Successful companies understand the importance of building a strong connection between their blue- and white-collar workforce. They ensure that this connection is always maintained. In this blog article, our customer Solarwatt provides a real-life example of how this can be achieved.

The challenge: employees working in production usually don't have desktop computers. If using private (mobile) devices isn't an option or is only partly possible, a question arises: "How do I reach my blue-collar workforce?".

There are two concrete answers/options to this question:

• Monitors in lounges, corridors, production halls, or canteens.
• Terminal PCs in hospital wards, branches, or production halls.

Before you start the implementation, ask yourself whether you would like to allow your employees to navigate the intranet themselves or not. Depending on how you answer this question, there are various options.

News and information on monitors or digital signage systems

Display the most important developments and news on monitors installed in strategic locations and keep your employees updated as they pass by.

For this purpose, creating an additional homepage specially optimized for the monitor is essential. Keep factors such as the future size of the monitor, its position, and the distance to the viewer in mind when designing it. The homepage needs to convey information without the need for interaction. The following components and elements are particularly suitable for this purpose:

• Teaser widget and hero teaser with significant and meaningful titles and sub-titles
• Image widget
• Callout widget with a short, concise message
• HTML or RTE widget for displaying the canteen plan, for example

Continuous homepage maintenance is essential to ensure the information is always relevant and the monitors establish themselves as a central point of contact.

To ensure that the homepage created specifically for this use case is only used for the monitor, create a new (local) user and assign the corresponding homepage only to this user. To ensure that only the homepage and no other disruptive elements or functions are displayed, you only assign the following permissions to this role:

• "Access homepages"
• "Access pages"

You can also integrate a QR code into the homepage using an image widget to advertise the use of the mobile app.

Below, you can see an example of a suitable homepage:

Generic accounts with access to kiosks and terminal PCs

Would you like your employees to be able to navigate the intranet independently using a centrally installed terminal or tablet? No problem, you can create a dedicated homepage, set up a generic account, and assign it its own role.

The homepage should present all information relevant to the target group in a way that is as easily accessible and clear as possible. This includes the dynamic display of news from relevant sources and direct links to static information such as the current canteen menu or the corresponding shift schedules.

Useful widgets and elements in this context are:

• Hero teaser to show the most important current topics
• Latest blog articles widget for dynamic display of news from relevant sources
• Link button widget as a prominently placed shortcut to the shift plan, for example

The dedicated role shouldn't include any rights to interact within the intranet, as this is assigned to a generic account. Therefore, all posts, comments, likes, subscriptions, or uploads would be anonymous.

A corresponding role should include the following permissions:

• "Access file library"
• "Access colleague list"
• "Search"
• "Access homepages"
• "Access pages"
• "Access communities"
• "Access events"
• "Access the launchpad"
• "Access other profiles"
• "Access timeline on homepage"

Below, you can see an example of a suitable start page.