Hart Technical Solutions - Intranet Websites
Although an Intranet website may look similar to a regualr website, its function is widely different. While Internet sites are public facing and genreally available to anyone, Inranet sites are by nature private and password protected. Some Intranet sites may be restricted so they are only available on corporate networks and virtual private networks (vpn) behind firewalls; this adds an extra layer of protection.
Intranet sites are designed to support the business functions of the company. Most company Intranet sites will contain similar areas of function but may be used differently. For exmaple, a calendar may be a function of an Intranet site but that calendar may be used to schedule meetings or physical resources such as meeting rooms, projectors and the like. A professional services firm such as a law or accounting practice, may use a calender to log billable client hours. A call center may use a calendar to schedule agents for phone service and so on. Although all have the calendar function, they are used differently. This may even be the case within various departments of the same company.
Intranet sites can also serve as repositories of internal, private information. For example, your Intranet site may hold data on internal known software or hardware issues or recall data for use only by customer service employees.
Internal files such as reports, forms, presentations, documents and the like can all be housed on your private Intranet. This allows for a single document to be in place for wide-spread use. Price lists, marketing brochures and meeting minutes are just some of the examples of data than can be housed on an Intranet site.
Users of your Intranet site(s) can be granted specific privledges for specific areas or tasks even down to the file level. For example, you may wish to give read-only access to your customer service team for your price list, but your accounting department may be given write permission to the same document. Thus, when pricing changes, accounting makes the change and customer service uses the new document.
Process triggers can be put into place so that when events take place on your Intranet site, users are notified. For example, when accounting updates your price list, an email can be sent to everyone in customer service notifying them that a new price list is available. Notifications can also used to let a person or department involved in a process know that a document or task requires their attention.
Other Intranet uses may include employee training and testing, human resource learning and compliance, instant messaging and secure data sharing with vendors and suppliers.
Intranet sites should be designed to support your internal business processes. Automatation can save money, time and increase customer and employee satisfaction.
Typical Intranet Website Features
Basic | Intermediate | Advanced | |
---|---|---|---|
Feature | |||
Password Protected | |||
Calendar | |||
FAQ/Common Data | |||
eForms | |||
eCampaigns | |||
eFax | |||
Dashboard | |||
File Sharing | |||
Multi-Lingual | |||
Integrate with Internet | |||
Team Collaboration | |||
Automate Processes | |||
ACL/Directory | |||
VPN |