Most collaboration and ECM systems offer tolerable out of the box profile templates. Having recently been involved in a project around this, I would note the following:
- Work with users to design profile pages rather than just dumping a template on them.
- One issue is the profusion of profile pages across multiple systems. Ideally you want a single place where profile information in managed by the user, that may then be visible in different ways in different applications. Master data mgt innit.
- Some of the fields will depend on the nature of the businss that you are in. i.e. In a project-based organisation, listing people's previous projects is key. In a sector where credentialling is important (e.g. medicine) you'd want to focus on qualifications.
- Spend some time thinking about how the data in the profile gets into the profile. The more data that has to be manually added by the user, the less likely it is to get done.
- The current trend is to work towards automatically adding relevant information from other systems into profiles. This removes the issues around the manual addition of data but requires an investment in systems integration.
- Think about different levels of profile access for different user groups. As a user, I may want to share a small number of things about myself with everyone but a greater number of things with a smaller number of people.
