| EUROPEAN INTERACTIVE DIRECTORIES |
PRACTICAL TIPS ON INSTALLING INTRANETS
- Use a reliable service provider for external connections. Ask for reference sites that match your likely requirements. Shop around for best deals and consider ISDN or leased lines. Leased lines are the sensible route for larger organisations.
- Include planning for the future in your company's Intranet strategy. The usage of the network could grow quite quickly once users perceive the benefits.
- Choose products that can be deployed easily and give a good growth path.
- Check the available bandwidth as Intranet traffic could otherwise bring your system to a halt.
- Check whether the network infrastructure will carry the load. Consider upgrading to 100 Base T.
- Get feedback throughout the company in the definition of the Intranet/Internet strategy.
- Enable TCP/IP across the network as this is the universal transport protocol system.
- If you have to purchase new hardware, consider Internet-enabled PC's.
- Don't use too many graphics as they take a long time to download.
- Remember that good Web publishing requires skill and experience and as much practice of publishing Web pages internally on the Intranet as possible is advisable before publishing on or interfacing with the Internet. This is because people on the World Wide Web may have little experience of your company but have expectations of quality and content derived from other sites. It may be a good idea to use external consultants to publish pages designed for the Internet until the in-house expertise has been acquired, something that only time and continual practice internally will achieve.
- Check your firewall arrangements. There are plenty of very good solutions available on the security aspect. These should be researched in some detail.
- The more complex your information needs, the more likely you are to need a groupware product. These include workflow (where information is automatically routed from person to person), intelligent assessment of data being input and discussion databases. For smaller organisations however, relatively simple systems should suffice.
- Consider outsourcing design of your Intranet to independent Intranet specialists with the technical skills to install an Intranet and to maintain and update it in the long term.
- The complexity and range of skills required is not apparent to many organisations when they start to develop an Intranet. A lot of companies let people in their IT department undertake the tasks with no additional training. Training is a valuable investment and staff should undergo fairly comprehensive training to enable them to be a useful resource in the Intranet strategy of the organisation.
- Design and marketing teams need to be involved from the beginning if the Intranet is to grow into a fully fledged workflow and collaborative network.
