Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with intranet

Need hosted solution for retiree extranet

Joleta — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 11:55:47 -0800

Help me figure out how to put our retiree directory online and eventually create a retiree extranet. We don't have the resources to produce or host an extranet web site in-house at this time. Has anyone used a hosted solution for a retiree or employee extranet? I'm thinking of something along the lines of a Google or Yahoo group, but more customizable.

The solution doesn't have to be free, but it should be cost effective compared to the cost of printing and mailing a retiree directory and several other communications each year. (Yes, we know that not all our retirees are online, but we expect to substantially cut down on printing and mailing costs, and be more green by not sending out all that paper.)

To start, we need to get our retiree directory online, and it would be great to have it in some sort of sortable/searchable database, not just an uploaded PDF. We need to be able to send e-mails to all members, and we'd like to eventually have a forum/bulletin board for retirees to communicate with each other.

Intranet advertising?

scottreynen — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 09:07:17 -0800

Is there a good way to sell advertising on a password-protected intranet? If so, what is it? I develop an intranet at an advertising agency, and we've tossed around the idea of running ads on our intranet, both as an ongoing experiment in online advertising, and as a small revenue stream for an IT department that is otherwise just overhead for the agency. Ignoring the social issues for a moment (e.g. distracting employees from their work), is there any good technical solution for intranet advertising?

Anything that works like Google AdSense, spidering the site to get context for ads, is out because the site can't be accessed without a password. So that leaves either systems that determine context in real time with JavaScript, or systems that allow the publisher to choose the ads (or something else I'm not thinking of). Are there any such systems that work well enough, with enough advertisers, to be worth using?

FOR THE HORDE! ... or some other Groupware package...

aristan — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 12:14:00 -0800

I've taxed myself with saving the company money with clever use of smoke, mirrors, and computers! One of the things I'd like to replace is our proprietary intranet site that is costing us at least $5000 a year. I'd to go with something Open Source that we can manage ourselves. What do You think will meet our needs? And how can we use our Intranet better? We currently use WebEx's WebOffice with about 35 members out of the few hundred that work for the company. I'd like a way to bring everyone into the company.

Here's what we currently actually use from WebOffice:

- Group Documents: All of our HR documents, memos, and product information are stored on our Intranet.
- Calendar: Though, frankly I've only seen birthdays on it.
- Databases: We have databases of Customer Contact information on the intranet, but I have never actually seen this information used for anything. We don't even pull stuff off of it for mailings.

I've looked at Horde Groupware, but am not sure if it'll meet our needs. Do you have any experience with open source Intranet/groupware software?

Also, how can we use our Intranet better? It's not used as much as it should be. How can we get users more involved?

Creating links to Adobe files

Joleta — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 08:26:34 -0800

How can I link to downloadable Adobe Illustrator and EPS documents on our intranet? We'd like to make our corporate logos available in in a variety of formats on our intranet, for download by employees who have graphics programs. We all use IE 6.0 by corporate mandate. (I don't have the problem described below when I use Firefox, but that's not an option for other employees.)

I uploaded the logos as Photoshop, Illustrator and EPS files and created links to them. When I click on a Photoshop file, I get a box with the option to open or save the file, but when I click on an Illustrator file I get nothing. If I right-click on an Illustrator file, the only "Save As..." option I get is Adobe Acrobat (PDF). My EPS file links allow saving only as a PostScript file, through either left or right clicks. How can I make my Illustrator/EPS files available for download?

Introducing Social Bookmarking on a Corporate Intranet

lord_yo — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 05:49:32 -0800

Social Bookmarking on a corporate intranet: How can I introduce it successfully? I am involved in a project to introduce a social bookmarking application on our corporate intranet. We have chosen Scuttle, a del.icio.us clone as our vehicle.

The company I work for is a big global one (~100k employees). Availability and understanding of Web2.0 technology and principles is low, even among communications people, except for the few social media geeks around.

Do you have a social bookmarking app on your company intranet?

What advice can you give me on a successful introduction of such a tool - in terms of change management, communication, education, and convincing management?

Batch replace a file in FrontPage?

Joleta — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:18:31 -0800

Can I change a graphic throughout a FrontPage web site? I updated a graphic that's used as a navigational image map on our company intranet. Unfortunately, this graphic exists in every subweb of the site. Is there any way I can change out the graphic for the updated one (which has the same filename) every place it appears in the site without actually going into each subsite and manually importing the new graphic file? (Please, no comments on this miserable site structure or the use of FrontPage in general. I already know and can't do anything about it until our redesign/CMS project is approved.)

How do we bring daily news to staff without computers?

Milkman Dan — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 14:06:16 -0800

Our organization uses the Intranet to keep staff informed. 40% of our employees don't use computers in their daily job. How do we bring the Intranet to them? Our organization relies on a custom-built Intranet to communicate all our important announcements, and provide key tools and documents. Admin staff are covered, but maintenance staff, kitchen workers and retail clerks (comprising 40% of the organization) have no computers, and thus no access to the Intranet. However, they need to be kept in the loop.

What’s the best way to do this? Freestanding computer kiosks? Adapt the week’s news to a looping powerpoint presentation, broadcast on wall-mounted TVs? We’re a non-profit – what’s going to be the most affordable way to do this?

Interview questions for intranet content manager position

hootch — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 07:25:40 -0800

I've been asked to do a short job interview with some candidates for an intranet content manager position. I've never been on that side of the interview table before and need some help coming up with good questions to ask. I'm a web developer for the site and they've asked me to do a 5-15 minute interview with each candidate to gauge their tech savvy and compatibility with me, since the person will end up working with me quite a bit. The position is mostly about writing news articles for the site and supervising other publishers' work on the site to make sure their pages fit within the guidelines for the site. They also have a hand in guiding the development of the site as far as new initiatives, selecting which feature requests get developed, etc. We have a publishing system where they use Word to create content for the site, so they won't need to know HTML or anything, but they can't be completely clueless about technology either. What would be some good questions to ask to gauge their general technology knowledge?

The only question I've been able to come up with is asking them to give an example of how they currently use the Internet that might be a bit out of the ordinary ("I store all my address and phone number information in Yahoo Address book so I can access it from anywhere while only maintaining it in one place" vs. "I use it to check my e-mail.").

Open source social networking or KM tool for an intranet

TheDonF — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 10:07:08 -0800

I'm either after a free, open source social networking app or a free, open source knowledge management app for my company's intranet. My company has two different change teams that work on large projects. One works just in customer service, the other works for the rest of the company. They want to share information on projects they've worked on and personal experience they have. To this end, I want to install an online app to support them. However, do I want a social networking app or a KM one?

I'm not after loads of features - the important thing is that people can document whatever they want to in an easy, non-code writing (ie, no wiki) way.

Can someone recommend either a social networking or KM app that they've used on an intranet? We're running version 5 of both PHP and MySQL. The only stipulation, other than it must run on that platform, is that it must be free.

Bulding A Joomla-Based Intranet

boombot — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 17:18:45 -0800

Is Joomla a good solution for the CMS of a mid-sized non-profit's intranet? I've taken a look at the product and think it would work, but would love to hear about any firsthand experiences.

A good web design company in San Diego?

escher — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 09:20:54 -0800

Do you know a good web design company in San Diego for an order management system? I'm looking to build a website for my wife's company and I'd like to know if you have recommendations for any particular companies in San Diego. We'd prefer to keep it local to ease the communication during the development of the system and for maintenance.

Here's what I'm looking to have done: A complete order management system from quote -> invoice. There are several different stages in between (6 i think, depending on which paperwork has been filled out, where the order is, etc). Each order needs to have documents associated with it (e.g. a P.O. or Invoice or shipping documents), and tasks associated with it (e.g. Bob need to send out shipping documents). So in addition to the order management, there needs to be some kind of task management as well.

Or, if you know of a software system that can be heavily customized that does this sort of thing, I'm open to that too.

If you feel weird about self-linking, then just send me an email - it's in my profile.

Indexing an intranet for personal search?

cameradv — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 07:04:46 -0800

At my company, I've despaired in convincing IT to add a search option to a long list of policy documents on the corporate intranet. Is there software that can index these policies on my own computer, to build a personal search engine? Something like Google Desktop but for an intranet?

Password access for Intranet Web site

bright77blue — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 06:25:23 -0800

How can one protect an Intranet web site while allowing access from the Internet. Internal users need to see the web site without typing in a password, but when users access it from the outside they need to type in a name and password - or even better still a HTTPS session. I can give more thn one internal IP to the server if I have to. Is htaccess the way to go? (Joomla website) Thanks!

Community building inside a company

bru — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 06:24:24 -0800

Looking for reports about (or people working with) closed online communities inside companies. I have the opportunity to make a 1 hour presentation to the top brass of a company about the benefits of creating an online community for (and with) their employees. This is a very successful company with branch offices all over the world. They use email extensively but have no experience with blogs, forums, wikis or the simple idea of an online community. They are asking me "why" they should do it and "what" positive effects it will have on their company if they do it.
Intranet based communities are by definition closed, so maybe this is why I didn't find anything significant with Google or AskMe.
Any example or contact with people involved in similar projects would be appreciated.

Help me choose an intranet.

dirtynumbangelboy — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 09:47:12 -0800

IntranetFilter. Help me choose a corporate intranet package. My company really needs an intranet (not just my opinion), so I'm researching options, with a view to making a presentation to HR and other stakeholders in the next month or so.

Our IT person is suggesting SharePoint from Microsoft, as we run an Exchange server. My concern with that is mainly bugginess and security, as well as ease of customization--ideally, we'd probably want the intranet to have the same look and feel as our extranet.

I'm leaning towards the product found here, as it seems fantastically simple, infinitely customizable, and without the multitude of security flaws that MS is known for. It's basically an out-of-the-box solution.

Can anyone provide me with pros and cons, personal experience, etc?

Can you recommend software that will generate an extensive site map of my company's intranet?

jennaba — Wed, 31 May 2006 13:40:12 -0800

I'm looking for a piece of software that will spider the company's intranet. After looking around for a few days, I've generated a list of requirements. 1. Needs to be installed on my desktop machine, as the intranet can sense whether the appropriate user is logged on to the network behind the corporate firewall, and I need access to all areas of the site.

2. I need to be able to specify what kinds of URLs it should ignore (like dynamic ones). The site is built in Coldfusion if that matters. Also, I'd like the ability to exclude certain filetypes (like images) and directories.

3. I'd like it to output in a pretty graphical format if possible. If it doesn't I will have to create a Visio graphic so management can comprehend it.

4. Here's the clincher: I want it to be able to pull the "last modified" date from the file itself and display it with the filename. One of the reasons we're doing this audit is to ferret out stale content.

5. Super mega bonus points for anyone who can figure out how to somehow combine the data contained in our WebTrends database with the sitemap, so not only can we see how the files link to each other, how old they are, but also see how heavily trafficked they are.

Thanks to everyone in advance!

Task orientated intranet redesign

TheDonF — Thu, 11 May 2006 03:09:20 -0800

Looking to re-develop an intranet around task orientation rather than business structure. Have you done this? I work on a large-ish intranet (~15,000 documents) and we're looking to change the IA from being orientated around business structure to being task orientated. But where to start?

Have you gone through a similar exercise and, if so, how did you do it? What went well and what would you do differently if you had to do it all again?

Help me create a flickr-type site!

edjusted — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 09:59:03 -0800

Help me catalog and organize our graphic files! I'm trying to catalog thousands of graphic files, mainly Illustrator and EPS files. That part's not too hard. The problem I'm running into is, how do I have the catalog accessible to everyone in our company, preferably on our intranet?... Ideally, the file names and directory paths could be searchable (e.g. if I have a file stored in directory /thisgraphic/thatcategory/sports, I'd like to be able to find it by searching "thisgraphic" OR "thatcategory" OR "sports".)

In addition, I'd like everyone to be able to tag the files, a la flickr, also using (preferably) a web interface. I've looked the heavy hitters like Portfolio, Cumulus, and iView. While the cataloging part is pretty easy, the putting everything on web AND having them searchable AND having tagging doesn't seem so easy.

Search for my site

dhacker — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 12:58:06 -0800

Can you reccommend a solution for searching my own site that does not display ads (therefore, it is not Google)> Simple, search box on my site that indexes my pages (200 - 300, some dynamic) and allows me to search it. The thing is, I don't want ads so the standard free solutions won't work. We've been using Atomz/Websidestory for years and it works well but the ads are beginning to be a problem.

Past ask.mefi threads have mentioned Perlfect - but I'm not running Perl on my server.

Any other thoughts? State of the market changing?

Blog, Wiki, Intranets : Any experience?

jonthegeologist — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 10:54:44 -0800

Is anyone using blogs and wikis at work on a corporate intranet? I'd love to hear about how successful they are? What kind of projects do you use them for?

Good W2K intranet blog/bulletin board software?

Sasquatch — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 11:45:56 -0800

Can someone suggest some good intranet blog and/or bulletin board software for a fairly standard W2K domain, IIS, ASP, Office 2000 intranet? I want to implement something at work to allow our managers to post significant events on our intranet so that the entire department can keep up with what's going on.

Absolute requirements are:
* Has to be hosted completely internally on a W2K domain with IIS.
* Has to be stupid simple for non-tech people to use.

It would also be nice if it integrated with W2K domain logins and not require a lot of time to code / setup. Ideally this would expand up to 80-90 users.

I don't mind spending a little money, but Movable Type's commercial licenses get expensive very quickly. I'm not even committed to blog software. I'd really prefer a bulletin board format, but a traditional bulletin board requires too much time and too many clicks to find new information. I need one page that has a listing of all the latest news, automatically generated from postings. Blogs do that well, but not so well on fostering discussions that are easily found later. Bulletin boards do well for fostering discussions, but are bad at automatically generating a news page.

I think AskMetafilter is a good compromise between the two, but I don't know how I would implement something like this under Windows.

I saw this earlier thread about reluctance on intranet blogs and wikis. That didn't help with my software question, though.

Intranet Design Suggestion

NotMyselfRightNow — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 12:30:53 -0800

Intranet design suggestions. I'm aware of OSWD for simple web designs. Is there an equivalent for intranets? I'm trying to design a simple, small, basic one for my firm and need a good starting point to work and develop from. Any suggestions? Free is ideal (always!), but templates or design for a small fee would be okay, too.

Google or bust?

loquax — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 08:07:58 -0800

Does anyone have any experience with the Google Search Appliance or similar enterprise search tools? In particular, I'd like to know how much I can customize the external search functionality. For example, my users will have the option of searching my site and/or the web, but if they search the web, I'd like to restrict the sites that the search returns/filter for keywords, that sort of thing. Is this possible? I also want to customize the interface to the point where an end user won't recognize it as a Google product. The FAQ seems quite vague, and Google doesn't want to talk to me. Besides that, any general impressions or alternate recommendations? Thanks...

Fear of wikis and blogs at a corporate level

vincentm — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 05:16:31 -0800

How do you explain the reluctance (hesitation) for developing blogs and wikis (and social softwares in general) on the big companies' intranets (if you have succeeded so far please contact me) ?

I've built it, now how I do I get them to come?

pomegranate — Thu, 09 Jun 2005 07:27:24 -0800

We've just added a new intranet site to our company's suite of communications tools. I've customized the site, added some appropriate materials, and sent invites to some key players across our company. Now what? We have about 800 computer users in 50 sites in the US, Canada, and Mexico, and we want them to use the intranet site for conferences, discussions, and to share best practices and templates. We'll hold all of our classes and seminars from there, so people will be driven to the site to attend the classes, but how do we get them to contribute, start talking to one another? I think our users may be suffering from new-tool exhaustion, since we just rolled out PCs two years ago, and added several new software options this year, plus they may not understand how it differs from their e-mail or our shared network drive. What have you seen work? What have you seen not work?