intranet features summary

["Allyson C. Harris" <aharris -at- ROCKTENN -dot- COM>]

Two weeks ago, I asked what features companies were putting on their
intranets. Here's a summary of the responses. For easier scanning, I
divided the responses into two broad categories:
* business features that directly or somewhat directly pertain to company
operations, and
* employee service features that are unrelated to the company's operations.

Features were mentioned once unless otherwise noted. Also, please keep in
mind that most companies' intranets include only a handful of the features
mentioned in the very long list below. Many respondents said their
intranets were just in the beginning stages. The focus of intranets differs
widely too, depending on the company's line of business. So don't be
overwhelmed if you're company is just getting started.

Thanks to all for your feedback. There are a lot of creative projects out
there!

BUSINESS FEATURES:

* Ability to change one's W-2, benefits package, dependents, 401K, or
whatever other personnel issues from Web page
* Employee listings with phone numbers, and capability to e-mail or page an
employee directly from the Intranet page listing that employee. (5
responses)
* Employee listings that include above plus employee pictures (2 responses)
* Employee listing that includes all of above plus employee office number
that when selected, displays a layout of the floor with the exact location
of the office.
* A database of vendors, distributors, and strategic partners
* Training plans
* Calendar for the conference room
* Descriptive information about various company divisions
* Internal job postings
* Running list of messages to all staff
* Question and Answer about a new company building
* A link to corporate usenet groups
* Newsgroups where users can post a message about a work-related topic (2
responses)
* Search engine
* Chat room where users can "chat"
* Administration utilities to manage intranet and Internet web side content
* Online versions of company magazines and newsletters (2 responses)
* Company press releases
* Message from the President
* Mission statement
* What's New Page
* Help Desks -- applications that allows uers to ask questions about a
particular topic area, other users can answer and the reply is
automatically e-mailed to the questioner.
* Glossary of Terms used throughout the company
* English/German technical dictionary (company based in Austria but uses
English as common language)
* Competitive information, including list of competitors (2 responses)
* Links to competitions' websites and industry-related information (3
responses)
* Links to corporate web (external) site
* Vacation schedules
* Policies and procedures
* Question and Answer for new employees on common procedures (mail
handling, shipping and receiving, mainframe access) - 2 responses
* Forms (vacation requests, purchase requests, etc.)
* Currency converter (co. has  branches all over world)
* Capability for employees to order office supplies from the warehouse
* Individual dept. home pages that allow staff to put up any kind of
information they want, business and non-business.
* Individual employee web pages with information on the work they are
doing, personal interests, links to their own personal web pages outside
the company.
* On-line document library (2 responses)
* Listing of all collateral produced by the Marketing and Technical
Documentation depts. (included are title, pub. #, availability, brief
description, date of publication release)
* All company product manuals, and some third-party and vendor manuals, in
PDF format
* Design documents
* Engineering Change Notices
* Schematics and other artwork
* Reference and project information organized by project
* Network and system status
* Project status
* Project meeting minutes
* New product and current product information (internal things like product
codes, marketing reports, product descriptions) to help sales and customer
support (2 responses)
* Info on beta products and and sites
* A knowledgebase which will be linked to company's new Internet site under
development for logging and tracking various hardware, software, and
documentation issues
* Product revision histories and compatibility charts
* Capability to extract data, run reports, and track product using SQL
applications
* Capability for high-end users to update a database from the web, or to
view other data, all in "real-time." (Kaiser intranet)
* Customer inquiry feature that included framesets, with the left frame
being the Tables of Contents that drilled down to different layers, and the
right frame containing the content of the topic the user chose. (Pacific
Bell intranet)
* Company and product teams within R&D have their own page, with meeting
minutes, technical notes, white papers, and other supporting documentation,
along with links to download latest makes of software.
* Ability to search a bugs database by product, feature, bug number, etc.
* Quick reference page for engineers that includes ASCII chart and software
company homepages (Borland, Microsoft, etc.)

EMPLOYEE SERVICE FEATURES:

* Classified ads (2 responses)
* Reviews of local lunch spots
* Menus for the company cafeteria
* Company store catalog and order forms
* Links to other web pages that may be of interest to employees (2 to
Dilbert)
* Dilbert of the Week posting
* Commuting options
* Child care information
* Local community information
* Internal tennis competition results
* "Who is bringing cake on Fridays" list
* Selected news stories and information from outside
* Links to weather information





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