The Landscape Partnership

About The Landscape Partnership

The Landscape Partnership was established in 1986 and provides government bodies, local authorities, developers, charities, private companies and landowners with services in landscape architecture, urban design, environmental planning and ecological and arboricultural consultancy. With a team of over 50 experienced landscape architects, urban designers, environmental planners, co-ordinators and scientists, landscape managers, ecologists, arboriculturists and graphic designers, The Landscape Partnership undertake projects in all aspects of environmental design and planning and have offices in the UK and Ireland.

The key objectives

As the company expanded, it had become apparent that all offices had become insular and, consequently, business processes, resources and other communications were less efficient and in some instances, inconsistent. They needed a cohesive solution that would unify the business internally and allow all staff to easily update and retrieve company information from a single, centralised repository.

With this in mind, The Landscape Partnership approached netXtra with the idea to deliver a secure online wiki solution that would offer a user-friendly company knowledgebase and central repository for all electronic business information and a centrally managed company image gallery. The solution needed to be secure, and yet easy and straightforward to access. It also needed to allow staff at different levels of seniority, to gain appropriate and bespoke access to specific items of information - settable by designated high level system administrators.

The final solution

Given the specific requirements of The Landscape Partnership, the final solution delivered was a tailored version of the standard netXtra Knowledgebase. The netXtra Knowledgebase is a secure online and centrally accessible repository of easily creatable and editable information pages, by anyone with access rights. As a wiki-based solution, it offers them complete versatility, and provides all offices with a central location for common information. It also provides an easily accessible and controllable area for business critical information, such as company policies and quality procedures, as well as a focal point, internally, for company news articles.

The Knowledgebase's familiar wiki editing tools have given every member of staff, in all 6 offices, the power to instantly update any item of information to which they have access, as well as keep informed by email of any updates to articles for which they are 'subscribed'. Its WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, makes amending, posting, commenting or adding new articles easy and means that their staff required no specialist training or system knowledge.

The final solution

Given the specific requirements of The Landscape Partnership, the final solution delivered was a tailored version of the standard netXtra Knowledgebase. The netXtra Knowledgebase is a secure online and centrally accessible repository of easily creatable and editable information pages, by anyone with access rights. As a wiki-based solution, it offers them complete versatility, and provides all offices with a central location for common information. It also provides an easily accessible and controllable area for business critical information, such as company policies and quality procedures, as well as a focal point, internally, for company news articles.

The Knowledgebase's familiar wiki editing tools have given every member of staff, in all 6 offices, the power to instantly update any item of information to which they have access, as well as keep informed by email of any updates to articles for which they are 'subscribed'. Its WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, makes amending, posting, commenting or adding new articles easy and means that their staff required no specialist training or system knowledge.

Summary of the features and benefits

• Allows staff, secure access to a central repository of articles and other electronic information
• Knowledgebase Wiki enables users to add new or amend existing articles using a familiar WYSIWYG editor
• Tagging, makes searching for articles or images quicker and easier
• Comments facility allows users to remark on, as well as edit the article itself
• Access control allows administrators to set every user's access
• Change Log that provides links to the most recently updated articles
• Pages can be viewed by popularity, enabling users quick access to the most topical articles
• A summary list of 'My Articles' helps each user keep track of their own articles, or articles they have edited
• A 'Recently Read Articles' link list and 'Articles Yet To Read' link list keeps all users informed of new article status
• Complete version history that enables the user to view older revisions of each posted article
• Article archive that allows scheduled archiving of old articles
• 'Roll-back' facility that allows the replacement of current articles with older or archived versions
• Email notifications that informs any user of updates to articles for which they are 'subscribed'