Staff directories benefit from cross-linking
Categorised under: Intranets, James' articles
Staff directories (internal phone directories) can be much more than just a way of looking up contact numbers. In any large or complex organisation, they can also provide a way of ‘navigating’ through the relationships between staff, business units and locations.
One of the key conclusions from examining successful staff directory implementations is the importance of providing extensive cross-linking within the directory.
These cross-links allow staff directory users to find the information they need, even when the first search doesn’t uncover the right contact.
Linking within the staff directory
The key concept is this: never leave the user with a ‘dead end’. Instead, links should always be provided to further information, related details, or other potentially useful features. This allows users to explore the staff directory, making it much easier for them to find required information.
The screenshot shows an example of this type of cross-linking. In this case, links are made from the staff profile page to details on the organisational units that the staff member belongs to.
[CM Briefing 2008-13, read the full article]
James Robertson is the Managing Director of
3 Comments:
Great post. I completely agree with you. We saw this in our old people directory too. Regrettably it was replaced by a less-linked one. We’re working on getting the more cross-linked people directory back. Another example of cross-linking is ‘people > expertise’. We added that in our old version too. That gave very interesting results. This can also be extended outside the company. The internal directory then becomes CRM-ish too.
Have you had widespread use of the “expertise” functionality? If so, what kind of organisation do you work for?
(I ask, because it is hard to find examples where expertise directories have succeeded, and we would often recommend against them for that reason.)
Sorry for the slow response… Yes, we rolled it out in our company and it was a big success. It died away when we rolled out our new intranet. But we’re looking into reintroducing it soon.
I work for a large company that engineers, manufactures and sells copier/printer/scanners. Email me and I’ll tell you more!