Signing in to Blissbook has been a pain in the butt for our non-SSO (Single Sign-On) users for a long time. It’s been a pain because Blissbook is password-based and… get ready… we never ask users to create a password. Users get a link in their invitation email that signs them in to their Blissbook automatically. However, if they ever sign out or use a different browser, they can’t access their Blissbook without a password. The workaround is to tell Blissbook you forgot your password and the system emails you a link to set up a new one.
We want to make it easy to access Blissbook. If your company’s policies are hard to access, they aren’t protecting your company. That’s bad!
There are 3 basic options for a computer system to confirm a user’s identity:
The user and computer system know the same secret, such as a password, PIN, etc. Ideally, this secret is impossible for others to guess.
The user has a physical object in their possession that verifies their identity to the system, such as a key, a bank card, a phone/computer/key fob with a secret token, etc.
The system knows a physical characteristic of the user, such as a fingerprint, eye iris, voice, etc. This is known as biometrics.
Blissbook has traditionally used option #1. We’re switching to #2.
When a user tries to sign in to Blissbook, they’ll enter their email address. If that email address is in Blissbook, we’ll know who they are and what organization they belong to.
They’ll then get an email with a special link that they’ll click to sign in to Blissbook. Users will remain signed in for 60 days unless they explicitly sign out or switch web browsers.
This means your employees never have to create or remember a password to access their employee handbook. They just need access to their email account!
Happy Spring, faithful Blissbook reader! It’s already in the 70s here in Atlanta as we celebrate our latest release of goodies. This update touches both parts of our tagline: protect your company and show employees you care.
Search and a Table of Contents
Published handbooks got a big upgrade a few weeks ago with a new table of contents that includes links to all of your policies, not just the major chapters. We also added search, so handbook readers can easily find anything they’re looking for, whether it’s in a hidden section (the Nitty Gritty) or not. Just one more thing to help make sure you never hear “I couldn’t find the policy” ever again.
Better Branding
Part of showing employees you care is presenting information to them with the same amount of effort and attention that your company puts in to presenting information to customers. We’ve got 2 updates to help you do that.
You can now upload a custom favicon (the little icons in your browser tabs) so everything about your Blissbook can be “on-brand”.
A lot of our customers like the ability to add images to their “guiding principles” section (or whatever they’ve turned that section into). Since the core values section is basically the same format, we thought our users might like to add images there as well. Now you can! Check out the Rocket Whale Blissbook to see it in action.
Easy Sign In
This one is a doozie. We changed the way signing in to Blissbook works, so that our users’ employees don’t have to create or remember a password. This one deserves a longer explanation – read that here.
In January, the Blissbook team survived 2+ feet of snow in DC and at least 7 minutes of flurries in Atlanta in order to bring you some new Blissbook goodness!
Here are the updates for early February!
Upgraded Print & PDF
For a long time, we’ve supported printing a handbook by applying special styling that gets applied if a user printed a handbook from their browser. This didn’t work right for some older browsers, the formatting wasn’t always perfect, and there was nothing in the interface that let users know they could print. Those days are over!
All users now have a “Print to PDF” option when viewing their handbook. This opens or downloads a pdf file (depending on your browser) that can easily be printed. This works across all browsers.
Admins also have a link at the bottom of their CMS, next to “view”, that they can use to print the handbook. You can also “print” a preview, although it gets a DRAFT watermark.
The print/PDF handbook respects all access control, so users printing a handbook will only be able to print the content that they’ve been given access to.
If you take a look and notice that your print version looks funky, please let us know so we can fix it!
Happy New Year! We’ve had a fun and busy winter so far. Our new customers (one with 2500 employees) are pushing our engineering team hard to support new functionality, and we’re rocking it!
Here are the latest updates:
Employee ID
You can now include an employee ID in your import file. That ID will stick with an employee throughout their life on Blissbook and is included in all reports and exports. If an employee’s email address changes, they’ll still be tracked as the same person. We’ll be migrating even more functionality over to this paradigm as we move along to ensure your data in Blissbook matches how you work in the real world.
SFTP HRIS User Sync
Linking your employee list in Blissbook to your HRIS means adding and removing employees happens automatically. However, some HRIS systems are not API-friendly. That means we can’t program something to link the two, even if we wanted to.
Now, if you have one of these HRIS systems, you don’t have to worry! We can work with your IT team to set up an automatic and secure file transfer. First up is the SFTP format. FTPS (notice the slightly different acronym) is coming very soon!
Signature Image
Does your CEO want to put a real signature on that welcome message? You can now attach an image as a signature so that it shows up exactly how you’d like. Check it out on the Welcome chapter of the Content tab.
Our next update will be a big improvement to the print version of your handbook. Stay tuned!
Last Friday, we talked about a new beginning for Blissbook. Our upcoming release marks the start of that new beginning, so without further adieu, here are the newest Blissbook features. Look for this release to drop within the next 48 hours!
Overhauled Sharing and Access Control
Handbooks now have their own sharing and access control that’s separate from your organization. You can still share something with your entire organization, but you don’t have to.
So go ahead, share your Blissbook with your lawyers or with the HR pro you met at the last SHRM meeting. It’s easy!
When Blissbook launched in late 2013, we felt pretty good about what we knew and what we were launching. We combined our knowledge of the policies and procedures industry that we acquired over 1-2 years of research with the momentum we saw behind engagement initiatives and the growing sentiment that company culture is something companies should invest in.
It made a lot of sense. Unfortunately, the real world often doesn’t make sense. In the real world, people don’t act rationally. It may seem like they do from the outside, but if you dig deep enough, you’ll find it’s usually an illusion.
Looking back with that knowledge, we realize we knew a lot less than we thought. I’d say we were at the beginning of the “I’m an expert” phase shown below.
In late 2014, after an intense 6 months of startup engineering education, we decided that we knew nothing. Or, at least, not enough. Not only that, we were burned out. So although we remained committed to serving our existing Blissbook customers, we weren’t sure what to do next. We took a break and in addition to taking on some consulting work with Home Depot (our team has deep, real expertise in designing and building software), we built a completely unrelated product in a totally different market.
Blissbook, if you didn’t know, is built by the amazing folks at RW Code Lab. By keeping our “day jobs”, we make sure Blissbook remains independent. This is very important to us because we always want to make sure Blissbook’s users long-term interests are our first priority.
Sometimes we’ll post about topics on the RW Code Lab blog that we think would be interesting to our Blissbook audience. Today is one of those days.
Change management in the enterprise is hard! We have an interesting take on it (boats and sharks?!), so head on over to the RW Code Lab blog to give it a read.
It seems like every month there’s a new story of a company being hacked. Earlier this year it was Anthem / Blue Cross Blue Shield and last year it was Target (who recently settled for $10mm) and Home Depot. The most recent incident was a couple weeks ago when the US Government’s Office of Personnel Management was hacked.
This one hit home for me. Many years ago, I passed all the necessary tests to be a Foreign Service Officer. This included a thorough background check, which includes where I’ve lived, where I’ve traveled, any drugs I’ve ever taken, and extensive personal information of my friends and family. It’s all now in the hands of the Chinese government and whoever else they sell/give it to. Oops.
Think this problem is going away? Not a chance.
Now, although it’s up to IT/IS departments to keep information safe, there is something HR can do to help their employees prevent identity theft.
Have them place a security freeze on their credit report.
Pace Salsa seemed to have had a pretty epic social media failure over the weekend, which the Huffington Post covers pretty well. The twitter conversation contains a ton of intrigue, including:
Robots
Salsa blackmail
Fake Twitter accounts
Employees trying to get others fired
Pretty great, huh? Too bad it was totally fake! But for training purposes, let’s pretend it was real. The obvious lesson is not to automate your Twitter account. Twitter is simply another communication channel and you wouldn’t automate your responses to support emails, would you? Didn’t think so.
Josh, a new dad, is suing his employer, Time Warner, for discrimination because they won’t give him the same 10 weeks paid leave that they give new moms and new adoptive parents (dads included). His claim is discrimination. If these other classes of people get that benefit, why not him?
What’s the Law Say?
The Family Medical Leave Act requires an employer to allow 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a new child. If both parents work at the same company, those 12 weeks can be split any way the parents choose (but they’re still capped at 12 weeks). Employers may also require employees to exhaust paid leave options first before unpaid leave kicks in. Employees can elect to do this anyway if they so desire.
There is no law that says employers must provide paid leave to employees. That makes this case purely about discrimination. Or is it?
