Please do not adjust your set - what’s next for Khub? - Michael MacAuley

Following a short while for the initial release of Khub to settle down and get some of the bugs ironed out, we’re adding some more bits to Khub and changing some others.

So what’s coming up? Well, the first thing to say is a big thank you to everyone who has been feeding back and helping identify both the bugs in the system and areas we can improve. We have been listening and within the parameters of the project have taken steps to address as many of those concerns as we can right now.

There are three elements to the next phase. Networks, public parts for groups and some changes based on feedback.

Networks are a central part of the business model we are pursuing to make Khub more sustainable over time. For a while now there has been a need to allow for other parties using Knowledge Hub, to deliver their own networks and control their own branding.

For example we have a partnership with the Scottish Improvement Service to deliver Khub into Scotland. They would naturally like to brand accordingly but maintain links with the UK community for sharing of expertise and experience.

We have also been working with the Highways Maintenance and Efficiency Programme (HMEP) who are assessing Khub for delivering a network to their specific audience.

Both of these audiences have need of a separately branded and administered set of groups. We are therefore building a layer into the system to allow them to do that.

Public group elements will allow facilitators to make parts of their group open to the public web. In the same way you can currently publish blogs and documents, you will now also have the ability to make other elements public i.e. forums and wiki’s. This would make the information public but commenting or contributing will still require logging in.

This is the part of the next 2 sprints that interests me most. I’m curious about how people will use it. It enables both the creation mini-site’s using Khub functions and the possibility of embedding elements into other sites.

Publishing directly to the web will be possible from open and restricted groups and their functionality will be available e.g. libraries of documents, wiki’s, etc. I can see a number of ways to configure this to deliver services and really look forward to seeing what you do with it.

Finally, there are a few adjustments to your screen. The most noticeable is your home page which will be tweaked to let you see more information in activity streams. Also your invitations will be appearing there soon so no need to look around for them anymore.

The Library and blog areas will be out and listed separately in both groups and in the main area as per feedback from everyone. Seems obvious now you say it.

Our monthly updates to the site continue and recent improvements include improvements to search, additional buttons in the text editor so you can format more easily, fixes to the notifications and work on some incorrect links.

Thanks again for all you help and perseverance in making the site better. We have much better activity now (following a dip post migration from CoPfPS) with 47,000 visits a month at the moment of which just over a quarter are new visitors.

We have had just under 22,000 new registrations since May bringing the total number of registered users to just over 130,000.

That’s it for now. It will take a couple of months for the new changes to come on stream and there will be more comms in advance of that. Just thought you might like to know what’s coming up.

If you want to know more or have any comments please contact me here using the messaging system or email me at michael.macauley@local.gov.uk

Mike