AdUniverse Solution Features

Portal

The portal is the User Interface part of the solution. AdUniverse comes with industry standard portal solution having all the portal features, such as User customizable pages, layouts and page web contents, Full fledged WYSWYG Web CMS, Full featured Control Panel which enables administrators to configure various functionalities and aspects of the portal.

Organization Structure

AdUniverse targets to automate the business process of an Advertisement Agency and to manage the Intellectual Assets being produced during day-to-day work activities performed. AdUniverse thus is able to replicate the whole organization structure of the agency. It is architected in a flexible design to manage people’s profile and set the reporting officer. Thus the full tree hierarchy of the agency is reflected in the system.

Individual Workspaces

In a Social Networking and Knowledge centric environment, each individual entity within the system should have individual and dedicated space where they can store and manage content of their own. The workspace can be treated as the Profile of the entity.

Projects/Jobs

By behavior, Ad agency work environment is very loose and open, thus it is often difficult for the business stakeholders to control and monitor the cost. It is also hard to put any accountability on individuals for certain tasks or deliverables within a required time frame. Also because of employees of the organization usually works in desktop machines without any central storage, the intellectual assets being produced are nowhere centrally kept, managed, secured and backed up.

AdUniverse targets to resolve this business hurdle of any Ad agency, It is a tool by which an Agency can automate its business process and deliver the product in a systematic and controlled fashion. AdUniverse tries to solve this problem without compromising the creativity and innovation of the people that the industry requires. Each assignment or deliverable, in this system is called a Project. A project can be for a Campaign, for a Concept or for any production such as Films, Photos etc. An Account Manager is designated for a project who is responsible for managing the whole activity.

Workflow Controlled Projects

In the system, each project is controlled via an integrated Workflow Engine. All the workflows (or processes) and task details are configured in XML in the system – making it highly configurable and without any lock-in. A workflow is a collection of steps (or tasks) to be executed sequentially or parallely.

AdUniverse is designed to have separate workflows (or processes) for different practices, type of projects, clients etc. Thus the Ad Agency has a highly flexible and intelligent environment by which they can manage the steps of constructing a campaign or creating an ad-work. These set of tasks can be different for different clients for same work – Campaign. Even it can be different for different practices (or can be same).

Pre-defined Processes – AdScience

We understand the Advertisement environment and which steps are to be followed for completing a particular job to be done. Thus AdUniverse is bundled with a number of pre-defined (and, of course, changeable) workflows or processes for creating Campaigns, Concepts or Production deliverables. These pre-defined steps can be treated as templates by which the project or job will be performed and information will be collected. Thus the resources doesn’t have to think what to do and how to do – AdUniverse will guide them step by step.

Workflow Tasks

Tasks are the central piece by the all the work is being controlled and monitored. Each task assigned to a particular user has a defined set of details to be filled in. User also attaches and uploads files in the task. Thus the project job gets advanced and completed.

Tasks once assigned to a user reflects in his/her timesheet also, enabling the user to fill up the time he/she has worked in the organization. The tasks are visible in the calendar as well, so that other users also get to know in which work he/she is currently busy with.

Any actions performed in the task, are broadcasted in the Project Activity Feed as well, making the whole environment truly collaborative, up-to-date and highly informative.

Escalation

Escalation is an important tool to monitor and control a project. AdUniverse is integrated with an Escalation Engine which escalates the information of any task is overdue and not completed by due date. The escalation notification goes by email to the reporting officer. The text of the escalation mail also dynamically editable.

AdUniverse creates the organization Hierarchy in terms of the employees roles and hierarchy in the agency. Thus each employee will have one Reporting Manager, except of the CEO. In the event of a task is not completed in time, escalation mail is fired to the Reporting Manager of the concerned person and to the Account Manager (or Project Manager) of that particular project.

In case the task is still not complete, the escalation is fired to next level of Reporting Officer. And this goes on upto 3 levels.

Project Management

AdUniverse treats each project individually by assigning a team of resources to that job. Each project has a dedicated workspace where all the contents related to that project are accumulated.

There are four main functionalities offered for Project Management in a project workspace – Project Overview, Tasks, Resources, Repository.

Alerts, Notifications

Notification and Alert engine is an integral part of any Task Management system. AdUniverse has a strong Notification engine which enables the system to send or notify users for a wide variety of events. Notifications are sent via EMails to the configured EMail address of the user. The Notification texts are also dynamically configurable.

Some of the events when users get notified are

Task is assigned
Task is completed
Task is overdue
Project is started
Project is completed
Document is uploaded etc

Document Management

AdUniverse comes with full featured Document Management system, some of the available features are -

Upload Document
Edit Document Metadata
Automatic Metadata creation
Editable metadata list
Versioning – Check-Out, Check-In
Preview of all major types of documents
Comments to documents
Tagging
Download, Copy documents etc

Timesheet

It is important for an organization’s point of view that the time spent by employees in office premises can be tracked and monitored. In AdUniverse people are assigned tasks via project processes efficiently, and people are supposed to spent hours for those assigned tasks only. Thus it is also important for the managers and stakeholders to know how much time has been spent in which task and in which project for a client account. AdUniverse timesheet module helps managers in this aspect.

Whenever a user is assigned a task in a workflow process, an entry corresponding to this task is added in the user’s timesheet, the entry starts from the date when the task is started. User can then enter the actual hours spent for that particular task. When the task is completed in the workflow process, the entry in the timesheet automatically gets disabled, thus restricting users to enter incorrect time information.

Control Panel

AdUniverse comes with powerful control panel enabling the administrators control the full portal dynamically. Some of the features and controls this module offers are -

Creating, Managing Users
Creating, Managing Roles
Assigning Users to Roles
Managing Web Site Contents (Web CMS)
Managing Portal Pages
Changing Portal, Workspace branding

For Advanced Users, a few features are also available:

Managing the Server – Caching, Indexing etc
Installing new Applications
Installing and managing plug-ins
Managing corporate password policies for the portal
Managing the Extranet