the last person who either voted or commented on your idea. The "Suggested Ideas" section will show you ideas that you may be interested in. We have developed an algorithm that suggests ideas based on your voting, commenting and tagging habbits.

Spring '09 (V1.5) will be IdeaJam's fourth upgrade since it's launch in March 2008. All customers on software maintenance will be entitled to Spring '09.

We will be pushing this build to the IdeaJam.net sometime in the next few days.

Posted by Bruce Elgort At 10:38:37 AM Location The Internet | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: IdeaJam Consulting


The time since Lotusphere has been incredibly busy, we had a great time and met some really interesting people and companies who are interested in running IdeaJam in their organizations.

One of the areas that some people have expressed an interest in is the process and strategy around Idea Management more broadly - beyond the capture element that IdeaJam typically supports. Well, over the last month or so we have been working with a UK based company called Think Play Do, who are innovation consultants. What we've found is that our product integrates beautifully with their Challenge-Based Innovation service, indeed, the combination of our offerings can bring huge value to our clients' innovation processes.

This week we have been working with Think Play Do at one of their client's sites, running a workshop that was aimed at jump-starting their Idea Management process. During the workshop, attended by twenty five of the key business and technical leaders from around the group, we launched a new IdeaJam site. We did this with what Think Play Do call a 'flash challenge' - generating a large number of ideas, votes and comments in a very short time. The workshop quickly got the the participants involved in the process and has maximised the client's chance that they'll get greater value from the wider roll out of our system. Indeed, they've reported they are confident that over the next weeks and months this will deliver:

- a shorter development cycle for new products and processes;
- an improved working environment and,
- a better bottom line in these tough economic times.

We're happy to be able to recommend Think Play Do if your company is interested in using IdeaJam to enhance its innovation process - especially if you need some assistance in launching it and managing its broader integration. In association with our software, the team of Elguji and Think Play Do can help you.

Posted by Matt White At 05:11:00 AM Location London | Permalink | Comments (0)