SharePoint Intranet trends & best practices 2011

Intranet Trends & Best Practices
2011 & Beyond

AGENDA
Intranets - The Evolution
Intranets 2011 - What to expect?
The Vision
Trends for Intranets 2011
Top 5 Features of Intranets 2011
Ageless Key features of Intranets
Why SharePoint 2010 for Intranets
Intranets 2011 - Best Practices
Building Intranets 2011 - The Process
Reference Roadmap

Intranets with Static
informational pages

Communication and
information sharing
intranet

Self – Services Intranets

Enterprise Information Portal

Collaboration Driven Intranets

Digital Dashboards and Data
Driven Intranets

Social and Comunity Driven Intranets

The consolidated Enterprise Workplace Platform
Evolution of technology, intranet trends and concepts over time

The intranet Features Stack

The Continual Growth of Social Tools
 Intranets 2011 will usher in the era where Social tools and applications take prominence and provide
organizations with an opportunity to connect better with their employees.
 The social profile of users will begin to serve as resource hub – not only can employees connect with
other employees but disseminate information about themselves, their areas of interests and
achievements which will allow for greater employee recognition and understanding.
 Employee generated content is taking prominence and with abilities like user tagging, social profiling,
“people” based content information and search has been enhanced.
 Web 2.0 intranet will also greatly benefit the entire organization in terms of retaining enterprise talent
due to the open nature of the tools which help the HR to identify expertise and find people with niche
skill sets based on their contribution and participation in a socially collaborative intranet environment.
“Enterprise 2.0 technologies have the potential to let an intranet become what the internet already is: an online
platform with a constantly changing structure built by distributed, autonomous and largely self-interested peers.
On this platform, authoring creates content; links and tags knit it together; and search, extensions, tags and
signals make emergent structures and patterns in the content visible, and help people stay on top of it all.
Enterprise 2.0 technologies are subject to network effects; as more people engage in authoring, linking and
tagging, emergent structure becomes increasingly fine-grained.”
- Andrew P. McAfee in Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration (MIT Sloan Management
Review, Spring 2009)

Dynamic Work Place
 The corporate intranet is evolving continually and is viewed from a perspective of the consolidated
work place – the business oriented work tool.
 Access and work from any place – the era of Mobile Communication is well and truly here. With
Mobile devices like the iPad, Blackberry and the iPhone, users have been accorded greater flexibility
in accessing their information irrespective of their locations.
 Corporate Intranets as consolidated workplaces provide employees and business users with
information in context of their everyday work – helping them execute work faster and reduce the
overheads and efforts involved due to redundant information and data gathering activities.
 Intranets as Dynamic workplaces provide organizations with a flexible platform that will allow them
to channel the overall goals and objectives to the entire organization and track to the set goals and
objectives in the right manner – helping them keep ahead of the competition.

Intranets as a Self Service Platform
 Intranets will focus on delivering tools and applications that are self service in nature – allowing
employees to get access to all information and execute everyday tasks without the need to wait on
anything else
 The self service tools of the intranets will be available at various levels – at the enterprise level,
departmental level, project / team level and peer to peer level, greatly improving the productivity of
the employees across the various functions of the organization as a whole.
 Deliver HR, Finance and Facilities related services such as taxation information, benefit forms, expense
reporting etc for users to access content from a central repository in a secure manner.
 Personal management tools helps streamline process online, reduce employee overheads and align
towards a more paperless organization.

The Collaboration Network
 Collaboration Intranets in 2011 will focus beyond team, project and departmental level
collaboration and facilitate intra departmental / business function collaboration making it
easy to streamline majority of the critical collaboration processes within organization.
 Social tools bring in the concept of social collaboration – which simplifies the contribution,
sharing and dissemination of content, information and documents, making it possible to
review and approve in a faster manner.
 Collaboration intranet will help to identify and address specific needs and initiatives
around projects, departments and collaboration teams.
 Establish the best practices of communities across the organization where employees can
utilize a single interface to communicate, collaborate, foster ideas and share knowledge.

Enterprise Search
 Social and community tools enable employees with self service content contribution
capabilities, increasing the volume of content on the intranet, making search an important
part of the enterprise intranet
 Intranets are focused on providing context based search that allows users to look beyond
just documents and content, but also obtain information based on people search,
expertise and social tagging.

Enterprise Content Management
 Intranets 2011 will give prominence to user generated content and will include tools that bring in the
concepts of Web 2.0 to allow users to quickly contribute and share content.
 Content organization and structuring will move beyond folders hierarchies and will be managed with a
combination of enterprise taxonomy for formal structuring and folksonomies using free flow, user
specific tags for organizing the content and information based on the user’s preferences.
 Personalization will be one of the key feature that needs to be integrated within the Intranets 2011.
With personalization, employees and business users can have a “dedicated” personal space on the
intranet where they can collect, track and manage information and data relevant to them from across
the intranet.
 Intranets 2011 will see enterprise content being consistently delivered through various types of
interfaces like smart phones and other mobile business devices.
The Digital Environment
 Organizations will look beyond documents and presentations and utilize rich media like videos, flash
embeds and audio files among others which are interactive and are delivered through interfaces that
stream these files or social and community mechanisms like wikis and blogs among others.
 Help employees access real time information and enhance business intelligence outputs through a
single dashboard. Reduce turn around times in key decision making requirements.

Internationalization

Integrate to the daily Mobile Business
work requirements Intranets Workforce Applications

Enterprise Intranet
Enhancements
Enterprise

Knowledge Management Real
Security Collaboration Digital Time Data
Dashboards
Departments
Document
Formal Infrastructure Self Service
Management
Business Solutions
Content
Management Workflows
Governance
Blogs &
Teams Wikis
Individuals Commenting
Industry &
Integrate to the News Feeds
Informal Structure
Enterprise 2.0
Micro blogging

Intranets 2011 = The Consolidated Work Place Social Tools
Rating
People & Content
Search

People & Content User Profiling
Search
Tasks
Language
Management
Customization

Taxonomy &
Social
Translations
Networking

Governance Mobile
Intranets

Real Time Data
Business Tools

Globally Local Digital Dashboards

User Profiling

Employee Enhancement Tasks

User Profiling - Help users create their profile with customized data to display Customization

areas of interest, awards and achievements, expertise etc. Profiles to
become the basis of talent, resource and knowledge management.
Social
Networking
Task Oriented - Provide a single interface for employees to carry out
their daily tasks and business functions with simplified digital
interactions to increase employee efficiency.

User Experience - Provide high quality and rich user experience so that employees
have better interfaces, lesser page loading and refreshing times and application that execute faster

Customizations - users can personalize and customize their profiles to suit their needs and
requirements. Easier to develop networks and connections as other employees are able to identify social
information more easily and accurately.

Social Networking - Establish the platform for integrated knowledge sharing environment with
enterprise 2.0 features. Foster ideas and thoughts with expert opinions, ratings, wikis, blogs, forums,
RSS feeds amongst others to improve employee productivity.

Technology
Mobile Intranets - The consolidated work place environment has given rise to the importance of
providing instant access to employees who are on the move and require access to documents, information
and even upload real time data for other employees to access. With devices like
iPad, Blackberry and iPhone amongst other devices accessing
information has never been easier.

Applications Enablement- Providing better user experience has
been simplified with tools like VoIP, video streaming, audio
enhancements, RIA and Ajax etc which has become
a norm more than a wish list. Mobile
Intranets

Digital Dashboards - with integration capabilities to various legacy
systems and LOB’s like CRM, reporting systems, databases etc. Real Time Data
employees can access everything through a single interface
and at real time if need be.
Digital Dashboards

Business Objectives
Globally Local - Multi – location organizations are keen on localizing their content while maintaining a
global approach. Organizations are keen on providing information that is more locally relevant to a
particular location – such a weather updates, news update, traffic etc

Business Tools - To view the Intranet from a perspective that will allow the
organization to fulfill their purpose, objectives, achieve goals and keep tab
on the KPI’s. An ability to connect and understand employee better with
focus on skills, idea fostering and talent management .

Governance Intranet Governance - More focused governance polices procedures – an
inherent shift from just control to more flexibility in publishing and rating with
a decentralized structure from previous models.

Business Tools
Uniform Community Culture - Align employees to the company culture
and objectives with greater emphasis on understanding and sustained
Globally Local development

Content Management
People & Content
Search Taxonomy - Ability for organizations to maintain taxonomy based on
Language user generated content, especially vital for those organizations that
Management have international work force.
Internationalization - Improve content relevance based on the language
of choice – ability to view blocks based on the language in use.
Taxonomy &
Translations Translation Management - To over see the translation requirements of
the different end users; simplified icons to help users identify the
language of their choice, keep track of the content, translation requests
and job queues.
Search – Provide a framework that allows users to obtain relevant
content with tagging, keywords and content types that simplifies
search capabilities.

Social

Top 5 Features of
Intranet

Collaboration Information Management
 Team Sites  Workflows and Approvals
 Project Portals  Content Publishing
 Community Sites  Document Lifecycle Management
 Discussion Portals  Records Retrievals and Archiving
 Knowledge Wikis  Digital Assets Management
 Back End Systems Integration
 Line of Business Data

Employee Enhancement Enterprise Network
 Forms and Requests  My Sites
 FAQs  Department Portals
 Videos, Tutorials and Self Helps  Activity Portals
 Knowledge Management Portals  Social Networking
 Support
 Idea Management
 Manager Tools
 Facility Maps

SharePoint 2010 features the latest Enterprise 2.0 capabilities can provide a high value intranet with
rich user experience, better share point intranet design and effective governance policies. The top features that drive
intranets on SharePoint 2010 platform are –
 Social Capabilities – SharePoint 2010 provides a host of social tools that are designed to help employees
connect, discover, share and grow. Ex: My sites allows users to create profiles that help to connect with the
organization.
 Search – Enterprise search has been vastly improved with features like FAST Search, Faceted Search and
thumbnails with increased scalability to millions of documents, different data sources and ability to infer
metadata from content.
 Document Management – SharePoint 2010 provides advanced document management capacity with features
like document sets, templates, records managements etc.
 Metadata – Taxonomy has been enhanced in SharePoint 2010 to meet classification and hierarchy needs of
content with option to cater for user generated content.
 Workflows – Meet complex business workflow requirements in SharePoint 2010. Additionally utilize features
like Visio services to create workflow and display their current status.
 Others – SharePoint 2010 also provides host of other prominent features like working offline, mobile
support, themes, web standards, ribbon for easy add and edit etc.

Feature Description
Tagging & Rating SharePoint 2010 provides inbuilt web parts and features for allowing users to tag and
rate content
RSS Improvements include enhancements of RSS output from SharePoint – from an content,
format and security standpoint
Mobile Support Includes native clients for iPhone and Blackberry
MicroBlogging Lightweight conversation with community integration, comments, liking email
notifications and summaries
Activity Streams Aggregation of events from across all the SharePoint sites including community actions,
microblogging, commenting, third party status updates from facebook, twitter etc.,
People, Profile & Expertise Integrated tightly with Social Networking
Management
Connectivity Users will be able to connect and work with peers – online or offline
Rich Media Integration Out of the box rich media support (beyond just having document libraries)
Metadata Management Automatic extraction of metadata from images, configuring a folder to automatically add
tag content with a specific tag, support for folksonomies, and the addition of the
Enterprise Managed Metadata service

Feature Description

Blogs & Wikis Improved with better features for content authoring, support for images and built-in
workflows

Social Bookmarking Enables end users to bookmark and share favorite sites, pages, documents among others

People & Expertise Search Capture knowledge not found in documents using People & Expertise

Common Connector Framework for Securely connect out of the box to content from sources across the enterprise
indexing & Federation

Scale & Performance via improved Meet the scalability & performance needs of Enterprise and departments
topology architecture

Build Search Powered Applications Leverage publicly available query object model & web parts for extensibility

Refinement panel & Sorting Narrow down the search and navigate to the right content faster

Search in Context Field different results and refinement options based on the user profile

Social Behavior improves relevance Includes document ranking based on click through behavior

Information
Architecture

Mobile
Governance Intranets

Intranets
2011
Best Practices

User Social
Experience Networking

Internationa-
lization

Information Architecture
 The Information Architecture plays a big role in the user acceptance of the intranet –design the
architecture to provide a consistent user experience.
 Establish the common categories and sections that users tend to use – HR, Company
Information and News have been the most popular traditionally
 Simplify the process of personalization and customizations - Quick links are an example of how
users view the links they regularly visit
 Factor in dynamic growth of user profiles and social tagging features to support search and
visibility. With user profiles playing a central role in content relations and management, the
architecture should be dynamic and self sustaining in nature
 Consider future changes and scope of intranet growth from a social networking, content
management, collaboration and as well as governance policies .

Mobile Intranets
 Mobile access of intranets are more focused on meeting high priority requirements – such
as documents management, collaboration needs etc
 Provide features that take in to consideration of the device in use – small screens, input
devices, download delays and design and compatibility of mobile sites.
 Provide only business critical functions on mobile usage – full usage of intranets on
mobile devices caused more hindrance then enhancement
 Establish support features for mobile devices – maintenance of intranet should be
expanded to mobile usage in addition to full intranet usage.

Social Business Tools
 Asses and identify the social networking maturity of the organization – not all social networking
features are required; strike the balance of requirement and access
provided to employees.
 Social tagging and profiling are important artifacts that have enhanced social networking
features – provide for users to identify those attributes that will help in improving their social
visibility and network across the organization
 Provide for social taxonomy and folksonomies that will allow for people with similar interests,
problems and identifying experts. “User rating” is of particular importance as it helps identify an
user with an issue or line of expertise that other employees stand to gain from and boosts
knowledge management.
 Social Profiles should contribute towards HR functions and allow the HR department to
identify those resources and experts who can add value to a particular requirement or fulfill
requirements outside of their domain. Helps in enhancing talent management
and idea management

User Experience
 User experience forms a core requirement for acceptance of the intranet – keep it simple and
easy to use for users to relate to it.
 Consider Web 2.0, collaboration, social networking and internet styles while designing the user
experience.
 Leverage latest technology like VoIP, video streaming, audio enhancements, RIA and Ajax,
providing better user experience to interact has become the norm
 Utilize SharePoint intranet design practices to ensure that employees have better interfaces,
lesser page loading and refreshing times and application that execute faster – follow popular
social networking platforms that follow simplistic views and trends.
 Implement search capabilities that allows employees to obtain relevant information
encompassing documents, content, profiles, experts etc in shorter time spans – “Accurate
results leads to greater productivity”.

“I want to Google my internal work spaces, rendered as the intranet. “
- In the words of an end user.

Intranet Governance
 Intranet governance requires top level sponsorship across all key stake holders to plan,
approve, develop and deploy intranets – clear definition of objectives, goals and mission is a
critical need.
 Ensure the tracking of Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) across the business against the ROI,
user approval and acceptance and engagement matrices.
 Establish clear guidelines on social networking, content management and publishing with
social media policies that define ownership and responsibility towards content
 Build on existing policies and procedures instead of abolishing them – users will be able to
better relate to existing do’s and don’ts than having to understand from scratch
 Evolve from the “blocking” scenario to more self governed scenario – put the onus on the
content owners and publishers to take responsibility of the data.

Simplicity and transparency are the keys to good governance.

Improved Employee Satisfaction
 Employee surveys reveal that users are able to find relevant information faster. Ex: Users are able
to find experts in minutes when previously it took them hours or even days.
 Enterprise 2.0 tools have improved knowledge sharing, idea fostering and resource management
enabling greater productivity and efficiency. Ex: New recruits are able to obtain support and
knowledge leading to faster learning curve.

Technology Enhancements
 Mobile intranets provide access to employees from any location for collaboration and document
management leading to lesser turn around times. Ex: Sales employee can collaborate with any
team and get a quote instantly.
 Communication has become faster with tools like IM, VOIP, Video Conferencing etc. This has also
reduced travel times and cost overheads.

1. Assess
Evaluate the organizational
needs, people readiness and
infrastructure – Establish the
Intranet Maturity Framework

Assess
2. Plan
5. Monitor Plan the user needs, profiling,
Measure User acceptance, tools, applications and
Provide Support and Optimize governance that will best fit in
the Intranets to the social behavior at the
organization
Monitor Plan

Create Design

4. Create 3. Design
Establish the platform and build Design the site structure,
the structure, integrate with the Information Architecture and
systems and roll out – The Technology Roadmap
Consolidated Work Place

Consolidated
Work Place  Monitor the User Acceptance
and Support.
 Obtain Feedback and Statistics to
enhance the growth of the Intranet.
Work
Enhancement  Create a Single Source for Users to carry
out the daily functions.
 Create a Single Source for Users to carry
out the daily functions.
 Integrate Mobile Components to provide access at
Integrating Formal All Times.
with Informal  Provide Informal Tools and Applications as part of the
formal infrastructure.
 Enhance Knowledge Management and Foster Ideas amongst
Employees with Tools like Blogs, Wikis, User Ratings, Social
Tagging etc.
 Implement Governance Tools, Policies and Procedures. Social Tagging etc.
User Evaluation
 Analyze the User Needs and Social Maturity of the End User
 Plan and Design the set of Social Tools to meet the User Attributes
 Development of Governance and UAT
Key Stakeholders - Top Management, Business Unit Heads, Departmental Owners and End Users

Thank You
Optimus BT,
2550 Northwinds Parkway,
Suite 140, Alpharetta GA 30009, USA
Phone: (770) 569 1240
Fax: (770) 569 1242
Email: info@optimusbt.com
Web: www.optimusbt.com
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