-James Surowiecki , Fast Company

Marqui my first Impression

Just like any good geek I like to dig right into a service or software package to see what surprises it holds for me. Geeks usually portray this type of behavior and we only go to the manual when needed, if your lucky enough to have one. But some people are not as technically blessed and many people either want or need to read the manual before using a product.

So when I evaluate a product, I also evaluate the documentation and look to see if the author has created examples of how functions are intended to work.

As I reviewed the online demo of Marqui I quickly clicked through the different tabs which contained functions that on initial inspection looked to flow well and were laid out in a way that a typical computer user would understand. A question did arise about a function in one of the tabs, I loaded the online help file and was impressed. So often today companies race to put a product together and skimp on the documentation which is beyond aggravating when you have spent your hard earned dollars on a advanced program or product. What I found on the Marqui demo was a concise explanation of the tool and a real world example on how to use it.

Wanting to test a theory, I had my wife take a look at the function and had her read the help file. Folks she has been a stay at home mom since we were married 10 years ago, but used to work at a major travel firm in Japan and has not been around modern business software tools. As she clicked through some of the other functions she mentioned it would have been real nice to have this tools available when she was in the workforce as it would have eliminated mounds of paper and increased productivity.

Case in point, one of the functions in the console tab is called Task Manager. This function is designed in such a way that a office staffer can create a document that needs to be reviewed at several levels before it can be approved for release to the general public. The creator loads the document onto the content management system and initiates a approval task to his superior. Upon initiation the superior will get a e-mail that their is a task for him or her to act on. Opening that task in e-mail will load the CMS Console allowing him to review approve/disapprove the document and add notes. If further review is needed by a superior the task can then be re-assigned to the next level. This keeps the approval process flowing and allows for quick changes to be made in order to get the document on the street.

As I dig deeper into Marqui over the coming weeks I will definitely refer back to the documentation. On a scale of 1-10 I think they have scored about a 8 in there online documentation. I did notice a couple of referral links that did not re-direct perfectly so I deducted a couple of points for that. It is important for companies to insure that all links in their online documentation take them to the intended link. The only thing I could see that could use improvement in the task manager section would be to develop automated routing rules for standard documents.

Most organizations go to great lengths to develop approval chop chains, most organizations use a folder with the document tucked inside to route it through the chop chain which is time consuming and wastefall of resources. Most approval chains are well established and do not change from day to day so introducing a chop chain routing rule in the task manager would be the icing on the cake. Or even being able to create one on the fly.

You can get more information about Marqui at www.marqui.com and if you are interested in becoming a developer for Marqui drop me a line at geek@geeknewscentral.com as I have the direct line to people who count at Marqui. I will ensure you get a call back. For those companies sitting on the fence about a Content / Communications Management System make sure you check back here often as I will be reviewing all of the features of the Marqui CMS platform. [www.marqui.com]

First Impression : Gender Blinder