University Customized Knowledge Management ...

University Customized Knowledge Management System (KMS) Abdel Nasser El Bast1, Waseem Kharfan1, Bassam Hussein2, Majd Ghareeb1, Mohamad Raad1, Dept. of {1Computer and Communication, 2 Industrial} Engineering Lebanese International University, Beirut, Lebanon Email: {abdelnasser.bast, waseem.kharfan, bassam.hussein, majd.ghareeb, mohamad.raad,}@liu.edu.lb

Abstract — The fundamental difference between regular, ordinary information and knowledge is that the latter comprises actionable data; that is data with practical values which can be acted upon. For this reason, knowledge management has evolved throughout the years to become an integral aspect of modern corporations and organizations as it contributes to the growth and development of these enterprises. This paper proposes the implementation of a customized knowledge management system that will be deployed and integrated as part of an existing university management system that is currently in use at the Lebanese International University. This ultimate goal of such a system is to aid in the accomplishment of administrative and academic processes more effectively and efficiently. Keywords: knowledge management; process management; project management; task management; file sharing; link sharing; knowledge base; knowledge article; feedback discussions.

I. INTRODUCTION In any organization, ministry, institution or university, collecting knowledge has always been considered an important success factor as it generally saves a lot of time and money. It also helps in archiving the most valuable information relative to the organization, thus reducing the size of redundant stored data and optimizing retraining time and efforts. These requirements have made managing knowledge a necessity for any enterprise [1]. Knowledge Management (KM), by definition, is a “discipline that promotes an integrated approach for identifying, capturing, evaluating, retrieving and sharing all of an enterprise’s information assets. These assets may include databases, documents, policies, procedures and previously uncaptured expertise in individual workers” [2]. Moreover, KM aims to extract the most beneficial advantages out of knowledge resources by providing the optimal conditions to evolve performance, innovation and collaboration among employees, which consequently leads to a significant improvement of an organization’s competitiveness in the market [3] [4]. A Knowledge Management System (KMS) is an IT-based system used in an organization to manage knowledge through creating, capturing, storing, sharing and publishing information that is extensively used within that organization. It is crucial for business sustainability and continuity in a rapidly

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changing and evolving global environment [5]. In today’s organizational environments, a KMS is a valuable asset that plays a major role in the improvement of the quality of service, employee performance and communication, as well as client satisfaction. It also serves as a basis for conducting audits and self-assessments [6]. Traditionally, paper-based documents were considered as the primary means for saving and managing knowledge; however, the processes of creating, editing and using them effectively took considerable time and effort, especially in terms of data indexing and retrieval. Inside each institution, there are huge numbers of exchanged messages and post-it notes that are densely connected, rapidly changed and relative to each other in multiple ways, which further complicate the processes of information extraction and data retrieval [7]. The fast evolution of computer and communication technologies helped in the creation of automated knowledge management systems that usually tend to face a lot of the disadvantages of the old-fashioned paper-based documentation. These systems, if designed properly, are supposed to help any organization in managing all of its information with simple, quick and efficient means that will reduce employee time wasting and efforts to store, forward and retrieve knowledge. However, and despite their value-adding objective, not all the KMS projects have been successfully applied in enterprises of different domains. The first critical characteristic of some existing KMSs is that they are usually system-dependent, which means that they have been created for a specific system and needed to be completely changed to meet the requirements of other systems, leading to difficulties in their portability. In addition, some KMSs have been developed without proper planning, design coordination, performance indicators and benefit measurements, which badly affected their expandability and durability [8]. In this paper, we propose a KMS to be applied at the Lebanese International University (LIU), and to be integrated as a part of the University Management System (UMS) currently deployed at LIU. The next sections provide detailed information related to the functionality and design of this system. Section II provides the system description while section III describes the primary services provided by the

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system along with its quality attributes. Section IV presents the overall design of the system. Sections V and VI finally provide recommendations on future and potential enhancements of the system along with concluding remarks. II. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION To generate design concepts for the system, several knowledge management systems adopted at some of the world’s top enterprises were investigated. The main examined concepts were the basic services that such systems provide, as well as the benefits received by the companies upon applying a knowledge management system. Of main importance also was the graphical user interface provided to users and how it simplifies the processes of sharing knowledge and using it effectively within an organization. Three systems in particular have heavily influenced the approach to design the LIU KMS. These systems are Atlassian Confluence, Microsoft Yammer and Asana. Following the detailed exploration of the mentioned systems, and after categorizing them according to their advantages and disadvantages, clearer ideas regarding the design of the LIU KMS were formed. The features related to project and task management were exceptional in all three systems, which helped in focusing heavily on this service in our system, bearing in mind that most of the processes at LIU, whether administrative or academic, are in the end a set of projects, mini-projects and tasks to be carried out by administration and faculty members. The social aspect depicted in these systems added a new dimension to the user experience. Employees in organizations were enjoying all the knowledge management processes, as they were able to interact with each other professionally. This motivated us to present the discussion feature in almost all of the services of the LIU KMS, in addition to giving users the opportunity of sharing files, links and knowledge bases and articles to elevate knowledge management at LIU to a whole new level. As team members, we benefited from our work in LIU to make sure that the system planning meets the specifications and quality measures of the currently deployed infrastructure. The team is managed by experienced faculty with a long record of industrial and academic experience in such projects. The system will serve as a complete management platform that allows the allocation of resources on an as-needed basis, the identification of skill gaps and the determination of what knowledge assets the university has accumulated. The LIU KMS will be designed to be as systemindependent as possible, in order for it to be adaptable with a diversity of requirements and specifications. In other words, slight modifications to the existing database will make the system applicable by any other university or enterprise without any conflict, rendering it highly interoperable. On the other hand, the system will be a support to the current UMS in the university, which means that it will take advantage of the already deployed infrastructure and it will only need minor effort and budgeting to be installed and run. Furthermore, the system will be supported with feedback and discussion forums related to specific missions and tasks,

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which will help in error-tracking and enhancement of the system in the future.

facilitate

the

III. MAIN SERVICES As part of the LIU UMS, the developed KMS will potentially include, and not be limited to, the following main features and services: • Process and Project Management Service: Members or teams working on projects are assigned tasks at any time throughout the duration of the project. People are tagged by their names and their tasks are categorized into types that are related to processes created by the managers. Such processes are various administrative and academic procedures that define and clarify the sequence in which the tasks are performed, and provide the members with additional knowledge resources to help them accomplish their missions. Moreover, tasks are linked with a due date from the calendar to specify the deadline time. As a result, project and task statuses vary with time (e.g. New, In Progress, Accomplished, etc.) and they are reported back to the project manager who is consequently able to monitor and control the progress of a project and its relative tasks with ease. Project members can also discuss the overall project and task progress by exchanging comments between each other and with the project manager so that everyone is involved in tracking the development and accomplishment of the project. • File and Link Sharing Service: Collaboration between the organization members, even when not working on a specific project or task, is enhanced by allowing them to share files and web-based links. Users can upload a variety of file types, such as word documents, PowerPoint presentations, images, PDFs, etc. to share and discuss them among each other. Also, files related to a particular project or task, are accessible by the relative team members through this service. Additionally, users can share any web content among each other, such as blogs, news, videos, tweets, etc. They can also discuss these topics by commenting and replying on each other’s posts. • Knowledge Base Service: This feature basically represents a database for storing documents that contain solutions and particular practices to address common problems and requests. Through a built-in text editor, users can create documents that explain certain procedures or solve a specific problem, then save these documents to the Knowledge Base and share them with the rest of the users. These documents may contain screenshots to simplify the presented solutions. Moreover, each document is tagged with labels to ease the searching process. IV. SYSTEM DESIGN The LIU KMS consists of many web pages that are distributed among the different services. These pages were developed using the Adobe Dreamweaver software, in which

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the basic web programming and scripting languages (HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript and jQuery) were used. Once the site is launched, it will be hosted on an Apache server. As for the database building and manipulation, MySQL was adopted. A. KMS Dashboard After the user successfully logs in to the system with his/her private credentials, the main dashboard will appear and the user can select one of the available services. The dashboard is shown in Fig. 1 below.

Fig. 3. Process Management Controls

For a manager to create a process, he/she clicks on the ‘Create Process’ button, and the form displayed in Fig. 4 opens in a popup window. The manager gives the process a title and types in a brief description, then selects whether the process is of administrative or academic nature and estimates the time needed to complete the process (in days). Finally, the manager uploads a group of resource files and clicks the ‘Proceed’ button to move into the next step.

Fig. 1. KMS Dashboard

B. Process and Project Management When a user selects the Process and Project Management service, he/she will be directed to the service’s main page, shown in Fig. 2 below, to select one of the two available subservices.

Fig. 2. Proces and Project Management Dashboard

1) Process Management Process management is a service provided exclusively to users with ‘Manager’ permissions for them to create and manage processes. These processes can be either administrative procedures such as human resource, public relations and management operations, or academic routines like course transfers, course syllabi preparation and exam schedule arrangement.

Fig. 4. Create Process Form

The manager is then presented with a form to develop the steps necessary to carry out the process. This form is shown in Fig. 5 below. Any number of steps can be filled, and upon clicking the ‘Create’ button, the process is saved as an HTML page along with its corresponding steps and resource documents.

When a manager enters the process management service, a list of previously created processes is displayed as shown in Fig. 3 next. As shown, the manager has access to the process details and can view the process steps, in addition to the process resources, which are a group of files and documents that are related to the process itself. The manager can also edit and delete a process.

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Fig. 5. Process Steps

2) Project Management Project management is a service related to process management. It allows managers to create projects and tasks, and link these with the already created processes in the system. The aim of this relation between tasks and processes is to provide a team of members working on a project with an organized and well-defined scheme to perform their tasks accordingly. When a user enters the project management service, a list of previously created projects is displayed as depicted in Fig. 6 below. As shown, the user can display the projects he/she has created by clicking on the ‘My Projects’ button, as well as the projects he/she has taken part in by clicking on the ‘Shared with Me’ button. The user can view the project details, overall status and the tasks included in a certain project. Note that only users with ‘Manager’ permissions can create, edit and delete projects, as well as assign tasks to other members in that project.

Fig. 7. Create Project Form

After creating the project, the manager is able to assign tasks to the corresponding project members, through the task management form presented in Fig.8 below. As shown, the manager gives the task a title and a description, specifies the members working on it, chooses one of them as the task supervisor and finally selects a due date for the task. The manager can optionally add any files related to the task at hand by clicking on the ‘Upload’ button. And just as in the case of project creation, all involved members will be notified once the task has been created. Note that the supervisor’s main responsibility is to inform the manager of the corresponding task progress by starting and finishing tasks on behalf of other members.

Fig. 6. Project Management Controls

To create a project, a manager clicks on the Create Project button, and the form displayed in Fig. 7 opens. The manager gives the project a title and a brief description, then tags the members who will work on the project and finally specifies the start and end dates. Once the project is created, all participating members receive a notification informing them of the project’s creation.

ISBN: 978-1-4799-4130-8 ©2015 IEEE

Fig. 8. Create Task Form

All of the created tasks and their relative details are displayed in the project’s page, where only the manager can edit and delete them. This is shown in Fig. 9 below.

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Fig. 9. Task Management Controls

clicking on the ‘My Files’ button, in addition to the share operations that he/she is tagged in by clicking on the ‘Shared with Me’ button. The user can also view the details and download the files included in a share operation. Note that users of all permissions can create file sharing operations, and only these creators are capable of editing and deleting them. Furthermore, all tagged users can participate in a discussion regarding the shared files.

Team collaboration is depicted in the Task Discussion feature, which is accessed from the form presented in Fig. 9 above. Through this feature, the manager and the respective task members can discuss the task progress by exchanging comments, which helps everyone involved to keep track of the task and make sure it is accomplished on time. The Task Discussion page is shown next in Fig. 10. Task information is displayed at the top, members’ comments are displayed in the middle, and then the logged in user is provided with a text area to share his/her feedback on the task at hand.

Fig. 12. File Sharing Controls

To create a file sharing operation, a user clicks on the ‘Create’ button, and the form displayed in Fig. 13 opens. The user types a title and a brief description, then assigns several labels to the operation. These labels are used to aid users when searching for the files within the system. After that, the user tags the members he/she wants to share the files with and finally uploads the file(s) to be shared. Once the operation is created, all participating members are notified.

Fig. 10. Task Discussion Page

C. File and Link Sharing When a user selects the File and Link Sharing service, he/she will be directed to the service’s dashboard page, shown in Fig. 11 below.

Fig. 13. Share Files Form Fig. 11. File and Link Sharing Dashboard

When the user selects the File Sharing option, he/she is then directed to the service’s main page shown in Fig. 12. The user can view the share operations he/she has created by

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Link sharing is almost the same. A user of any permission can create a Link Sharing operation, and specifies the link to be shared by entering the corresponding URL. Discussion is also featured in this service.

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D. Knowledge Base When a user selects Knowledge Base service, he/she will be directed to the service’s main page, shown in Fig. 14 below. The user can view the knowledge bases he/she has created by clicking on the ‘My Knowledge’ button, in addition to the bases that he/she is tagged in by clicking on the ‘Shared with Me’ button. Each knowledge base includes several knowledge articles that support the knowledge base with detailed information regarding a certain issue or procedure (IT-related processes, academic procedures, etc.). Users of all permissions can create knowledge bases, and only these creators are capable of editing and deleting them.

allows users to upload ready-made articles by clicking on the ‘Upload’ button.

Fig. 16. Knowledge Base Articles

V. FUTURE ENHANCEMENTS Future knowledge management tools will collect and evaluate data for every member in an organization, in addition to providing the right information to the users who actually need it, helping businesses to rapidly get to insight [9].

Fig. 14. Knowledge Base Controls

To create a knowledge base, a user clicks on the ‘Create’ button, and the form displayed in Fig. 15 opens. The user types a title and a brief description, then assigns several labels to aid in the search process and selects the members to share the knowledge base with. Once the base is created, all involved users are consequently notified.

One of the potential future enhancements of the system presented in this paper is to design and implement a Chrome extension that allows access to the system as a browser application. Also, a mobile application of the system could be developed to be compatible with the different mobile operating systems (Android, OSX, etc.). With respect to the addition of more services; as shown in the system’s dashboard in Fig. 1 above, services such as Meeting Arrangement and Statistical Reports can be added to the system. The main idea of the Meeting Arrangement service is that it would allow a group of members to hold a live meeting by filling in a meeting agenda template, which includes the meeting’s objectives, the discussion points as well as the action items that can be extracted from the meeting and transformed into projects and tasks. Regarding the Reports feature, it would allow the integration of some Google API applications that provide statistical data relative to the work of the users within the organization. Such statistics would provide further insight into the organization’s processes and aid administrators in improving the efficiency of the work. VI. CONCLUSION The overload of data is increasingly making active knowledge management essential for organizations, due to KM’s facilitation of decision-making capabilities, stimulation of cultural change and innovation and making learning routine [10].

Fig. 15. Create Knowledge Base Form

All the members involved in a knowledge base can provide their knowledge by developing knowledge articles. A sample is shown in Fig. 16. The KMS allows users to write their own knowledge articles through a built-in text editor. This is done by clicking the ‘Create’ button. At the same time, the system

ISBN: 978-1-4799-4130-8 ©2015 IEEE

The importance of knowledge management systems in modern organizations was the main motivation to design and develop the system for it to be applied at LIU. Top knowledge management systems applied at some of the world’s leading companies have been studied and analyzed in order to form a clear vision of the system, and extract the required characteristics and services for the KMS to be useful and beneficial once integrated within the current LIU UMS.

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The LIU KMS will enable administrative and faculty members to perform their operations and accomplish their tasks and processes in a more efficient and interactive manner, through the different knowledge management features provided by the system. REFERENCES [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

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