You know the feeling: all the red bubbles, pings, and alerts that greet you when you log on in the morning. Before long, it’s lunchtime and you’ve spent time putting out what seems like a hundred fires. It’s hard to know what to work on first, and you scramble between systems to find what you need. To make things worse, you haven’t even had a chance to dig into that big project you promised yourself you’d work on.
Information overload is a communication problem
The information overload you’re experiencing is probably a communication problem. It’s relatively easy for dedicated teams to share information among stakeholders within the team because they have their own tools designed to do just that. These same systems make it exponentially harder for information to move across teams, which leads to misalignment, duplicated effort, and–yes–information overload.
You may think about communication as real-time activities: sending a message in a chat app, sitting in a meeting, or walking over to someone’s desk to check in. But communication happens every time information passes from one person to another.
And every time information passes from one person to another, there’s an opportunity for that information to become knowledge: the stuff that makes folks even better at their jobs. Especially in hybrid and remote workplaces, this means that a lot of the work of communicating is done while reading or watching information that’s previously been created. Why not make it easier for that information to transform into knowledge?
Guru: improving communication, deleting information overload
Transforming information into knowledge is pretty much Guru’s whole thing. Guru is designed to be your single source of truth across teams and functions. Companies use Guru to capture and share important information (and keep that information accurate) all while reducing the strain of information overload and helping keep people engaged and productive.
Instead of different teams piling up a bunch of documents all over the place and hoping people can figure it out if they ever have to work together, everyone knows the most critical, up-to-date knowledge lives in Guru. No mess, no stress, no overload. And we’re updating our software to make it even easier to fight information overload!
Announcing announcements!
One of the biggest challenges companies face is keeping employees on the same page when it comes to company-wide initiatives. With Guru’s announcements feature, it’s easy to send information to everyone on your Guru team and make sure they’ve seen it.
We’ve learned a lot from our customers that use Knowledge Alerts, and we’re renaming that feature to announcements because we’ve seen how it’s an effective way to flag the most important information that people need to know. When you send an announcement, team members will be prompted to read the Card (either in Guru, Slack, or Teams) and acknowledge that they’ve read the information. You can then get a report of who’s read the Card and make sure everyone’s on the same page. Send announcements to individuals, groups, or your whole team on Guru.
Guru has a long history of using this feature to send company-wide announcements! Guru’s Knewsletter (knowledge + news–get it?) is a Card with a biweekly round-up of important information that matters to teams across the company. This is especially important during times of rapid change. Life in the tech world moves fast–policies change, strategies shift, and everybody wants to know the rules on bringing visitors (and dogs!) to the office.
So from product updates to operational changes to reminders about company perks and holidays, the Knews keeps everyone connected to the same goals. That’s why sending an announcement for the Knews Card–and asking people to verify that they read it–is meaningful for us. It’s a way for SMEs to spread knowledge, employees to see what’s most important, and managers to make sure that everyone on their team understands company-wide initiatives. Everyone wins!
A more valuable dashboard experience
In order to make it even easier for people to see the most important company-wide information at a glance, we’re updating the dashboard in the Guru web app with a new section showing announcements that have been sent to all members of your Guru team.
Just log into Guru’s web app, go to the Home page, and you’ll see the new dashboard highlighting the most recent announcements that have been sent to the “all members” group in your Guru instance. It’s a quick reference for employees to rally around what’s important, in real-time and without all the noise.
Navigating Guru’s web app just got easier!
There are times when you need to dive deeper into your company’s shared knowledge. Getting oriented to a project in flight, adapting to a new role, or understanding an updated team structure involves looking at information across multiple Cards, stored in Collections and Boards.
That’s why we’re releasing a new navigation experience that makes it easier to see where information lives in Guru. A familiar left sidebar and nested navigation helps users see not just Cards, but where they’re located in your knowledge structure. It’s simpler to browse and easier to consume information. And now every Card has full breadcrumbs that show exactly where that Card is located in your knowledge structure.
We’ve also added the ability to pin Collections to your left sidebar so that people can customize their browsing experience (and never lose that handy Collection again). Pinning Collections is a great way for employees to customize Guru so they can find what they need, faster. And don’t forget about Favorite Cards and Boards! People can choose Cards and Boards to add to their Favorite lists and further customize how they find information in Guru.
Guru (still) works where you work
One of the great things about Guru is that it gives people options for finding the information they need to be awesome at their jobs:
Use the extension over your web apps: For quick-hit answers and guidance on daily tasks, Guru’s browser extension sits right on top of the apps you and your teammates are already using. See how to put in for that well-deserved vacation right over top of your HR system!
Find and capture information from chat apps: Slack and Teams are where work happens, and Guru is right there to help. Get answers, capture information, search Guru, and verify Cards without leaving your company’s chat app. Helpful hint: check out the new Home tab in Guru’s Slack app for a cheat sheet of everything you can do with Guru + Slack. More info on the Home tab in the Guru Community!
Take a deeper dive in the Guru web app: Sometimes you want to carve out the time to do some deeper reading. Collections and Boards in Guru are a great way to see grouped information and make it easier to see the big picture behind your company’s collected knowledge.
Guru math: information + communication = knowledge, managed
When you solve the communication problems that lurk under the surface of collecting and sharing information, you strike a serious blow against information overload. Guru keeps teams aligned around the most important information with announcements, provides a variety of ways to search and browse information, and even gives people options to customize their experience based on what’s most important to their individual roles.
Best of all, Guru is designed to be easy to use for leaders, admins, and employees. With Guru as your single source of truth, leaders can be confident that their teams are rowing in the same direction, admins can easily grant access to stored knowledge, and employees can do their day jobs with confidence–and without information overload!
That feeling? It’s information overload.
You know the feeling: all the red bubbles, pings, and alerts that greet you when you log on in the morning. Before long, it’s lunchtime and you’ve spent time putting out what seems like a hundred fires. It’s hard to know what to work on first, and you scramble between systems to find what you need. To make things worse, you haven’t even had a chance to dig into that big project you promised yourself you’d work on.
Information overload is a communication problem
The information overload you’re experiencing is probably a communication problem. It’s relatively easy for dedicated teams to share information among stakeholders within the team because they have their own tools designed to do just that. These same systems make it exponentially harder for information to move across teams, which leads to misalignment, duplicated effort, and–yes–information overload.
You may think about communication as real-time activities: sending a message in a chat app, sitting in a meeting, or walking over to someone’s desk to check in. But communication happens every time information passes from one person to another.
And every time information passes from one person to another, there’s an opportunity for that information to become knowledge: the stuff that makes folks even better at their jobs. Especially in hybrid and remote workplaces, this means that a lot of the work of communicating is done while reading or watching information that’s previously been created. Why not make it easier for that information to transform into knowledge?
Guru: improving communication, deleting information overload
Transforming information into knowledge is pretty much Guru’s whole thing. Guru is designed to be your single source of truth across teams and functions. Companies use Guru to capture and share important information (and keep that information accurate) all while reducing the strain of information overload and helping keep people engaged and productive.
Instead of different teams piling up a bunch of documents all over the place and hoping people can figure it out if they ever have to work together, everyone knows the most critical, up-to-date knowledge lives in Guru. No mess, no stress, no overload. And we’re updating our software to make it even easier to fight information overload!
Announcing announcements!
One of the biggest challenges companies face is keeping employees on the same page when it comes to company-wide initiatives. With Guru’s announcements feature, it’s easy to send information to everyone on your Guru team and make sure they’ve seen it.
We’ve learned a lot from our customers that use Knowledge Alerts, and we’re renaming that feature to announcements because we’ve seen how it’s an effective way to flag the most important information that people need to know. When you send an announcement, team members will be prompted to read the Card (either in Guru, Slack, or Teams) and acknowledge that they’ve read the information. You can then get a report of who’s read the Card and make sure everyone’s on the same page. Send announcements to individuals, groups, or your whole team on Guru.
Guru has a long history of using this feature to send company-wide announcements! Guru’s Knewsletter (knowledge + news–get it?) is a Card with a biweekly round-up of important information that matters to teams across the company. This is especially important during times of rapid change. Life in the tech world moves fast–policies change, strategies shift, and everybody wants to know the rules on bringing visitors (and dogs!) to the office.
So from product updates to operational changes to reminders about company perks and holidays, the Knews keeps everyone connected to the same goals. That’s why sending an announcement for the Knews Card–and asking people to verify that they read it–is meaningful for us. It’s a way for SMEs to spread knowledge, employees to see what’s most important, and managers to make sure that everyone on their team understands company-wide initiatives. Everyone wins!
A more valuable dashboard experience
In order to make it even easier for people to see the most important company-wide information at a glance, we’re updating the dashboard in the Guru web app with a new section showing announcements that have been sent to all members of your Guru team.
Just log into Guru’s web app, go to the Home page, and you’ll see the new dashboard highlighting the most recent announcements that have been sent to the “all members” group in your Guru instance. It’s a quick reference for employees to rally around what’s important, in real-time and without all the noise.
Navigating Guru’s web app just got easier!
There are times when you need to dive deeper into your company’s shared knowledge. Getting oriented to a project in flight, adapting to a new role, or understanding an updated team structure involves looking at information across multiple Cards, stored in Collections and Boards.
That’s why we’re releasing a new navigation experience that makes it easier to see where information lives in Guru. A familiar left sidebar and nested navigation helps users see not just Cards, but where they’re located in your knowledge structure. It’s simpler to browse and easier to consume information. And now every Card has full breadcrumbs that show exactly where that Card is located in your knowledge structure.
We’ve also added the ability to pin Collections to your left sidebar so that people can customize their browsing experience (and never lose that handy Collection again). Pinning Collections is a great way for employees to customize Guru so they can find what they need, faster. And don’t forget about Favorite Cards and Boards! People can choose Cards and Boards to add to their Favorite lists and further customize how they find information in Guru.
Guru (still) works where you work
One of the great things about Guru is that it gives people options for finding the information they need to be awesome at their jobs:
Use the extension over your web apps: For quick-hit answers and guidance on daily tasks, Guru’s browser extension sits right on top of the apps you and your teammates are already using. See how to put in for that well-deserved vacation right over top of your HR system!
Find and capture information from chat apps: Slack and Teams are where work happens, and Guru is right there to help. Get answers, capture information, search Guru, and verify Cards without leaving your company’s chat app. Helpful hint: check out the new Home tab in Guru’s Slack app for a cheat sheet of everything you can do with Guru + Slack. More info on the Home tab in the Guru Community!
Take a deeper dive in the Guru web app: Sometimes you want to carve out the time to do some deeper reading. Collections and Boards in Guru are a great way to see grouped information and make it easier to see the big picture behind your company’s collected knowledge.
Guru math: information + communication = knowledge, managed
When you solve the communication problems that lurk under the surface of collecting and sharing information, you strike a serious blow against information overload. Guru keeps teams aligned around the most important information with announcements, provides a variety of ways to search and browse information, and even gives people options to customize their experience based on what’s most important to their individual roles.
Best of all, Guru is designed to be easy to use for leaders, admins, and employees. With Guru as your single source of truth, leaders can be confident that their teams are rowing in the same direction, admins can easily grant access to stored knowledge, and employees can do their day jobs with confidence–and without information overload!
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