There is a worrying trend emerging in the field of information architecture: organisations are attempting to finalise site structures without evaluating their effectiveness in the…

Efforts should be targeted at improving the quality of key information, while applying lower standards to the majority of intranet content.

The second CM Briefing for August asks the question: is your intranet trusted by staff? To quote: It is widely recognised that an intranet must be trusted, if it is to be regularly used by staff across an organisation. While it is easy to make this statement, it is harder to qualify what is meant by trust, how users assess it, and how we can build (or rebuild) trust in the intranet. This briefing looks at the issue of trust, and presents some simple steps that can be taken to further build staff trust in the intranet.

It is widely recognised that an intranet must be trusted, if it is to be regularly used by staff across an organisation.

All too often, centralised intranet teams find themselves battling with decentralised authors to enforce consistency and quality standards.

My second CM Briefing for July encourages intranet teams to lose the language of enforcement when dealing with authors. To quote: All too often, centralised intranet teams find themselves battling with decentralised authors to enforce consistency and quality standards. Not only is this fighting ultimately fruitless, it can be very damaging for the morale of all participants, and potentially crippling for the future of the intranet itself. In these situations, intranet teams need to find a new approach, and new ways of working with their decentralised authors. The first step is to lose the language of enforcement.

The first of my CM Briefings for July looks at what to include in intranet search results. To quote: While there is much that can be done to improve the effectiveness of intranet search, a good starting point is to improve the design of search results pages. The first question to ask is: what to include (and what not to include) in search results? This briefing is designed to provide a simple checklist that can be used to assess (and then redesign) intranet search results pages.

This case study presents the findings from five intranet reviews across a range of organisations, each with very different results.

Intranets must be more than just a dumping ground for ‘second-hand documents’ if they are to be successful. Instead, a radically different policy needs to…

My second CM Briefing for May looks at the paradox of delivering to isolated staff. To quote: Staff in geographically isolated locations are most reliant on information sources such as intranets. In practical terms, however, these staff are the hardest to reach. This is a central paradox for intranets, and while there are no easy answers, there are some practical steps that can be taken to better meet the needs of these isolated staff.