Intranets are private computer networks that use Internet protocols to securely share part of an organization's information or operations exclusively with its employees. Sometimes the term refers only to an internal website; sometimes other Internet protocols are used as well, such as FTP.
#22083
Five Ways to Identify Intranet Usability Issues
Many intranets are under-used. Intranet managers lament the low use and discuss how to get staff to 'use the intranet more', resulting in marketing and promotions activities to increase use.
Maurer, Donna. Step Two (2004). Design>Web Design>Intranets>Usability
#31077
The key to efficient and effective user support is an intranet site that supports employees in performing their tasks. However, most intranet sites offer an overload of information that users often must interpret on their own. Van Mansom outlines a useful approach to creating corporate intranet sites.
van Mansom, Kees. Intercom (2008). Articles>Web Design>Intranets
#31268
QAS is a small company with only 400 employees. However, this small postal software company well understands the power and value of knowledge and empowering employees with the right information and tools to excel in their day-to-day jobs. How? Rather than accepting their small size and stature as an impediment to intranet success, QAS has evolved their intranet from good to great.
Ward, Toby. Communication World Bulletin (2007). Articles>Web Design>Intranets
#23656
How to Use FrontPage to Design a Corporate Intranet 
Microsoft FrontPage is used extensively in small and medium-sized companies to create both Intranet and Internet Web sites, even though professional Web designers turn up their noses at it. This paper reviews some of the factors that led to its widespread usage, and gives some pointers to nonprofessional Web Mistresses.
Yelverton, Bonnie. STC Proceedings (2003). Design>Web Design>Intranets>FrontPage
#24219
How We Built Our Tech Pubs Intranet Site With Cheap Stuff
Our Veep of Development laid down the glove: An award, he promised, would be given to that department producing the most useful intranet site. Budget, you ask? So we used all manner of freeware. In this session, we'll explain why an intranet made sense in our company, what tools we used to build our site, feedback we have received, and how the intranet has made our work more pleasant and efficient.
van Oss, Joseph E., Ina L. Mutschelknaus and Gerald F. Heiderschheit. STC Proceedings (1999). Design>Web Design>Intranets
#13199
How We Developed an Intranet: Using the Web to Inform Employees, Manage Projects, and Save Money
Data General’s R&D organization had developed disparate web sites. It was hard to find relevant information and difficult to know what others were doing. We volunteered to create a unified web presence to solve these problems. Taking initiative while building consensus, we crafted a highly used and highly useful intranet. This paper describes how we did it. Our success allowed us to broaden our department’s scope and change its name from “Documentation” to “Documentation and Web Services.” Our experience shows that documentation departments are well suited to create and maintain intranets, and that documentation professionals have the skills to become content developers or information architects.
Harvey, Michael. STC Proceedings (2001). Presentations>Web Design>Intranets>Case Studies
#20249
Sooner or later, most web designers will be called upon to create an internal site. And will quickly learn that one’s own company can be tougher to deal with than any client. Linabury offers tips on surviving the process.
Linabury, Dave. List Apart, A (2000). Design>Web Design>Intranets
#31430
The Intranet as a News Channel
While the use of a news section on the company intranet's home page is widespread, communicators need to ask themselves how effective this is as a way to avoid mixed messages and information overload. Does it reduce information overload, or increase it? And how can the news section be used to effectively cut through informational clutter?
Robertson, James. Communication World Bulletin (2005). Articles>Web Design>Intranets>Newsletters
#13651
The Intranet as Ecosystem: A Model for Sustaining Development
The complexity of the intranet and the interrelationship between it and the organization’s overall environment mean that traditional methods for supporting company information technology and communication (in which geographically and administratively separate groups determined company standards and guidelines) may not be adequate for the new medium. Available resources are also inadequate; material for web 'authors' (writers, information architects, graphic artists, and programmers) usually focuses at the site level, and most academic and trade articles on intranets focus on the central internal home page or on aspects of the physical infrastructure. Resources covering the whole intranet generally focus on management issues—hiring staff, setting goals, overseeing the design process, selling ideas to upper management, and getting people to use the system once it is deployed. But support groups tasked with the everyday design and maintenance of the intranet also need to “manage” it—that is, to envision the intranet’s role in the overall communication and technological structure of the organization, design and maintain its architectural structure, and sustain it by ensuring its content is accurate, timely, useful, and usable.
Wilder, Pam. University of Washington-Seattle (2000). Books>Content Management>Intranets
#21336
Intranet Design Annual: The Ten Best Intranets of 2001
The Nielsen Normal Group report 'Intranet Design Annual: The Ten Best Intranets of 2001' is a worthwhile look into successful intranets that would otherwise not be available to the general public. It is a valuable guide for anyone (not just specialists) involved in intranet design and development.
Lash, Jeff. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>Web Design>Intranets
#22078
A range of statistics are typically gathered on intranet usage, but of these, search engine reports are by far the most useful. This briefing explores two key search engine reports that should be implemented on all intranets, and looks at how they can be used to improve the effectiveness of the site.
Robertson, James. Step Two (2004). Design>Web Design>Intranets>Search
#28160
An intranet, in contrast to the Internet, is in-house and serves the employees of an enterprise. Although intranet pages may link to the Internet, an intranet is not accessed by the public. The intranet was fertile ground for web-savvy geeks like me to till and plant.
Findlay, Hugh. Carolina Communique (2006). Articles>Web Design>Intranets
#19298
The Internet hype may be dying down, but one area in which productivity gains can still be a reality is intranet development. Intranets could hardly be described as the sexy end of web development, but many companies around the world are experiencing real value from improved efficiency in terms of internal communications. Intranets can be big business. But unfortunately, Intranets often illustrate everything that is worst in web design. I imagine most readers of this article will be familiar with those corporate Intranets that become little more than a collection of department websites, each with its own navigational structure, look and feel, and content. Some organisations even pride themselves on this laissez faire approach to Intranet development, seeing the intranet as an opportunity for departments to express themselves online.
Farrell, Tom. Frontend Infocentre (2001). Design>Web Design>Intranets>Usability
#29997
Intranet Usability Shows Huge Advances
Measured usability improved by 44% compared to our last large-scale intranet study. The new research identified 5 times the previous number of intranet design guidelines.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2007). Articles>Usability>Intranets
#14183
Intranet Usability: The Trillion-Dollar Question
The average mid-sized company could gain $5 million per year in employee productivity by improving its intranet design to the top quartile level of a cross-company intranet usability study. The return on investment? One thousand percent or more.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2002). Articles>Usability>Intranets
#24377
Intranet: Another Word for EPSS?
Easy access to corporate databases, collaboration areas and tools for project teams, up-to-date product and competitive information, instant access to information on employee benefits and company policies, a single email system that reaches every desktop and every person. These are some of the services that are causing companies across the world to implement Internet standards, protocols, and browsers within their organizations. This introductory session demonstrates the progression of intranets from glorified networks to electronic performance support systems and gives you the opportunity to determine how an intranet might benefit your company while designing several intranet approaches.
Hyman, Francine N. STC Proceedings (1998). Articles>Web Design>Intranets>EPSS
#13792
Intranets Save Time--But for Whom? 
The world economy will lose roughly $100 billion because of bad intranet usability. Why is this? The intranet, as the corporate information infrastructure is called, is supposed to dramatically enhance employee productivity. That's the party line, but it's not the reality. The reality is that most intranets are a mess. Employees waste inordinate amounts of time trying to find answers to their problems, and most companies have no active programs in place to improve their intranets or make them into productivity tools. Intranets often suffer from the worst mistakes of Website design while having only a fraction of the budget allocated to marketing-oriented Websites.
Nielsen, Jakob. Business 2.0 (2001). Design>Usability>Intranets
#19573
Intranets signal a significant evolution in the way organizations will be using, producing, and finding corporate information. Discover where this evolution will lead us.
Collins, John. Writer's Block (1997). Design>Web Design>Intranets
#19853
The Unisys Product Information department includes a diverse staff of writers, editors, graphic artists, online media developers, and engineers. This large and eclectic staff performs a variety of jobs and must interact through multiple sites across the U.S. In November of 1996, the PI intranet web site first went live. By November of 1998 it was obvious to those responsible for maintaining the site that a 'refresh' or redesign of the page was necessary. A project team was formed in January 1999 to accomplish this task with at least one representative from each site. This case study will show what was accomplished, how it was done, and what was learned during the project.
Alexander, Bruce. STC Proceedings (2000). Design>Web Design>Intranets
#18332
Look Before You Leap: The Importance of an Intranet Pilot
Few of us are brave enough to try something completely new without first taking a tiny bite. Perhaps by past experience, we know that if we take that large leap of faith, one of two things will happen: you'll spit it across the table and commit a catastrophic social faux-pas or you'll gobble it down and ask for seconds. Truth of the matter is that it makes sense to ensure the success of a greater whole by first tackling a smaller piece. Simple HTML-only document management systems of the early 1990's have given way to more robust, content laden intranets with dynamic database integration. With all the different uses for intranets now compared to a decade ago, it's vital to tackle a smaller working model before investing the time, effort, and money into achieving Nirvana in one try.
Chin, Paul. Intranet Journal (2003). Design>Web Design>Intranets
#19972
Making Information Work on the World Wide Web
The amount of information that people need to perform their jobs is increasing. Many organizations are looking to the Internet to help manage and distribute this information. Unfortunately most organizations are not aware of the design and writing skills necessary to create quality web pages that are effective for users. This paper briefly describes the business context for web technology, and outlines a proven process for structuring information to be effective online. This process is based on the premise that an online application will only be effective if its designer considers the people, information, and technology involved.
Thibeau, James. STC Proceedings (1996). Design>Web Design>Intranets
#23437
Managing Content for the Intranet
Communication over the Intranet can change how a company's employees and departments work as a team. This is especially important for companies with branches or subsidiaries overseas.
Sacharen, Chani H. TC-FORUM (2001). Design>Web Design>Intranets
#23761
MSWeb: An Enterprise Intranet #1
We're pleased to bring you the first of two excerpts from upcoming second editon of 'Information Architecture for the World Wide Web.' The excerpts look at MSWeb, which the authors say provides a glimpse of what most intranets will be doing in three to five years.
Rosenfeld, Louis and Peter Morville. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>Web Design>Intranets>Software
#23763
MSWeb: An Enterprise Intranet #2
In our second excerpt from the newly-released second editon of 'Information Architecture for the World Wide Web.' the authors look at how the MSWeb team succeeded at spreading its gospel through a huge organization like Microsoft when similar efforts at smaller companies often fail.
Rosenfeld, Louis and Peter Morville. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>Web Design>Intranets
#23052
Is the portal a task-oriented platform for applications, e-services and cross-functional business process integration or a tool for enterprise-wide knowledge management? Is it a bottom-up enabler of communication and collaboration or a top-down channel for broadcasting official corporate propaganda? Inevitable consensus answer? It's all of these things and more, and the IT folks better be ready to support this exciting new paradigm!
Morville, Peter. Semantic Studios (2001). Articles>Knowledge Management>Intranets>Web Design
