Moxie Breaks Knowlege Spaces Customer Portal Into Widgets

Enterprise Social Networks: Must-Have Features Guide

Companies that provide online support via the Knowledge Spaces customer portal from Moxie Software will be able to show bits and pieces of that user experience on their websites with a widgetized update scheduled for release in October.

Moxie announced Monday that it has both improved the core experience of its embeddable portal and broken it into smaller components. The new widgets for functions such as displaying the most frequently read articles from the knowledge base can be embedded in any page without dominating that page. They can be displayed in a sidebar, for example.

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"You don't need to be a stud programmer to embed these," said Nikhil Govindaraj, VP of products at Moxie. "Any webmaster or person with HTML skills can take that and embed it in the website."

At the same time, more ambitious Web developers can take advantage of RESTful APIs to customize these components, he said.

Knowledge Spaces is part of the Moxie Spaces social platform, which offers a combination of workforce and customer collaboration tools and integration with Salesforce.com. Knowledge Spaces is used mostly on external websites but it also can be used by internal contact center staffs. This update also emphasizes escalation options, so users who are frustrated with gaps in the knowledge base can use a click-to-call option to get someone on the phone, for example.

The widget option gives website operators new flexibility, but Moxie also has been working on improving the integrated portal experience. Search has been enhanced with new "faceting," showing users how to narrow their search by product or category to find the information they are looking for, and "term boosting" to home in on important keywords, according to Moxie.

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