What Intranet Is Actually For
Intro
I remember the early 2000s (yes, I'm that old), which I would call a romantic time, when the Internet was full of intellectuals, companies invested a lot in Intranet, and you could have everything you wanted there: buy and sell stuff, discuss your superiors, and the like. I'd call the time we live in cynical, with a COVID pandemic behind us, when we lost that "just for fun" © nerdy feeling of doing cool stuff just because we can. I see that management refuses to invest a little time in building the Intranet, even when it costs them literally nothing in terms of IT resources. And I try to comprehend the reasoning behind that: COVID reminded us that business is about making money, which people are free to spend on whatever makes them happy. And yet I see particular reasons to have an Intranet, on the one hand, and the reasoning of companies trying to make products in this area completely missing the point, on the other. Let's look at Open Intranet, for example. The features are compactly listed on their GitHub. Everything is very down-to-earth and even technical, but I see some very different reasons to have an Intranet.
Why, finally
The right question is missing here in the first place, from my point of view, and that is: what are you not able to have without an Intranet? And the follow-up: what could you significantly improve with an Intranet? Let's get into my arguments:
- A company is a group of people spending a lot of time together (even remotely), and just acknowledging this fact is valuable. Like, who we are, what's going on, I mean events, birthdays, news, and photos from events as well. Just don't let HR and PR get into this; write it yourself.
- We tend to use more web apps nowadays, and just having a single page with a collection of links and short descriptions can make a difference.
- I don't hate email anymore, but I don't accept it as a primary communication channel. You can put anything you want in emails, but if people need to use it further, please be so kind as to post it on some website in an accessible way.
- Onboarding is a process worth revisiting, and whatever you write, whether a PDF, a PowerPoint presentation, or a simple webpage (way better), please keep it updated and accessible for newcomers, because the first few weeks can be hard.
- I'll skip the document library, but I'm personally interested in some space for the project team to post documents and updates on what's going on (or at least to show that we're still alive as a project). It makes a difference, especially for long-term projects, and it's even covered in project management books (if communication management rings a bell).
I'm not selling anything, so I'll not waste your time (or the precious bytes of my blog) convincing you that the reasons above are important. I'm personally convinced that every bullet point deserves an article, as each brings value (again, it depends on how you cook it), and they are not corporate BS. It's low-hanging fruit to make life a little bit easier for people at work, because it serves a greater purpose: how we, human beings, exchange information with each other and how we treat each other. Why is it low-hanging fruit? Well...
The tools
Most companies already have SharePoint, as it's included even in the cheapest Microsoft 365 cloud subscription, and I think it's a great place to start. It's bad; I curse Microsoft every time I use it. The last time I specifically remember, I had to reload the page every time I saved because it went blank. But hear me out: SharePoint has three massive advantages:
- You most likely already have it, as I've mentioned before, and that's still important.
- It is integrated into group and policy management, so it's easy to have a closed, protected Intranet and manage access rights – and that can be less straightforward with other systems. Plus, you get Windows authentication out of the box, and users will thank you.
- It is integrated with Teams and OneDrive, so you can put a link to a file and edit it in one place.
SharePoint also gets the job done in terms of, well, creating webpages, and it's kind of OK at that. Blogging is easy (and underappreciated for corporate communications, as I see it). You can also integrate forms, and they'll save info to an Excel table, just exactly how you'd expect it. And I've solved a lot of real-world tasks with just three tools, but you can find more if you dig deeper. Some are trash by default, including Loop, by the way. Just stick to the basics, and you'll be fine.
But SharePoint would be my second choice, even after default Drupal. Drupal is beautiful, safe, scalable, fast, and automates the publishing process the right way. Again, start by automating the publishing process itself and have some fun along the way. Open Intranet (see the links above) adds everything you dreamed of, so it's definitely worth visiting. Regarding extensions, I would start with the most boring, hated, and overlooked stuff – notably, authentication. That's because nowadays you still have to authenticate everywhere, although this problem has already been solved. It's about respecting your users, sorry, employees. Wiki and document management seem promising; I'm just too spoiled by specialized solutions. Maybe it'll do; I don't know. Must-read posts and GDPR definitely arouse the interest of a compliance department, if your company is big enough to have one. So, yes, you could meet a lot of requirements with one product.
Conclusion
Finding the right balance is hard, especially with communication. Take informal chats, for example: the best examples I've seen were selected chats where people could go nuts with the jokes – if you don't appreciate it, just quit the chat. But it should also fit in with the corporate culture, and these two words could go wrong in so many ways. And an Intranet is just a tool for transmitting this corporate culture, and that could go wrong in too many ways as well. So I see the point of not taking the risks, especially if your company is in survival mode. But I've convinced myself that having fun while working positively influences the atmosphere and everything else I do, so I don't struggle with this choice anymore – I'd definitely go for it.
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