Instant Technologies - Press Room

Challenge: Increase usage of Lotus Sametime amongst employees.

MediCorp Health System has grown from an eight-room hospital in Fredericksburg, Virginia to what it is today, a not-for-profit regional system of 28 health care facilities and wellness services. In the ultra competitive healthcare industry today growth such as MediCorp's is no small feat, and measures have to be taken to maintain communication across the organization. Lotus Sametime was a natural choice for instant messaging since MediCorp was already running Lotus Domino and Notes. The goal of deploying Lotus Sametime was to provide another means of communication so that employees could easily find one another and have instant messaging meetings rather than playing e-mail and phone tag.

As MediCorp deployed Sametime throughout their organization, they experienced certain peaks and valleys of usage and adoption. While powerful, the out of the box benefits of Sametime were not enough to spur immediate widespread adoption of Sametime by employees of MediCorp Health Systems. MediCorp Information System's department actually had to mandate the use of Sametime by their associates.

There had to be a way to give Sametime a bit more functionality and grab the employees' interest. MediCorp believed if it could provide added services on top of the Sametime infrastructure and produce a tool that would benefit all employees who use Sametime, those hurdles of adoption would be overcome.

The Instant Solution

MediCorp discovered Instant Technologies at Lotusphere 2004, where David Russell learned about Instant Agent Framework - an application for rapid Sametime bot development. He then downloaded the demo and was "blown away by its ease of us". Sametime bots that would have taken him months to write using other tools he was able to develop in minutes.

Many network administrators and other employees work in a time consuming environment where they do not have the time required to build a bot from scratch - a process that often takes weeks, or even months. Instant Agent Framework provides a solution that allows administrators to create multiple bots easily in less than an hour.

Easy Installation:

Russell is the only person that actually uses the Instant Agent Framework to develop the bots, but he is the only one that needs to. Installation takes only a few minutes, and the bots he creates are used by a considerable number of MediCorp's employees.

Rapid Development:

After installation, Instant Agent Framework allows for the creation of bots in an wizard like format. There is no programming experience needed. The entire process of creating a Sametime bot - from the installation of Instant Agent Framework to deployment through the Instant Agent Service Loader can be done in as little as a half hour.

"It allowed me to develop multiple Sametime BOTS in mere hours. Thanks to its easy user interface, I didn't have to read any user manuals or know any code - it was easy." - Russell

Flexible Database Querying:

The Sametime bots created by Instant Agent Framework can be configured to display any information from an organization's database in any desired format Sametime supports.

Ease of Implementation:

The fact that the Instant Agent Framework only needs to be installed on one computer also is advantageous. Once the Sametime bot is developed, anyone on the Sametime server can have access to it simply through instant messaging.

Instant Results:

Now that the people at MediCorp had identified a solution the next task was implementing the Instant Agent Framework. According to David Russell, the Sametime bots he created were a hit.

"People like 'cool new gadgets', and it's even better if those gadgets offer a business solution. It was a hit, especially from our Executive Assistants who need to look up information quickly in Notes Databases, and now can even faster with BOT technology."

At MediCorp the most popular bots access their telephone directory, and then another accesses a policies and procedures database that contains everything from what to wear to work to how much patient care an employee can give out.

Russell has also had a number of requests for bots that would run off other systems separate from their Notes/Domino databases. He is encouraged by the fact that MediCorp's associates are thinking of possibilities and coming to him to improve their work environment further through the use of bots.

Russell has even mentioned that when he forgets to turn on a Sametime bot he has people hunting him down to figure out what happened.

"Everyone has noticed an improvement in the time it takes to grab certain pieces of information. I would say [Instant Agent Framework] has helped our Executive Assistants the most." - Russell

Currently MediCorp has over 250 Associates using Sametime, and the Sametime bots created through Instant Agent Framework for quick decision making meetings, general chat, and awareness. Russell also said that when Domino 7 comes out MediCorp plans to deploy new Notes 7 clients to their entire organization. This will put Sametime on everyone's systems.

"We have about eight bots now, and with the entire organization online - I can see many more cropping up!" - Russell