UW Madison Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center

Community Design

Community Collaboration

UW Madison Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center launched an internal collaboration community appropriately named the Bioenergy Hub, used to connect University of Wisconsin Madison and Michigan State University researchers.

7Summits was approached to design and implement this community on Jive Social Business Software. Over 400 members utilize this community to check out the Center’s new publications, find meeting materials and reports, locate and learn more about researchers and staff, and see what’s being discussed by colleagues. The availability of this information combined with custom visual design and configuration ensure that the Bioengery Hub complements and encourages the level of collaboration desired to support ongoing innovation.

Customizations for Enhanced Usability

7Summits created enhancements to the Jive Software platform to accommodate member activation and ease of use. A key element of success here involved integrated their existing LDAP server into Jive’s authentication process. This means that members can use a common username and password from their legacy system to access the community. Next, we made it even easier to have a profile on the community by providing the ability to sync profile information from legacy systems into the new community. Both of these customizations allowed users to begin collaborating immediately within the community without having to build additional profiles or accounts. Cool.