Web Portal Development: Benefits and Types

What do you do to make your business stand apart from the crowd?

I am assuming the answer is: evolving the business constantly with the latest technologies and new strategies, right?

So, then you might have heard about the portal for sure! It is popular for being a one-stop solution for all business needs like automating manual work, providing security features, helping everyone to stay on the same page, etc.

Yes, having a web portal for your business is a solution for all your business miseries!

But there are questions to answer like:

What type of web portal do you need?
What should be the cost of a web portal for your business?
What are the benefits of a web portal?

And many more.

For that, we have this article!

It answers all the questions you might have about the web portal.

So, without any further delay, let’s get started from the basics:

What is a Portal?

When I was figuring out what a web portal is, I often misunderstood it with websites, but they are not the same!

You might think that a web portal’s features look similar to those of a website, but let me tell you, their purposes are different. Plus, they are not interchangeable.

A website provides access to users to various information from a single point of access. It includes well-organized content comprising company information, articles, vendors, supplier lists, etc. The website uses web pages that anyone can access. Its purpose is to create a digital presence.

The web portal gathers all the information from various sources (CRM, CMS, etc.) into a centralized system for all the users including employees, partners, customers, and admin. This means that you and your team will not have to juggle multiple systems to fetch user data.

It enables easy document sharing and with collaborative tools enhances the communication between teams and with customers.

The web portal requires login credentials, allowing only authorized users to access it. It provides relevant information to users based on their roles. With many security and streamlining features, a web portal gets the plus points in comparison to a website.

Website provides generic information relevant for all the users. However, the portal enables users to access only the required information.

I will justify my opinion in this article by explaining different details of how a web portal is a one-stop solution for enhancing customers’, partners, and employees’ experience.

Use of Web Portal

Now that you know a web portal is, you might want to know their features and benefits for your business. Here are a few that will end your search for a better business streamlining tool.

Enhanced Collaboration

Numerous times in a day, an employee has to send a document or other data to another employee.

Sharing third-party social spaces make interacting with the team easier, but are they efficient? No, they are not. It takes a chunk of time and effort. To save the extra effort and time, you need a web portal that enables easy information flow. With centralized data, users can get all the data at one place with options to share on multiple channels. And with secure sharing, users can share the documents without worry.

Simplified Operations

A web portal reduces your work by automating some tasks. People can fill their data in the system, and the portal will update accordingly.

For example, insurance agents will not be required to update customers’ documents or details every time; customers can do it by themselves. The support team will not have to waste time updating customers about their ticket status or delivery updates. They just require you to log in to the portal. The portal will fetch the data from the CRM automatically.

This way, your team’s productivity will increase, and they can invest their time and effort in something more fruitful.

Better Security

Data theft is hard to escape; however, our web portal has a solution. You can share limited data with specific members or a team with role-based access features.

With page-view access, you can give access to a few pages of your data and keep other data confidential.

With features like two-factor authentication and multiple-factor authentication, you can provide more security to users and gain their trust.

Original Source: https://www.crmjetty.com/blog/web-portal-benefits-and-types/

Web Portal Development: Benefits and Types

What do you do to make your business stand apart from the crowd?

I am assuming the answer is: evolving the business constantly with the latest technologies and new strategies, right?

Yes, having a web portal for your business is a solution for all your business miseries!

But there are questions to answer like:

What type of web portal do you need?
What should be the cost of a web portal for your business?
What are the benefits of a web portal?

And many more.

For that, we have this article!

It answers all the questions you might have about the web portal.

So, without any further delay, let’s get started from the basics:

What is a Portal?

When I was figuring out what a web portal is, I often misunderstood it with websites, but they are not the same!

You might think that a web portal’s features look similar to those of a website, but let me tell you, their purposes are different. Plus, they are not interchangeable.

Original Source: https://www.crmjetty.com/blog/web-portal-benefits-and-types/

11 ‘Must-have’ Features and Functionalities in Your Custom Web Portal

To ensure your project requirements are fulfilled through a web portal, you must have enough features to help you with that. Custom web portals are the best way to have features that suit your business and customer needs, but some features need to be in your custom web portal.

In this blog, I have mentioned some web features that guarantee your niche, business, and customer requirements are fulfilled. These features will ensure security and a top-notch experience.

What Features Does Every Custom Web Portal Need?

Starting from listing down the requirements to actually having them in your portal is a complex process if done without experts.

At CRMJetty, we ensure quality services with suitable guidance from the beginning to serve you the best custom web portal with all features to ensure an excellent customer experience.

Request a Quote

Below are some ‘must-have’ features in your custom web portal curated by the company that aces at portal development:

1. Interactive Dashboard

This comes without saying. The homepage is the first thing a shopper will see when logging into your business’s web portal. Here, you want to ensure that the homepage is neat with smooth navigation, has information in the proper place, and is highly interactive. Keep the contact information properly visible. Keep self-service options constantly visible on the screen. Don’t make your customers work to find the menu or products they want; thus, always include a search bar with a voice input option.

You can even let your customer choose their dashboard theme. Give them a section to have their bookmarked products or wish list. Include such features to make the dashboard exciting and interactive.

This way, you can make an interface suitable for technical and non-technical users.

2. Self-Service Tools

Self-service is a mandatory service to be provided and expected from businesses. Users mostly prefer the luxury and comfort of finding the answers to their questions without waiting for another human to respond to them on business days.

Here, providing self-service is the best option to let customers solve their queries through given resources at their convenience and save your service reps from mundane tasks like explaining ‘how to change password’ multiple times a day to customers. It will boost their productivity too.

Original Source: https://www.crmjetty.com/blog/must-have-features-and-functionalities-in-custom-web-portal/

5 Industries that Benefit from Web Portal Solutions

Portal is a website that provides single-point access to applications and information. It not only helps in selling or ensuring an online presence but with many other purposes. Different websites having different purposes are built with varying approaches. For example, if you need a web portal to help you sort customer queries, you have a support portal. If you want to allow your partners to manage their activities, you have a partner portal. Similarly, the extent and use vary from industry to industry.

However, the best thing is you can approach a custom web portal development company and customize your portal as per your needs.

An online portal can be convenient for different industries.

Let us explore the industries that can benefit from web portal development services.

Education

The education industry has a centralized database that holds information on the teaching staff, administrative staff, students, and everything else. A web portal could give them access to the information to carry out their jobs.

For instance, teaching staff can

Manage various classes
Mark students attendance
Arrange the timetable
Upload important class
Upload marks and grades
Upload documents and details

Students can

Check attendance
Submit medical details
Check marks and grades
Keep up with notices

Admin staff can

Keep the fee records
Consolidate reports
Manage staff and students details
Have an overview of the school’s operations

NonProfit

Portals for nonprofits can help you streamline your organization’s activities, handle donations, manage volunteers and members, track their tasks and schedules, and provide a hassle-free experience so that you can focus on changing the world.

A web portal development services will provide you with features like:

Donation Module
Automated Fund Transfer Module
On-Boarding Volunteers
Volunteers Timesheet Management
Knowledgebase
Live chat
Smart Dashboard

And help you interact, and scale at your own pace.

Medical

A medical portal means doctors would have all the information about the patient. They would have details of patients’ history of diseases and treatments, allergies, and others. Administrative staff would know about the patients’ demographic details along with payments. Patients would be able to contact doctors and the team anytime they need support. They can access their individual files and see their progress.

In addition to this, a medical portal could help streamline the transplant and transfusion process. As hospitals would have all the details of the patients, they can match the recipients’ blood group and match organs promptly.

Pharma

In the pharmaceutical industry, a portal could be a great way for pharmacists to track a patient’s history. A patient can request medicines according to the prescription, and pharmacists can fill them accordingly. Pharmacists can know about the patient’s drug intake and can regulate it. They can even avoid misuse of a particular drug.

A portal will also connect the pharmacist with the patient’s doctor. So they can verify the prescription before approving a patient’s request.

They can also keep track of patient’s allergies and avoid medicines that can cause reactions.

Real-Estate

A real estate industry consists of many stakeholders such as admin, realtor, agent, member, etc. Up of that, agents and admin require streamlined communication and a 360-degree overview to close the deals.

Managing it manually can be tedious, time-consuming, and unorganized. A web portal, on the other hand, can simplify it. It can help you

Manage properties along with your stakeholders
List properties on the website
Enable buyers and sellers to manage their listings, selling, renting
Build transparency by showing details to everyone involved
Generate leads for your properties

And more.

A web portal development company can help you develop a real-estate portal with features like

Broker management
Property management
Seller management
User-centric features
Geo-location
Media

With a real-estate portal, you can automate your tasks and can serve customers in a better way.

Conclusion

Web portals are important for all B2B and B2C businesses. However, choosing the secure one is essential. So, make sure that your portal development company provides a secure gateway and doesn’t store anything on the server.

Why Do You Need Web Portal Development

The use of web portals varies according to the industry. For example, a university would have a portal with different access points: One for their students to register for classes and check their schedules. Another access point would be for faculties to manage attendance, submit grades, and so on.

Despite the nature of the industry, they prove useful in every business spectrum. They help businesses, including customers and staff to manage their workflows, contact information, and human resources affairs. That also includes documents, communication, and support.

A web portal, as whole, provides a structure to organize the content. It encourages visitors to engage more through blogs, comments, or social media.

In other words, it’s a bridge that joins customers to businesses. It covers the distance between user expectations and the actual services provided.

This is the reason why many businesses are adopting web portal development. And the sole reason why web portal development services are in huge demand.

Let us find out more about it.

Benefits of Web Portal

Improves Interaction

Customers can use web portals to manage their activities. Instead of providing support through emails and calls that are quite tedious, businesses can help them virtually 24*7 without being present.

As customers can sort the common queries, it would encourage them to engage more, resulting in better interactions. A smooth system like this can delight customers and help bring them back to your business.

Enhance Awareness

The internet is the biggest market for business and updates nowadays. The increase in competition of the business helps to improve strategies. Social media platforms help business organizations to recognize the current market and trends. By providing the latest information about the market, business services, and other knowledge guides, you can create awareness in your customers.

With blogs and guides, you can keep updating them with the latest stuff. By engaging with the features, they can learn about the latest trends and technological advancements.

Offering a single sign-in for a variety of applications

One of the essential business requirements is to have single access to handle entire business operations. Businesses often look for solutions that can sync the information between different modules and applications.

Hence, you should go for web portal development. Portals integrate with different business applications and prove useful in streamlining the process.

They offer you and your customers with ease of services.

Offers improved customization

Web portals are often useful for enhancing personalization. They even help customize various tools. With portals, customers can avail the best of services. They can give feedback on the kind of services they are looking for. This can then help businesses with customization.

For example, if they know what a customer likes or dislikes, or what they mostly order, they can provide personalized recommendations.

Even designs of portals are unique and make the interface user-friendly. Customers can customize their web portal look. If they want a news section on the dashboard, they can add it. If they don’t, they can remove it. This customization services would help customers to avail services in a simple way.

Provides services to a diverse domain

The main benefit of a web portal development is in the domain. The portal is the entry point for your customers to enter your website. And the domain would help customers find you from thousands of similar websites on the internet.

So, use a domain-specific portal. It would enhance your visibility.

Bringing visitors

Development companies implement a high-class web portal development service with specialists in development and technologies. These experts would make sure the portal is perfect to every inch, according to user expectations. This satisfaction would be the key to attract more visitors. It would ensure business with a constant increase in sales and profits.

End Words

Web portal development helps companies to increase visitors and earn profits. It can improve online presence and brand building.

Portal can further aid in improved interaction between customers and businesses. There are numerous benefits of having a portal.

If you don’t have a portal, you must get it developed now.

Partner with a company that provides web portal development services.

Summary

This article provides information about the benefits of a portal and how a custom one made using web portal development service can give you a solution that is worthy of your business.

Salesforce Communities – Licence Types Explained

We all know how much Salesforce products are used worldwide for its features, resources they provide, ease of implementation, and many more reasons. With every product they release, they go one step further in providing their customers with world-class solutions. And of course, every product is updated keeping in mind easy integration with its CRMs. Today we are going to talk about Salesforce Communities in detail and understand its different licenses and which one to use.

What is Salesforce Community?

In 2013, Salesforce introduced Community cloud with an aim to create a platform for customers, partners, and employees. It provides companies to work effectively, understand their customers’ requirements, and fulfill it. In simple terms, you can also say that the Salesforce community is the advanced version of portals.

With the help of communities, your users can work collaboratively. It is built on the Salesforce platform and easily integrates with CRM.

Communities are developed such that they can be perfect choices for your partners, customers, vendors, employees, or anyone else.

Let’s see each type in brief:

– Customer Community

– Customer Community Plus

– Partner Community

You can see each of them in brief and understand the differences between portals and communities in our previous blog post here.

Each of them has its own merits and demerits. They are a vital part of Salesforce products and can be useful in a variety of professions. Over the years, communities help a lot to enhance businesses in three major areas.

– Enhance brand experience

– Provide a dedicated space to users

– Culture of collaboration

Costs of each of them and features they provide:

Customer community/ Partner Community is available for $2/ login or $5/member on a monthly basis. It provides features like:

– Digital Experience Management

– Customer Service and Account Portal Templates

– Knowledge

– Case Management

– Lightning Flow Automation

On the other hand, Customer Community Plus is available for $6/ login or $15/ member on a monthly basis. In addition, to the above features in Customer Community Plus, you get below features.

– Roles and Advanced Sharing

– Delegated Administration

– Customizable Reports and Dashboards

Talking about the licenses, Salesforce provides access to these communities’ plans in various licenses.

Salesforce provides licenses in six different types of licenses. Listed below:

Customer Community:

It is useful for business to consumer experiences using large numbers of external users who need access to case objects or knowledge. You can also use the customer community with personal accounts.

Customer Community Plus:

Customer Community Plus is useful for business to consumer experiences with external users who have access to reports and dashboards and need advanced sharing options. Customer Community Plus can also be used with personal accounts.

Partner Community:

Partner community is useful for B2B communication. It gives access to sales data like partner relationship management and can’t be useful for personal accounts.

Commerce Portals:

Commerce portals are for custom digital experience to engage any external users, like brand engagement and customer loyalty. It provides limited access to CRM objects and can be used with personal accounts.

External Apps:

External apps are very customizable experiences while incorporating CRM objects, custom objects, and external data and require additional storage. Its ideal use case is a dealer, vendor, or supplier portal. It is useful for franchise management, marketplaces, and multi-level marketing. The external app’s license cannot be useful with personal accounts.

Channel Account:

It is useful for business to business communities and portals that calculate their usage on the basis of numbers of partners instead of numbers of individual users.

Each of the above mentioned licenses is available in two ways i.e.:

– Member-based

– Login-based

Difference between both types of license:

Community member-based license is similar to standard Salesforce internal license. External users who have member-based licenses can have access to a community multiple times. But, they do not have access to internal organizations.

Whereas, in login based license you need to purchase a specific number of logins for monthly usage. Here, external users can use one log in each time they log into the community. After that, they can use the same credentials multiple times for the same day. Additionally, once logged in they can easily switch between communities. You can configure the session timeout period of login to a maximum of 24 hours.

Well, that’s a lot of information about the Salesforce license. Now, comes the main question. Which license should you purchase?

All types of licenses serve different purposes. Decide on the basis of your company’s requirements and see to it that it fulfills the requirements.

If you are still establishing yourself in the market and thinking of going with a portal then Salesforce customer portal is where you should get started.

Job Portal and All Its Must-have Features Explained!

Nowadays everything and every business we interact with is through portals. Be it searching something via web or app. Your users’ first medium of interaction is a portal.

There are various types of portals available like self-service portal, web portal, knowledge portal and many more. Many companies are growing solely by providing portals to businesses. In the current times they are very powerful tools to get users and interact with them effectively.

Talking about web portal; let’s first know what web portals are?

According to LifeRay, “A portal is a web-based platform that collects information from different sources into a single user interface and presents users with the most relevant information for their context. Over time, simple web portals have evolved into portal platforms that support digital customer experience initiatives.”

In simpler terms we can say, portals provide users with easy and curated access to company’s information. There are various types of web portal solutions available like:

Employee portal
Job portal
Partner portal
Knowledge portal
Vendor management portal

And many more.

Here, we are going to talk about recruitment web portal or job portal. We will discuss how it helps recruitment firms, HRs, employers, and people looking for jobs. Additionally, we’ll talk about the features an ideal job portal should have.

What is a Job Portal?

The simplest example of a job portal is LinkedIn. Well, a part of it, actually.

Job portal is a platform where everyone who is looking for a job and people who are hiring come together to find the right job or the right candidate for the job. Both the parties, job seekers and employers, have their own logins and dashboards and features.

So let’s look at some of the must have features and aspects of job portals and what are its advantages.

UI/UX:

It is very important to have a visually appealing and easy to navigate portal. Make sure that the UI/UX of your portal is representing your company’s brand. Having good UI/UX will make sure your users return to your site for their job seeking or hiring.

Going one step further, if you are a recruitment firm and looking for web portal development services, then you can hire a company which helps you to create a custom job portal and add features according to your business processes. With easy and simple UI/UX.

Multi language support:

Just imagine, you are a firm operating from Canada then any person staying in another country who is looking for a job in Canada is very likely to come to your website, create their account and start looking for job opportunities.

Looking at another side of the coin, let’s say your recruitment firm has a tie up with different companies in different countries then it is okay to say that you have global presence and global user base.

In both the scenarios, you need to make sure that language is not becoming a barrier for your users to interact with your web portal. Hence, make sure that your portal is supporting multiple languages. Build your portal in such a way that your user can interact with it in any language they are comfortable with.

This will help you increase your user base and leave a good impact on your users as they’ll know that you care about them.

Easy to Navigate:

Easy navigation in your web portal plays a very vital role in retaining your customers. Make sure that your users understand your portal, are getting clear instructions about the next steps and are not getting lost on your website.

Features:

Firstly, make sure to not bombard your users with long questions while building their profile. According to the current market trends, users don’t like it and are likely to leave your website. Instead ask them crisp, clear, and precise questions. Short questions save time for your users and they don’t leave the website halfway.

In your job portal you can provide your users with features like resume building, importing resume, or uploading from computer. Make sure to keep resume building feature easy to understand, hassle free and dynamic.

Going ahead, you can provide your users with keyword search options, filter search, location based search, education based, part-time, full-time, and many more. This makes it easy for them to search the opportunities they are looking for. Additionally, they can also easily apply for it if they like it.

Final words:

Being a recruitment firm, it is better to have a job portal as it brings all your users at one place and provides them with necessary information. Rather than going for pre-developed portals, it is better to have a company which helps you with web portal development. They will understand your requirements specifically and develop features that are centered around your business logic.

Web Portal: A Solution Every Startup Should Have

Startup is the new way to do business across the globe. Governments are pushing and promoting young minds to start their own companies. From making special policies to organizing hackathons, funding to setting up incubation centers, organizing business meetups, government bodies are backing innovative ideas and businesses led by young entrepreneurs. In fact, big tech companies are also investing in small scale startup companies which help them to promote themselves better.

Helping startups is a must as they face lots of challenges in setting up their businesses. But, there is one forever issue which these companies face and i.e. to gain and retain customers. We all know customers are king. Happy and satisfied customers help you bring more customers and grow your business. Remember, getting customers is not just about contacting them; it’s about connecting with them.

There are many ways of getting customers but having a web portal is the new way for upscaling, enhancing, and growing your business.

Let’s understand how a web portal can help you as a startup company for gaining and retaining customers even during the pandemic.

What is a web portal?

According to Liferay, “A portal is a web-based platform that collects information from different sources into a single user interface and presents users with the most relevant information for their context. Over time, simple web portals have evolved into portal platforms that support digital customer experience initiatives.”

And here’s how it helps a startup likes yours grow:

Simplified Management

This is one of the major issues most of the startups are facing. Many of them don’t know the key of management. But, with the help of a single portal, you can manage your company, employees, and customers all in one place. Web portals can also work as an internal employee portal. Here, your employees can collaborate with each other and streamline internal operations. Not only this but with the help of a web portal it becomes easy for your customers to reach out to you. This not only reduces a lot of miscommunication and management mishaps but also simplifies internal processes.

Flexible and User-friendly

Digital is the new normal. From purchasing hairpins to big electronic items or even paying for everything is now online. Today more than half of the population of the world is dependent on the internet. In such a rat race, having a good, user friendly, and easy to navigate UI/UX is necessary. If your customers are facing difficulty in navigating through your web portal or even your website then it is likely that they will drop the idea of doing business with you.

Bad UI/UX is one of the major issues why your customers don’t come back to your website. In this scenario, developing a custom web portal is the key. You can have complete control over these things and create a portal that lives up to your customers’ expectations helping you create a brand name.

Secure Channel

Security is an essential part of any online product today. Having a secure portal means your clients’ data is safe and they trust you with it. Your clients will also have individual login credentials using which they can log in their accounts and have access to their documents only. It works as a secure channel for your clients to communicate with you.

Custom Solution

There are thousands of web portals available in the market and looking at the different options with myriad features might confuse you. This is why a customized portal is the way to go. There are lots of web portal development companies out there that can help you to create a portal of your choice according to your business logic.

Having a custom portal means it can have the features and functionalities of your choice, you can also develop a custom theme based on your website’s design language. Additionally, having a custom portal also gives you an opportunity to integrate features based on your clients’ feedback as well.

In short, having a custom web portal is a win-win situation for you as well as your customers.

Single Sign-in Option

Once the web portal integrates with your website then it becomes very easy for your customers to sign in to your portal. They can easily access the technical documents, generate tickets for their issues, access user manuals, understand your company’s products, services, and many such things. Additionally, integrating web portals helps even your support team member in solving your customers’ issues efficiently.

Creating a Brand

If your company requires a strong social media presence then you can integrate the same in your web portal which makes it easier for you to interact with your customers. And get new customers as well. Not only communicating but you can also come to know their issues directly through social media platforms. We all know how powerful social media is. Big tech companies have dedicated support pages that help their customers to easily solve the issues round the clock.

Providing round the clock support on a platform of your customers’ choice will not only help you in getting new customers but will also build up the reputation of your company.

Being an entrepreneur has its own difficulties but with the help of the technology and correct tools you can surely make your name in the market. Business is all about taking risks, sometimes there are profits, sometimes there are losses. But keeping up with the market trends is the key to success.

5 MUST haves in your Knowledge Management Portal

Knowledge Portals are tricky to get right. If they do not solve customers’ queries, they are not worth investing in.

The basic purpose of any Knowledge Portal should always be to:

– Enable users to find the information they REALLY need

– Provide updated and fresh information

While we live in a digital world, it is important that your knowledge portal carries the basic features for a great user experience. Because there will be new trends, but the essential features would always remain the same.

Delete Outdated Content

A Knowledge Portal means the bank of the organization’s documents. And when we hear that, we all imagine – a bunch of unorganized stuff.

Even if there is an in-built search engine in place, it will sort the data by relevance, and not as per the quality. That means if your customer is looking for a particular report, and the search engine finds 4 different copies, how they will be able to distinguish which one is the latest?

Hence, it is important that the content in your database is updated from time to time and curated.

Simply, delete the outdated content.

So, does your knowledge portal enable you to do that?

You can also enable users to comment, tag, and rate content, flag outdated, and erroneous information. Based on the feedback, content admin can hide or delete “bad data”. Also, the ratings will help users to identify relevant content easier.

Is your “Find” feature good enough?

When thinking about helping users, it is important to understand that “find” is much more than just search. As Seth notes, “A knowledge management portal with the correct information architecture allows users to both search and browse.”

Do your customers have access to all the information they require? It is important that your portal provides a 360-degree view of the information. Otherwise, users will have to visit other references. It should be capable enough to provide easy access to people, expertise, communities, collaborative content, structured data, and rich media such as images and video.

In addition, a properly configured knowledge portal should enable you to “push” information directly to users’ desktops, mobile devices via email, RSS, or any other medium. It enables users to spend zero time in seeking information, and have it delivered directly to them in real-time.

Now it is your turn to find out how your knowledge portal provides information to users. Does it provide access to all the information your users need? Does it enable multiple forms of information discovery that help them find the right information at the right time?

Mobile Access

At times of crisis like COVID-19, remote work and BYOD adoption are picking up the pace. Hence, your users require a quick, easy, way to access information from any device they’re using. Also, the solution should be integrated allowing knowledge access without switching apps.

Customer Communities and Sharing

If no one is reading your material, then it won’t be effective as anticipated. Hence, your knowledge sharing solution should let you send information to external users. This way, you can successfully drive prospects in the funnel and track which content is working, and which is not.

Also once a lead converts, it is still important to build customer loyalty. A KMS with a “community of learning” for customers can quickly establish your name as an industry leader and customers would keep coming back.

Reporting and Analytics

Tangible results are important for a business’s impact. Unfortunately, many organizations do not focus on the value being created with the Knowledge portal and focus on other metrics to measure success.

It is important for you to know which data enables employees to become more productive? Are your team members actively collaborating and sharing knowledge with each other? Are the answers actually helping them?

Robust analytics can help you identify such insights making the elimination of outdated data easier.

Now you know!

Investing in a knowledge management portal is like buying a new house. You need to double-check and make sure to have all the important aspects in place before making the purchase. And now you know which ones can be your success formula.

Education Portal: Bring the Campus Home

Just like I’m writing this article from home, there are a huge number of students who have to study from home. Studying and teaching even inside a school infrastructure can be challenging. Previously, we have written about how the logistics of teaching and learning can be overcome with an education portal. But now the challenges we face are even more challenging.

Schools used to rely on class participation, infrastructural facilities like lab, projectors, library, etc. There used to be a structure to a typical school or college day that would go about. COVID-19 has pronounced school as public places, therefore shutting them down and sending kids home.

The greatest thing about learning at a school is that everyone gets equal facilities. The computers are all the same, the lunch hours are the same, the library is accessible by all, and there is internet access. Moving this entire system home is of course difficult.

The first challenge will come in the form of internet access, and the second in the form of a computer. Even if we assume and these are available, we have to assume they might not be consistent. So what are the changes you can make as an educational institution to make it possible for your students to keep learning and your faculty to keep teaching?

Get a portal.

If you have a portal, modify it to do more than what it is doing right now. It is no longer limited to marking attendance and getting homework assignments. This will mean getting the best of the best.

Let’s do a deep dive into what the portal can do for your institution during this pandemic:

Video classes:

Classes have to be online. But not all classes can take place at a single time for everyone because your students may be in different time zones. So professors also have to have an interface where they can easily record classes, live or otherwise, which can then be stored. The class interface should also have a chat option where students can ask questions and teachers can answer them. This will bring everyone’s experience a little closer to what they used to have in the classrooms.

Assignment interface:

All assignments are now online. That means it will require an interface that makes it easy for students and professors to interact with or collaborate on assignments. Simply uploading a bunch of questions on a document and getting answers to those is not going to be enough.

So this interface needs to be more interactive. It should allow more formats, like multiple choice questions, longer essays, pop quizzes that are only available for certain hours to ensure participation, etc.

Office hours:

A number of professors have dedicated office hours. This is where they have one on one interaction with students. Here they discuss their assignments, clear doubts that the students have, and guide them in all their academics.

So the education portal needs to have an interface specially designed for this. The professor can feed in their office hours, and the students can see those hours, and request an appointment. The meeting can then be over a video call or a phone call, which can be logged in to the portal.

Exams:

Since in person exams cannot be held, there needs to be a digital interface for it. This includes pop quizzes, open book exams, and more. Certain measures can be put into it like time limits for each question, only one attempt, etc. can help ensure a smoother anti cheating exam while maintaining the workflow of the school at the same time.

The education portal’s strengths while in use on campus are different than in remote use. While on campus, if there was a flaw, it would be less disadvantageous than if it happened while everyone is accessing it remotely.

As far as the administration of the school is concerned, the portal handles all the things remotely like it did on campus, minus things like classroom allocation, etc.

Professors and admin staff should also have a special interface built in that allows them to have meetings, to keep things running smoothly.

Apart from that, this education portal needs to be lightweight since everyone will not have the kind of internet access that a school does.

At CRMJetty, our team can cater to academic institutions’ needs. You can browse our previous blog, and even read the whitepaper. Your custom online education portal will thrive in our hands.