Introducing Inside Einstein with Responsive Design
It’s a new year and Einstein’s intranet, Inside Einstein, has a new look and many great new features thanks to the interactive media team led by Najam Hayat, in the department of communications and public affairs. Najam and his talented web designers and programmers—Adam Hochman, Arooj Khan, Felipe Monegro, and Linus Surgeon—have transformed the internal site with a new responsive design. We sat down with Najam to learn just what this means for the Einstein community.
IE: What exactly is responsive design and why did you re-work the intranet using it?
NH: Responsive design is a technique that allows the same website's design and layout to adapt to the size of the screen used to view it. The goal is to provide an optimal viewing experience—no zooming, panning, or scrolling—for a wide range of devices. We want our community to use the intranet to get help with their daily tasks. It made sense to have it available to them whether at their desk or on the go.
IE: What happened to the Workflow Carousel?
NH: We replaced the bar of icons that was at the top of the site with My Workflow. It uses many of the same icons, but we believe it’s more inviting and easier to organize. We also limited the selection to items that relate specifically to doing one’s work. And we moved other icons, such as Holidays, Snapshot, and E-screens to a navigation called Potpourri.
IE: Why’d you do that?
NH: Our aim with Inside Einstein is to make using the site as easy as possible. When we had the Workflow Carousel, there were more than 30 icons. We realized they included options needed to complete one’s work, such as the portals for IT support and reserving space for an event, as well as items that merely offer helpful information or ways to engage, like e-screens and our Snapshots gallery and “In Memoriam” pages. We felt by splitting these resources into My Workflow and Potpourri, it would be easier to have the icons most used to complete one’s work in one place and the helpful resources in another.
IE: So “Potpourri” is a new offering too?
NH: Potpourri is a new way to access certain resources and information that already existed on Inside Einstein. Since the word means “a mixture of things,” we thought it would be a good way to organize a variety of icons that the Einstein community will want to access for various reasons. And it allows us to add other items as needed. In some instances, you may see an icon in My Workflow and a listing in Potpourri; we did that for items that one might look for in either location, to help make searching easier.
IE: I see that the Document Library is one of those that resides in both My Workflow and Potpourri. What can one find in a search of the library?
NH: We introduced the Document Library a couple of months ago. It’s the repository for all policies, procedures, and forms that various departments have created. My team worked closely with Sheila McBride and Dana Lee to create the library, which makes searching for documents much easier because they’re now all in one place. Sheila did outreach with every department that had documents, and she formalized them so that they are now up to date and have a uniform look to them. You can search the library for any of these documents, with a variety of search fields to help you find the document you need. Departments also have the documents they’ve created on their respective sites within Inside Einstein. And there also are ways to share the documents and to bookmark them.
IE: Speaking of bookmarks, I see you now have a section on Inside Einstein called My Bookmarks. What’s that?
NH: Again, because we want to make Inside Einstein as easy to use as possible, and to encourage members of the Einstein community to customize the site to suit their needs, we asked ourselves how we could add to the user-friendliness of the site. We realized that being able to keep your favorite links in one place and to organize them the way you like would be immensely helpful, especially since some people have a lot of forms and websites they must reference in carrying out their responsibilities. So, My Bookmarks allows users to save their internal links, like iRis or specific forms they may need from the document library, along with favorite external sites that they may need to access.
IE: Wow, that’s great. Are there any other new features we should know about?
NH: Yes. We’ve introduced Mega Menus to provide more information in a simple-to-navigate way. This should take care of some complaints we received regarding the pop-out menu on the previous site, which was not very intuitive. We also have made Around Campus stories searchable now, and submissions to Snapshots can be uploaded directly instead of via email.
IE: That’s a lot of improvements, but it seems like a lot to learn how to use! How can one know where to begin?
NH: We’ve got that covered. Near the very top of the site, next to the Montefiore Intranet link, there’s a “Help” link. You can click on Help to view a slideshow that illustrates how to use many of the features we just discussed. I also should mention that when you sign on, you’ll see a personal greeting in the upper right-hand corner of the site. When you click on it, you’ll see a menu that will allow you to update your profile and personalize your workflow. We encourage everyone to make sure their personal profile includes a current headshot, their room location and phone number, and some keywords or even a retyping of their title so that other members of the Einstein community can connect with them, as needed.
IE: Is there anything else?
NH: I’m glad you asked. We’ve also added an important new feature that occasionally will appear on both Inside Einstein and the main Einstein website. It’s called Need to Know. Whenever there’s important information that members of our internal community need to know, a specially labeled box—saying “Need to Know”—will appear on Inside Einstein. At the same time, if a member of the Einstein community is on our internet site, they will see a window slide out. This will alert them to go to Inside Einstein to view the more complete details that will be noted there.
IE: So, is that all we need to know about the new Inside Einstein?
NH: For now, yes. And we hope you’ll provide us with feedback so that we can continue to make improvements and add features that will enhance your user experience and make getting your work done easier. We’ve still got “Ask Einstein!” for submitting questions and suggestions. Please use that to let us know what you think and what else you’d like to see on our intranet.
Posted on: Thursday, January 31, 2019