ISGsites Delivers Collaboration Workspaces for Association Committees, Chapters, SIGs, Voting and Executives

ROCKVILLE, Md., Dec. 16, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Associations can now provide online workspaces to working groups such as committees, chapters and special interest groups (SIGs) to make it easier for them to collaborate, manage documents and network with other members of the group. ISGsites, a new suite of modules from ISG Solutions, takes advantage of Microsoft SharePoint 2010 technology and the cloud to provide associations with a cost-effective way to provide five types of workspaces:

• Committee Workspaces – Committees tasked with preparing an official document, such as a set of bylaws or industry standards, can have a website with shared resources, document versioning, automated workflows for getting feedback and approvals, and project management tools that help track tasks and action items.
• Chapter Workspaces – Each chapter can have its own workspace with a branded home page and content management tools that help members keep their own content up-to-date. Chapter leaders can manage their own roster.
• Special Interest Group (SIG) Workspaces – SIGs can have a workspace with a document library and other shared resources, discussion forums, blogs, surveys, news feeds, and a searchable member directory. Meeting web parts let members see announcements, agendas, and who else is planning to attend.
• Voting Workspaces – A website where members can nominate themselves or others for leadership roles in the association. The association's business rules for creating a slate can be built in. Rich profiles of each candidate, drawn automatically from iMIS, help members make an informed decision. Voting can take place online, with tallies stored in committee records.
• Executive Workspaces – Dashboards provide business intelligence to association executives, delivering the most important data at a glance: memberships, dues, meeting registrations, exhibitor revenue, and more.

ISGsites is built on top of Microsoft SharePoint 2010, and draws on SharePoint 2010's capabilities to deliver a full range of collaboration, document management and reporting capabilities in each workspace. The association can decide which capabilities to include in their workspaces. Options include document libraries, group calendars, member directories, blogs, wikis, discussion forums, announcements, and much more. Dashboards are available in each workspace to provide up-to-date reports on the statistics that matter to each group. MySites allow group members to develop rich, association-centric profiles that support networking professionally and confidentially within the context of the association and the workspace.

ISGsites is tightly integrated with iMIS, drawing member information directly from iMIS and then sharing that information with SharePoint, so the right people automatically have permission to the appropriate workspaces – without creating extra work for association staff.

"We developed ISGsites as a cost-effective way for associations to leverage all the member and event information stored in iMIS, and use that data to help manage websites created with SharePoint 2010," said Charles Oakley, CEO of ISG Solutions. "With ISGsites it will become substantially easier for association working groups to find the information they need when they need it, get their work done faster and achieve greater satisfaction."

ISGsites is delivered as a hosted solution using cloud infrastructure and Software as a Service (SaaS) technology. Associations pay a predictable monthly fee – there is no large, up-front investment. This allows associations to save money, reduce their investment in IT infrastructure, and get web initiatives deployed faster.

About ISG Solutions

ISG Solutions develops, sells and supports software for associations. ISG's flagship product is ISGweb for iMIS, a suite of Web-based software modules that extends iMIS, allowing associations to take advantage of the information stored in their iMIS database to provide better service to members on their websites. ISG also implements and supports the iMIS association management software, and is one of the largest Authorized iMIS Solution Providers (AiSPs) in the world. More than 300 clients have chosen ISG as their technology partner. ISG Solutions is headquartered in Rockville, Maryland, and maintains a website at www.isgsolutions.com.

Contact: Phil Varady, ISG Solutions, 301-519-3776 x148, [email protected]

SOURCE ISG Solutions