Sean R. Nicholson

Searchability is key in allowing your users to find content on your Intranet. While most users are happy with conducting a simple keyword search using a single text box, an advanced search feature allows users to find information and find it faster.

In typical Intranet search results, users are presented with content and documents that contain the keyword or keyphrase they have entered. What’s often not present is the context in which the information is stored. For example, suppose that the user searched for the phrase “key performance indicators”. Likely, they’d receive a lot of content and documents in their results, but the results may not necessarily specify whether the results are KPIs for the Sales department, IT, Marketing or another department.  As a result, the user spends time sifting through the information to find the specific content they are seeking.

By leveraging advanced search functionality, Intranet Administrators can provide their users with the ability to refine their search sources prior to ever clicking the “Search” button. Maybe the user is only interested in the PKIs that are located within the IT departmental content and are stored in PowerPoint documents. By using advanced search, this type of filtering could be offered making it easier to find the correct content located in the appropriate context.

Sean R. Nicholson

Driving user adoption is one of the key challenges for any Intranet portal. One of the most effective ways to ensure that your users are getting the most of your Intranet is to ask them how they want to use it, observe how they actually use it, and either add/modify functionality to meet their needs or train them to use the portal better.

By listening to your users and understanding their needs, you can create user personas that group users by department and role.  For instance, you might be interested in developing a persona for new employees that helps you streamline the initial look/feel of the portal in a way that helps new hires find their employment forms, crucial new-hire information, and job aids related to their new responsibilities.

By creating a variety of personas for the different employee roles in your organization, you can consistently work to find new ways to present meaningful content and functionality to your users and ensure that they are leveraging the portal in the most effective manner possible.

A persona for a new hire might look something like this:

Ned NewHire

General Characteristics and Responsibilities:
Ned is brand new to the company and this is his first job right out of college. He needs to complete his W-2 documents online and should complete the New Hire Orientation eLearning class. He will also want to find information about how to enroll in company benefits, and a map of the various buildings on campus.

Key Intranet Impacts:
Ned will need to easily access online training, new hire information, and HR benefits information. As a result, it might be a good idea to set every new hires default portlet layout to include an HR portlet and a training portlet so they are prominent on the home page when they first log in to the portal. In addition, a portlet with links to relevant job aids and departmental information would help Ned understand his new responsibilities.

Sean R. Nicholson

Over the years, I have been privileged to work on a variety of Intranets ranging in shapes and sizes. Some were for large corporations, others were for small non-profits. Some were heavily governed, others were driven by user content. Even though each of these Intranets were unique in their own ways, they had one key element in common – strong user adoption. Without a strong user community that recognized the value of the Intranet, each would have failed.

Follow these 5 best practices and you’ll be on your way to showing your users the value of your Intranet and ensuring that they keep coming back for more.

1) Give your Intranet an identity – Just as with any Web site, your Intranet needs a strong brand that means something to your employees. Give your employees an opportunity to help choose the name and you’ll take an additional step in not only selecting something that is meaningful to your audience, but allows them to have a sense of ownership over the brand.

2) Find Your Advocates And Help Them Spread The Word – If you’re in an medium or large organization, it’s likely that you won’t be able to drive user adoption all by yourself.  Instead, recruit a team of employees who understand how valuable the Intranet can be and arm them with tips and tricks that they can use to show the value to others.  Be sure to find folks who may not have recognized the value of the Intranet in the past and work hard to convert them into advocates. You’ll be surprised how much weight their endorsement carries.

3) Give Employees A Voice – Whether it’s through forums, blogs, polls and/or Wikis, give your employees the opportunity to add content to the site. Allowing them to contribute will enhance that sense of ownership and give them a reason to come back.

4) Make It Easy To Use – It’s a Google world out there and if your users can’t find information quickly and easily, they’ll seek it somewhere else. Make sure your Intranet has an easy-to-navigate taxonomy as well as a strong search engine.  Also, be sure your following the best practice on when to open new windows with hyperlinks so your users to get lost in multiple browser sessions and can always get back to your site.

5) Update, update, update – Users come to Intranets for content. If your information is stale, your user adoption will plummet. Find ways to add new content as well as new functionality. If a feature or widget  isn’t getting any traffic, ask yourself whether it’s worth the real estate. Also, be sure to periodically ask your users what they think and make changes when it makes sense.

As always, I’m interested to hear feedback and comments, as well as strategies that you have used to drive Intranet adoption in your organization.