Air France Customer Case

Air France: Better sharing in projects and improvement of communication

• Market: Transports
• Need: Better sharing in projects and improvement of communication
• Solution: Project Management and Communication
• Products: XWiki OpenSource

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Air France wasn't using open source at that point, and the search for a wiki solution allowed the exploration of this path. XWiki responds to numerous uses. His other strengths are the rights management, its flexibility in terms of creating real applications (create polls, FAQ, News...) and also the management of the skins, very effective. (Julien Revert, IT service Air France)

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Context

Communication within a group such as Air France / KLM is essential for its performance. Thus, establishing a diffusion device which combines both speed and flexibility can prove to be an optimal project management strategy. Moreover, the size of the company, the team diversity and the multitude of projects within it requires finding means to enable collaboration, increase transversality and sustain synergies. 

Wikis at Air France / KLM

55 wikis have been installed on the intranet of Air France and 3 others on the common intranet of Air France / KLM. 50 % of the wikis are dedicated to "projects" and 50% to "publishing": 

• The former are destinated to the use of project teams (IT, AMO ...). They allow all members of the same project (5 to 200 people) to easily exchange information about it. Each wiki project is based on a model (including among others: news, FAQ, navigation menus, specific pages to administer some parameters of the site ...) which can be modified as needed. 
• The latter are used to disseminate information. They are driven by different user categories: Player, Editor, Administrator, Technical Administrator. 

Achievements

Beyond the establishment of XWiki OpenSource, several developments have been made: 

• Development of a specific authentication module for SiteMinder, coupled with Alfresco (navigation panel, upload ...); 
• Creation of 3 major skins, respecting the graphic chart of Air France; 
• Setting of the native XWiki SQL search engine and of Google Box, searching only in a given wiki; 
• Creation of forms, in order to manage the forum nicknames, the FAQs related to computer components and to projects forms; 
• Development of various applications, such as the one for the reporting management of the activities of different services, or the one for server management. 

Benefits

The immediate benefits are: 

• An increased reactivity for updating the sites, without deadlines or publication workflow when it is not necessary; 
• A much larger exchange between different areas of expertise and also a better visibility on things achieved in the company. 

Wikis in numbers

• 10000 page views per month;
• 2000 unique visitors per month;
• 2 to 100 different contributors according to the wiki;
• From 20 to 1000 pages per wiki, 0 to 10 new pages per day per wiki. 

There is also a blog

A blog for COMEX Air France (where each of the 12 directors has dedicated space for blogging) was also created. All Air France employees can respond to messages through comments. This blog is averaging over 150,000 page views per month, 45,000 unique visitors, with spikes of 4200 visits per day.