Traditionally an intranet was given a unique URL with some relation to the name of the intranet. eg http://staffnet or http://thehive. For many organizations this is as far as the complexity extends regarding the intranet URL. Often an organization contains more than one URL for its internal applications that make up the intranet. For larger organizations a unique domain for all intranet related applications is used. Read more »

When it comes to your organization’s intranet, never presume users think the same way or have the same approach to finding information.  Not everyone will know where content belongs or who the content owners are, so as Information Architects our job is to provide users with different paths and entry points for accessing information, so that it’s quick and easy to find. Read more »

As staff members, it is a truism that we work with our colleagues. But for those of us engaged in intranet content management, we are also working for our colleagues. In fact, once they have logged into the intranet, our colleagues become our clients. This is because the intranet exists for them and the success of the service we provide as intranet administrators depends upon their uptake, response and involvement.

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Setting your company’s browser homepage to be your intranet homepage, helps to encourage staff to view the intranet as a central news and productivity hub.

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Our latest release, iD 4.1, is now available for upgrade.  The new version includes a combination of exciting new functionality, and several major usability enhancements.

We wanted to let all of our valued clients know exactly what to expect from their upgrade, to ensure everyone is taking full advantage of all that’s on offer in the latest version of iD. We have prepared an iD 4.1 Upgrade Considerations document detailing how each of the changes will affect what you see and do every day with iD.

It is an invaluable resource for all clients making the move to iD 4.1. Click here to see it.

If you have any further questions, please contact support@intranetdashboard.com.

Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year from everyone here at iD.

Superpartners are Australia’s largest superannuation administrator, with over 1700 employees, offices in every capital city and over $80 billion under administration for over six million member accounts.

Seeing as they’re not all that busy, they also decided to become an iD client way back in 2006, and have been going strong with their intranet – The SPot – ever since.

Due to the competitive and changeable nature of their industry, Superpartners must continuously evolve and adapt to remain at the forefront – creating a variety of unique communication challenges. They were kind enough to tell us their story, and how they overcame these challenges to become one of iD’s biggest success stories.

Superpartners have shared some seriously innovative intranet ideas in their new case study, with a focus on creating the intranet that works for your business, rather than creates work for it.

With an enormous focus on engaging employees and improving their day to day experience at work, Superpartners have created and continue to improve ‘The SPot’.

We’ve published their case study on our website to give you all a sneak peek into just how they did it – get your hands on it here.

A big thank you to Superpartners, and congratulations on your fabulous intranet!

Breaking News – Members of our Marketing team were yesterday granted a temporary leave pass to escape the office for a few hours.

While the hectic weeks leading up to a significant release usually see staff bid farewell to their loved ones, surrender keys to any fast-moving mode of transport and substitute sunlight with high potency Vitamin D tablets, an exception was made in this case.

Never fear, before war cries of  ‘release the hounds!’ start getting thrown around you should all know – it was an educational venture.

They attended the book tour for James Robertson’s newly released ‘Designing Intranets – A Guide to Creating Sites that Work’. James is the Managing Director of Step Two Designs, who provide consulting and mentoring services around intranets, among a variety of other things.

James shared some really interesting insights around what he feels goes into making a great intranet design. We won’t spoil the book for you – you can get your hands on a copy here – but it’s definitely worth a read, and would be a great resource for any budding re-designers out there looking for a little inspiration.

There really aren’t a great deal of resources out there giving intranet teams real-world insights into what makes a good intranet, great. As James pointed out yesterday, there seems to be a cone of silence when it comes to intranets; we’re all a bit afraid to get nosey.

Having never been fans of silence and as huge advocates for nosiness, we are with James – the more of us that get talking, the better our intranets will be. At the risk of ripping off what may have been a tag line for a United Colors of Benetton commercial – together we do better.

So get talking…what do you think goes into a great intranet?

Content Management aficionados and budding social butterflies, J.Boye, are at it again – holding another of their fantastic events next month in London. Peppered over several fabulous locations around the globe, J.Boye events have conquered what we have coined as the Triple I Effect – being interactive, informative and interesting.

This particular event – Intranets At Work – is aimed at helping intranet professionals push their corporate intranet to the next level, with some real-world insights from companies who have fought and won the internal communications battle.

Register now using discount code ‘intranetdashboard’ and receive 20% off your ticket. Spots are limited so get in quickly to avoid missing out.

The Details:

When - 22nd Septmember, 2010

Where - Central London, Venue TBC

For more information, visit: http://www.jboye.com/

We can all agree there are few things more frustrating than getting lost. The fact that most of those things will actually only happen to you after you find yourself lost is even more incentive to stay on the straight and narrow.

Thankfully we live in the age of the GPS, and can have our route mapped out and even narrated to us by a gender of our choosing, in a soothing international accent. Your intranet users are not so lucky – they face navigating the online world without the help of their trusty Tom Tom.

Before this terrifying thought has you running back to a paper-based office, there are a number of easy ways to guide your users around your intranet with ease. Navigation comes in a number of forms such as Search, Bread Crumbs Bars, Quick Links, Navigation Bars, the list goes on…

For now let’s focus on Navigation Bars.

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This is quite a common question. Once time, effort and resources have gone into creating your intranet, how can you be sure staff are even accessing it, let alone reaping any of the hard-earned business benefits you have so carefully laid out? Like a parent on the first day of school, you can pack their lunch, dress them and drop them off but you can’t sit in class to make sure they’re learning. Don’t despair though, there are ways…

One approach, and perhaps the most obvious, is to track users’ access. Reporting tools such as iD’s Statistics Reporter can provide you with a quick snapshot of the traffic to your intranet, to give you a feel for what’s happening, to who, and when. What it can’t tell you, is whether or not your users are getting anything out of their time on the intranet.

Time would be better spent focusing on making your intranet engaging, useful and business-critical, so users will not only want to use it, but will depend on it to complete their daily duties.

There are a lot of factors which influence user access to the intranet, including:

Culture – Is using the intranet an integral part of your company culture i.e ‘Have you seen what’s on Flowercorp today?’ or ‘That’s a great idea, let’s create a forum topic on Flowercorp to get some feedback’

Content – Does the intranet contain relevant, up-to-date information that users will want, but more importantly need, to access?

Contribution – Are users trained and actively encouraged to contribute to the Intranet?

Importance – Is it the main repository of information – the source of truth – where users know they will be able to find exactly what they are looking for, quickly and easily?

Something as simple as moving the weekly newsletter onto the intranet instead of offering it via email or in paper-based format can have an enormous effect on users, pulling them to the system to get the information they need.

Another interesting idea is to create an area specifically for users to interact socially. This gives them a relaxed environment to start contributing to and encourages them to log on to see the latest information. An example is shown below using iD’s Coffee Break site.

So rather than focus your energies on monitoring the usage behaviors of your intranet’s users, why not take a closer look at exactly what you are offering and what you could do to improve your user experience. Make it as engaging as possible and they’ll actually want to use it.