Planning the Intranet IV

This morning I finished building the WSS Webserver we will use to build our intranet on. To be fair, it was very straight forward and did not gave me any issues aside form the speed, as I was working on a VM copy of the real server.

I made a virtual copy of the live server, to do a test run of the set-up. I used the VMware converter which is simple to use, and gives me an exact copy of the live server. I used this to complete the setup and configuration. This way, if any problems appear, I am aware of them and can prevent them from occurring on the live machine.

I did however encounter one small issue, which is completely my “fault”. I did not check in advance how to set up the email configuration for outgoing and incoming mail. The server is a standalone installation, not part of a farm, and I believe the WSS server, although standalone, should be able to benefit from the UK exchange environment for the mailing purposes.

Another thing I now have to have a look at is the way we will “upload” the custom applications we will be building. My best guess is that we will set up a site in IIS for each which we will link to from within the WSS site. However, I would have to have a look on how this can be done. Shared folder, Frontpage extensions, don’t know yet. We will be developing in wither visual studio, or on the VS Web developer express edition, and I’m not 100% sure what is the best way to publish the applications we build in there.

Planning the Intranet III

For about 5 years I have been working with IBM software. Mostly using Lotus Domino and Notes, designing applications. However I also looked at other technologies, like Websphere and DB2.

I have recently switched (well, I’m still switching) to comparable products from Microsoft. Mainly becasue the company I work for made the decision to stop using IBM for their internal mail and databases.

I do however believe that IBM, known as Big Blue, a big and slow organisation, was ahead of Microsoft concerning intranet software and ease of development back in the day’s they launched Websphere. I have been looking at an article on their website, that states that in 2006, their Intranet was listed in the Nielsen Norman Group Report: Intranet Design Annual 2006: Year’s Ten Best Intranets.

I never heard of that report before, and headed straight over for a look: http://www.nngroup.com/reports/intranet/design/. The report is for sale. 224$ and its yours. For me that is too expensive, and Im sure that my boss (who is likely to leave soon), would have a good laugh if I walk over to ask him for the money!

(reports from previous years still cost about 200$, which I still find very steep!)

However, it gave me a good impression what points to look at for our Intranet:

Some of the key areas for which best practices are presented in the report are:

• Company and industry news
• Integrating internal and external information sources
• Editorial control of the intranet homepage
• Keeping the intranet up-to-date
• CEO blogging
• Employee and department weblogs
• Onboarding of new employees
• Consistent navigation
• Multilingual intranets; supporting international employees
• Multimedia and video on intranets
• Data visualization
• Web 2.0 features on intranets
• Community
• Polls
• Collaboration tools and discussion boards
• Internal wikis
• Employee self service
• Search
• Governance
• Development process for intranet redesigns
• Web analytics for intranets
• Staffing of intranet teams; where they report in the organization
• Updating and maintaining standards and guidelines for intranet design
• Intranet branding
• Promoting new intranet features
• Staff directory and employee profile pages
• Corporate calendars
• Personalization
• Customization
• Alerts
• Working with external design agencies

These points are things (call them features) they look at when evaluating intranet sites. I believe this to be a very complete list, and I’m sure that in a company our size (just looking at our office in Spain, we are about 300 people) can and will have to remove some of the points. Either because of difficulty of implementation (read: cost), Irrelevance or plain Overkill.

It looks like we have a Feature Checklist, with which we can start planning!

Intranet budgets and staffing

Planning the Intranet II

Seems like someone in the company has read the post about the intranet re-design. We received communication that a complete organisational layer will be disappearing! This was actually what I hoped for because I firmly believe in flat layered organisations. From what Ive seen in different companies, is that flatter organisations tend to embrace employee empowerment, are quicker in their decision making and more flexible in fast moving/changing markets (like the IT business we operate in).

I also believe that this will enable me to design the intranet in a much more useful way. The platforms we implemented lately are web based platforms to enable and improve both horizontal and vertical communication. My biggest fear was that with the classic org-chart the company has here these platforms would not be used to the fullest. Especially when I received the first ideas from management, in which they actually wanted to implement the full structure of the organisation in the intranet design.

As it looks now, I’d have to go back to the drawing board, which I’m happy with, because now it looks like we can design a modern intranet, that will actually enable cross-team communication and combine that with a sound knowledge management strategy.

Planning the Intranet I

As we are currently about to start implementing a sharepoint environment, this also implies that we will have to plan the Intranet.

Currently we do not have any. Well, we have the intranet site of our English company headquarters, but that is hardly used, and does not interact with us. Meaning that we cannot add our content, links to our tools, etc. The Sharepoint implementation will give us the possibility of having our own intranet site. This is, I believe, very important. Mainly because being an IT company with a lot of different teams, spread over different floors using only email as a way of “digital communication” is … say… a bit outdated (Heavy understatement). This is especially true if you know that most problems we experience internally are due to communication problems (either lack of, incorrect or simply non-existing).

The intranet could change that. Could, I say, because I believe that if not planned and managed correctly and across the board, an intranet can cause more problems than it was designed to resolve.

Management manages this company in a very typical style, you could really apply the machine metaphor to this one! Top-Down and in very linear streams. It is really hard here to make different dept. managers talk with each other and even more if they have to work together.

Lately there is a lot if buzz about 2.0 technologies, and how they can benefit communication outside work, but also in the office. Examples are company wiki’s, facebook-style people profiles etc.

I am now looking into planning the whole new environment. Not because I’m asked to, but because “I can see the cloud hanging above me, and don’t feel to wait till its raining”… Call it being pro-active (but I will dedicate another post to that;) ).

Personally I would like to make sure the intranet will give us these communication advantages and I believe that is also has to be future proof. My biggest fear is that the intranet ends up to be absorbed by “the Machine”, managed by a few upstairs who only care about their specific parts/departments or tools.

I see that the modern organisation is flat, as flat as possible without interfering with operations. If you look at these new communication technologies, you see that these are enablers for this. Maybe they even push organisations is this direction. The problem is: “how to apply modern tools in a company whose management thinks in an old-fashioned way”