Wednesday 27 November 2013

Born Global - update

Following on from our recent post about the Born Global 2013 competition, we just received the results of the regional heats....  and KnowledgeSmart was awarded one of the 10 places up for grabs in the grand final!

10 firms from across the West of England go head to head in Bristol on 09 December, pitching to a panel of business, investment and marketing experts, Dragon's Den style.

We'll have one day to recover, post-AU! :)  Will let you know how it all goes...

R

Saturday 9 November 2013

KS Wish List

Here's a sneaky peek at the latest KS customer wish list ideas, which have been included in the next software release. This will hit the live site in the spring.  In no particular order..

Task 1
I’d love to have the ability to store some of my group comparisons to avoid have to re-create them all the time.  I know I can save them as PDF’s, but they’re always changing a bit, and I check them as requests for info, or I want to look at one or more. (NB this relates to the Results > Group Comparisons page).


Task 2
Is it possible to have 3 options for the wording that goes on the email invitations? For example one for staff, one for interviewees, plus one other? Add more than one option for custom text on the Settings > Test Invite page. Maybe add a drop-down with ‘Invite 1, Invite 2, Invite 3’. Selecting the different option in the drop-down causes the different text to display.


Task 3
In the default KS test invite, there’s a “click here” link that points to the video overview of test taking; however, I don’t see any HTML code available to add another link to the default invite. Can another one be added?  Essentially, we’d like to point to our internal information page.


Task 4
Is there any future hope of allowing groups to be shared between Users and Results? i.e. if you create a group or dynamic group on the Users > Users page, is there a way to re-create this group on the Results > Data page (without having to build it again from scratch)?  Maybe ‘import’ popups on the Users and Results > Data pages to achieve this.


Task 5
When an assessment is shown as “In Progress” on the Invites > History page, is there a way to see how much has been done without opening the assessment? i.e. can I roll over the invite and be able to tell how many questions have been answered? Or a percentage complete value?


Task 6
Add an extra setting in ‘Settings’ for customising the test start page.  Allow admins to customise the appearance of the test start page.  Offer the option to enter our own custom text. One of the fields carries the KS default text (from the test intro). Allow admin to choose where this appears.  Another field will be the KS note about tests with a time limit.  Admins also choose where this appears.


Task 7
Is there a way to suppress the usernames from the various graphical reports generated in the Results pages? I’d like to provide these graphs with just the data points themselves.  Make the charts anonymous.


Task 8
Can we add a filter on the Invites > History page, which allows admins to search on the main user list and provide a sub-list of users who have not been sent any invites at all? Add a new item in the filter at the top of the page called, ‘Invite not sent yet’.


Task 9
Add to Dynamic Groups for users/invites/results the ability to filter by status (i.e. Interviewee/Employee/Ex-employee). Add Dynamic Group filtering to Invite History (plus the above new fields).


Task 10
Swap ‘Skip question’ & ‘Request training’ buttons over on the test UI, to help avoid users skipping questions by accident.


Task 11
If the 'Skip question' button is disabled, can you remove the corresponding blue square on the navigator key?


Task 12
Add an advisory which is triggered if a user enters too many answers for pick list question types (not too few). It says: 'This question has a maximum of x correct answer choices'. Otherwise the pick list marking awards zero for too many answer entries, which might be considered a bit harsh.


Task 13
In the admin dashboard, add a new csv export button on the Results > Data page which displays the info from the user data capture pages (at the start and end of a test).  Can we see some new search fields, which allow results to be filtered, based on these user data capture fields? i.e. job title, industry, self rating value, etc.


We are grateful to everyone who provides feedback on the KS user experience. Whether it is an idea for a new admin dashboard feature. Or pointing out occasional bugs and errors which crop up during live testing. Both are hugely valuable to us and much appreciated.  Special thanks to HOK, Cox, Purcell, RTKL, Pennoni and Evolve for the majority of these excellent service improvement suggestions.  We'll keep you updated, as the dev approaches a go-live date.

R

Sunday 3 November 2013

KS Library Update

It's been a busy few months of library updates, but we've made excellent progress this year, keeping everything up to date and moving forwards.

Advanced material, BIM and company standards appear to be the main themes for content this year.

All of the main Autodesk titles are available in 2012, 2013 and 2014 formats. Here's a summary of live titles:


Our newest titles include: Inventor (parts 1-4), AutoCAD Plant 3D (parts 1-4), Revit Structure advanced and Graphisoft ArchiCAD (parts 1-4).  We've also created a French version of our popular Revit Architecture Fundamentals  test.

Here's what we're working on at the moment:

AutoCAD Civil 3D advanced
Revit MEP advanced
Revit MEP fundamentals (metric data sets)
Autodesk Vault
Bentley AECOsim Building Designer
Synchro
Tekla Structures

If there are any topics you would like to see, in addition to those topics listed here, do please let us have your feedback and we'll add it to our rolling list of library updates.

R

Saturday 2 November 2013

Top DAUG 2013

KnowledgeSmart is once again partnering with the team at AUGI for this year's annual Top DAUG skills contest at AU2013.

This year's contest is shaping up to be the biggest ever, with 10 tracks planned for AU delegates.

Here's what we hope to include, using 2014 versions of the software:

3ds Max
AutoCAD 2D
AutoCAD Civil 3D
AutoCAD Plant 3D
Inventor
Navisworks
Revit Architecture
Revit MEP
Revit Structure
BIM

As in year's past, contestants will have just 10 minutes to answer a selection of knowledge-based and practical tasks, covering the main features of each application.

The person who posts the highest score, combined with the fastest time, in each track, will take the prize for their chosen topic. Then we analyse the data from all streams, to crown the overall winner of the Top DAUG contest.

Hope to see you there!

R

Born Global

This week KS presented at Born Global 2013, a competition for businesses in the West to explain why they have the potential to grow overseas.

Sporting a 'Dragons Den' style format, KS CEO Rory Vance attended the auditions in Bristol, going head to head with 5 local businesses, all from different backgrounds and industry sectors, including finance, fashion, music and technology. Presenting to a panel of business and marketing experts, each business had just 4 minutes to present a case for why they have the greatest potential for export success.

From multiple auditions across the region, 10 firms will be selected for the Grand Final on 09 December.

Last year's winner accompanied UK PM David Cameron on a trade visit to Japan, so the potential rewards are significant.

We'll keep you posted when the results from the regional heats are announced later this month...

R