The intranet is not a one-off project. Instead, it must be supported by an ongoing process that ensures that the site continues to be effective. Beyond this, the intranet must also grow to match the ongoing evolution of the organisation that it serves. In practice, there are a wide range of activities that intranet teams should conduct on a monthly basis. This article explores a good number of these, focusing on tasks that will build and nurture the intranet. Monthly intranet activities There are many month-to-month responsibilities for the intranet team. Some of these relate to maintaining the intranet and

Intranet teams need to be clear on where they are heading, and what they will deliver. Typically, this involves writing either a bullet-point list of goals or a 20-page intranet strategy. In practice, the list of goals is too short (and too abstract), while the intranet strategy documents are often wordy but unclear. Neither form works well. What is needed is a single sheet of paper that captures where the intranet is at, where it is going, and what this means in the short-term in terms of actual deliverables. This is the basis for the "intranet concept", a succinct yet

I'm sure I've written about this before, but I'm spending a lot of time at present helping organisations to select a CMS, and other than the sessions to document requirements the single biggest block of time is sitting in on vendor demos. Based on the past few years of experience, here are some tips for vendors on how to present a good session: Introduce yourselves. Start with a brief (!) introduction of who you are and what your product is. Aim to give us some useful background and context for the detail to come. Stick to the script. Follow closely

Intranet redesigns are not small projects. There is a significant amount of design, usability and information architecture work, not to mention the laborious content migration process. What is launched is almost certainly an improvement on the old intranet, but the question must be asked: how much of an improvement? In too many cases, the vast majority of effort is devoted to the intranet home page, the overall information architecture and the page layout. Lower pages in the site are often migrated more- or-less unchanged, with much of the internal structure within sections only slightly updated from the old intranet. This

A very simple but very effective improvement to the intranet is to ensure that all staff login to the site in order to use it. This allows a number of immediate benefits to be offered, as well as providing a foundation for future enhancements. That this is worth mentioning is an indication that many intranets are run on a shoestring, or have grown incrementally over time. These 'ad-hoc' intranets are often supported by a minimal (or non-existent) IT platform with no one positioned to implement these types of core features. This article explores the benefits of implementing staff logins, and

There is no doubt that fuelled by a compelling business need, a portal solution can provide real business advantage. However provisioning a portal when it is a content-managed site that is required, will result in the most expensive website or intranet that an organisation can build. What then should those organisations keen on entering the portal space consider? Using two case studies this article explores portals and seeks to answer this question by taking a look at: the difference between 'portal as a concept' and 'portal as a technology' the types of business initiatives that are well-suited to a portal

Much has been written about the impact of 'email overload', in terms of the productivity cost and impact on attention spans for staff. There is another very real cost of the reliance on email: the duplication of information management activities. 'All staff' emails are often used to send out new policies and procedures, product updates and other changes. These can range from a few paragraph to 50 pages, and it is left for each staff member to keep track of this information. In an organisation of 1,000 staff, this leads to the effort of managing these updates being multiplied by

Most intranets have some form of policies and procedures, typically focusing on authoring guidelines and standards. The question is: are these the right policies to have? In many cases, intranet teams have established policies that they find difficult to enforce, while missing the opportunity to develop policies that will be much more beneficial for both the intranet team and the site itself. This briefing takes a different look at the role of intranet policies, and outlines five policies that all intranet teams should develop. The role of intranet policies Policies and procedures are all too often written as administrative or

Improving the effectiveness of internal communications is often one of the key goals underpinning corporate intranets. In practice, this is often reflected in 'latest news' section on the home page of most intranets. While news on the home page is certainly widespread, the question needs to be asked: how effective is it? This article explores the role of the intranet as a news channel, revisiting some of the assumptions about how best to deliver online news within an organisation. News on the home page News is often the central element of intranet home pages, filling up the central area of

The intranet needs to have a strong brand, a sense of identity that, at a basic level, distinguishes it from the public website and other information sources within the organisation. Beyond this, the intranet brand should be designed to build staff trust, and to convey a clear sense of what the intranet can offer and when it should be used. This briefing explores the role of the intranet's brand identity, as well as outlining how to put it into practice. Lack of identity Too many intranets consist of nothing more than a collection of many different intranet sub-sites, published by