Designing intranets

The intranet should look and behave in a consistent way (rather than, for instance, different departments having radically different graphic designs and navigation systems). Having an intranet that changes its appearance and behaviour between sections disorientates users and can introduce doubts into their minds as to whether or not all sections are as reliable and current as each other.

A good solution can be to create a standard page template with certain fixed characteristics, such as:

• Font
• Navigation
• Graphic design
• Page structure

Another interesting point  is that an organisation’s intranet should be easily and quickly distinguishable from its public-facing website (i.e. look different). Failing to do this can lead to employees becoming confused as to which ‘world they are in’ (and could even lead to customers being sent inward-facing and commercially-sensitive documentation).

How intranets should treat their content

It’s important that any intranet makes it absolutely clear what information it does and doesn’t provide. It’s also important that the intranet’s relationship with the organisation’s other information-resources should be made clear (e.g. what sort of information appears on the intranet vs. what sort of information is on the fileshare).

In general, a piece of information should only appear in one location on the intranet (although it can obviously be linked to from many different parts of the site). The 2 main advantages of this approach are that it:

• Reduces the need for keeping multiple versions current and accurate
• Avoids potential user-uncertainty about which instance of a piece of content is relevant to a user

Managing intranets

Most successful intranets are governed by a strong, central team. This is absolutely necessary in order to provide an intranet with a clear and cohesive approach.

Although authorship and content-ownership can – and very often should – be devolved throughout the business, the management of the intranet itself needs to be the direct responsibility of a dedicated team. (In exactly the same way as the site’s external-facing website should be.)

Employee directory

One of the most popular reasons for an organisation’s intranet is to find out how to contact fellow-employees. For this reason, you should always provide a dedicated central employee directory on your intranet.

Access to this directory should be provided from every page on the site and it should include all employees’ details. There should be one place that people can go and be confident of finding any colleague they need to.

Support different ways of searching and browsing

You should also bear in mind that people will not always be able to provide the full name of the person they’re looking for. You may have to allow users to search/browse according to:

• Departments people work for (e.g. “I met someone from ‘Finance’ the other day but can’t remember their name”)
• Job titles and/or responsibilities (e.g. “Who writes the company newsletter?”)
• Phonetic spelling of a name (e.g. “I’m looking for a Spanish colleague whose first name is pronounced ‘Hymie’”)
• First name (e.g. “I’m looking for Bob in Accounts”)
• Common name-variants (e.g. A man christened Alexander might also be known to his colleagues as Alex, Alec and/or Al)

Employee details

The details which the directory returns on an employee should seek to be as helpful as possible. Some of the most important details include:

• E-mail address
• Department
• Phone number (both for internal and outside dialling)
• Location
• Job titles and main responsibilities (including any pages the person is responsible for on the intranet)
• Photo
• Manager

To learn more about this interesting article go to:  www.webcredible.co.uk