Like most large companies, we have a company intranet. At Autodesk, we call ours Infosys. Our Infosys consists of the usual information such as divisions and organizations, support, human resources, corporate services.
Infosys also includes an employee directory where an employee can look up another employee's name, phone number, title, boss, etc.
A search for Senior Architect, Brian Mathews, returns the pertinent information about Brian:
I have blanked out the last four digits of his phone number. Please do not disturb him.
Through the miracle of DWF and scripting, we have supplemented our employee information with a feature we lovingly call "the people finder." The office location returned from the employee database is actually a hyperlink to a DWF file. We have a DWF file with the floor plan for each of our Autodesk offices worldwide. Clicking on the hyperlink for Brian's office (i.e., Room 15363) loads the DWF file for the San Francisco One Market facility into the browser,
invokes the Autodesk DWF Viewer, and zooms to Brian's office.
The DWF file also contains hyperlinks that refer back to the employee database. Clicking on the office next to Brian's (i.e., 15348) returns information about the employee that sits there.
I have also blanked out the last 4 digits of Autodesk Collaboration Solutions Director of Engineering Jon Tyson's phone number. Please do not disturb him.
The people finder became so popular that we soon got requests to include other items such as conference rooms and printers. Jimmy Bergmark has an article on how he helped Brian and Brian add support for printers. It is used company-wide. It is great when an employee visits another facility for the first time. We can find people, hotel offices, printers, or conference rooms.
At this year's Autodesk University, Brian Mathews and fellow DWF Technical Evangelist Brian Pene presented a class on how companies can set up their own people finders. Who said good people are hard to find? The materials from that class are available: Download zip file (27MB). Integration of facility information with employee information is an example of how scripting with DWF goes beyond the paper.
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