Web Community to Reinforce Interaction
Intra/Extra/Internet Solution for Trade Union of Education in Finland (12.6.2001)

Trade Union of Education in Finland OAJ has opened an intranet/extranet solution to improve interaction and to speed up communication between its decision-making bodies, committees and local representatives. The service containing community functionality and integrated with the Union’s existing Teamware Office™ Library was built by Teamware on the Teamware Pl@za® platform.

With more than 107.000 members, OAJ is the largest member organization of the Confederation of Unions for Academic Professionals in Finland AKAVA. The Union represents teachers of various school levels and in institutes of learning, ranging from day-care center teachers to lecturers in universities and vocational school teachers. It has a strong regional and local network.

OAJ wanted to enhance its member services by launching an intranet/extranet service for its decision-making bodies and representatives.

- Our new Web service will speed up internal communication and, therefore, make the representative tasks of the Union more effective. Our decision-makers can communicate over the Internet regardless of the time or the location, says Development Manager Anders Rusk from OAJ.

OAJ’s intranet/extranet system has been built on the Teamware Pl@za platform. It has been personalized according to different user groups. At the initial stage it includes the major decision-making bodies and committees as well as the employees of the central office. In the autumn 2001 the system will expand to cover the local trustees and representatives and in a year there will be a total of 5000 users, when the system will cover regional and national teacher associations.

The service consists of general news and information pages that can be accessed by all the dedicated users and that are updated daily from the central office as well as the closed SIG’s (Special Interest Groups) of different user groups. The SIG’s include for example discussion groups and shared document folders. Additionally the system is a fast feedback channel from the ‘field’ to the central office.

Each user has his/her own IBC (Teamware Interactive Business Card® ), where they can save information useful to other members. Also through the IBC it is possible to contact the member in question by simply clicking his/her contact information and sending him/her an e-mail or an SMS message.

Through the new system important documents, such as minutes of the meetings, different announcements, press releases and statements are easily accessible to the users, because the Union’s existing Teamware Library has been integrated with the new system.

- This has improved the information distribution enormously when we no longer depend on postal services, but can offer the information to our members in real time - 24 hours a day, says Anders Rusk.

Teamware has also started to renew the OAJ’s public Web sites. These will also be built on the Teamware Pl@za platform.

- The updating of the Teamware Pl@za sites is made extremely easy. By bringing also the public Web site under the same structure with the internal sites we will be able to utilize the same content for the intra/extra- and Internet simply by defining access rights for different users.

About Teamware
Teamware Group develops, markets and supplies software products and services designed to facilitate human networking and make communities prosper. Teamware is a wholly owned subsidiary of Fujitsu Limited, a leading provider of Internet-focused information technology solutions for the global marketplace. It operates through Teamware Interactives and sales offices in Europe and USA as well as the Fujitsu network worldwide.

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