What is a Digital Workplace?
A digital workplace is a modern, integrated work platform that enables employees to communicate, collaborate, and perform tasks efficiently. It includes an ecosystem of tools allowing seamless workflows and team connections.
Current State of AI in 2023: What We Learned So Far
Before adding artificial intelligence to our digital workplace tools, we experimented with AI-driven content creation and analysis capabilities. Our experiences have provided valuable insights, shaping our approach to integrating AI into the digital workplace.
One of the most striking outcomes has been AI’s ability to categorize content based on tags, topics, and other criteria. This is good news for content managers who can benefit from AI-assisted content organization, improving efficiency and search.
We also discovered the importance of providing specific prompts when interacting with AI systems like Open AI. Clear and precise prompts enhance the quality of AI-generated content, making it more relevant and valuable for the intended audience. This knowledge will undoubtedly be a differentiator among independent software vendors (ISVs) looking to integrate Open AI technology into their offerings.
As we continue to create an augmented digital workplace, we remain committed to learning and adapting based on our experiences. Our insights inform our product development and enable us to deliver AI-driven solutions that transform organizations’ communication and collaboration.
Leveraging Artificial Intelligence in Intranets: towards an Augmented Digital Workplace
We’ve talked about an ‘augmented digital workplace’ – but what does that really mean?
An augmented digital workplace integrates artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced automation capabilities to enhance the user experience, streamline workflows, and support decision-making.
At Powell Software, we explore various use cases to implement AI into our digital workplace solutions. Here are just a few inspiring ideas we have explored so far.
[Ps. We’ll keep the suspense building before we reveal all AI capabilities coming to Powell Intranet & Teams later this year!]
Augmented Contributor Experience
- Assisted Contribution: By leveraging AI, content managers can improve productivity with automated suggestions for catchy titles, descriptions, and metadata.
- Writing News Articles: AI-intranet tools will help authors draft news articles by offering suggestions, summarizing information, and generating outlines.
- Increasing Relevance with Assisted Scoring: Content managers can use AI analysis to understand what content resonates with users.
- Automatically Creating Fun Content: AI can generate engaging content such as “Fact of the Day” or “On This Day in History,”.
Augmented Employee Engagement
- Employee Advocacy: AI can help employees identify corporate content to share on social media, promoting brand visibility and employee advocacy. It can even propose the text employees need to personalize their social posts quickly.
- Ideation: AI-driven tools can support employees in brainstorming and idea generation, fostering innovation and creative problem-solving across the organization
Augmented Knowledge Management
- Bridging Teams and Intranet by Automatically Capturing Important Content in Teams: Integrating AI can help automatically identify and capture crucial conversations and documents from Teams, making them easily accessible and discoverable in the intranet.
Augmented UX/UI – The Virtual Building
One of the most exciting features we are launching is the Virtual Building.
What is the Virtual Building? A revolutionary digital, interactive space offered by Powell Software as part of Powell Intranet. It goes beyond the conventional UX/UI of intranets and embodies our vision of a full digital workplace. The Virtual Building provides employees with a dynamic and immersive environment for collaboration, communication, and engagement, particularly suited for hybrid work environments.
Think of it as a groundbreaking design that transforms your intranet or digital workplace into an immersive, interactive environment. It allows you to visualize your digital space as one or several floors. By doing so, the Virtual Building provides a more engaging and user-friendly experience.
Each floor has multiple rooms representing different sections of your intranet or Microsoft Teams spaces. Within these rooms, users will find various furniture items that serve as interactive elements:
- A bookcase for accessing documents
- A TV set for watching videos
- A tablet for enabling interactions
- A table and chairs for online meetings
The Virtual Building facilitates meetings and events, making it a versatile space for communication and collaboration.
Although it provides an immersive experience, it is not a metaverse. Users do not require third-party devices like VR glasses to access it.
You can learn more about the Virtual Building by watching our customer preview release webinar here.
AI-Intranets and Augmented Digital Workplace: The Difficulties to Be Solved
Despite the exciting potential, there are challenges when introducing AI into intranets.
Enterprise Security Concerns
There is still a lot we don’t know about AI and so it’s natural that organizations have serious concerns. Here are a few:
Information Security: Ensuring sensitive information’s confidentiality, integrity, and availability is crucial when integrating AI in intranets. AI solutions must be secure and compliant with industry standards and regulations to protect valuable corporate and personal data.
Our objective at Powell Software is to ensure that our AI integration is scalable and secure by leveraging Open AI services hosted on the Azure cloud platform. This approach offers the advantage of Azure’s robust security infrastructure, which adheres to strict compliance and data protection standards.
Privacy Concerns: When we use AI services, knowing how information and data move around is important. We are committed to showing how the AI system sends, handles, and stores data. This helps us protect people’s privacy and be open with our customers. This will help our customers make smart choices about using AI in their business while ensuring they follow data privacy rules and industry standards.
Contributor Education
Training content creators to use AI-powered tools effectively is essential for realizing the full potential of an augmented digital workplace. At Powell Software, we understand the importance of providing an intuitive user experience for content contributors. We’re creating a contribution journey that seamlessly integrates AI capabilities, automates recurring prompt elements, and offers user-friendly interfaces.
Our focus on the user experience means contributors can easily access AI-powered features without being overwhelmed by complex processes. We empower content creators to leverage AI, enhance productivity, and create engaging and relevant content for their audiences.
Employee Education
Employees must be trained to use AI intranet features. This will ensure a smooth transition and maximize productivity.
What Are the Next Steps for Our Roadmap and Product Research and Delivery?
At Powell Software, we are committed to continuous innovation and development. Our project roadmap includes ongoing research into AI applications. We work closely with partners to deliver innovative solutions that allow our clients to benefit from artificial intelligence in the workplace. To provide a clear timeline of our plans, we have outlined the following milestones:
- Quarter 3 2023: Private preview of the first Powell Intranet AI Capabilities, enabling early access and testing of the new features.
- Quarter 4 2023: General availability of the AI Capabilities premium add-on and new features to a broader audience. Additionally, we will introduce a dedicated app in Microsoft Teams to enhance integration and functionality.
- 2024 and beyond: We will expand our AI offerings, delivering more capabilities for employees and content contributors. We aim to ensure our solutions remain at the forefront of innovation and cater to the evolving modern workplace.
Conclusion
The digital workplace is evolving rapidly, and integrating artificial intelligence promises to revolutionize how we communicate, collaborate, and make decisions. We’re excited about AI and dedicated to creating AI-driven solutions for the digital workplace. We can unlock AI’s full potential by overcoming challenges and implementing them effectively, improving productivity, engagement, and innovation in all industries.