User Console customization is often an overlooked opportunity on the K1000, yet it can be a very powerful tool when used to its full potential. The text on the User Portal log in page can be edited by any administrator with the appropriate access to the Settings Tab on the K1000. While we can add just plain text into the User Console we also have the ability to add in HTML code. So, anything you can put in an HTML webpage you can place on the User Console for your Users to see before they log into the K1000, this is located under Settings ->General Settings.

With the ability to use HTML code on the User Console main page, and Knowledge Base, we can add links to the Company Newsletter which could be a knowledgebase article; we might add notifications on the Console that are related to known issues, such as an important server outage. Putting this information on the Console login page lets users know that we are aware of an issue minimizing the likelihood of creating additional tickets for a known issue.

Some other ideas we've seen in use include:

• Video Log from the organization leadership
• New product training
• Company news
• Service level agreement
• News aggregators, and much more.

Be creative!

The abilities of the portal are limited only to your imagination, so brainstorm and experiment. Talk to your users and find out what’s useful to them. When we engage and inform users effectively, helpdesk calls decrease. Your  could be as valuable as an extra team member could be– letting the users self-service on some common needs can really free up some time for your team to focus on other projects and priorities, instead of telling someone how to change the toner in the printer…again…

So, here's my challenge to you- Leave YOUR examples in the comments. I'll show you mine, if you show me yours :)
Let's see what you guys are doing, and how you've leveraged the open nature of the Console. Haven't done it, but wish you could? Post that too!

Here I've embedded a little message window that they must click before even seeing a login:

Here I've added a pretty little weather and blog (RSS) feed:

Here I got myself a nice little twitter feed widget:

Not too exciting on here, but on my box, this is a scrolling marquee sign:

I'd venture a guess that these aren't the most creative things out there- what are YOU doing?