Practical Intranet Development

Book excerpt: An intranet can be a powerful tool. A well-designed intranet becomes the key resource and communications platform for your organization, used by members of staff as their first destination for information. In contrast, a poorly designed intranet will sit unused, accumulating useless information, and eating up IT budgets. So, how do you avoid this situation, and make sure you design the most useful, and usable, intranet? This book takes you through the steps you need to take to make an invaluable intranet, from identifying your users' needs and building an indispensable tool, to marketing the results. It guides you through the problems that may occur, passing on invaluable advice from people who have been through the process before. We start by setting the scene, giving an overview of what intranets are and how to justify it to your organization. We then give you a rundown of the main areas you'll need to think about when developing an intranet, covering browsers, development techniques, usability, content management, security, and internal marketing. Finally, we'll take a look at what to do when the Intranet moves beyond its original function, looking at remote access, extranets, and what to do when the Intranet gets too big.