Chatter is our enterprise social network platform, built within Salesforce. It allows you to share information on your work, ask for advice/help on projects, collaborate on initiatives and projects, and more.
Chatter is available for all CES employees. If you do not have an account, or are unsure, please contact the Salesforce Support team for assistance.
Post Suggestions
View Chatter Etiquette Document
- Current work activities – Where (incl. which districts), what, with whom?
- Department Staff updates (what have you been working on over the last week?)
- Shout-outs
- New staff & departures
- Grant awards
- Resources
- Questions
- Food-in-Kitchen
- Personal announcements: babies, weddings, grand-babies
- Collaborative Internal Meetings/Event announcements
- Continued meeting discussions (Meetings without rooms)
- Best practices in districts articles. (May only be on external website.)
- Specific content, including:
- State collaborative agreement. (Under new state legislation.)
Things You Shouldn’t Post
- CPI (Confidential Personal Information)
- Inappropriate content ( eg: foul language, nudity, slander, mentioning other users or employees in a negative way, etc. )
- Things you wouldn’t send in a “Reply All” email…
Examples of Engagement
Here is a list of examples and use cases that can help give you an idea of what you can use Chatter for:
Communicate on a Project or Grant
Currently working on a project with a group of people usually consists of emailing each other back and forth with questions, updates, changes to a document, etc. All of these emails can start to pile up and get lost in your Inbox. If another person is brought on to help, you, and other team members, would normally need to forward emails and documents to them.
With Chatter, you can create a group where all the teams members communicate and share documents. All the information on the project can be found in one place. If other people are brought on to help, they only need to be added to the group and from there they can see all of the team’s activity without the need of going to each member individually to gather information.
What are you doing and what are others doing?
Often times we have no idea what the other people in our department are working on, let alone anyone else in agency. It is important for us to be able to eliminate the silos of communication that often form. Maybe someone else is working on a similar task and could provide you with some information they have already collected or you can both join forces and work on the task together. Perhaps someone else has worked on the same thing in the past and has some useful tools and resources for you to help make your work easier.
But knowing what others are doing, and letting others know what you are doing, is not just about looking for help and resources; it also provides a means of knowing what other departments are involved in. Many of us are confined to just our department, and our own work, and we tend to forget or not think about the bigger picture that other departments are also working towards. By following coworkers and other departments in Chatter, you can now find information on what each department is actively working on and perhaps find areas where you would like to get involved with.
Meetings without a room or time restriction
Meetings are not for everyone. Some people can not justify enough time in their day to attend the meetings, platforms, etc. that they are involved with. Sometimes meetings need to be scheduled last minute because of a topic or issue that has come up, but there is no room or time available for everyone to attend.
Chatter is not a replacement for a meeting, but it does provide a new means of communication that can be used to continue meetings that had to be cut short or for people that could not attend to still have their voices heard.
Know more about the people you work with and find someone to help you or to bounce ideas off of
Chatter’ main goal is to eliminate silos and remove the distance between departments and other agency buildings across the state. The initial piece to that is the employee profile, which all Chatter members need to fill out when they join. The more robust the profile, the more others will be able to learn about you.
Profiles are more useful than just finding out about someone’s likes and contact information. They are also very useful for knowing what skills and experience are available across the agency.
Let’s say you are working on a project or a task and you need to use Excel to setup a spreadsheet to log all the data you are collecting. You’ve used Excel in the past, but are finding yourself getting lost when trying to set up the spreadsheet to function the way you need it to. Asking each person individually if they know Excel and can help you would take a very long time. But in Chatter, you could do a search for Excel and find all the people that have listed Excel as one of their skills or expertise and reach out to them for help.
