Online Presence: Full Office Site, Private Office, or Desktop?
  Until we actually began to use the Office Suite on the idi servers, we had no idea how useful this would turn out to be. In fact, we were downright skeptical.  Now all the data on awardees we work with and/or are tracking is in the same place and always right up to date. Also by all of us working from the same data source system, our internal decision-making process is more efficient and a lot more timely: the small firms appreciate that!
     I find particularly useful that we can now easily identify and initiate tracking of other SBIR firms doing interesting work.  It is a bonus that many of these are in other industry space - that we probably would not have come across. A useful new option for us.
     I know we were a hard sell. Thanks for hanging in there and nudging us to try using this. Now I don't know what we'd do without it
VP, New Business Development: Fortune 100 corporation.
All those with any form of Account Status - or even simply Site-Registered Users - have assigned space on the idi servers and those with any form of Account Status have Included in the Corporate Annual Retainer Accounts held by large and mid-sized firms serious about effective engagement of the SBIR talent pool SBIR is a secure, online Office Suite dedicated explicitly to supporting the various data and information needs of those Corporate personnel having SBIR-STTR interest and/or responsibilities.  To ensure that the data in the system is always current and can be regularly updated, the Corporate Office suits on idi servers.
  • Each person provided office access by that Tech Seeker will be assigned their own personal space in which they can search, analyze data, provide data input and request various services of idi - special reports, company profiles etc
  • The common location permits and extensive capability seamlessly
    • to share pertinent information and data and
    • variously to collaborate across the Corporation with others in the firm working on SBIR related projects
  Tracking: This very useful - and popular - part of the site provides detailed information in various forms on the full inventory of all SBIR-involved firms having in-place connection with the Office Holding Corporation OR in which Corporate personnel have expressed interest
  Database searching online: This area of the site provides two distinct, but relevant, search capabilities
1.  Self-directed searches within the full complement of awardee profiles, awards issued patents, keywords and phrases etc
2. The means to request Custom Researches on your behalf by idi personnel using the far more powerful and comprehensive offline relational databases.  These searches may include simple By-Company Profiles,  limited Analytical Reports and Request for Alerts by reference to keywords/key-phrase indicators.  These requests will be tracked by reference to Points System but only when there is serious over-usage will numerical limits be imposed
  In-House 24/7: This area supports materials transfer and communications within the primary group of Users in the Corporation and to the System Managers.  This includes working materials with added comments capability, set-up of ping alerts®.   Particularly useful are capabilities which enable multi-author document development related to SBIR bringing-into-use projects, an effective threaded message system as well as instant messaging to those the systems shows to be online
  Document Depository:  Set up primarily to provided archival function, all documents stored in this area will be fairly readily searchable and downloadable.  Input on documents stored in this area will not override the original but must be saved with a new name.
  ExPreS Projects: 
Handled in this area of the Office are development of all the documents and related materials along with in-system communications related to
1. Targeted Seeker specific events - inknowvation@work® and Brains Trust® and
2. iP3 participation - SBIRConnect; FutureThinking and SBIRChallenge - collectively perhaps usefully understood as a private sector funded version of SBIR ... with some extra elements built in to take full advantage of the special condition of working with SBIR-involved firms.