Intranets News & Articles

Jakob Nielson has just released his 10 Best Intranets of 2012 Report. This yearly report lists what Jakob and his highly regarded team believe are the ten best intranets of the year from submitted entries.

While the report is very useful in many respects, particularly the large number of screen shots, it doesn’t cover what I believe is the most important quality of an intranet: What do the intranet users think of it? 

There are a number of legal issues that intranet managers need to be aware of, and some apply to websites and any application with a web browser even if it is not an intranet.

Let me start by saying that I am not a lawyer and I guess you are not one either, so the information and advice I have set out below needs to be verified with the legal team in your organization. In this column I am only addressing accessibility issues and the use of photographs on intranets. There are many other issues!

When an employee is on a salary, managers don't care about their time. They think it is elastic. This is why intranets perform so poorly.

If you've read any of my previous articles, most notably my opinion on SharePoint, I'm not afraid of throwing bombs on the cherished myths of others. My target today: the governance myth. You know the one I'm talking about, the panacea that's trotted out as the solution to all the problems that crop up when you are trying to manage an intranet. So what do mattress manufacturers have to do with governing an intranet? Please humor me and read on.

Several articles have recently proclaimed the intranet is dead. In an age of activity streams, mobile communications and other forms of fast-moving dialogue, do intranets remain relevant? Analyst firm Forrester Research has released a new report, Intranet Portals: Workforce Technology Adoption 2011, that provides some insight into that question.

As a teenager this Bob Dylan track, released in 1964, seemed to me to capture the changes that were taking place on the political and social landscape. Over the last few months I have started to feel it is more like an anthem for doomed intranets.

Microsoft’s takeover of the corporate intranet has been rapid, and nearly overwhelming. Nearly two-thirds of all organizations (all except the very smallest) in the Western World use SharePoint, in some shape or form (according to multiple surveys).

Despite its most unimpressive start and growth as a second-tier technology just a few years ago – lagging well-behind IBM’s Websphere and other commercial portal and CMS technologies – SharePoint has become the leader of the pack, powering more intranets than any other solution.

While the workforce is increasingly occupied with knowledge work, it is not seen nearly as business critical as production or service delivery. For this reason, many knowledge workers have had to put up with poorly designed enterprise digital services. Executives and decision-makers must learn that “good enough” is just not good enough when it comes to designing digital services for enterprise use.

We currently face a higher education system that is hundreds of years old and stuck in the past. I believe that social intranets may be a key to radically bringing higher education into the 21st century.

Intranets are key to internal communication and collaboration within organizations. The continual evolution of Enterprise 2.0 strategies and solutions has driven functionality and requirements further, shifting how we think about social business and collaboration in our organizations.

The situation gets more complex when your intranet is a global one. Building a successful global intranet is not simply about making your intranet multi-lingual. You also need to take localization and cultural factors into consideration, and manage findability and relevance across channels.

To understand the challenges of implementing a sophisticated, social and global intranet join RivetLogic this Thursday June 23rd at 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern as they discuss how to build sophisticated intranets with open source software.

During this one-hour event you will:

• Review typical ROI and value associated with Enterprise 2.0 intranets
• Discuss strategies for community sharing
• Learn about common globalization challenges
• Explore strategies for managing global content
• Understand how to enhance information findability using Apache Solr

The session will focus on practical examples and lessons that you can immediately put into practice.

If improving your intranet is on the table this year, you can reserve your seat here.

If ThoughtFarmer (news, site) has spent a lot of time over recent months extending the functionality of their Social Intranet Software (SIS) and making it easier to use, then this week they are also making it cheaper with the release of Cloud Edition, a hosted version that comes with all the functionality of the on-premise edition.

A business case for an intranet is like the business case for a bathroom; you can live without them (and use others), but you’re a fool if you do.

On the surface, a social intranet might seem to be just an intranet dressed up in rounded corners and pastel colors and with features such as blogs, wikis, activity feeds, ratings, profiles and tagging. Yet, the difference between a social intranet and a traditional intranet is far more profound than that.

Disruption! Most intranets need it. They tend to evolve gradually with time, with each new intranet manager adding a little touch of innovation. But not too much; we don’t want to frighten the users! I envy Jane McConnell, who seems to work with the very best of intranets. I tend to get called in when all else has failed. It can be a depressing experience. But disruption is on the way, and from a wide choice of options I’ve chosen three that are likely to be a challenge in the next twelve months.

Most intranets are not seen as essential to the functioning of an organization. This is because management is not convinced of their strategic value.