Internal Company Portal Software (intranet)
Discussion
t, never used and turn into an out of date company phone book, they were the must have thing in about 2002. Ignore the tech specifics - what are the actual requirements? Why are people going to use it? Will you have support to mandate the portal as the default home page?
As mentioned many company intranets were little more than a prettified telephone directory, a few dusty articles and content about as compelling as the average NP&E thread.
With sufficient vision and support they can, however, become a genuinely useful "tool" although don't fall into the trap of expecting the average employee to be interested in high level organizational announcements or the latest "positive engagement initiative". As a unified access point to self-service tooling, knowledge management and a jump off to division/project/group etc scope portals is typically where they show value.
As mentioned many company intranets were little more than a prettified telephone directory, a few dusty articles and content about as compelling as the average NP&E thread.
With sufficient vision and support they can, however, become a genuinely useful "tool" although don't fall into the trap of expecting the average employee to be interested in high level organizational announcements or the latest "positive engagement initiative". As a unified access point to self-service tooling, knowledge management and a jump off to division/project/group etc scope portals is typically where they show value.
We already have a SharePoint 2007 intranet but it is pretty old. There is a lot of custom code e.g. links to external data sources (financial, KPI), HR details (up to date directory of companies, locations, staff), reports, company news etc.
People use it quite a lot but I've been in similar companies with more of a community feel e.g. a trade-it style part as we are in multiple countries and people move and sell stuff.
Simplest solution is move to SharePoint 2013/2016 cloud or on-premises, but just wondering if there is any other cheaper solutions or is SharePoint still the best.
People use it quite a lot but I've been in similar companies with more of a community feel e.g. a trade-it style part as we are in multiple countries and people move and sell stuff.
Simplest solution is move to SharePoint 2013/2016 cloud or on-premises, but just wondering if there is any other cheaper solutions or is SharePoint still the best.
So I've experiences from both sides of the fence.
Current work uses a cloud based sharepoint, while my previous work used a custom written one.
The sharepoint site is full of information at the current work, but it's the typical information overload kind of thing where every document has been uploaded. As a result it can be a pain to use.
The old work used a custom written one, by yours truly, which took huge gobs of information from the various systems and merged it all together to work for the business. As I was leaving they were bringing in a new website with the MD intending to do away with the intranet, though I suspect they'll be using it for a good few years yet as the guys who did their website took bloody ages, and I'd already made the information in the website available on the intranet (as the info was to be provided to the website anyway). I suspect my successor will be managing it for the foreseeable future!
I also sold a similar system to another customer, and built in pat test record keeping and labelling as well as time sheeting, holiday calendar and such all tied together. Think we did an online accident book also (as they worked out on customer sites a lot) and a few other bits and bobs.
So based on the above - go custom, but make it work for your business. Don't expect it to change things overnight without a lot of time and investment to make the most of things.
Current work uses a cloud based sharepoint, while my previous work used a custom written one.
The sharepoint site is full of information at the current work, but it's the typical information overload kind of thing where every document has been uploaded. As a result it can be a pain to use.
The old work used a custom written one, by yours truly, which took huge gobs of information from the various systems and merged it all together to work for the business. As I was leaving they were bringing in a new website with the MD intending to do away with the intranet, though I suspect they'll be using it for a good few years yet as the guys who did their website took bloody ages, and I'd already made the information in the website available on the intranet (as the info was to be provided to the website anyway). I suspect my successor will be managing it for the foreseeable future!
I also sold a similar system to another customer, and built in pat test record keeping and labelling as well as time sheeting, holiday calendar and such all tied together. Think we did an online accident book also (as they worked out on customer sites a lot) and a few other bits and bobs.
So based on the above - go custom, but make it work for your business. Don't expect it to change things overnight without a lot of time and investment to make the most of things.
mattdaniels said:
What 'problem' with your current implementation are you trying to fix? That it's too old" ?
Mainly we are using WSS 3.0 (Free version of SharePoint 2007) which is our only server application that we can't move off Windows Server 2003 and onto Server 2012 R2. It also doesn't work that well in modern browsers and would be nice to use SharePoint 2013/2016 that uses much HTML5 and better WYSIWYG editing.jonamv8 said:
Sharepoint was going out of fashion in 2010. Dislike it and never seen it as a benefit, other solutions available these days with ready to go plugins
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