Running an intranet can be a huge and thankless task. All too often, intranet teams feel that they have made little progress towards their long-term ambitions for their sites. While the success levels of intranets vary greatly, there are very few sites that do not contain at least a couple of successes. These successes may be small, perhaps benefiting only one group of staff, or they may be substantial pieces of functionality that support the whole organisation. In either case, it is important to fully recognise these successes, and to communicate them throughout the organisation. Intranet teams should also take

The functionality of the content management system (CMS) is obviously a key deciding factor when purchasing a new product. Equally important is the usability of the CMS. If staff, particularly authors, cannot easily make use of the CMS, then the system will never be a success, regardless of how powerful it may be. The overall usability of CMS products, and their suitability for their intended users, is therefore increasingly closely scrutinised during the evaluation and selection process. One key challenge remains, however, which is how best to define (and ultimately evaluate) the 'usability' of a content management system. While there

The earlier article Three fundamental purposes of an intranet identified that there are three main aspects that must be addressed for an intranet to be successful: content communication activity Content refers to the traditional role of the intranet as a repository of corporate information, while the intranet can also be an effective communications channel, and a mechanism to provide task-oriented tools and systems. The challenge for organisations is ensuring that all three purposes are addressed, for any one in isolation is not enough to build a sustainable and effective intranet. This briefing builds on the earlier article, to explore what

Intranets often focus on one or two key aspects, depending on who is running the site. The intranet maybe established as a communications channel, or as a repository for corporate content. When tackled in this narrow way, intranets often struggle to be sustainable and successful in the longer term. To be truly effective, intranets need to address three fundamental purposes: content communication activity This briefing will explore each of these purposes, and will outline how all three elements are required if the intranet is to be effective. Content The intranet's role as a repository for corporate information is well understood.

The concept of innovation, and the advantages it can deliver, have come to the forefront in many organisations. With organisations as recognising that market opportunities can be generated through business innovation, it is natural to ask whether the intranets that serve these organisations can themselves be innovative. In many ways, it is vital for intranets to innovate if they are to prosper in the long term. As things currently stand, intranets are often seen as 'dull but useful', which can make it difficult for intranet teams to gain the resources they require. Building more innovative intranets gives the opportunity to

Intranets are often invisible tools within organisations. While staff rely on the intranet to help them complete common tasks, the site itself is taken for granted. The intranet team is similarly low in visibility, with little senior management recognition of the team or its role. The net effect is that intranet teams work hard from month to month, but struggle to gain the support and resources required to deliver a truly great site. While this is perhaps a natural by-product of the role of intranets within organisations, intranet teams can do much to increase their level of recognition (and therefore

I'm doing a lot of work at the moment helping organisations select a content management system. One of the key aspects of this is making sure that our clients get to fully understand the strengths and weaknesses of each product, and the vendor demos the major way of achieving this. The first step is to prepare scenarios that outline a "day in the life" of the CMS, and to have these used as a "script" for the vendors. At the end of the session, we then use a very simple scoring scheme for each of the narrative requirements: Score Rating

Search is broken on many websites and intranets. Search results pages are confusing and cluttered, and users can't easily find what they are looking for. It is tempting to think that this is a technology problem. Certainly, if there is a very old or very limited search engine in place, this will need to be replaced with a modern solution. The danger, however, is that it can be believed that simply purchasing and installing a new search engine will solve all these problems. The reality is that search doesn't work 'out-of-the-box', and that there is a small (but vital) piece

When it comes to implementing online forms on an intranet, there is a

Organisations nowadays are complex, diverse and everchanging. Within this working environment intranet managers need to define their place in the organisation. One way to help establish where the intranet manager fits in an organisation is a position description. Position descriptions describe the key or major duties and responsibilities of the position. The intranet manager may inherit a position description with the role or more often intranet managers need to create both the role and a position description. Generally there is a great deal of relevant information on position descriptions available in resources such as books, websites or the human resources