Intranet Plus

Hi all,

I saw in one of the Intranet forums a guy asking how he can replace the email address on hundreds of pages now that their email address has changed.

Most of the time it is quite simple. You have one include file where you change the email address and that’s it. 30 seconds job.

But in this case they don’t have one. As the guy said it is 10 years old Intranet which back then the include technology weren’t that popular (although I do remember back in 1998 using them) . He also said this:

Unfortunately our Intranet is about 10 years old and has been allowed to grow without any proper control. There is a collection of websites and they are not all ASP files. Websites have been built by different contractors using different methods.

This is really bad… the last thing you want is that you web development will go out of control. This is true to your Intranet system, and your Intranet as well.

So before you start any web project talk to your developer and agree on one method that the site will run. Otherwise you will end up search and replace a lot…

S-Development

Hi all,My wife works for one of the biggest investment bank in the world. They have a sophisticated intranet system over there. With that system the employees could do a lot of things. In fact it was a classified website. Like Loot or even E-bay. It was buzzing with activity - After all this bank has 60,000 employees. So you could find there tickets to gigs or football, recommendations about builders, cleaners… benefits for the employees and much more.

One day without any reason they decide to change the system. Since then there is virtually zero activity. Why? Because they replace a good intranet design with bad one. So people can’t find a thing over there. And after a week or two they don’t even try. So now they have a deserted intranet system that cost them fortune.

This happens many times. If you get it wrong, people won’t use it no mater how much money you spend. The rule is very basic: keep it simple. If you look at Google for example their secret is simplicity. Just a logo with a search field and some links to other services. And it works. The less is more on this case.

I visited one of my clients that wanted me to add some functions to their already exciting intranet system. I felt like sea sick. So many colors and information on one page that it was impossible to use. I asked them if the use it a lot, and they say not really, but they want to have more functions, so people will use it more.

My first advice for them was to change the design completely. Our designer here in S-development, came with a nice interface. Very clean and simple. This is even before we add more functions to it. They love it. Now they use it much more, and it is a good basic for further development.

So don’t get it wrong. It is Important

Assaf Scialom