From Intranet to Digital Workplace: the City of Lunel speeds up its Digital Transformation

Between the Mediterranean Sea and the garrigue, Lunel is a French dynamic city of the Occitanie region. Known as the capital of « Petite Camargue », it charms visitors with its exceptional living environment and rich heritage with medieval roots.

With an area of 23.9 km² and more than 26,000 inhabitants, Lunel has experienced sustained population growth, with an increase of more than 20% since 1999. Its appeal is due as much to its strategic geographical location as to its lifestyle.

Famous for its Muscat wine, its history, and its strong identity, Lunel combines tradition and modernity.

Two years ago, the City of Lunel started an ambitious digital transformation project: redesigning its intranet and extranet to move on to a genuine digital workplace. The goal was to create a modern collaborative platform, beyond a simple intranet, capable of becoming a central entry point for all local authority employees.

Among the priorities identified were:

• Strengthen internal communication, both institutional and between employees, to facilitate exchanges within the local authority.


• Foster collaboration via workspaces (teams, projects, themes), integrating document management and task tracking features.


• Digitize as many business processes as possible to improve efficiency and traceability.


• Connect the platform to existing business tools (such as CIRIL, GLPI, webmail, etc.) for a seamless and centralized experience.

The solution also had to provide key features such as customizable forms, chat, and videoconferencing to keep users within a single working environment.

Another major challenge was to design a platform accessible to all 600 users, taking into account their mixed uses. About half are field employees with few or no computer skills, while the other half have fixed workstations.

As part of its digital transition, the City of Lunel paid particular attention to its choice of solution. Several criteria guided the decision, including eXo Platform's open source positioning, a determining factor for the local authority seeking technological independence and control over its digital environment.

The platform also impressed with its ability to bring together all the expected uses within a unified environment: internal communication, collaborative work, document management, real-time exchanges, etc. This all-in-one approach is particularly well suited to the needs of a public organization.

Another key point is the ability to deploy eXo Platform on the city's own servers (on-premise), ensuring full control over data.

 

Finally, the implementation of this solution is part of a strategy aimed at restricting dependence on the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Until now, the document database was hosted on network storage spaces. The integration of OnlyOffice into the eXo platform now allows the local authority to benefit from co-editing features directly within the platform, without using the Office suite, thus further confirming its choice for digital autonomy.

The deployment of eXo Platform in Lunel city was part of a gradual and structured process, led by the IT department and developed in close collaboration with employees. The project is managed by the Deputy Director of Information Systems, who ensures the technical consistency of the system, with functional support from eXo.
Extensive work was carried out on the ergonomics and content structure, particularly during the update to eXo 7.0. The home page, dashboard, and all information spaces were redesigned to provide a smooth, intuitive, and visually consistent experience across the whole digital workplace.

The dashboard centralizes key information: news feed, quick access to business applications, personalized shortcuts, etc. The goal is simple: to enable each employee to access useful information in three clicks or less.
The restructured key spaces went live a few days ago. The eXo team was responsible for designing the Communication, HR, and Executive Management spaces, while the IT team deployed the space template to other departments and adapted it as needed.

Each department now has its own information space (top-down communication) and collaboration space (exchanges between employees in the same department), completed by cross-functional and inter-team project spaces.
Several business connectors have been integrated into the platform, including GLPI (already active) and iXBus (digitization of accounting documents, currently being deployed), strengthening the integration of the digital workplace into the local authority's ecosystem.

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