One Intranets Vancouver: Intranets, extranets, portals

Intranet 2.0 in 10 Not-So-Easy Steps

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:47:00 +0000

Thousands of corporate intranets are seldom-used, impossibly complex beasts. In contrast, next-generation intranets are simple, social platforms that can change the way people work (for the better!). But getting to Intranet 2.0 isn’t so easy. Here are my 10 steps.

Step 1: Blow up the old intranet.

Why? It’s irrelevant to employees’ day-to-day job. The cumbersome updating process alienates people. It’s out of date, and usage is dismal.

How? Find the intranet server, get to a command prompt, and type >rm –rf *. (That’s a server admin joke.) Alternatively, unplug it. Seriously, it’s not worth trying to fix; you’ve got to start over.

Step 2: Turn users into authors.

Why? When readers can also write, the intranet becomes self-healing. There’s no longer any distortion in knowledge transfer. Users feel trusted and empowered. And there’s no excessive burden on a few people.

How? Every page should have a big fat edit button.

A great example is limestone mining company Graymont. They’re in a staid, traditional industry that hasn’t changed much in a hundred years, but their IT environment is cutting edge. They’ve given everyone the power to edit in their collaborative intranet 2.0 environment, even those who come to work in steel-toed boots and only occasionally sit at a computer. “We believe that sharing information everywhere possible will help us do a better job and be a lower-cost producer,” explains director of IT Ron Ogilvy.

Everyone has the power to edit in Graymont’s intranet 2.0 environment — even those who come to work in steel-toed boots.

Step 3: Expose the social context of all content.

Why? If you know who added a piece of content, where they work, who they work with, and what other content they’ve created, the content is wrapped in a social context. That context makes the information much more interesting and meaningful.

How? Expose every bit of social data you can. Rich, self-maintained employee profiles are a great way to do this, linked clearly from each piece of content a person contributes.

Intrawest Placemaking, a resort development company, uses “Place” pages: a personal area where each employee can add a profile, upload photos and documents, create pages, and share favourite links. Every change an employee makes to the intranet—every comment posted, every file uploaded, every page added—has the employee’s name by it, linked back to his or her “Place.” Other employees can follow the links, learn about each other, explore each other’s content, and develop relationships.

According to Placemaking’s president, Drew Stotesbury, there “has been a dramatic increase in the frequency and quality of collaboration across our organization.” (Read the case study on Intrawest Placemaking’s intranet.)

Employee profiles are a vital link in exposing the social context of intranet content

Step 4: Make things findable.

Why? If people can’t find stuff on your intranet quickly, they’ll stop using it.

How? Support multiple methods to find content. Implement an excellent search, an intuitive navigation structure, and tagging (keywording’s cool younger brother).

An effective combination of intuitive navigation and thorough tagging was employed on an extranet for primary care physicians in Vancouver, Canada. For example, to find a lab requisition, a physician can navigate by lab location, condition type, or requisition type. The tags help surface the same lab form in multiple, logical locations. Or they can search. “[Our extranet] is like a medically oriented, locally resourced, primary-care Google,” said one physician.

The physician extranet “PC Central” combines search, hierarchy and tagging to provide multiple navigation paths to content

Step 5: Send signals when content changes.

Why? When you send signals, it brings people back to the intranet. It keeps conversations flowing; it keeps content fresh.

How? When a page is added, edited, or commented on, send a signal to interested parties via email or via RSS feeds.

Screenshot of a signal sent via email

Step 6: Provide scaffolding: a framework to support new content.

Why? Some organizations deploy a blank wiki as their Intranet 2.0, but it’s really tough to start with a blank slate. Users need some sort of framework in place to guide content creation. The more scaffolding you provide, the better: it’s easier for users to edit something that’s there than to create from scratch.

How? Get an information architect to help define the initial structure of your new intranet.
For smaller companies, it could be as easy as defining the top level or two of your navigation. Maybe something like this:

Home
People
How-To
News
Projects
Tools & Links

Step 7: Hold a barnraising to populate initial content.

Why? Again, it’s really tough to start with a blank slate. Populating content before launch creates initial value, providing a reason for users to visit. That content will also serve as a design pattern, causing other users to imitate what they see.

How? Get 5 or 10 people with their computers together in a boardroom. Lock the door, order pizza, and create or migrate content for a day or two.

Step 8: Make them use it. Once.

Why? Most people don’t want to learn a new application no matter how easy it’s supposed to be. Users have to be forced, just once, to try Intranet 2.0. Once they see how easy-shmeezy it is, they’ll be off to the races.

How? In brief group training sessions, get every employee in your organization to click the Edit button. Get them to edit their profile, add a page, add a comment.

I was recently on-site at a 230-person web start-up to help them implement our ThoughtFarmer Intranet 2.0 platform. We installed it on Monday. We built scaffolding on Tuesday. We barnraised on Wednesday. On Thursday and Friday, we did a series of 12 training sessions that got almost half the company to click the Edit button. Their intranet 2.0 was an immediate success, with high levels of participation across the organization.

Step 9: Lead by example.

Why? If you can get the senior team to participate in your collaborative intranet, people will pay attention… and imitate them.

How? Get one of your senior executives excited about the prospects of a collaborative intranet environment.

Get them adding and editing early and often. The more senior the exec, the better – the CEO would be great.

Intrawest Placemaking, mentioned earlier, enjoyed the full support of their president, Drew Stotesbury. He took the lead in openly sharing information on their collaborative intranet. Discussions he initiated were often the most popular pages.

A discussion initiated by Intrawest Placemaking’s president, Drew Stotesbury

Step 10: Get the intranet “in-the-flow”.

Why? Most intranets are “above the flow”. They store the artifacts of production. But they’re not used for production themselves. When you can use your intranet as a production tool, to get things done, you’ve reached Intranet Nirvana.

How? Use your Intranet 2.0 in the flow. Write documents in your wiki – not in Word. When you’re taking meeting notes, do it live, on your intranet. And if you can’t use your intranet in the flow, change it till you can.

At ThoughtFarmer, we use our ThoughtFarmer-powered intranet “in-the-flow” — we use it to design ThoughtFarmer itself. Sometimes we find ourselves floating back to old ways of doing things, like starting a document in Word. When that happens, we try to discern what it was that caused us to fall back “above the flow”.

At ThoughtFarmer, we use our ThoughtFarmer-powered intranet “in-the-flow” to design ThoughtFarmer itself

Intranet 2.0 isn’t easy to achieve. But once you’re there, you’ll never want to go back.

Your intranet as a collaboration hub

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 20:49:00 +0000

As online collaboration tools continue to permeate the enterprise, intranet managers need to make their intranet the hub of internal collaboration or risk irrelevancy.

Collaboration means working together to get something done. At a minimum, I think your intranet should facilitate the following three types of collaboration:

Instant Collaboration

Goal: Share ideas and get immediate feedback
Offline equivalent: Face-to-face meetings & phone calls
Online solutions: MSN Messenger, Google Talk, WebEx, etc.

Instant collaboration tools include instant messaging and desktop screen-sharing. Your intranet should provide links or downloads for these tools and instructions on how to use them. Advanced integration could include an indicator beside names in the employee directory to show who’s online.

Project Collaboration

Goal: Plan and execute a project
Offline equivalent: Status meetings & war boards
Online solutions: BaseCamp, Central Desktop, eProject, etc.

Project collaboration tools usually include a shared calendar, to-do lists, message boards and a file repository. Your intranet should link to your project collaboration tool and include suggestions on how to use it effectively. Advanced integration could include a personalized to-do list on the intranet home page.

Mass Collaboration

Goal: Ongoing sharing, learning and connecting with teammates
Offline equivalent: Team off-sites, workshops, conferences
Online solutions: Confluence, SocialText, ThoughtFarmer, etc.

Mass collaboration solutions make it easy to create, share, and find content. They include wikis, blogs, and social bookmarking. The best ones leverage the network effect to aggregate individual contributions in ways that create value for the entire organization. Your intranet shouldn’t be integrated with a mass collaboration solution. It should be a mass collaboration solution.

The intranet team should pursue ownership of all types of online collaboration and integrate them into a single portal. The future for intranets is mass collaboration.

Further reading:

Collaboration Types: Part One, Two and Three

List of mass collaboration applications

The Net Generation Hates Your Intranet

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 22:15:00 +0000

In Wikinomics, Don Tapscott describes the "perfect storm" that is ushering in a new era of mass collaboration: the Web as a computing platform; a global economy; and a demographic tidal wave he refers to as the Net Generation.

Born between 1977 and 1996, the Net Generation grew up immersed in a digital world. The internet dominates their personal and social lives, from instant messaging to peer-to-peer filesharing to virtual communities. They publish and participate in online social networks and swap ideas as easily as they swap songs and videos.

So what happens when one of these fresh college graduates joins a firm and finds a staid, traditional intranet with a tightly controlled publishing model?

They hate it.

This is a very real problem for companies trying to attract and retain new talent. These twentysomethings operate on principles of openness, participation and interactivity. If a company's technology infrastructure, including the intranet, does not encourage free communication and collaboration, it misses a big opportunity. Worse, it alienates these younger, internet-savvy employees.

This issue is obviously bigger than just the IT department. It involves the culture of the entire organization. That notwithstanding, what can we as intranet managers do to attract and harness the talents of the Net Generation?

Turn users into authors. Help your employees edit, create, annotate, rate and comment on the intranet. By trusting them in this way, they'll trust you back. You'll create honest, satisfied, engaged employees. You'll also create an environment where knowledge flows freely and breakthrough ideas can emerge.

Turn authors into friends. Expose your company's social network online. Allow employees to associate, connect and form relationships with one another through the intranet. This isn't touchy-feely hogwash. One of Gallup's 12 questions to gauge employee engagement is "Do I have a best friend at work?" Intranets that turn authors into friends improve employee engagement and strengthen workplace community, especially with Net-Geners.

Skeptical? Then consider some of the world's most heavily-trafficked web sites: MySpace (#3), YouTube (#6), Facebook (#10), Blogger (#12), Flickr (#20). They are dominated by the Net Generation, and they operate on the two principles listed above: they turn users into authors, and authors into friends. To create an intranet that "clicks" with N-Geners, we would all do well to imitate these sites.

I'll leave you with a quote from Wikinomics: "Companies able to adapt to the new demands of N-Gen now will gain a tremendous source of competitive advantage and innovation. Those that don't will be left on the sidelines, unable to refresh their workforces as the N-Geners flow to other opportunities."

Sounds ominous. But I think he's right.

2006 Year in Review: Top 5 articles for intranet managers

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 18:07:00 +0000

At the close of 2006, we’re seeing some strong trends with web applications in general and intranets in particular. With the help of AJAX, browser-based interfaces are becoming more powerful and complex; yet paradoxically, there is a renewed awareness of the importance of simplicity. And as sites like MySpace, Wikipedia and YouTube become more popular, the concept of social, collaborative intranets is starting to gain traction.

With these trends in mind, here are the 5 articles that most influenced my work as an intranet consultant in 2006.

1. Enterprise 2.0: Dawn of Emergent Collaboration
The seminal article on how Web 2.0 will radically alter knowledge collaboration in the enterprise. Absolutely worth the $6.50 cost to download.

2. Greater than the sum of its parts
A great PowerPoint by Yahoo’s Tom Coates explaining how and why social software works. This slideshow gave me great ideas on how to add social value to an intranet.

3. Participation Inequality
In a multi-user community, like a wiki or a discussion forum, a small percentage of users are responsible for the bulk of activity, while others just watch. Jakob Nielsen discusses the phenomenon and ways to overcome it.

4. Ambient Signifiers
Adding subtle visual cues to your interface can improve usability for advanced users without overcomplicating it for novices.

5. Defeating Feature Fatigue
An abundance of features might excite people, but it decreases long-term satisfaction. This Harvard Business Review article about product design applies equally well to intranet design.

And let me throw one more in here. Thinking of quitting your day job in 2007 and becoming an entrepreneur? Guy Kawasaki makes suggestions on how not to go bankrupt in your first year in his article, “The Art of Bootstrapping.”

You have my wishes for a great 2007!

Enterprise Social Software Case Study: Intrawest Placemaking

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 00:40:00 +0000

This is a little longer than my usual quick tips--it's a case study of the social intranet of one of my clients, Intrawest Placemaking. Eight screenshots are included below.

It's not too often outsiders get a chance to see the intranets of other companies. I hope you enjoy it!

Background

Client

Placemaking (325 employees) is the real estate development division of Intrawest (25,000 employees). Placemaking is 100% knowledge workers. They develop resort villages worldwide, including Whistler-Blackcomb (British Columbia), Mountain Creek (New Jersey), and Tremblant (Quebec).

Project history

Tracy Hutton, Director of Learning at Placemaking, wanted to leverage the company intranet to create community at the recently re-organized company. She also wanted a better way to capture Placemaking’s intellectual capital online.

The existing intranet, released in May 2004, was infrequently updated and poorly used (averaging 0.5 page views per employee per day).

Hutton needed to redevelop the new intranet, and then maintain it, without a single full-time resource on the project.

Placemaking’s original intranet, May 2004

Solution

Solution: Social Software

Creators of ThoughtFarmer social software, Chris McGrath and Darren Gibbons, approached Hutton with the idea of using wiki-type technology to create a self-sustaining intranet democratically maintained by the entire company.

Hutton embraced the idea and won support of senior management. The redesigned intranet was launched in April 2006 on the ThoughtFarmer social software platform.

Placemaking's collaborative intranet, April 2006

Enterprise 2.0 features

Placemaking’s new intranet is built on the wiki principle of open editing. All employees have the ability to add and edit content, even on the home page.Recent changes are listed on the home page and a search engine indexes all content. Pages and people are intertwined: each page is linked to the author’s profile and their profile page links to pages by that person.

Unlike wikis, Placemaking’s intranet has a hierarchical content structure with auto-generated navigation. It was felt that non-technical business users wouldn’t be comfortable with WikiWords and free-form page creation. Instead, clicking the “Add a page” button creates a subpage of the current page.

Successes

Tenfold increase in use

At launch, intranet use immediately increased tenfold to 5 page views per employee per day. The increased use has held steady for 6 months.Use is pervasive. There were 1486 unique users in the second quarter after launch. With just 325 employees, this means over 1000 non-Placemaking employees—mostly employees of the parent company, Intrawest—used Placemaking's intranet. (Although it's not advertised, all of Intrawest's 25,000 employees—including those working in the lodging and ski operations divisions—have read-only access to Placemaking's intranet.)

Knowledge sharing that saves money

In September, Mike Hartigan, a Placemaking project manager in Vancouver, created a page about a method of finishing concrete floors that creates an appearance better than tile at a substantially lower cost. Using the method at the entrance to a resort saved $500,000 and reduced the project timeline.Other project managers in Florida and Nevada posted comments to the page, asking further questions. In response, Hartigan posted photos of the finished job and addressed their comments. The other construction managers planned on using the information on future projects.

On another occasion, a construction manager shared his approach for lighting supply for condo-hotel development. By using a light broker to assemble the lighting package and gather competitive bids, he saved about $200,000 on a typical $30 million project.

Placemaking manages dozens of multi-million dollar developments a year. These construction tips, if implemented on just a handful of projects, will save the company millions of dollars. Without the everyone-is-an-editor intranet, it is doubtful that they would have been shared.

A $500,000 tip: Construction manager Mike Hartigan shares a technique for polishing concrete that looks better than tile

Employee "places" popular

The first social feature of ThoughtFarmer to resonate with Placemaking employees was Employee “Places”: a personal spot for each employee to add a profile and create pages. As employees uploaded photos of themselves, added amusing anecdotes, and revealed a little more of who they are, the popularity of People Places skyrocketed. Within 3 months, virtually all employees had added their own contact information, one-third had added a personal profile, and 15% had created pages.

Employee “Places”, where each employee can add a profile and create pages, were the first popular social feature of the new intranet

Six weeks after launch, an unplanned community "event" took place on the intranet. Two people changed their profile pictures to ones of actor Tom Selleck in the 1980’s TV show Magnum P.I. The change, like any other, was listed on the intranet home page. Within minutes, other users also changed their pictures to Magnum P.I. or to Magnum's butler, Higgins. Within 2 hours, dozens of employees had taken the idea and ran with it, sporting photos of 80s TV icons like Mr. T, Daisy Duke and Michael Knight. It was the talk of the office.

Although this event was of no immediate business value, it was a milestone in the adoption of the democratized intranet by the employees. From that point on, Placemaking seemed to "get" what their new collaborative platform was capable of.

An unplanned community “event”: Users change their photos to those of 80s TV icons.

Company president a leading content contributor

Placemaking's president, Drew Stotesbury, has been an active user and proponent of the collaborative intranet, posting news articles, uploading photos, and starting new forum topics.

Placemaking's parent company, Intrawest Corporation, was recently acquired by Fortress Capital. During the period of uncertainty preceding the announcement of the acquisition, Stotesbury used the intranet to good effect in assuaging the concerns of employees. He posted regular updates on the impending transaction, invited questions, and posted answers.

Stotesbury's leading role contributed to a change in attitude amongst staff, as employees began to view the intranet as a serious tool and a viable platform for communication and discussion.

The company president is an active participant in the online community. Here he starts a conversation about “Amazing places”.

No misuse

In the six months since launch, there have been no incidents of employees misusing or abusing their ability to edit and post content. No content can be posted anonymously, as Placemaking’s intranet software integrates with their Windows network and Active Directory. Employees take responsibility for their own postings and this self-policing seems to be effective.

Challenges

Participation inequality

In any social system, a small group of users is usually responsible for the bulk of content creation. This holds true for Placemaking's intranet.On the encouraging side, about half of all users have gone beyond just updating their contact information, and have uploaded a picture, posted a comment, or created a page. Still, there is a small network of users (about 20) that is responsible for the vast majority of page creation, content edits, and forum posts. Getting the other 300 employees to not just lurk, but to actively participate, remains a challenge.

Participation is heaviest at Placemaking’s head office. Head office employees are 3 times more likely than non-head office employees to contribute content to the intranet and 5 times more likely to be frequent page editors. It is unclear why head office employees are more willing to participate in the social system. It may be due to the nature of their jobs. It could be that a critical mass of peers is participating, making others feel comfortable enough to join in.

System limitations

Software to support emergent collaboration in the enterprise is new and imperfect. No doubt some lack of user participation at Placemaking is due in part to limitations of the underlying software.

One feature the user community has repeatedly requested is a mechanism to alert them if a particular page changes — in Enterprise 2.0 parlance, "signals". While RSS is the preferred signal platform in tech circles, no Placemaking user has mentioned it: they want alerts delivered by email.

In December, Placemaking will migrate to ThoughtFarmer 2.0, which includes email-based signals when a requested page changes. In addition, Placemaking’s updated intranet will include content tagging, social bookmarking, and "related content" links. It is hoped that these system enhancements, all part of McAfee's "SLATES" formula for Enterprise 2.0 collaboration, will increase participation on Placemaking's intranet (A. McAfee, “Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration”, MIT Sloan Management Review, Spring 2006).

Placemaking plans more social features in a December upgrade to their intranet software

Everyone-can-edit is a foreign concept

Some users evidently do not edit intranet content because the concept is so foreign.

For example, one user posted a comment to a page with a recommended change: “Tracy, can we change out CW’s name for John’s? What is the procedure for updating the entire paragraph?” The user could have made the change himself by clicking the prominent “Edit this page” button.

User interface issues aside, if the user expected the ability to edit content, he would have found the edit button. But many users are still not expecting this ability. This cultural shift will take time.

Many users don’t “get” that they can edit a page. Here, a user posts a comment asking the site administrator to make a change, even though he can click “edit” and make the change himself.

Key Learnings

Pays for itself

In a large company, the cost of an effective enterprise collaboration platform is trivial compared with the value of the knowledge that is shared. Placemaking's total investment in their intranet, including customizations and information architecture consulting, was under $100,000. That money is recouped by one construction manager implementing the suggestion to use a light broker.

Additionally, Hutton is convinced that the social software aspects of the intranet have strengthened the feeling of community at the company and helped foster loyalty among employees. These tacit benefits represent a return on investment that’s hard to quantify, but is very real.

Need easier ways for employees to add value to intranet

Currently, about 50% of Placemaking employees do not edit the intranet. 44% are occasional editors, and 6% are active participants. Although participation is high compared to internet-based social systems, we still need to look at new ways to get the 94% of low- or non-participators more involved.

One new feature to be added to Placemaking’s intranet in December is a simple social bookmarking system. Users can favorite a page with one click. Their lists of favorites are visible to others, and their favorites count as “votes” that impact search results.

User contribution can’t get easier than one click. It’s hoped that system enhancements like this one will serve to extract value from more employees.

Enterprise collaboration is a cultural shift

Placemaking is in an excellent position to take advantage of its social intranet. It’s a knowledge-based business. Its President is an active participant in the system. Its revenue per employee is very high, so any efficiencies or cost savings gained from sharing knowledge can have a significant bottom-line impact.

But employees can’t be forced to participate. They have to first see and believe that participating benefits them. That’s a cultural shift that will take time.

Exploit email to strengthen your intranet

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 21:30:00 +0000

Many IT managers would like their intranet to reduce the organization’s dependence on email. Is this realistic?

Email is an incredible communication and collaboration tool: It’s freeform, multimedia (with attachments), easy to learn, easy to use, and platform-independent. It’s not going anywhere.

So instead of trying to reduce email with your intranet, consider how you can exploit email to strengthen your intranet:

Send links to important announcements
Don’t send “all staff” emails of important announcements. Instead, publish the announcement to the intranet, and then send an “all staff” email with a link to the article.

Subscribe to email alerts
Allow users to add intranet pages to a “watchlist”. When the page changes, automatically send an email notification to subscribed users.

“Email this page”
Add “email this page” functionality to intranet pages. Users click it to send a page link to colleagues via email.

Publish content via email
Allow users to publish content to the intranet by sending an email to a special inbox. (Wiki software products like Confluence, SocialText and ThoughtFarmer support this kind of functionality.)

Your intranet may do nothing to reduce the size of your inbox. But if you embrace it, email could do wonders for your intranet.

Further reading:

Form fields: Place captions outside; use default styling

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 14:23:00 +0000

Intranet designers sometimes place captions for form fields inside the field in an attempt to conserve screen real estate. For example, instead of putting the caption "Search intranet" to the left or on top of the search box, they put it inside. Don't do this.

Last month I ran user testing on a proposed intranet design that used this style on all input boxes. It repeatedly caused problems for the predominantly over-40 test group. For example, instead of entering a query in the search input box, they just hit the "Go" button beside the box, assuming it would take them to a page where they could enter the query.

Here’s a graphic to demonstrate the issue more clearly:

On a related note, designers are often tempted to stylize form fields and buttons to match their colour palette or to add visual interest to a page. Be very careful here. It's vital that users recognize form elements as such. Messing with the browser defaults is risky. I think form elements are best when they're:

Big
Three-dimensional
Default colouring

Again, here's a visual to illustrate the point:

6 Steps to Effective Discussion Forums on your Intranet

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Tue, 16 May 2006 17:39:00 +0000

I used to work for a company that takes pride in encouraging open dialogue. They have an excellent intranet, and a few years ago they wanted to implement forums to promote productive conversation.

After 4 years and 3 major revisions to the forums, usage is sporadic at best. The technology works, the culture is right, and the company is big enough (over 500 employees). What's wrong?

When you have a small base of users (say, under 10,000), everything has to be perfect to create effective discussion forums. Here are 6 guidelines:

1. ATTACH A FORUM TO EVERY PAGE.

Instead of providing a centralized location for forums, allow discussions to emerge on any and every intranet page. It's impossible to know what will spark a conversation.

2. PROVIDE AN AGGREGATED, PRIORITIZED VIEW OF DISCUSSIONS.

This page should list every active discussion on the intranet, showing:

Title of page where discussion is happening
Owner of page
Number of posts to the discussion
Date & time of most recent comment (best expressed in relative terms, i.e. 2 hours ago)

Sort by date, placing at the top the discussion with the most recent post.

3. INTEGRATE FORUMS WITH THE COMPANY DIRECTORY.

Forums shouldn't require registration. The intranet should be able to personally identify each user (usually via Windows integrated authentication).

Link the name of each commenter to his or her employee profile in the intranet directory.

4. STRIP THE INTERFACE TO THE BASICS.

On the actual page containing the discussion, all you need for each comment is:

name of commenter (linked to his/her intranet profile)
date & time comment was made (best expressed in relative terms, i.e. 2 hours ago)
the comment itself

Not needed:

No multi-level threads
No comment-level subject (a single subject at the top of the page is sufficient)

Sort comments with the oldest at the top, so the discussion is easily read.

5. SIGNAL PARTICIPANTS WHEN A POST IS MADE.

This is perhaps the most important step to effective discussion forums.

As soon as a post is made, send an email to the page owner and to everyone who has participated in the discussion so far. (If your user base is very savvy, you can provide an RSS feed instead.) This keeps the discussion moving and keeps all participants involved. Otherwise, days can elapse between comments, and the conversation dies out.

6. ENGAGE YOUR ORGANIZATION'S THOUGHT LEADERS.

If you can get the leaders at your company to use the forums to share opinions or ask thought-provoking questions, others will follow.

It takes all 6 steps to create effective discussions on your company's intranet. Has your company made a success of forums? If so, I'd like to hear about it. Send me an email at cmcgrath@oneintranets.com.

ThoughtFarmer, SharePoint, Wikis, and the lack of good intranet software

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 17:52:00 +0000

There is a lack of good intranet software in the world.

Microsoft SharePoint is the most common intranet platform I encounter, but not because it's good. Out-of-the-box SharePoint is a nightmare from the user's perspective, and customizing it to make it usable is near impossible. I've been asked to consult on more failed SharePoint implementations than on any other type of intranet.

Wikis are being used successfully on intranets by some IT workgroups, and they work well for collaborative authoring. But as the main engine for a corporate intranet, most wikis fall short. Non-technical users struggle with content editing, and their inherent lack of structure devolves into chaos.

What do we need out of intranet software, anyway? The Intranet Review Toolkit helps identify some basic needs:

Scalable, fast-loading home page with useful content
Search with prioritized, easy-to-scan results
Consolidated organizational news, with an archive of older articles
Searchable, sortable corporate staff directory
Easy-to-edit, easy-to-navigate content pages

Sounds easy. So why isn't there more intranet software that does a bang-up job delivering on these basic needs?

I have no idea.

That's why my friends at OpenRoad and I have spent the last 9 months developing ThoughtFarmer, Wiki-inspired software built just for intranets.

Check it out: http://www.thoughtfarmer.com

ThoughtFarmer installs on the corporate network. It's built on a Microsoft .Net/SQL platform. And it makes it ridiculously easy to build a usable, useful intranet.

The intranet software landscape just improved. Let me know what you think.

Intranet content: Bad grammar is okay

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 19:07:00 +0000

Managing an intranet is tough work. It's even tougher if you insist on perfect spelling, proper grammar, and inverse-pyramid writing. So relax! It's more important that your content is timely. Decentralize content authoring, and don't worry about run-on sentences and misplaced quote marks. Save your penmanship for core corporate information.

Related article:
Let go of an obsession with intranet content quality

Killer intranet prototypes in minutes

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 19:24:00 +0000

Scrap the paper prototyping. Un-install Visio. There's a new prototyping tool in town, kids, and it's called Axure.

What’s wrong with paper prototyping?
I raved about paper prototyping a year ago. But here’s the problem: It’s S-L-O-W. And if you were weaned on computers like me, your hand starts to hurt after holding a pencil for 5 minutes.

What’s wrong with Visio?
Visio was designed to build technical and process diagrams, not web sites. It doesn’t support pages that scroll. And although it can do a web export, you can’t interact with the forms it creates, making usability testing very difficult.

What’s so great about Axure?
Like Visio, you can drag-and-drop widgets and link pages. It supports templates and styles so you can make global changes quickly. But unlike Visio, it generates stellar HTML prototypes (here’s a sample I created to accompany this newsletter). It also lets you annotate all page elements in detail, and you can generate a complete specifications document in Word format with a single keystroke.

Axure RP 3 costs $589US [3]. Version 4 is currently in beta, and it adds zooming, AJAX-prototyping, and other enhancements to Version 3. If you’re in the business of building intranet applications, a strong web prototyping tool is one of the best investments you can make.

Pearls of Wisdom

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 17:35:00 +0000

From the article "My Golden Rule" in December's Business 2.0:

"The next big thing is whatever makes the last big thing usable." – Blake Ross, co-creator, Firefox

"Never write when you can talk. Never talk when you can nod. And never put anything in an e-mail." – Eliot Spitzer, New York state attorney general

In 2006: Turn intranet users into intranet editors

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Tue, 27 Dec 2005 18:59:00 +0000

The most important intranet concept for 2006 is to turn your users into editors. This is the wiki concept (definition), and it will become mainstream in 2006.

Why would you let your intranet users become intranet editors?

It removes publishing barriers. On most intranets, average users don’t submit content—the process is confusing or time-consuming. But if users can publish their own content, they stop hoarding and start sharing, increasing the currency and relevance of your intranet.

It reduces cost. A wiki-type intranet is less expensive to implement and maintain than a restrictive, workflow-based content management system. It also reduces the need for dedicated intranet editors.

It removes distortion. Ideas are exchanged in one transfer step, eliminating distortion and filtering.

It increases engagement. Users that can add and edit content feel a sense of ownership over their intranet.

Some intranet managers are alarmed by the prospect of allowing users to edit content. But good intranet software tracks usage and records version history, mitigating any risk. Will you open up intranet publishing in 2006? The potential upside is worth it.

Read more:

Intranet trends in 2006

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 19:43:00 +0000

Shiv Singh shares his thoughts on intranet trends for 2006. Two things I liked in his article:

Intranet ROI will be pushed to the back burner... In the future, senior executives will be less concerned about the tangible ROI of an intranet. It will be an assumed cost of doing business, just as corporate e-mail has become.

I'm glad he sees this trend emerging. I've argued before that intranet ROI is a waste of time.

Some employee blogs will last but unfortunately most won’t... Most organizations have cultures that subconsciously encourage information hoarding and group think. These organizations will find that their employees are reluctant to share their knowledge and personal insights unless they see tangible benefits in doing so. As a result most employee blogs will be superficial and boring unless, of course, they are anonymous.

Great points on blogging, and they apply to knowledge sharing in general. Intranets can become a melting pot of knowledge and a catalyst for breakthrough thinking--but there are major cultural impediments to overcome.

Intranet evaluation toolkit

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 16:47:00 +0000

Step Two Designs has released a free toolkit for evaluating an intranet. From their site:

This intranet review toolkit provides intranet managers and designers with an easy-to-use method of assessing the strengths and weaknesses of their intranet. It contains a substantial set of heuristics, allowing a detailed intranet review to be conducted that focuses on a wide range of functionality, design and strategy.

Make your text readable

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 17:37:00 +0000

What is it with microscopic type on web sites? Is it cool to be
illegible? Does the designer hate the over-40 crowd? Are bigger fonts
more expensive?

Here are some guidelines for readable text on your intranet:

Use high-contrast colors. Black on white is the best.
Use 12-point type for optimal reading speed. For the small print, 10-point should be the minimum size.
Align left. Justified text destroys word spacing; right-aligned slows the eye.
On-screen, there is no difference in reading speed between serif and sans-serif. However, most users prefer sans-serif.

Wikis aren't the panacea for intranets

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 19:12:00 +0000

Shel Holtz argues that wikis are not an appropriate platform for powering entire intranets:

The notion of wiki-as-intranet is based on ease of publishing. It’s the same motivation that leads the folks at some blog software companies to claim an intranet could be reconfigured 100% on blogging software. Both suggestions come from the “selling hammers” school of business solutions: If you’re selling hammers, every problem looks like a nail. But intranets are more complex beasts that cannot be supported by either platform alone. At least, not if they’re good intranets.

Intranet publishing: Workflow doesn't work

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 16:28:00 +0000

"Workflow" is often a requirement for enterprise content management installations. The idea sounds great: I log on, write a news item, click a button, and Jackie's notified by email to review it. But what if Jackie's on vacation? What if the item is outside Jackie's area of expertise? What if my particular news item requires a new layout? And does Jackie really want all this workflow spam in her inbox?

Workflow doesn't work--there are always too many variables at play. Humans should not be forced to conform to a strict publishing process--the publishing process should accommodate human behavior.

I favour a publishing process based on trust:

Give users license to create and edit a range of content themselves
Trust them to engage others where appropriate
Where users don't have permission to create content themselves, tell them who does, and let them devise their own workflow--send an email, make a phone call, or walk down the hallway.

This kind of publishing process is flexible--and much cheaper to implement.

Read more:

Four steps to cure a stale intranet

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 00:28:00 +0000

If employees feel their intranet is irrelevant, they stop using it. And if they stop using it, there's little incentive to update it. The intranet grows stale. Here's how to cure it:

STEP 1: Get fresh content
Until you complete steps 2 and 3, commit to publishing a new, relevant article to the home page every single day.

STEP 2: Build a killer app
A killer application is so useful that it brings users back again and again. It could be an employee directory, the weather forecast, a timesheet, or a cafeteria menu.

STEP 3: Make everyone an editor
To ensure your intranet is never stale again, give every single employee the ability to contribute content (see my articles on Collaborative Intranets and Bob Buckman)

STEP 4: Make the intranet the home page
Make the intranet unavoidable by setting it as the home page on every employee's web browser.

If this all sounds good, but you've got no time, I know a consultant who can do each step for you. :)

Designing effective navigation systems for intranets

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 22:46:00 +0000

A good navigation system answers these questions:

What site is this?
What page am I on?
What are the major sections of this site?
What are my options?

Here are three navigation systems that work well in a variety of situations. All of them include persistent navigation: top navigation items that remain consistent on every page, giving the user a sense of place and familiarity.

BREADCRUMB (view sample)
Pros: Always works, at any level of the site
Cons: Requires 3 distinct navigation areas on screen.
Some tests show that users ignore breadcrumb navigation
(read Human Factors' report).

VERTICAL BREADCRUMB (view sample)
Pros: Always works, at any level of the site.
Requires only 2 navigation areas on screen.
Cons: Left navigation bar becomes more cluttered as you drill down.
Sibling and child pages could be pushed below the fold.

GRANDPARENT, PARENT AND SIBLING (view sample)
Pros: Keeps a clean, simple left navigation bar.
Cons: As users drill down, the parent and grandparent pages change. This could confuse some.

When designing navigation for your intranet, consider some of the more difficult scenarios. Can a user quickly navigate through a set of related items, like each benefit or perk in the employee section? What if some of the related items have child pages, and some do not? How will file downloads or external links be handled?

Usability testing for navigation design should start with card sorting, then paper prototype tests, and finally testing of a working digital prototype.

There is no perfect navigation system for a broad and deep site, as intranets usually are. But if you consider a variety of scenarios and employ several kinds of user testing, your navigation will be effective.

Democratic, collaborative intranets: Dramatically better

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 15:39:00 +0000

One of my clients is about to embark on an exciting journey: they're launching a democratic, collaborative intranet. What does that mean? It means not only can everyone read a page, but they can write it. That small change creates a dramatically different intranet, where everyone in the organization can now fix problems, add ideas, and collaborate. Consider some of the benefits of an open intranet:

1. It stays current
With the entire company able to post content, the intranet becomes the best source of information on what's going on.

2. It's self-healing
If any user sees an error, he or she can fix it immediately.

3. It creates a high level of engagement among users
Because they control the content, employees feel a sense of ownership over the intranet.

4. It reduces staffing requirements
Your users are your editors. Content maintenance doesn't require a dedicated team.

5. It promotes collaboration
There are no barriers to communication on a democratic intranet. Have an idea? Share it.

6. It enables information to flow freely
An abundance of information creates an environment where breakthrough ideas emerge.

Democratic, collaborative intranets are a dramatic improvement over traditional, top-down, one-to-many intranets. They can be the catalyst that transforms the way your company manages and disseminates its knowledge.

Democratic, collaborative intranets: Dramatically better

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 15:39:00 +0000

Design intranet navigation with card sorting

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Thu, 03 Mar 2005 01:45:00 +0000

To design intranet navigation, find out users' mental model of potential content by running card sorting tests. Does an expense report form belong under HR? Finance? or a forms category? You'll only know the right answer after card sorting. Here's how:

Make an index card for every piece of content. Limit it to 100 cards.
Run 4 or 5 sessions with 3 or 4 users each.
Ask them to group the cards in piles of related content. Piles can be as small or large as they want. If they want, they can also group the groups.
When they're done, review each group for anomalies. Then ask them to suggest a label for each group.
Collate the results to inform your navigation design.

Combine card sorting with your knowledge of business objectives, user goals and usability best practices to design intuitive navigation for your intranet. Make sure to test your final navigation design with a paper prototyping session.

Other resources:

Here's a Word template for creating card sorting labels. I print onto Avery 5262 labels and stick them onto 3-1/2 by 5-inch index cards.
Try using this frequency-of-content-use survey at the beginning of your card sorting sessions. You'll gather useful data and your users will familiarize themselves with the content they’ll be working with in the card sort. Compile the results with this Excel template.
This excellent white paper provides in-depth information on card sorting.

The difference between intranets and portals

noreply@blogger.com (Chris) — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 23:52:00 +0000

The words 'intranet' and 'portal'* are often used interchangeably by IT professionals, and their meaning seems to be evolving quickly. Here's what each term means to me:

An intranet...
Is an internal web site or web application
Is built primarily for employees
Is accessed securely
Is often accessible only on the company's internal network
Sometimes refers to the entire collection of internal web sites and web applications
A portal...
Serves as the internal home page for a company
Is the internal equivalent of msn.com or yahoo.com
Often consolidates many intranets
May include single sign-on capabilities
May or may not be powered by a commercial software package

So a portal is an intranet application in itself. The portal is on the collective 'intranet'. And the portal consolidates many intranets. No wonder everyone is confused.

*For the purpose of this article, 'portal' refers to an enterprise or corporate portal.

One Intranets Vancouver: Intranets, extranets, portals

Intranet 2.0 in 10 Not-So-Easy Steps

Step 1: Blow up the old intranet.

Step 2: Turn users into authors.

Step 3: Expose the social context of all content.

Step 4: Make things findable.

Step 5: Send signals when content changes.

Step 6: Provide scaffolding: a framework to support new content.

Step 7: Hold a barnraising to populate initial content.

Step 8: Make them use it. Once.

Step 9: Lead by example.

Step 10: Get the intranet “in-the-flow”.

Your intranet as a collaboration hub

The Net Generation Hates Your Intranet

2006 Year in Review: Top 5 articles for intranet managers

Enterprise Social Software Case Study: Intrawest Placemaking

Exploit email to strengthen your intranet

Form fields: Place captions outside; use default styling

6 Steps to Effective Discussion Forums on your Intranet

ThoughtFarmer, SharePoint, Wikis, and the lack of good intranet software

Intranet content: Bad grammar is okay

Killer intranet prototypes in minutes

Top 10 must-read articles for intranet design in 2006

Pearls of Wisdom

In 2006: Turn intranet users into intranet editors

Intranet trends in 2006

Intranet evaluation toolkit

Make your text readable

Wikis aren't the panacea for intranets

Intranet publishing: Workflow doesn't work

Four steps to cure a stale intranet

Designing effective navigation systems for intranets

Democratic, collaborative intranets: Dramatically better

Democratic, collaborative intranets: Dramatically better

Design intranet navigation with card sorting

The difference between intranets and portals