Sunday, December 31, 2006

Nexus of Intranet Success

True intranet success is rare and often fleeting. The dedication, rigor and resources required to build and maintain a successful intranet or portal are significant. And while a successful intranet does not necessarily require a lot of money per se, there are many facets that require attention, successful planning and execution.
I refer to the collective intranet facets or requirements as the Nexus of Web Success. Nexus [‘nEksIs] comes from a Greek word meaning ‘meeting place’ – an appropriate moniker given the intranet’s position in the average organization.




Depicting the Nexus as an illustration, the main components required for a successful site or portal can be presented as a set of three concentric levels:

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Level 1, Executive Support
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Level 2, The Foundation (Planning, Resources, Value and Users)
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Level 3, Motivated Users


While some levels or factors may, on the surface, seem more important than others, optimal intranet and Internet success requires success on all levels – each working in conjunction with one another. Hence, the relevance of the ‘Nexus’.


Executive Support

At the centre of the Nexus or the heart of a site’s potential for success, is the backing of senior management – both moral and financial support. Many organizations have intranets that are mid-management or grass-root initiatives, and some enjoy a certain level of success. However, the potential of your intranet will never be fully realized without proper executive support and a senior management champion (ideally either the CEO or CIO).

The number one challenge facing corporate intranets today is not technology, nor tight budgets, but rather internal politics, specifically, the politics of competing priorities and management agendas. The second biggest hurdle is a financial one. To win these challenges you need senior management in your corner.

“Without the support, the site is more of an organizational afterthought and your work is almost an underground effort,” says Shel Holtz, ABC and IABC 20-year veteran of organizational communication. “So if you want your site to be taken seriously, you need executive support.”

Before the project (build or re-design) can gain executive support, it must be presented and marketed to demonstrate how it can help the organization achieve its goals and objectives. The intranet must demonstrate measurable value insofar as it relates to company profits, earnings and revenue.

“Speak executive’s language, appeal not to technology but results,” says Holtz. “No executive loses sleep because the intranet doesn’t get enough hits or isn’t cool enough. Executives lose sleep over revenues, earnings and competition. You need to demonstrate how your efforts will help executives sleep better.”

One way of pitching this idea to executives, as Holtz suggests, is to bring the executive team’s attention to articles from business publications that explain how other companies have achieved bottom-line success through the application of online technology.

But before you pitch your proposal to executive management, know what you want your site to achieve. Know the 5Ws for the site:

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Who will come
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Why they are looking for your site
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What they want to find
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When they want it
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Where they’ll find it


The Foundation
Planning
Without thorough planning, your site could face extinction. Although executive approval and support is vital for the shape and funding of a site, without solid research and clearly stated requirements your intranet could waste considerable time, money and effort.

An intranet manager at a major communications company recently lamented about the phenomenal amount of wasted time, money and effort exhausted in evolving their enterprise intranet portal that serves tens of thousands of employees. In one year, the intranet was redesigned three times – sucking significant funds and patience from an organization that should be using the intranet to support rather than drain the bottom-line. Of an extended team of more than a dozen people working on the intranet, only one person remains.

“Forget the online “field of dreams” epigram – if you build it, they will come,” advises Holtz. “Find out the who, what and why of the site. Then determine how you can meet your specific, measurable objectives with the audience and its needs.”

Failure to develop an integrated plan that accounts for an organization's structure, stakeholder and user requirements will certainly ensure failure and, with it, a loss of significant time, money and jobs.

"Too many sites and portals fail or don't live up to their potential because they lack direction and often become a political football torn between rival groups and competing priorities within an organization," says Carmine Porco, vice president of Toronto-based Prescient Digital Media, a veteran consultant who has also worked for Cisco and Deloitte Consulting. "First, you have to get your stakeholders to agree to the strategic plan and vision and on how the intranet should work and evolve. But you also need to understand what employees want and expect; and then marry the two."

Resources
Internet and intranet sites can be complex and very expensive. Few successful sites are developed and maintained by a single person using only internal resources. While hardware, software and people are the major resource requirements, specific investments in servers, databases, publishing mechanisms, search engines, self-service applications and editorial and technical staff account for the bulk of expenditures.

The biggest difficulty in conveying the necessity for adequate resources is that there is no rule-of-thumb – every organization is different with differing business requirements, access to infrastructure and internal technical skill sets. There is no standardized budget model for the development and operating costs of a site, many pundits often attempt to frame resource requirements by the annual cost-per-user. For example, at most medium- to large-size organizations, the annual intranet cost-per-user ranges anywhere from $50 - $1000 with $100 - $300 per user being the most common range.

“There are no rules of thumb and, in any event, it’s rare for an organization these days to be developing a site from scratch. Decisions around staffing and budget all go back to the issue of business goals,” says Jack Goodman, a recognized intranet guru and former director of IBM’s worldwide intranet, W3.

“If you are building the intranet primarily as a communications vehicle, the expense here is primarily labor costs for content creation and research analysis. However, even an editorially focused intranet requires creation, and upkeep of a user interface, development of an appropriate information architecture and taxonomy, etc.”

However, Websites and intranets are no longer just online newsletters. Successful sites enable business processes, such as employee and customer self-service (e.g. electronic bill presentment and payment, benefits enrollment, etc.).

“Business applications and tools require either purchasing off-the-shelf applications, outsourcing to third party vendors or developing applications in-house – any of which can be expensive,” adds Goodman.

“So, there is no single measure that defines website success, or for the amount of resource required to support an intranet. But money always helps….”

Value
Most people and organizations inherently know and understand the value of the telephone and don’t require a detailed ROI balance sheet before buying a phone system. Most organizations and executives know full well that the phone is a mission-critical instrument for most, if not all, organizations.

In many ways, intranets and Internets are like telephone systems – they assist us in accomplishing mission-critical work all the time but their true value – value for the user – is rarely measured.

Toronto-based Prescient Digital Media employs a formal methodology and approach to evaluating and measuring the value of a site. The unique methodology, built on years of best practices and experience, focuses on six criteria:

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Planning & Resources – the intangibles behind the user experience
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Design – the ‘look’ and ‘feel’ of the site (e.g. color, images, fonts, etc.)
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Layout – the use of page space and real estate and how information is presented and organized on a given page
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Usability – the ease by which a user can navigate a site and complete tasks.
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Content – any form of static (e.g. news releases, biographies, etc.) or dynamically generated text

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Tools & Innovation
– interactive applications and tools that aid the user


To deliver true user value, all of the above criteria needs to be ‘clicking’ and working in tandem. However, designers of corporate sites should remain focused and keep it simple. Resist the impulse to add fancy technical trinkets to your site. According to communications and technology consultant Shel Holtz, bleeding-edge technologies favour simplicity and speed that meet the real needs to help a company achieve its goals and objectives.


Use

If it isn’t used, then your work is for nothing.
If the site delivers true user value, then users have a reason to come (but they need to be motivated to use the site).
Not surprisingly, users are not looking for gadgets or cool design, they’re after information (content) that meet four key criteria:

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Compelling – content must be relevant and compelling
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Timeliness – content must be timely and updated regularly
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Style – it must be well-written and in an appreciable context
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Measurement – the success of your content must be measured


In short, the key determinants for ensuring visitors use the site is value and motivation – your audience needs to know of your existence and they need to have a reason or a motivation for clicking through.

Motivated Users
“Building an intranet is one thing. Getting people to use it is another,” espouses Scott Kirsner, author of Intranet Marketing 101. Internet sites are no different.
Steve Crescenzo, the top-rated speaker at the 2003 IABC International Conference in Toronto, equips business communicators with ways to motivate users to visit a site.

Firstly, motivating users requires education and marketing to raise awareness of the site’s existence. “If you can get people there, you know they’re there because they want to be there,” stresses Crescenzo in delivering his Integrating Print and Online workshop.

One way to get people there is to use a PUSH medium, like print or e-mail. Intranets are PULL communication vehicles – users need to be driven towards it. By integrating PUSH and PULL vehicles, you can combine the use of e-mail and print to help promote your intranet or Website.

If you choose to use e-mail to push users, be sure to use it with caution. Avoid sending too many e-mails - they can be intrusive, like junk mail, which winds up in the trash. Crescenzo offers six tips for maximizing your e-mail readability:

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Simple
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Consistent
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Short
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Scannable
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Not too wordy
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Add links to more information, if possible – along with the link to resources on the intranet.


“The delete button is easy to get to,” says Crescenzo. “E-mail a little. Link a lot. Make links to different parts of the intranet.”

Once users are aware of the site and are using it, they also need to be motivated in continuing to use it.

If users are not compelled to use the site, then they won’t and it becomes a useless tool.

Lessons Learned How to Avoid the Top 10 Intranet Mistakes

The third best way to improve through experience is to learn from your mistakes. The second best way is to learn from the mistakes of others. And the best way is to learn from your own successes.
My experience in developing and implementing intranet strategies has exposed me to a number of mistakes, many committed by others and, I must admit, a few by me. Along the way, I’ve also enjoyed a number of successes.

From my experience, I’ve developed a list of the Top 10 Intranet mistakes, from which you can learn some crucial lessons without experiencing the pain that might otherwise be felt. This list can get you started on your own intranet strategy, or it serve as a checklist for your intranet endeavors.

Mistake 1: Don’t Talk to Users
“I’m afraid of what they might say” was one response I received when I asked a client why they haven’t asked what their users want. Sticking your head in the sand and ignoring the world around you is a great strategy… if you’re an ostrich. But if you’re creating an intranet site that will improve the lives of users, you had better understand how they want to use it. User input is essential, particularly when you consider how a new intranet affects just about everyone in your organization.

Engaging employees in usability testing is also an important consideration because they are your clients after all. Nonetheless, it’s surprising how many organizations make the mistake of launching or refining an intranet without formally gathering user input.

Mistake 2: Don’t Build a Plan but do try to boil the Ocean
Too many times, I have seen organizations try to implement everything at once without a solid plan to guide their priorities. That’s like trying to boil the ocean: you’ll expend enormous energy and achieve little as a result. Without a proper plan, your intranet will surely fail.

As with any new initiative, a proper planning phase is required to ensure clearly articulated requirements, vision, strategy and measurable objectives. A proper plan will also allow you to effectively determine your scope and help map out a phased approach. This is not to say that your strategy should not include a grand view of the end product but it should be implemented in 6-8 month stages.

At the rate technology is changing, especially in the Web Content Management System (WCMS) arena, it is more prudent to pick a few low hanging fruits and establish success which will encourage buy-in (and spending) than it is to try and pick the tree clean all at once.


Mistake 3
: Ignore the KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid) Rule
This can never be stated enough, yet time and time again we see organizations trying to “customize” their intranet because they feel they are “different”. I would venture to say that a majority of the small to mid-level WCMS vendors can accommodate 80% of many organization’s requirements without customization. As I mentioned earlier, when you devise your plan, start small and keep it simple.

The number one comment we hear from our user research is, “I can’t find anything.” We never hear, “I would like a really neat customizable application that can’t be bought off-the-shelf”. It makes no sense to increase the risk of failure by allowing users to, for example, customize the look and feel of their home page by adding columns, graphics, etc.

Mistake 4: Write for the printed page, not the Web
Quite simply, users read the web differently than they do paper documents. Notice how this article, for example, is written in easily scannable chunks. I bet many of you probably didn’t read this sentence until you first scanned the top 10 mistakes and then decided that the article might actually be interesting enough to read top to bottom. So, why is it that when Prescient first views a potential client’s site, we are invariably overcome by long blocks of verbiage?

Your content providers/authors need to be trained on how to write for the web if you want to avoid this mistake

Mistake 5: Don’t Provide Training
Everyone, from authors and users to administrators and IT staff need to be trained on how to use the software, write for the web, administer users, etc. However, if a site is not intuitive enough for someone to instinctively grasp, then I would say the fault is in the site, not the user. Don’t’ agree? My 6 year old daughter can surf Barbie.com on her own. ‘Nuff said.

Authors and content providers need to learn not only how to use a new CMS, but also, how to write for the web. Administrators, webmasters and IT staff who receive training also require “train the trainer” courses so that they can transfer knowledge to others in the likely event that people change jobs or leave the company.

Mistake 6: Launch Your Site without Marketing It
“If you build it, they may not come”. Not only does marketing your site help garner greater traffic, it also allows for better buy-in from your users. Change management is very important when implementing an intranet as it affects the entire organization and, therefore, must be acknowledged and built into the planning process.

Marketing should not only be a priority at launch but continuously. New features/applications should be continually promoted to demonstrate success and promote innovation. One simple way to do this is by highlighting a new feature in a monthly newsletter, on the home page or on a frequently visited page, such as the employee directory.

Mistake 7: Fail to Build a Governance Model
Who owns the intranet? When asked this ques
tion, organizations often resemble the monkeys who “hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil”. Without proper ownership, management and standards for your intranet, it will surely fail. How the site is managed and governed needs to be clearly defined during the planning process and then must be supported by senior management.

Without this, the common excuse for the inevitable poor intranet is “I have real work to do”. Steering committees, executive champions, standards and guidelines are all essential components of an overall governance model. By putting a good model in place, the political bickering that inevitably accompanies an intranet project is lessened. See “ The Politics of Intranet Ownership” for more on this topic.

Mistake 8: Only Look Internally for Best Practices
As I said in the opening, the best way to learn is from your own successes. If your organization has a strong track record of successfully deploying intranets, then all the answers you need will be found internally. If not, you’ll need to learn from others’ mistakes and successes by reading extensively, attending seminars and hiring consultants.

OK, the last point may sound self-serving, but where else are you going to discover the most up-to-date best practices in a time-efficient manner? A consultant can assist with your project by offering an unbiased opinion, by sharing best practices and knowledge and by offering insight into how case studies can be adapted to your unique requirements.


Mistake 9
: Move Ahead Without Senior Level Backing
As with any project, if a new intranet is not fully endorsed by senior management, it will be more difficult to achieve success. Prescient has learned two essential ingredients to success. First, senior management must “get it”. If they see no need for the intranet, they will need to be “ educated”. That is, they will need to be shown how their competitors and others have received return on investment.

The second ingredient for success is recognizing that more senior managers are requesting a business case for their intranet. This is no easy task. However, while measuring the precise return on investment may not be possible, there are ways to demonstrate both potential and existing ROI. For our free white paper, Intranet ROI, please contact us.


Mistake 10
: Treat the Intranet like an Event, Not a Process
Many intranets have not been updated since launch. Your intranet may have been built by somebody in IT who once had some time on their hands and who now probably regrets doing so because anytime a change is required/she is the one who gets the call. This role may not even be in their job description and as mentioned earlier, the site has probably faltered because he/she has scoffed it off by saying, “I have real work to do”.

With a proper governance model in place, the intranet can be a living, breathing application that grows and changes with the organization. Ownership, process and content workflow, trained and decentralized authorship, ongoing marketing and metrics, defined responsibilities and executive support are some of the essentials that will ensure your intranet enjoys ongoing success.

Avoiding these mistakes won’t guarantee intranet success, but my experience has shown that applying these lessons significantly raises the probability that your site will contribute positively to your organization’s goals. At a minimum, the list will help you learn from others’ mistakes, rather than from your own.

Wiki The Intranet

A wiki is a server program that allows users to collaboratively contribute content to a website. Editing is done in your web browser using a user-friendly editing tool not too dissimilar to a stripped-down version of MS-Word. But a wiki is more collaborative than your average page authored by one person. A wiki may contain the writing, edits and additions of many, many users. Any user can edit any other users’ contributions.

Additional tools available to wik-heads include author tracking, and locking and even version control and rollback

The most famous wiki is Wikipedia.com which is an online encyclopedia authored by whomever wants to author. Yes, you can make your own edits and additions. Wikipedia now features over 600,000 files with thousands of contributors though they do disclose that “Nonsense and vandalism are usually removed quickly.”

The biggest wiki profile story just hit the pages of mainstream media when the LA Times experimented with a ‘wikitorial’ that allowed readers to rewrite an editorial on the paper’s website. However, the experiment was sabotaged by morons who sabotaged the effort by posting pornographic images.

Not to be outdone, Wikis are beginning to hit corporate intranets too

Virtual Intranet software for company networks Brief Article Statistical Data Included

Build a company-wide network on the cheap

TEAMWORK IS the secret of many successful businesses. But not every start-up or small business can afford to install the sophisticated networking equipment and software required for creating its own, private Internet -- or intranet, as it's often called -- that allows everyone in an organization to share information easily and operate more efficiently. But thanks to the Internet, even if you don't have a company-wide intranet, you can still enjoy many of the benefits of one by subscribing to a Web-based virtual-office service for a few dollars a month.

ONLINE NETWORKING

Virtual-office services provide your business with a central location for documents, discussions, and messages in a special, private corner of the Internet. Anyone with a password can access your intranet from any computer with a modem and a Web browser. And because your network is based on the Web, you don't have to spend big bucks on technicians to keep the whole system running.

Web-based virtual-office services generally fall into two categories: business-collaboration services and community-building services. Business-collaboration services focus on keeping a business connected to its workforce. A leading example of this type of service is HotOffice (www.hotoffice.com). For $12.95 per month per user, HotOffice links with many applications on your PC, including Microsoft Word, and your Java-enabled Web browser to create a system with many of the features of a large, corporate network. Community-building services, on the other hand, specialize in chat rooms and bulletin boards. A good example of a community-building service is PowWow, by Tribal Voice (www.powwow.com), which charges an organization $49.95 per year to start.

HOT-WIRED COLLABORATION

HotOffice is best suited to businesses that need to collaborate on projects. When you subscribe to HotOffice, you can set up accounts for each member of your organization. Each person gets his own e-mail address as well as a calendar, a contact list, and a document folder. After installing the free HotOffice software, you can save documents to your HotOffice folders on the Web right from Microsoft Office or from the Windows 95 desktop and open those documents from any Web browser anywhere. The HotOffice software adds a button to your Microsoft Word, Excel, and Power Point tool bar to make HotOffice look like a seamless part of your computer system. If you want to share a document with all the member of your organization, just tell them what HotOffice folder you saved the document in, and they can open the file as if it were their own. You can also set up department and project folders devoted to a specific task, such as recruiting new employees. Chat rooms and bulletin boards are also built in to HotOffice.

Financial consultant Jeff Stello, president of IT Financial Inc., uses HotOffice to support a client called Healthy Pet Corp. Healthy Pet recently used HotOffice to develop a business plan and build a national network of veterinary-health-care providers. While the company could have created a business plan without online collaboration, according to Stello "it would have been difficult, especially with the time restrictions we had." After completing the business plan, Stello and Healthy Pet took advantage of HotOffice to allow Stello's company to communicate payroll and payables information for Healthy Pet's locations around the country. When Healthy Pet gets larger, it will probably need a conventional business network, but in its early stages HotOffice has been a lifesaver. There are other virtual-office products on the market -- eRoom (www.instinctive.com) and 3-2-1 Intranet! (www.iminet.com), for example. But HotOffice gives a small business the most bang for its buck.

COMMUNITY SERVICES

Community-building services such as PowWow can both help a company communicate with its clients and supply a way for employees to stay connected. If you teach classes, provide emotional support, or offer a community service, a PowWow-style online community can be a central resource for all the people with whom you want to stay in touch. You'll need to have each member of your group install the PowWow client software (it's free to download) on his or her computer so that all can participate in online chats and post messages.

PowWow has developed some impressive technology for exchanging speech files and has enhanced its Internet services with multimedia capabilities. But you'll have to train members of your community in how to take advantage of PowWow's advanced features because they're not easily mastered and may be a little too sophisticated for entry-level computer users. On the other hand, you can manage your PowWow community easily through membership controls, complete with an automatic profanity censor. Those management tools make PowWow more suitable for hosting business-oriented communities than, say, Excite or Yahoo!, which offer more-general community-building services.

The intranet as an employee retention tool

The intranet is a key driver of employee retention. Studies show that employees who were highly satisfied with their intranet or corporate portal also had a high level of job satisfaction. When employees are satisfied, they stay on longer, their productivity rises and training costs fall.

It’s a buyer’s market. There is a shortage of skilled workers and we all know it. In fact, while the shortage is estimated at a couple of million workers in the U.S. alone, the shortage is increasing rapidly and expected to grow to 14 million by 2020.

Is it any wonder why so many HR professionals are completely and totally obsessed about employee retention? Retention has become such a hot issue for executives that even The Economist dedicated an issue last month (October 2006) to “The search for talent: Why it’s getting harder to find.”

Despite the need and focus on employee retention Spherion Corporation’s IT Employee Confidence Index dropped 4.3 points to 54.1 in the third quarter, according to the latest IT Employment Report (conducted by Harris Interactive). However, some 73% of IT workers say they feel it is not likely to lose their job. So job confidence is not a factor in affecting their job confidence and satisfaction.

“On the surface, this quarter’s data may seem contradictory, but the tech sector itself is operating counter-intuitively,” said Brendan Courtney, senior vice president of Spherion® Professional Services. “IT workers are still being enticed to stay with their current employers through a series of retention efforts which may explain why even more of them are confident in their own job security.”

So employees are not worried about their jobs, but their confidence and job satisfaction is declining – and the market is screaming for skilled workers with a massive shortage that is dramatically on the rise.

What’s the problem? Why aren’t more companies doing more to retain workers? The answer may lie in the results of a Career Systems International study on employee retention. Employee priorities are “exciting work and challenge” and “career growth and learning.”

Top Drivers of Retention

1. Exciting work & challenge 48.4%
2. Career Growth, Learning & Development 42.6%
3. Working with great people & relationships 41.8%
4. Fair pay 31.8%

It is clear that the intranet is a primary driver and enabler for fulfilling the top two drivers for white collar workers – exciting work & challenge, and career growth & learning. The intranet is an incredible learning tool, and there’s no question that if executed properly, that leading edge technology can bolster employee satisfaction.

“There's no disputing the value of effective internal communications in any small or medium-sized business. Employees who are better informed are more satisfied, feel more involved in the fate of your company and ultimately contribute more to your success,” states the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) (see Creating effective internal communications). “Companies that make internal communications a priority are more likely to reach their objectives with motivated employees. In turn, you can resolve conflicts quickly and improve employee productivity.

BDC’s top two recommendations for improving employee communications: a company newsletter (paper or electronic), and the intranet. The intranet allows employees to be better connected to the company and each other by improving communications, enhancing collaboration, and increasing individual productivity. Employee spend less time searching for information to do their jobs, and complete tasks faster.

IBM knows all too well the value of the intranet on employee retention. At IBM, the human resource services via the intranet (loosely called e-HR) is saving the company more than $500 million a year - $284 million in e-learning alone. But the benefits are far higher than just mere dollars. Since improving the intranet and adding e-HR services, employee satisfaction with human resources has risen from 40% to 90%. The financial impact of such an increase must be immeasurable.

As for the intranet as a whole, IBM has some other very important non-financial metrics:

* Usage and value: 80% of IBM employees access the intranet daily
* Workforce enablement: 68% view the intranet as crucial to their jobs
* Employee retention: 52% are more satisfied to be an IBM employee because of information obtained on w3

When employees are satisfied, they stay on longer, their productivity rises and training costs fall. The combination of a higher employee job satisfaction rating, along with improved knowledge and experience, leads to better customer service.

Studies show that employees who were highly satisfied with their intranet or corporate portal also had a high level of job satisfaction. Conversely, those who were very dissatisfied with their intranet or corporate portals were much more likely to be dissatisfied with their jobs. Other research has shown that effective internal communications – often the responsibility of HR – is a driver of job satisfaction. Since the portal functions as an online communications tool, it naturally flows that a significant correlation between the effective portal and higher job satisfaction would exist.

If employee retention is a top priority for most organizations, the increased investment in the intranet is a must. Those organizations that continue to treat the intranet as a cost center rather than an investment in the future will be losers in the race to retain talent.

Intranet kiosks vs home access

by Toby Ward — The success of intranet kiosks has been very limited. An increasingly more common and popular alternative may be the option of extending remote or home intranet access to all employees.

Very few organizations provide personal desktop and intranet access to every employee. Large and small organizations alike have and continue to struggle with the issue of intranet access for manufacturing or remotely working employees who do not work at desks with computers. In fact, the 50% mark – employees that have individual access – appears to be the average.

Communications professionals often struggle with this dilemma of having to improve internal communications, but not being able to directly communicate with a high percentage of the workforce via the organization’s most powerful communications tool, the intranet. To solve this challenge, many organizations look to the intranet kiosk.


Kiosks
The kiosk is typically a stand alone computer terminal about 4-5 feet tall with a hard outer case and a touch screen or an industrial strength keyboard and tracking ball (not unlike the ones you see in the airport). Sometimes they’re just a regular desktop computer. Most organizations use these kiosks in areas of high traffic by employees that don’t have dedicated computers including:

* field offices
* manufacturing plants
* cafeterias


Some organizations have turned to the kiosk as a communications solution for bridging this digital divide, but the results are usually unimpressive. Rarely are kiosks ever used to the extent management hopes or expect.

“In practice, it may be impractical (or prohibitively expensive) to reach all staff using just kiosks,” writes James Robertson of Australian-based Step Two in his article Intranet kiosks or remote access? “Staff may also be reluctant or unable to make effective use of the kiosks during their work breaks.”

I recently conducted a client focus group at a remote field office with workers that work outside and don’t have a dedicated computer, but they do have a shared computer workstation (kiosk). Not surprisingly, these employees have intranet access but the workstation kiosk is not well used. “We don’t use the intranet much and don’t really care… but I would if I could access it from home.”

One exception is Dutch Railway company NedTrain with an employee workforce of 4,000, the majority of which do not have dedicated computers. Despite the limited computer access, the company encourages employees to use centrally located touch-screen kiosks to access the intranet. The result: an astounding 2.5 million quarterly visits – or 200 intranet visits per employee per month.


Remote or Home Access
What has proven more successful than kiosks, is providing remote or home access to the intranet.

“Remote access can be useful even for those without computers at home, and can better match the way staff want to complete some of the common tasks, such as planning holiday dates in consultation with their spouses,” writes Robertson.

British Airways has a remote employee population – so remote that they’re constantly traveling in all corners of the globe. Despite that challenge, BA employees are well connected via the intranet. Here’s a telling statistic of how connected employees are at BA: there are 48,000 employees worldwide, many of which are in the sky, in airports, and on the road, and the intranet gets up to 23,000 unique visitors a day.

BA doesn’t give their employees laptops to travel with. There are however a few dozen kiosks for them to access the intranet, but they’re not well used. In fact, BA has about 120 intranet kiosks at their big hub at Heathrow International, but the lion’s share of intranet access comes from remote access.

Alaska Airlines have put their intranet on the public Internet – that’s right, a .com website. Knowing that most of their employees work ‘on the road’ they got smart and put it on the public Internet (of course, secure areas are password protected and reside behind their firewall). Employees have ubiquitous access from any connected computer and it also shows the world, “We have nothing to hide! Come check us out.” (Visit the Alaska Airlines intranet at www.AlaskasWorld.com.

Kiosks are big, clunky, require maintenance and are expensive. Extending remote access via VPN or secured access is a far better proposition that likely has a better return on investment in most organizations.

The big deal about portals

by Toby Ward — Portal products still represent a green, emerging technology. The promise of success however is still overshadowed by many pitfalls and few success stories.
Frankly, I don’t see it. There are very, very few portal product implementations that live up to the hype.

IBM and Microsoft’s successful intranet portals are rare exceptions amongst portal software implementations. You would think that IBM and MS, since they developed the product and have nearly unlimited staffing expertise – not to mention deep pockets – would make darn certain their respective portals are successful. They are in essence their best sales tools.

Most however companies don’t have the resources and expertise. There are a few exceptions. The Fidelity Investments portal looks to be an exception to the rule (see their upcoming webinar Intranet Insider World Tour: Fidelity Investments). But despite all the salesmanship and marketing, portal products have been wildly disappointing.

But what is a portal? If you listen to most definitions driven by the vendors, a portal is an off-the-shelf (out-of-the-box) software product. Don’t let the vendors fool you – you don’t need a portal product to have a portal. I’ve seen and worked on plenty of solid portals that are built on content management systems (CMSs). Corporate portals, enterprise information portals, and corporate work portals are all vendor products. But a portal – without the preceding technical descriptors and jargon – is a gateway website to many disparate sources of information and data; it isn’t necessarily an off-the-shelf software solution.

Portal products continue to be hot topics of discussion and it certainly held the attention of the 150+ attendees who listened to my keynote presentation on portals at Ragan’s annual Web Content Management Conference in Chicago.

Portal products promise a lot:

*
Better internal communications
*
Increased employee productivity
*
Increased collaboration
*
Improved operational effectiveness
*
Decreased cost of information
*
Improved competitive/market advantage
*
Single point of access


Some of the common, universal features of portal solutions include:

*
Integration components (APIs)
*
Customizable gadgets or portlets
*
Search
*
Personalization
*
Basic content management
*
Collaboration tools
*
And increasingly more web 2.0 features


The benefits and advantages of portals however are often tempered by pitfalls. Problems abound.

“The long-predicted shakeout in the portal product market is becoming evident. Extreme due diligence should be performed before buying a portal product,” stated a Gartner report called “Portal Products: A Market in Distress.” The report is several years old now, but the caution still holds true today.

“Enterprises painfully discover that portal solutions are much less out-of-the-box than expected. Many face challenges due to misaligned requirements, underestimated implementation costs, or overestimated user adoption rates,” states consultant Janus Boye in CMS Watch’s 2nd Edition of the Enterprise Portals Report released in October (2006).

The report not surprisingly cites portal vendors for many problems including:

*
Usability challenges
*
Complicated, dashboard interfaces
*
Non-standard code
*
Accessibility failures
*
Too many features and gadgets
*
Poor design


In a separate, recent presentation the author says that he does not recommend buying and implementing a portal product for the vast majority of organizations.
Of course, it’s not all bad. Portal products have gotten better and aim to improve further. But not all portal products are created equal. Some serve niche markets, others are better for integrating back-end systems and business intelligence, still others are better at document management and content management.

There is in fact hundreds of portal vendors. I created the following ‘magic quadrant’ to highlight or showcase some of the players including the big boys, the challengers, innovators and niche players.



Note: this analysis graph does not constitute a full or deep analysis. It is a snapshot in time based on product reputation, review and corporate strength (financial viability) and it only considers a small percentage of the vendors. Nor does it represent an exhaustive analysis of any of the products.

Additionally, what is relevant today may be soon out of date. Technology is rapidly changing and evolving and the vendors know they must continue to improve and innovate.

Some trends to watch as customers demand improvements and vendors continue to evolve:

*
Continued blurring between portal & CMS products
*
Further market consolidation (mergers, acquisitions, etc.)
*
Increasing focus on usability
*
Easier to implement personalization (including role-based personalization)
*
More Web 2.0 (blogs, wikis, etc.)


Portal solutions aren’t bad. They’re just young, green and striving to find their legs. In the meantime, caveat emptor.

Home intranet access back issue

A great report from Ipsos-Reid reveals that Canada continues to be a world leader with a highly connected population – right up there with the Scandanavian countries, the United States, Korea and Hong Kong (did you know in a study of e-business readiness conducted by IBM and the Economist, Azerbaijan ranked 50th out of all countries? Who knew?!?!).

73% of Canadians are now connected to the Internet; 62% of households have high-speed access. Similar numbers are reported from the other leading countries.


What does this have to do with the intranet? Glad you asked...


A vast majority of organizations still only extend intranet access to a percentage of their employees. It often ranges from 33% to 75% of employees have access. With some exceptions (Cisco, IBM, Xerox and some other financially strong, leading-edge appreciators of technology), this is largely due to the fact that many, many employees, in most industries, do not have or work with a computer. In most organizations, no computer = no intranet access.


While some companies, particularly in the manufacturing sector, have established intranet stations or kiosks for employees without computers, the success of joint or shared workstations and kiosks have largely been lackluster. (One exception is Dutch Railway company NedTrain with an employee workforce of 4,000, the majority of which do not have dedicated computers. Despite the limited computer access, the company encourages employees to use centrally located touch-screen kiosks to access the intranet. The result: an astounding 2.5 million quarterly visits – or 200 intranet visits per employee per month).


Given the cost and cultural challenges of extending access to employees who don’t have computers some companies are extending intranet access to the employee at home (many companies offer home intranet access via a VPN or dedicated or password protected connection but often this privilege is only extended to executives and middle managers).


Others like Alaska Airlines have put their intranet on the public Internet – that’s right, a .com site on the Internet! Knowing that most of their employees work ‘on the road’ they got smart and put it on the public Internet (of course, secure areas are password protected and reside behind their firewall). It’s also a great way to tell the world, “We have nothing to hide! Come check us out.”

The Choice for Better Intranet Software Solutions

Intranet software solutions have emerged as breakthrough ways for businesses to gain online access to information. A comprehensive package of Intranet software solutions will contain features like document management, project management, contact management tools, calendaring, and professional email. Today, many businesses are opting for Intranet solutions to add to their information sharing capability thereby putting their business on track of success.

Like buying business software solutions, there can be several factors that encourage you to buy Intranet software solutions. However, lack of in-house expertise has been seen as leading them all. Often, non technological organizations are deficient in dedicated IT resources. Intranet software solutions provide them with a readily available solution to fulfill their Intranet requirements. Moreover, the package is equally beneficial for corporate work groups with technical resources to build an intranet but without the luxury of time.

At times, companies may not always need an intranet carrying out there day to day affairs but only for contingencies like a special project. During such situations, it does not make any sense to build the whole system that could be a prohibitively expensive. So, going with intranet software solutions which emulates the environment seems to be an apt way.

Choosing a good intranet software solution is one of the important decisions for your business that should be taken judiciously. Today, companies dealing in business software solutions try to tempt you by offering a suite of services. This can easily baffle you. You must know how to filter through all the marketing tactics thereby narrowing down to the specific company that will work best for you. Also, don't settle for any company just because it provides you with affordable software solutions. Entering a contract on something that doesn't suit to your requirements can cause much hardship later. You will then have to carry out the arduous task again resulting in an immense wastage of time and resources. Therefore, choose to buy intranet solutions from a reputed software solution company.

As far as getting outstanding ecommerce software solutions are concerned, outsourcing to offshore destinations like India is gaining new horizons. There is a multitude of top notch companies providing quality and cost effective software solutions in India.

Intranet Implementation The Advantages Of A Web Based Solution

The traditional approach to implementing an intranet is to purchase a software package, modify it for your needs, and install it on your system.

Over the past few years, another option has grown in popularity – the implementation of a web-based solution.

As you consider the choice between installed software and a web-based intranet, here are some considerations:

1. The most important requirement of any intranet is that everyone uses it.

To assure broad-based participation, the intranet must be easy to implement, simple to use, cost-effective to maintain, and offer each individual user the power to post, access and use content in a way that serves their specific needs. In short, the intranet must have value to everyone.

Web-based intranets are designed around this concept. The interface and navigation are consistent with their use of the web – an environment in which they feel in control, using familiar tools.

In contrast, the business world is littered with countless elegant and feature-rich soft-ware based intranets that have failed. Why? Because they represented an alien environment into which the user was expected to venture. Few employees had the time or the interest (or courage) to enter, rendering the intranet impotent, with the powerful tools unused.

This is the plight of traditional, out-of-the-box software solutions. Unlike web-based intranets, they force users into a constrained environment requiring in-depth training, built around rules designed for the group, rather than the individual.

2. Software intranets have unpredictable costs: in time, attention and money.

Software based solutions require extensive internal support. The ongoing expense in both staff time and money takes the focus of your IT group away from mission-critical tasks.

System integration, Implementation, maintenance, technology upgrades, training and user support are all on-going tasks that represent a significant, recurring investment. The cost can be substantial, far exceeding your initial license cost and monthly fee.

3. Web-based intranets offer a predictable cost and cutting-edge technology.

Most web-based solutions offer a fixed monthly fee that covers all maintenance, technology upgrades, training and user support. The costs are predictable, the technology evolutionary, and it's all done with minimal involvement of your IT staff.

It's for these reasons that companies needing broad-based participation in a changing environment are choosing web-based intranets over traditional software solutions.

Saturday, December 30, 2006

intraNet User Guide

Use this document to find your way around your clear.net Intranet. It provides instructions and information regarding the following:

* Home Page
* Organisation of Categories and Items
* Browsing News, Links and Documents
* Viewing an item
* Searching the Intranet
* Searching the Internet
* Search the Phone List
* Feedback
* Help
* Logging Off

Home Page

Here we will guide you through the main part of your Intranet; the Home Page and how to access the information listed on it.

Your intranet Home Page may look somewhat different from those in the screenshots, however the principles will be the same. Note: if you cannot see the Links or On-line Documents frames, use the scroll bar on the right side of the window to scroll down.



The Home Page is the centre of your Intranet, and all its services are available from this point. At almost any time, you can click on the Home button on the screen to return to the Home Page.



Organisation of Categories and Items
Information is either organised by category or by item. Items organised by category will be shown as a series of folders;



while items listed (from most recently item at the top of the list) will be displayed using an icon dependent on the type of item:

News item An on-screen article

Link A link to another web page (usually on the World Wide Web)

On-line document A file which can be down loaded (i.e. copied) to your computer (for example a corporate font)

If you are familiar with the file structure on a computer, you will have no trouble understanding how categories and items are organised. Each item (link, news article or on-line document) is stored within one or more categories (i.e. folders) At the top of the hierarchy is the Root category, which contains categories and items. Each of these categories can contain items as well as further categories.



To 'drill' down into the structure, click on a category or subcategory. To move back 'up' the structure, click on the Back button (for one level up),



or click on the Home button to go back to the Home Page.

Browsing News, Links and Documents
How you go about locating or browsing items depends largely on how your Intranet is organised - are the items on the Home Page listed by category or by item (or even a combination)?

Note: if you know the name or keyword for the item you are after, you may like to use the Intranet Search facility instead of locating the item by using the methods in this section.

If listed by Category
Click on a category in the list to see its contents. This may comprise items as well as sub categories; click on the sub category to view further links and possibly sub categories.



Once you have located the item in question, click on it to activate or display its details (depending on the type of item).

If listed by Item
Click on an item in the list.



The item is activated or its details are displayed (depending on the type of item).

Note: Depending on the browser you are using, if there are more categories or items than fit in the frame, you can use the scroll bars to the right of the frame or the right of the window to scroll down.

More Items Categories are an efficient way of storing and displaying items. However it is not possible to display all items and categories on the Home Page. To view the contents of the Root Category, or view categories and items on the various levels, click on the More hyperlink for the type of item required.



Note: Any items that are not specific to one or more of the existing categories are stored in the Root Category.

For example, click on the More… hyperlink for the On-line Documents to display



At the top you will see the category you are viewing (in this case the Root Category). Below a list of all categories ('folders') within this category. Lastly a list of all items in this category. (Your intranet may not have any on-line Documents at the Root Level, in which case you will not see these.)



Click on a category to view its contents.



As before, you will see the category you are currently viewing, followed by a list of subcategories (if any) and items (if any).



Viewing an Item

* News Articles are on-screen articles
* Links will take you to a web page on the World Wide Web
* On-line Documents are files which can be transferred on to your computer

Once you have located the item you are after, the next step is to click on it to activate or display.

Viewing a News Article



A news article consists of:

* a title (and indication of the news category/ies it belongs to)
* the article itself
* an image (optional)
* additional documentation such as a white paper (optional)
* link to on-line information (optional)

Click on the additional documentation or link if you want to obtain further information on the topic handled in the news article. To print choose Print… from the File menu. Return to the previous page by clicking on the Back page or on the Home button to go back to the Home page.

Viewing a Link
Click on a link, and your Internet Browser automatically opens a new window and loads the link. To return to the home page close the current browser window, and if necessary, click on the Intranet button in the Task Bar (Windows) or choose your Intranet from the Windows menu (Macintosh).

Down loading an on-line Document
An on-line document consists of

* A link to the down-loadable file
* Document title
* Description
* Links to up to 3 further related documents (optional)
* An overview of the category/ies the file belongs to

If you want to download (i.e. transfer on to your computer) the file, click on the Document title.



The document Detail screen appears with a description of the document and in some cases further references material (up to three reference documents). A list appears of all categories that this on-line document belongs to.



Download the file by clicking on the Document name or icon.



To view documents in other categories, click on the appropriate category.





intraNet User's Guide

Use this document to find your way around your clear.net Intranet. It provides instructions and information regarding the following:

* Home Page
* Organisation of Categories and Items
* Browsing News, Links and Documents
* Viewing an item
* Searching the Intranet
* Searching the Internet
* Search the Phone List
* Feedback
* Help
* Logging Off

Home Page
Here we will guide you through the main part of your Intranet; the Home Page and how to access the information listed on it.

Your intranet Home Page may look somewhat different from those in the screenshots, however the principles will be the same. Note: if you cannot see the Links or On-line Documents frames, use the scroll bar on the right side of the window to scroll down.

The Home Page is the centre of your Intranet, and all its services are available from this point. At almost any time, you can click on the Home button on the screen to return to the Home Page.

Organisation of Categories and Items
Information is either organised by category or by item. Items organised by category will be shown as a series of folders;

while items listed (from most recently item at the top of the list) will be displayed using an icon dependent on the type of item:
News item An on-screen article
Link A link to another web page (usually on the World Wide Web)
On-line document A file which can be down loaded (i.e. copied) to your computer (for example a corporate font)

If you are familiar with the file structure on a computer, you will have no trouble understanding how categories and items are organised. Each item (link, news article or on-line document) is stored within one or more categories (i.e. folders) At the top of the hierarchy is the Root category, which contains categories and items. Each of these categories can contain items as well as further categories.

To 'drill' down into the structure, click on a category or subcategory. To move back 'up' the structure, click on the Back button (for one level up),

or click on the Home button to go back to the Home Page.

Browsing News, Links and Documents
How you go about locating or browsing items depends largely on how your Intranet is organised - are the items on the Home Page listed by category or by item (or even a combination)?

Note: if you know the name or keyword for the item you are after, you may like to use the Intranet Search facility instead of locating the item by using the methods in this section.

If listed by Category
Click on a category in the list to see its contents. This may comprise items as well as sub categories; click on the sub category to view further links and possibly sub categories.

Once you have located the item in question, click on it to activate or display its details (depending on the type of item).

If listed by Item
Click on an item in the list.

The item is activated or its details are displayed (depending on the type of item).

Note: Depending on the browser you are using, if there are more categories or items than fit in the frame, you can use the scroll bars to the right of the frame or the right of the window to scroll down.

More Items Categories are an efficient way of storing and displaying items. However it is not possible to display all items and categories on the Home Page. To view the contents of the Root Category, or view categories and items on the various levels, click on the More hyperlink for the type of item required.

Note: Any items that are not specific to one or more of the existing categories are stored in the Root Category.

For example, click on the More… hyperlink for the On-line Documents to display

At the top you will see the category you are viewing (in this case the Root Category). Below a list of all categories ('folders') within this category. Lastly a list of all items in this category. (Your intranet may not have any on-line Documents at the Root Level, in which case you will not see these.)

Click on a category to view its contents.

As before, you will see the category you are currently viewing, followed by a list of subcategories (if any) and items (if any).

Viewing an Item

* News Articles are on-screen articles
* Links will take you to a web page on the World Wide Web
* On-line Documents are files which can be transferred on to your computer

Once you have located the item you are after, the next step is to click on it to activate or display.

Viewing a News Article

A news article consists of:

* a title (and indication of the news category/ies it belongs to)
* the article itself
* an image (optional)
* additional documentation such as a white paper (optional)
* link to on-line information (optional)

Click on the additional documentation or link if you want to obtain further information on the topic handled in the news article. To print choose Print… from the File menu. Return to the previous page by clicking on the Back page or on the Home button to go back to the Home page.

Viewing a Link
Click on a link, and your Internet Browser automatically opens a new window and loads the link. To return to the home page close the current browser window, and if necessary, click on the Intranet button in the Task Bar (Windows) or choose your Intranet from the Windows menu (Macintosh).

Down loading an on-line Document
An on-line document consists of

* A link to the down-loadable file
* Document title
* Description
* Links to up to 3 further related documents (optional)
* An overview of the category/ies the file belongs to

If you want to download (i.e. transfer on to your computer) the file, click on the Document title.

The document Detail screen appears with a description of the document and in some cases further references material (up to three reference documents). A list appears of all categories that this on-line document belongs to.

Download the file by clicking on the Document name or icon.

To view documents in other categories, click on the appropriate category.

Searching the Intranet
You may already know what you are looking for, just not quite its exact location. Provided you know a keyword for the item you are requiring, you can search the intranet for the item, even narrowing down the results to the type of item; News Article, Link or Online Document.

For example, you may want to locate the company logo document and download it on to your computer. First, type the keyword 'logo' into the Keyword search field. Next, check the Docs check box below it.





intraNet User's Guide

Use this document to find your way around your clear.net Intranet. It provides instructions and information regarding the following:

* Home Page
* Organisation of Categories and Items
* Browsing News, Links and Documents
* Viewing an item
* Searching the Intranet
* Searching the Internet
* Search the Phone List
* Feedback
* Help
* Logging Off

Home Page
Here we will guide you through the main part of your Intranet; the Home Page and how to access the information listed on it.

Your intranet Home Page may look somewhat different from those in the screenshots, however the principles will be the same. Note: if you cannot see the Links or On-line Documents frames, use the scroll bar on the right side of the window to scroll down.

The Home Page is the centre of your Intranet, and all its services are available from this point. At almost any time, you can click on the Home button on the screen to return to the Home Page.

Organisation of Categories and Items
Information is either organised by category or by item. Items organised by category will be shown as a series of folders;

while items listed (from most recently item at the top of the list) will be displayed using an icon dependent on the type of item:
News item An on-screen article
Link A link to another web page (usually on the World Wide Web)
On-line document A file which can be down loaded (i.e. copied) to your computer (for example a corporate font)

If you are familiar with the file structure on a computer, you will have no trouble understanding how categories and items are organised. Each item (link, news article or on-line document) is stored within one or more categories (i.e. folders) At the top of the hierarchy is the Root category, which contains categories and items. Each of these categories can contain items as well as further categories.

To 'drill' down into the structure, click on a category or subcategory. To move back 'up' the structure, click on the Back button (for one level up),

or click on the Home button to go back to the Home Page.

Browsing News, Links and Documents
How you go about locating or browsing items depends largely on how your Intranet is organised - are the items on the Home Page listed by category or by item (or even a combination)?

Note: if you know the name or keyword for the item you are after, you may like to use the Intranet Search facility instead of locating the item by using the methods in this section.

If listed by Category
Click on a category in the list to see its contents. This may comprise items as well as sub categories; click on the sub category to view further links and possibly sub categories.

Once you have located the item in question, click on it to activate or display its details (depending on the type of item).

If listed by Item
Click on an item in the list.

The item is activated or its details are displayed (depending on the type of item).

Note: Depending on the browser you are using, if there are more categories or items than fit in the frame, you can use the scroll bars to the right of the frame or the right of the window to scroll down.

More Items Categories are an efficient way of storing and displaying items. However it is not possible to display all items and categories on the Home Page. To view the contents of the Root Category, or view categories and items on the various levels, click on the More hyperlink for the type of item required.

Note: Any items that are not specific to one or more of the existing categories are stored in the Root Category.

For example, click on the More… hyperlink for the On-line Documents to display

At the top you will see the category you are viewing (in this case the Root Category). Below a list of all categories ('folders') within this category. Lastly a list of all items in this category. (Your intranet may not have any on-line Documents at the Root Level, in which case you will not see these.)

Click on a category to view its contents.

As before, you will see the category you are currently viewing, followed by a list of subcategories (if any) and items (if any).

Viewing an Item

* News Articles are on-screen articles
* Links will take you to a web page on the World Wide Web
* On-line Documents are files which can be transferred on to your computer

Once you have located the item you are after, the next step is to click on it to activate or display.

Viewing a News Article

A news article consists of:

* a title (and indication of the news category/ies it belongs to)
* the article itself
* an image (optional)
* additional documentation such as a white paper (optional)
* link to on-line information (optional)

Click on the additional documentation or link if you want to obtain further information on the topic handled in the news article. To print choose Print… from the File menu. Return to the previous page by clicking on the Back page or on the Home button to go back to the Home page.

Viewing a Link
Click on a link, and your Internet Browser automatically opens a new window and loads the link. To return to the home page close the current browser window, and if necessary, click on the Intranet button in the Task Bar (Windows) or choose your Intranet from the Windows menu (Macintosh).

Down loading an on-line Document
An on-line document consists of

* A link to the down-loadable file
* Document title
* Description
* Links to up to 3 further related documents (optional)
* An overview of the category/ies the file belongs to

If you want to download (i.e. transfer on to your computer) the file, click on the Document title.

The document Detail screen appears with a description of the document and in some cases further references material (up to three reference documents). A list appears of all categories that this on-line document belongs to.

Download the file by clicking on the Document name or icon.

To view documents in other categories, click on the appropriate category.

Searching the Intranet
You may already know what you are looking for, just not quite its exact location. Provided you know a keyword for the item you are requiring, you can search the intranet for the item, even narrowing down the results to the type of item; News Article, Link or Online Document.

For example, you may want to locate the company logo document and download it on to your computer. First, type the keyword 'logo' into the Keyword search field. Next, check the Docs check box below it.

Lastly, click on the Search button or press the Enter key on the keyboard.

A list of all on-line documents appears which have the word 'logo' either in the title or description field. Click on the required file and the logo document is viewed in detail. A link on the Detail View allows you to download (i.e. copy) the document to your computer. Click on the Home button to return to the Home Page.

Note:

* Only certain fields are searched for your keyword(s). For example in the case of a down-loaded document, the content of the document is not included in a keyword search.
* Make sure you tick the correct check boxes (News, Links and/or Docs)?
* Special characters can be used to denote for example product codes. Check with your Web Administrator.
* If you enter more than one word, items must include both keywords. For example entering 'company logo' will not find items with only 'logo' (this is referred to as an AND search). If in doubt, use only one keyword.
* The keyword you enter needs to match a word in the searched fields in its entirety. For example, searching for 'new' will not find any item whose key fields contain 'news' or 'knew'.

Searching the Internet
You don't need to leave your Intranet even if you want to find information on the Internet (i.e. the World Wide Web). An internet search can be conducted from your Home Page with a new window opened automatically for the Internet Search. Your Home Page will be right there to return to!

For example, say you wish to find some information on Julius Caesar. Simply type the words 'Julius Caesar' into the Keyword search field. Next, click on the Internet radio button (the Intranet button is automatically turned off).



Lastly, click on the Search button or press the Enter key on the keyboard. A new browser window opens in a pre-determined search engine (which is set by your Intranet administrator), and the results of the search appear.

To return to the Intranet, click on the Intranet button in the Task bar (on Windows operating systems) or choose the Intranet from the Windows menu (on a Macintosh).
Searching the Phone List
You can search for other users of the Intranet and view their details (e-mail, report to, phone number etc.) Enter the person's name (or part of name) and/or department into the Search Phone List field on the Home Page.




Click on the Search button or press the Enter key on the keyboard.



A list of contacts appears. Click on the person's name to view his/her details.




Click on the person's e-mail address to create an already addressed e-mail message to this person.



Click on the Home button to return to the Home Page.

Feedback

Any problems, suggestions or comments will be directed to your Intranet Administrator within the organisation. You will see his or her e-mail address in strategic locations around the intranet. Click on the e-mail address to automatically generate an already addressed e-mail message.




Alternatively, you can click on the Feedback button on the left of the screen to generate a feedback form which can be e-mailed off to the administrator:



Type in the message and click on the send button.



Click on the Back button or the Home button to return to the Home page.

Help

Wherever you are in the Intranet, click on the Help button to open up a page in the context-sensitive help screen.





intraNet User's Guide

Use this document to find your way around your clear.net Intranet. It provides instructions and information regarding the following:

* Home Page
* Organisation of Categories and Items
* Browsing News, Links and Documents
* Viewing an item
* Searching the Intranet
* Searching the Internet
* Search the Phone List
* Feedback
* Help
* Logging Off

Home Page
Here we will guide you through the main part of your Intranet; the Home Page and how to access the information listed on it.

Your intranet Home Page may look somewhat different from those in the screenshots, however the principles will be the same. Note: if you cannot see the Links or On-line Documents frames, use the scroll bar on the right side of the window to scroll down.

The Home Page is the centre of your Intranet, and all its services are available from this point. At almost any time, you can click on the Home button on the screen to return to the Home Page.

Organisation of Categories and Items
Information is either organised by category or by item. Items organised by category will be shown as a series of folders;

while items listed (from most recently item at the top of the list) will be displayed using an icon dependent on the type of item:
News item An on-screen article
Link A link to another web page (usually on the World Wide Web)
On-line document A file which can be down loaded (i.e. copied) to your computer (for example a corporate font)

If you are familiar with the file structure on a computer, you will have no trouble understanding how categories and items are organised. Each item (link, news article or on-line document) is stored within one or more categories (i.e. folders) At the top of the hierarchy is the Root category, which contains categories and items. Each of these categories can contain items as well as further categories.

To 'drill' down into the structure, click on a category or subcategory. To move back 'up' the structure, click on the Back button (for one level up),

or click on the Home button to go back to the Home Page.

Browsing News, Links and Documents
How you go about locating or browsing items depends largely on how your Intranet is organised - are the items on the Home Page listed by category or by item (or even a combination)?

Note: if you know the name or keyword for the item you are after, you may like to use the Intranet Search facility instead of locating the item by using the methods in this section.

If listed by Category
Click on a category in the list to see its contents. This may comprise items as well as sub categories; click on the sub category to view further links and possibly sub categories.

Once you have located the item in question, click on it to activate or display its details (depending on the type of item).

If listed by Item
Click on an item in the list.

The item is activated or its details are displayed (depending on the type of item).

Note: Depending on the browser you are using, if there are more categories or items than fit in the frame, you can use the scroll bars to the right of the frame or the right of the window to scroll down.

More Items Categories are an efficient way of storing and displaying items. However it is not possible to display all items and categories on the Home Page. To view the contents of the Root Category, or view categories and items on the various levels, click on the More hyperlink for the type of item required.

Note: Any items that are not specific to one or more of the existing categories are stored in the Root Category.

For example, click on the More… hyperlink for the On-line Documents to display

At the top you will see the category you are viewing (in this case the Root Category). Below a list of all categories ('folders') within this category. Lastly a list of all items in this category. (Your intranet may not have any on-line Documents at the Root Level, in which case you will not see these.)

Click on a category to view its contents.

As before, you will see the category you are currently viewing, followed by a list of subcategories (if any) and items (if any).

Viewing an Item

* News Articles are on-screen articles
* Links will take you to a web page on the World Wide Web
* On-line Documents are files which can be transferred on to your computer

Once you have located the item you are after, the next step is to click on it to activate or display.

Viewing a News Article

A news article consists of:

* a title (and indication of the news category/ies it belongs to)
* the article itself
* an image (optional)
* additional documentation such as a white paper (optional)
* link to on-line information (optional)

Click on the additional documentation or link if you want to obtain further information on the topic handled in the news article. To print choose Print… from the File menu. Return to the previous page by clicking on the Back page or on the Home button to go back to the Home page.

Viewing a Link
Click on a link, and your Internet Browser automatically opens a new window and loads the link. To return to the home page close the current browser window, and if necessary, click on the Intranet button in the Task Bar (Windows) or choose your Intranet from the Windows menu (Macintosh).

Down loading an on-line Document
An on-line document consists of

* A link to the down-loadable file
* Document title
* Description
* Links to up to 3 further related documents (optional)
* An overview of the category/ies the file belongs to

If you want to download (i.e. transfer on to your computer) the file, click on the Document title.

The document Detail screen appears with a description of the document and in some cases further references material (up to three reference documents). A list appears of all categories that this on-line document belongs to.

Download the file by clicking on the Document name or icon.

To view documents in other categories, click on the appropriate category.

Searching the Intranet

You may already know what you are looking for, just not quite its exact location. Provided you know a keyword for the item you are requiring, you can search the intranet for the item, even narrowing down the results to the type of item; News Article, Link or Online Document.

For example, you may want to locate the company logo document and download it on to your computer. First, type the keyword 'logo' into the Keyword search field. Next, check the Docs check box below it.

Lastly, click on the Search button or press the Enter key on the keyboard.

A list of all on-line documents appears which have the word 'logo' either in the title or description field. Click on the required file and the logo document is viewed in detail. A link on the Detail View allows you to download (i.e. copy) the document to your computer. Click on the Home button to return to the Home Page.

Note:

* Only certain fields are searched for your keyword(s). For example in the case of a down-loaded document, the content of the document is not included in a keyword search.

* Make sure you tick the correct check boxes (News, Links and/or Docs)?

* Special characters can be used to denote for example product codes. Check with your Web Administrator.

* If you enter more than one word, items must include both keywords. For example entering 'company logo' will not find items with only 'logo' (this is referred to as an AND search). If in doubt, use only one keyword.

* The keyword you enter needs to match a word in the searched fields in its entirety. For example, searching for 'new' will not find any item whose key fields contain 'news' or 'knew'.


Searching the Internet

You don't need to leave your Intranet even if you want to find information on the Internet (i.e. the World Wide Web). An internet search can be conducted from your Home Page with a new window opened automatically for the Internet Search. Your Home Page will be right there to return to!

For example, say you wish to find some information on Julius Caesar. Simply type the words 'Julius Caesar' into the Keyword search field. Next, click on the Internet radio button (the Intranet button is automatically turned off).

Lastly, click on the Search button or press the Enter key on the keyboard. A new browser window opens in a pre-determined search engine (which is set by your Intranet administrator), and the results of the search appear.

To return to the Intranet, click on the Intranet button in the Task bar (on Windows operating systems) or choose the Intranet from the Windows menu (on a Macintosh).


Searching the Phone List

You can search for other users of the Intranet and view their details (e-mail, report to, phone number etc.) Enter the person's name (or part of name) and/or department into the Search Phone List field on the Home Page.

Click on the Search button or press the Enter key on the keyboard.

A list of contacts appears. Click on the person's name to view his/her details.

Click on the person's e-mail address to create an already addressed e-mail message to this person.

Click on the Home button to return to the Home Page.

Feedback
Any problems, suggestions or comments will be directed to your Intranet Administrator within the organisation. You will see his or her e-mail address in strategic locations around the intranet. Click on the e-mail address to automatically generate an already addressed e-mail message.

Alternatively, you can click on the Feedback button on the left of the screen to generate a feedback form which can be e-mailed off to the administrator:

Type in the message and click on the send button.

Click on the Back button or the Home button to return to the Home page.

Help
Wherever you are in the Intranet, click on the Help button to open up a page in the context-sensitive help screen.

The main screen adjusts in size to accommodate the help screen. Close the help screen by clicking on the top left close button and the main screen resizes to normal dimensions again.

Logging Off

Exit out of the Intranet by clicking on the Log Off button.



Always log off before quitting your browser. Note: if you find yourself logged out unexpectedly (i.e. you are asked to log back on), someone else may have logged on to the Intranet with your username and password. A good reason not to share these with others!