What your Intranet/Extranet will have depends on what you expect from it. You could see it as a shared document space, simply a page with company announcements and “joke of the day”, or as a pulsating nerve center at the very heart of company operations.

Likewise, companies offer from the barest minimum, skeleton structure, no frills solutions, to overwhelmingly complicated “all your needs under the sun” products. We believe in the Buddha’s middle path, and think that intranets/extranets should play an important role in a modern organization, but at the same time should be realistic and practicable in a small to mid sized business context.

The following is a list of “demand as a right” features for an intranet/extranet solution:

Document Management – Any self respecting solution, which deserves the tag of an “intranet/extranet solution” must have this feature. It should allow you to upload multiple file formats online and organize them in folders for groups or individuals.

In addition to storage, the ability of groups to collaborate and work together on documents from remote locations is another essential. Efficient collaboration systems must have versioning, access permissions, document locking, & overwrite protection facility.

Automatic document backups keep you safe from emergencies and system failures.

Intranet/Extranet Page Publisher – This tool allows you to set up separate areas for departments, teams and individuals within your intranet, or create dedicated extranets for different partners, vendors or clients.

Different intranet areas, extranets and customer portals have different needs, purposes and audiences. Likewise, the publisher should allow the ability to add select collaboration tools to different pages, manage their look and layout, and also offer the option of using standard pre-built templates. The ability to customize page appearance is especially important with extranets and customer portals where one is looking to make an impression.

Some solutions on offer allow an incredible amount of customization, even allowing users to create entire websites from scratch.

Task Management – This tool allows managers to setup, monitor and track projects and tasks from within the intranet or extranet. This offers managers a viable way to keeping on top of multiple projects at the same time without having to “be there”.

“To Do Lists” form an important part of a task management tool, which allow a particular user a single view tasks assigned to self, or further assigned to others.

The task manager should have a notifications system, preferably with a variety of notification mediums (sms, email, desktop popup) which allow one to keep updated about task changes.

Graphic views are an added benefit.

Address Book/Contact Management – A contact management system allows a company to effectively manage all of its business contacts, and keep every person and group in touch with the right people.

The intranet should have a company directory where everyone can easily look up everybody else’s contact information. Also, individuals, intranet groups and extranets should have the ability to create and share their own address books. 

Functions like the ability to import contacts from other systems, customize contact fields, integration with email etc., make for an efficient system. An example is this.

Calendar, Scheduler - A centralized scheduling system keeps employees informed of company events, companies informed of partner/client schedules, and members informed of department/team schedules. Every individual, group, and the company as a whole should have a shared calendar so that scheduling hassles are made a thing of the past.   

The ability to overlay different calendars and see all schedules in a single view, the ability to send out meeting invites, and reminders are some features a calendaring system should have.

Business Email – An intranet should have an integrated email client which lets employees manage their business mail from their personal pages on the intranet. This allows employees the flexibility of having access to mail even when they’re out of office, by simply logging on to the intranet through the web.

Web Conferencing – Web conferencing is a relatively new tool which has recently entered the SAAS domain. It offers companies the ability to assemble interactive meetings on the go irrespective of the situation of meeting participants. The oft used pitch “almost like being there” isn’t too much of an overstatement. Major benefits accrue to companies with everybody not having to assemble at the same place for a meeting. This allows company employees to be mobile and connected at the same time.

Web conferencing allows multiple participants to discuss issues through audio and video, share files and applications, give presentations, and brainstorm on whiteboards. And all they need is a phone and web browser.

The cream offerings in the intranet/extranet domain also offer web conferencing as part of their toolkit.

Message Boards – Message boards are a great way for knowledge sharing and peer to peer learning, as well as a forum to resolve problems for employees, partners and customers. It also fosters discussion across the hierarchy and departments. The ability to set up and easily moderate message boards at the company, group, and extranet level is a great feature to have.

Chat – It makes sense for a company to have its own internal yahoo like chat, to facilitate real time communication and information exchange.   

Access Control– Since a deluge of employees at different levels and across departments share information through the intranet, the ability to manage access to pages, and other information like contacts, calendars, documents etc is of prime importance.

The management would like people in different departments and at different levels have access to different kinds of information and different degrees of access to that information. For example, non accounts employees would not have access to financial documents, and lower level executives in the accounts dept. would have only the rights of view accounts information and not modify it.

The permissions system should be logical and structured. Only members should be allowed to access to department & team pages or extranets. For example only the top management would have access to the “top management group” pages and information. Even within a group, members would have different levels of access to different kinds of information. For example some people might have the rights to create new documents, some the right to only view and modify them, and others to merely view them.

The overall administrator of the site should have the ability to delegate responsibility. For example a group administrator would have full rights at the group level to create sub groups, add or delete members, manage permissions, further delegate responsibility and so on.

Individuation & Profiling – Individuation allows a new level of control & customization. The profile of a member within a group determines what information and content he sees on the group page. Certain information would not be visible to him at all. That way, the intranet/extranet can be customized exactly according to the person using it.

Integration with other Applications – No matter how comprehensive your intranet solution is, it will not serve all your software needs. Different departments and companies, will have specific application needs. For example, the accounting department needs accounting software. Sales teams need CRM software like Saleforce to manage leads. An online sales team might need an email sales software. Moreover there are certain applications which are almost a given in all organizations – Outlook, Outlook Express, Excel, Word.

It is therefore important that the solution is flexible enough to integrate with other solutions that may be specific to a company’s needs. Unified login is a concept that helps intranet/extranet software integrate with other solutions. This allows users to log into other web applications they might need from within the intranet/extranet. Thus, even though the intranet may not offer specific solutions, it remains the nerve center of all activity of the company, through which employees can manage all their needs.

Intranet Design: Integration of Intranet, Extranets & Customer Portals – The solution should allow centralized control over the intranet, extranets and customer portals. The structure should be logical and easy to manage. The following is a logical structure - pages for individuals, pages for groups with member access, company wide pages with access for all employees, an extranet and customer portal pages with access for partners and customers. The administrator should be able to manage all pages from a central console.