The web is full of great applications that perform specific tasks really well (in some cases "really, really" well). We're big fans of creating solid interfaces to some of the best web applications with Siteflex, every time we do it opens up tons of new user-driven possibilities and opportunities.

One of the web applications the Siteflex team takes advantage of on a day to day basis is Google Calendar, which is one big reason we're excited to launch our Siteflex Events iCalendar interface.

iCalendar for Siteflex Events allows you to easily synchronise and distribute your Siteflex Event data to your community using an iCalendar URL or a simple Calendar file download.

• Individual Events
  Allow your customers to subscribe to a reminder about a particular upcoming event of interest.
   
• Events by Category
  Subscribe to a flexible, targeted list of Events from a particular Events category.
   
• All Events
  Subscribe to a Siteflex website's entire Events catalogue.
   

We've already begun using it ourselves, with Google Calendar. Getting your Siteflex Events to your community is as simple as hitting up Google Calendar's "Add by URL" feature, subscribe, done! Any changes to Siteflex Events then automatically update* your Google Calendar without you or the calendar subscriber having to do anything beyond the initial setup.

List your school's events, business' training sessions, trade event's daily session schedule, and all of your organisation's upcoming important dates.

Still using desktop-based E-mail clients? We've also setup vCalendar for Siteflex Events, which is the file type used in many older programs, Microsoft Outlook included.

All Events-enabled Siteflex websites now have access to this feature. Want to discover more about how to use iCalendar to keep your community informed? Talk to us about setting this up for your Siteflex website today.

* - All URL-based Calendars do not instantly update Google Calendar with any changes to their related Events.

One of our favourite things about Siteflex is when an instance is set up well enough to make people's lives a little easier, and perhaps to open up new opportunities that would not have been otherwise considered.

The Solutions Outsourced Siteflex website features one of the best examples of our Siteflex Intranet module in action. The team at Solutions has implemented many of their common business processes onto their Staff Intranet via Intranet based Siteflex Forms, as well as commonly referenced documentation, downloads and helpful information.

This week the Solutions Outsourced Team page was upgraded from a standard Siteflex Page to a more dynamic system, whereby staff members are able to update their individual Staff Profiles via the aforementioned Staff Intranet, all via Siteflex.

How was this achieved? Check out our Feature Spotlight below for an insight...

 

 

Contacts > Solutions Outsourced > Staff

First step to displaying custom Contact data (ie. Staff Profile data) is to create somewhere to put it.

Custom detail fields can be added to a Siteflex Contact Category to hold and reference this kind of custom data - staff interests, qualifications and profile. This can be setup via the Contact Categories interface within Siteflex.

Now that the custom detail fields are added, lets get some data in there (and without having to get Staff members to log into the backend).

 

Staff Intranet

As mentioned earlier, the Solutions Outsourced team has taken advantage of the Siteflex Intranet module for some time. These days the Solutions Staff Intranet has grown to become an essential part of their day to day business, with many areas driven by Intranet-based Siteflex Forms.

Thankfully the Solutions Staff Intranet has already been setup to allow Siteflex Forms to be associated with the logged in staff member, making the next step of allowing a Siteflex Form to update custom data a little easier.

 

 

Update My Profile

Siteflex Forms are able to have many freeform fields; flexible, customised questions. Usually this data does not end up in the Contacts system, however a Siteflex Form can optionally be setup to do exactly that.

By linking a custom Form question to a custom Contact detail field we can input and save the data directly into the Contacts system. We can match up the Form fields to the Contact fields via the Form's Link Detail Fields function.

 

 

Staff Listing

Moving the standard Team page to a dynamic one is simply a matter of ensuring that the data has been transferred over to the individual Staff members in the Contacts module. When this is done, the Siteflex Page can be quickly setup to display a Contacts list, in this case the listing of Contacts from the Solutions > Staff category.

This will, by default, display a list of staff members in alphabetical order. We can also customise the HTML output by this function with Siteflex Templates, handy for this circumstance as we'll put outputting custom field data.

 

The Boss

We now have our Staff Profiles displaying on our Team page, but hold on... the boss isn't at the top?!

Assuming your company doesn't just happen to have an alphabetical order that mirrors it's management hierarchy, you'll want to use the Order Contacts function in Siteflex Contacts.

After sorting out* your staff ordering, being careful not to offend anyone of course (one reason why alphabetical order can be desirable), we're done! 

We now have a nice, consistently formatted, dynamic Staff Profile page that Staff members themselves can update. Great!

 

* - pun intended