Update November 17, 2010: Since the launch and announcement of the MindTouch Social Intranet with Workforce by Dachis Group we are still seeing coverage trickle in. I’d like to share our most recent mention in the Software Development Times, “Dachis Group, MindTouch build up a social platform“.

Yesterday we announced a new pre-built solution we are calling the MindTouch Social Intranet. This new solution is pre-packaged with most of the more commonly used components for internal collaboration that are not included in our product downloads. It also includes an entirely new application suite: Workforce by Dachis Group.

More Screenshots

NOTE: Workforce by Dachis Group is included with the new MindTouch Social Intranet Solution, but Workforce may also be purchased separately and added to other MindTouch products. Contact us for more information.

Dachis Group is the world’s leading Social Business consultancy. The have a long list of Fortune 500 customers including: American Express, AOL, AT&T, Bud Light, Calvin Klein, Chevrolet, Chrysler…. Through its three main Social Business practice areas, Social Business Strategy, Social Business Engagement, and Social Business Intelligence, Dachis Group helps large organizations become more connected and engaged with their constituents.

Back in January, 2010 Dachis Group adopted MindTouch to power their internal collaboration. Barb Mosher at CMSWire explains it this way:

MindTouch is the base for the Dachis Group’s Collaboratory. The Collaboratory is their internal collaboration laboratory for testing and operationalizing social business environments.

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According to Bryan Menell, Director of the Collaboratory, Dachis got tired of using a number of different applications to support their work (Basecamp was one these applications). He indicated too many logins, too many screens. They wanted to reduce complexity, and as a result increase adoption, a perfect reason for the MindTouch platform.

And so, leveraging MindTouch, they built an integrated project tracking system, issue management system and threaded micro-blogging application. For the most part, there is no major breakthrough application here, it’s all fairly standard capabilities. The key is that it is all integrated into a single platform — one login, one place to work.

Bryan Menell writes briefly about his involvement in creating Workforce at the Dachis Group blog. This new application suite includes:

• Workforce Projects – includes the ability to manage and track almost any type of initiative or project, whether it is ongoing or has a firm start and end date. You can invite team members into your initiative for sharing and collaboration, message them, and manage group task items and key project dates.
• Workforce Comments – brings the conversation into MindTouch rather than using an external tool, which just creates another data silo.
• Workforce Issue Management – a flexible feature set that will track anything that has a lifecycle from a help desk, to bug tracking, or employee on-boarding. All of it color coded for easy identification, and easy to read charts and graphs.

“We are excited to be partnering with MindTouch as they deliver this product,” said Jeff Dachis, founder and CEO of Dachis Group. “This innovative solution was influenced by our own adoption and use of the MindTouch platform and Dachis Group’s Social Business Design thinking along with the extensive workforce collaboration expertise at MindTouch to provide a turn-key solution that delivers immediate and measurable business value.”

This is about providing collaboration in context in order to minimize context switching and maintain user flow states for peak efficiency. Collaboration in context is something MindTouch is uniquely suited for given the ability for the platform to federate systems and applications and rapidly develop applications. 

I was pleased to read about this announcement in GigaOm where Simon Mackie covered the release. Later he tweeted about it as well.

Yes, for the sake of the release it is a mouthful. Workforce by Dachis Group is included in the MindTouch Social Intranet, but Workforce can also be added to other MindTouch products. Meaning, you can buy Workforce independent of the pre-packaged Social Intranet solution.

Expect more news about these new offerings in the coming weeks.