There are often situations where there is a difference of opinion between the central intranet team, and the decentralised authors, owners or stakeholders. Depending on the team, there may be situations where they aren't confident of tackling the issues, or winning over the decentralised groups. To help build team confidence, and to win more of these arguments, there are three things all intranet teams should try to do: understand staff needs and issues put yourself in their shoes build the team's professional skills Each of these is explored in the sections below. Understand staff needs and issues Discussions relating to

Thanks to all those who provided feedback on the earlier mindmap that we posted. We’ve now incorporated a range of changes and improvements, and have released version 1.4. The fonts …

The phrase 'trying to boil the ocean' refers to tasks that are clearly and heroically impossible. This is exactly what most teams take on when they try to get every intranet page up to the same high standard. In the earlier article titled Intranet authoring: a hobby?, the role of intranet authors was explored, highlighting that many are required to maintain their content 'on the side', with little training or support. Most intranets struggle to deliver consistent, accurate, readable and valuable content. Despite this, the goal of many intranet teams remains to deliver universally 'good' content. This briefing will discuss

The rise of enterprise search has put an increasing focus on searching ever broader collections of content and documents within organisations. While enterprise search projects generally start with simple intranet search, attention quickly moves to searching document management systems, collaboration tools, business systems and fileshares. Underpinning this work is the belief (or hope) that business value will be delivered to users by deploying a more extensive search tool. Unfortunately it is often the case that searching more is not better than searching less. This briefing will look at some of the challenges involved in implementing enterprise search, and provide practical

I was co-facilitating the Intranet Leadership Forum workshop in Melbourne today, and we started the day with a discussion around collaboration. We covered a variety of questions, but one key …

When in Melbourne this last week, we ended up in a crowded restaurant, sitting next to a pair of pilots. From one of the major international airlines, they were enjoying a 48-hour layover in Australia, between long-haul trips. Inevitably, the discussion touched upon intranets, whereopon they exclaimed: "Ours is awful! We need to get you over to fix it!". That aside, they also told a very interesting story about their training systems. Apparently a new "home study" program has been recently put in place. A fairly typical e-learning system, the pilots read through a number of screens of information, and

Most modern content management systems provide two different ways of editing site content: in-context editing and back-end editing. While in-context editing is often seen as 'sexier', each method has its strengths and weaknesses. This briefing will explore these two editing options, providing advice on when to use them in practice. In-context editing In-context editing allows authors to browse the published website, using site navigation in the normal way to find the desired page. By clicking a small or hidden button (or some other equivalent action), they can switch into editing mode, updating the content of the page in place. During

A lot of intranet and portal projects aim to deliver functionality related to personalisation or customisation. This may involve tailoring information based on staff role, delivering news relevant for specific offices, or limiting access to information based on seniority. Any of these capabilities requires the system to know who staff are, the business unit they belong to, and where they sit in the real world. Unfortunately, too many of these projects run aground before they start because a key piece of IT infrastructure has not been correctly put in place. LDAP and Active Directory Sitting invisibly behind the scenes in

Often it's difficult to tell exactly who is using an intranet, and how they are using it. Obviously, some research is required to help answer these questions, but what technique can capture the tacit knowledge without shadowing users in an uncomfortable and expensive way? A relatively recent research technique that can be very useful in this situation is known as a 'cultural probe'. In essence, the technique involves getting users to give you information without you actually being there. Often this means giving them a diary to write things down in, but the technique can make use of all manner

Macquarie University is an innovative university located on a single campus in Sydney, Australia. Macquarie was founded in 1964 as a second-generation Australian university with a focus on interdisciplinary research …