So your SharePoint intranet is branded, now time for the content? Here’s some ideas..
Over the last few years we have developed a host of different intranets. From the socially focused ones to the business focused and there in-between. Recently we have just developed an intranet for Capgemini and it was in our opinion the perfect mix of in terms of content, mixing social and business to get a happy medium.
Here are some ideas that you people out there may find useful when creating your new company intranet.
1. Company jargon / Acronym buster!
We all know what it’s like working in an organisation where they talk the language of Acronym! So a nice little A-Z of acronyms and any other made up words for those people that don’t know what they all mean! Using SharePoint 2010, this is perfect example of where wiki pages can be used.
2. New Starter Pack
When we take on new projects we are all effectively the ‘new starter’ so we are perfectly placed to say whether or not a ‘new starter pack’ would be useful for not for all those important, boring details new starters need to know, e.g fire exits, who the high level managers are, what’s on the menu for the canteen etc..
3. Buy, sell, swap shop facility
This is an idea that is hit and miss. One example I saw was they used it alot, people loved it and it was a key driver to the intranet. On the other hand, people were advertising firearms on there (I am not joking). If they work then its one easy place to get rid, sell, swap your unwanted items quickly & easy! And if your intranet has one office location, you can save money on the delivery!
4. Location based information
Information based on where you are can make your life so much easier. So why not have on your intranet all the information based on where your working such as local taxi numbers, the best restaurants – which you could even review, train times if your outside of London, London tube map & service information as well as local good hotels & the low down on the best travel routes & roads to avoid! You could go a step further and change that location based on where you login!
5. The social & fun side
The happy mix of business & social is perfect. Where you have a bunch of important information, why not show some interesting quotes with a few fun ones in there. You can do this vica versa to, mixing important company information with the photo galleries & not forgetting the Dilberts! everyone in IT loves those cartoons.
6. Graphical company timeline
An idea I haven’t have the chance to put into fruition yet, but what about something like what Kelloggs timeline, they have done? Cool hey. Well what about something like that for your company intranet, detailing all key points of the organisation, why they are important & who is making the company great etc..
7. Video fault, *insert-company-name-here*Tube – basically, videos!
The way people see information is changing, always envolving and with the way we can view things on multiple devices, platform etc, then its no wonder video usage, marketing and general viewing is rising with over 3 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube (taken from YouTubes statatics). A great promotional video showing your staff what is coming next within the company is a great example where this works or even having the CEO do a quick video blog on his thoughts etc, either way, some good examples of where you can utilise video in your intranet.
8. Infographics or real time analytical data
Do you know how many calls your IT help desk deals with a day? No? Nor do I but I bet its a massive amount, so don’t be so hard on them! This kind of data is real useful when looking at potential cost saving exercises maybe, like cutting down there 1.5 million sheets of people your company may turn over – here are some great Infographic examples over at Visual.ly. Leading on from that, having some kind of visual service status is a great way of telling your employees that – everything is ok. Skype do a cool thing with their ‘beating heart’ service status – so cool!
9. How to guides
As we all know, SharePoint is a fantastic tool for publishing, document management, workflow bla bla bla but with all the power comes all the instructions to use them all and use them well. Instead of writing 30 step guides to doing various tasks, break them down into bite sized chunks like how to add a document, how to create a custom list for your users, you could even use Camtasia and do a video with narration over the top to help those who love videos. In my experience people remember about 70 percent of what they learn on courses, so using that example people will remember how to add a document but probably wont remember how to check it in – so you tell them!
10. Where are you? – Office & employee locations
I saw a glimpse of the EA Games intranet once, they used the Sims & their diamonds above their heads for their staff & the combined that with 3D desk views which you could look at each employees desk to see what they liked & did – pretty cool hey! This is very cool but if you work in a forever changing organisation then this would be a nightmare to manage. Using SharePoint 2010 and its lovely MySites users could manager this data themselves, because well really it’s in their interest to be found by people? Maybe! Maybe not, either way in my opinion it would be really helpful. Also for office locations, this would be really useful and if you wanted to be super cool you could utilise the Google Maps API, sorry Bing and combine the two.
Do you have some intranet ideas? Let us know below or on twitter #intranetideas
One of the best features in SharePoint I think is the Search service.
We added link libraries with links to our wealth of Video resources located on an external NAS device.
each video had a nice description which could easily be searched for using the Site search.
Users could then play the video by clicking on the link.
Golden rule
never add large files to the SharePoint database! keep large videos etc out of the SQL database.
user Network Attached Storage with web capabilities… QNAP is a good example..