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Subject:Re: OVERHAUL OF COMPANY INTRANET From:"Charlotte H. Jacobsen" <chjac -at- AMROSE -dot- SPO -dot- DK> Date:Thu, 22 Jan 1998 11:20:31 +0100
Gina,
the name of our intranet is Yggdrasil - it stems from an old
Viking-saga/story, where Yggdrasil is The Tree of Wisdom. Its roots
reaches everywhere and its top branches high into the heaven. A little
squirrel named Ratatosk runs from top to root tip and to all branches of
Yggdrasil to tell tales and gossip. So Ratatosk is the name of the
program that puts our HTML documents from the special folder on the
server to be the intranet where everybody can see it (I don't know much
of the programming stuff).
Yggdrasil, the intranet, is quite unorganised in my company because
everybody can put everything everywhere, ranging from Dilbert strips
over cake-bringing-list to
project descriptions and ideas.
I am right now in the process of putting a more serious intranet
together which is also going to be the user interface of our software.
On this intranet I want a web of information about our product ranging
from managerial overviews and marketing over customer specific
information, online help and programmer's documentation. I want to make
everything in HTMLHelp so that the navigation is given in the sidebar.
(Tutorials may contain Next buttons etc.).
Each category of information is optional so that if a customer buys a
system containing not all of our modules, all information about those
modules are excluded from that customer's intranet. Internally, in the
company, everything can be included, but each employee can decide to
switch certain categories off, e.g. tutorials. HTMLHelp has a facility
called Information Types which allows exactly that.
Our company name is AMROSE (Autonomous Mobile Robots Operation in
Structured Environments - which makes programs for robots). All of our
software modules are called amSomething, e.g. amView for viewing the
outcome of a robot simulation. So I decided to call the intranet
amOnline. We are keeping Yggdrasil as a "playground" and will put all
serious stuff into amOnline.
Right now I am looking at which database to use for source documents and
version control. Ideally, I would like the database to hold control over
all our documents from video clips to scientific articles. Preferably,
it should be intelligent in a way so that if you make changes to a
certain version of a document, it would generate a(n email) list of
keepers of that document. Or if you ask "I am going to make a 30 min.
speech about our company for 20 engineer students. What material do we
have?" it would generate a suggestion for a slide show.
Our company is not very large (yet!) so we can't afford - and don't need
- a $50.000-$100.000 system. As a starting point I might use MS Access
in combination with SourceSafe (for version control - programmers
in-house already use this). But I have only just begun digging into this
field.
Another thing is that I want to make everything as singlesource
documents using FrameMaker. It has the optional text option so that
extra text can be added for hardcopy user's guides and left out in the
version that is going to be converted to HTML for amOnline. This means
that practically every paragraph of text must contain a number of
attributes: for FrameMaker optional text, for HTMLHelp information
types, for database management. How I am going to manage this is still
very unclear to me.
If you, Gina, or anybody else on the list have any information about
(low cost) document management, I would be happy to see it. And I would
also be happy to share info that I may find, with you. Next month one of
the guys here is joining a seminar about neural network based database
management and data mining. I could make a summary if he returns with
anything interesting and if you are interested.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gina Hertel [SMTP:Ghertel -at- ALPHA88 -dot- COM]
>
> Hello all!
> I am trying to convert my company's intranet, previously a repository
> for obsolete information, into a powerful and dynamic communication
> medium modeled after the paradigm of a knowledge base management
> system.
> Along with this facelift, I am going to give the intranet a new name.
> I
> was wondering what the names of your companies/ names of your
> intranets
> were, if there were any relation between the two, and how the names
> were
> obtained.
> I thought of holding a contest, but I'm looking for a faster, more
> appropos approach.
> Any ideas or suggestions would be most appreciated!
> Thanks in advance!
> Gina
>
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