29.8.2022
Customizable tool links, improved search and people search functions – these features don´t come standard with the modern SharePoint Online intranet, but are all small customizations which took the intranet of Metsähallitus to a whole new level.
Continue reading “Case Metsähallitus: Small customizations ensured a better than expected intranet”
8.3.2022
Intranet and search engine optimization (SEO) may not be thought of as things that are related to each other, but in reality, they are very much related. Intranets also need search engine optimization, but instead of optimizing for Google, we just talk about optimizing for the intranet’s internal search engine.
However, all search engines work with the same main principles as Google. Sure, Google has a much larger datapool when it evaluates different sites, but the basic principles of organizing and sorting search results are similar.
Content creators play a key role when it comes to a good intranet search experience. Even the best search engine doesn’t know how to return the right results, unless the content creators have considered the search engine in the content. Although this is the same principle that content creators follow with search engine optimization for Google, SEO is often not considered enough when it comes to intranets.
This article lists the three most important search engine optimization principles for intranet content writers.
Continue reading “Intranet Search Engine Optimization”
1.3.2021
All intranets are moving to the cloud, including multinational and multilingual organizations’ intranets. This shift to the cloud provides many benefits, but at the same time presents challenges. Often old solutions cannot be transferred to the cloud because of technical reasons. Uponor faced this challenge a year ago. As the technical reform loomed, Uponor decided to take the opportunity to rethink its entire intranet concept.
Continue reading “Case: Uponor’s new intranet brings the entire organization together”
11.8.2020
The University of Oulu was tired of the fact that the staff instructions and services could not be found in the content structure of their communications intranet. The solution was to design, user test, and implement a new staff intranet with an easy-to-use service directory.
Continue reading “Case: The service directory plays a key role for the staff intranet of the University of Oulu”
6.8.2020
Ramirent, one of Europe’s largest machine rental companies, relaunched its intranet during the Covid-19 pandemic and major internal changes. Simultaneously, new communication and collaboration tools were introduced. Renewing the digital work environment is always a major task, and on top of that, Ramirent had some extra challenges. Nevertheless, the new intranet was successfully launched on schedule in early May.
Continue reading “Case: Ramirent’s Intranet – triumph over adversity”
24.4.2020
Intranets have been a hot topic for universities recently. When the technical platforms of intranets come to the end of their life cycle, it’s time to reassess the whole concept. This was done by The University of Helsinki with their Liferay Intranet which we wrote about earlier.
Where the University of Helsinki decided to differentiate between the intranets of employees and students, the Swedish-language Åbo Akademi University, situated in Turku and Vaasa, took a different approach. Åbo Akademi University’s new intranet is for both staff and students, and it was implemented on Finland’s most popular intranet platform, O365.
Continue reading “Case: Åbo Akademi implemented a bilingual intranet with O365”
5.3.2020
2017 was a year of change for the University of Helsinki. The University was undergoing a big organizational change and at the same time a new student platform was taken into use. The intranet called Flamma was a joint intranet for both staff and students. Now, some of its content would be transferred to the new student platform called My Studies, giving an opportunity to reorganize the content of the intranet. In addition, the technical platform was coming to the end of its life cycle and adding the fact that the intranet was not responsive, a renewal was more than called for.
Continue reading “Case: The new intranet of the University of Helsinki is a result of close-knit collaboration”
27.2.2019
What does intranets and digital workspaces look like in Finland in 2018? We conducted a survey, in order to find out roles, functionalities and technologies of the digital workplace as well as to see how organizations develop and lead their intranets and digital workplaces.
Continue reading “Survey results: The roles and functions of digital workplaces in Finland”
12.11.2018
Caverion designs, produces and maintains technical solutions in real estate and manufacturing. Their renewed intranet was launched in March 2018. The renewal sought to create a tool that would support daily work and enable concurrent communication throughout the organisation, regardless of language version or job title. The renewal and changes in content production were introduced on time and within the budget, thanks to strong ownership and leadership in the project. Here is what Anne Kotila, Digital Communications Manager, who was in charge of the project, and Päivi Alakuijala, Chief of Communication and Marketing at Caverion, have to say about the successful renewal.
Continue reading “Case: Caverion’s new intranet is an efficient tool for everyday communication”
What does a proper intranet solution look like for an international company with 1,800 employees, sales in over 30 countries and production in 7 countries? That was the question at Peikko Group that wanted to improve internal communication across the company by renewing their intranet. Peikko did not have a modern intranet or digital workplace encompassing the entire organisation, allowing the company to start from scratch. Continue reading “Case: Peikko Group created several intranets from scratch”
Organisations assign different tasks and roles to their Intranet. Over the past few years, the addition of features that enable knowledge-intensive work and interaction have caused many of the originally mass-communication focused intranets to transform into versatile digital workplaces.
Currently, there are basically two types of intranet: the communicational intranet and the digital workplace.
In addition, the popularity of using enterprise social networking (ESN) software as a tool for shared learning and coordination of work is growing.
Continue reading “What are digital workplace, intranet and ESN anyway? This is how I define them”
In addition to the technical requirements specification document, the content plan document is used to support the intranet implementation project. The plan can be also called content concept plan or content structure plan.
Continue reading “Content plan for an intranet – What does it include?”
Intranet is a service which essentially exists due to the information it contains. However, not all information is relevant for every user group. On the other hand, some of this information is relevant for everyone – oftentimes it is even “pushed” in front of everybody’s eyes. Then again, some of the content is utilized actively every day – and some of it only once a year. Moreover, keeping the content up to date should be super-easy.
Challenging requirements for intranet concept planning? Three-function framework for intranet content strategy provides a helpful tool for content planning and managing the explicit organizational information inside an intranet – or a digital workplace.
Continue reading “Content planning best practices for intranets and digital workplaces”
6.9.2017
Lately there has been a lot of talk about the competetiveness of the Finnish economy. One thing is for sure: in the intranet market we aren’t doing badly at all! Two Finnish products designed for intranet and digital work – Valo and Universe – are churning out outstanding sales figures around the world. In the spirit of our centenary year of independence, we decided to introduce these two top export products.
We interviewed representatives from both Universe and Valo, giving them the freedom to praise their own products as they see fit, but we also asked them to evaluate the competition and describe their product development philosophy. So, in this article we shall focus on Valo.
Continue reading “Finnish intranet products are conquering the world – introducing Valo”
6.9.2017
Lately there has been a lot of talk about the competetiveness of the Finnish economy. One thing is for sure: in the intranet market we aren’t doing badly at all! Two Finnish products designed for intranet and digital work – Valo and Universe – are churning out outstanding sales figures around the world. In the spirit of our centenary year of independence, we decided to introduce these two top export products.
We interviewed representatives from both Universe and Valo, giving them the freedom to praise their own products as they see fit, but we also asked them to evaluate the competition and describe their product development philosophy. So, in this article we shall focus on Universe.
Continue reading “Finnish intranet products are conquering the world – introducing Universe”
13.6.2017
Intranets in Finland are used for organizational, HR, and strategic communications, and to communicate company policies and guidelines. On top of these two traditional roles, most of the intranets are also tools to facilitate the forming of a common organizational culture and sense of community, our latest study on Finnish intranets reports.
Nov 3, 2016
After organizational communication and work instructions, the third most important task for an intranet is “creating communality” (Intranet Services in Finland 2016 survey). In practice, this happens in two ways. Continue reading “Sustainable communality grows from the community itself – supported by the intranet”
Sep 14, 2016
Intranet renewals typically involve pondering whether or not workspaces are part of the intranet, and should collaboration in the workspaces be implemented on the same technology platform as the communicational intranet . Yes and no – both are possible.
When we look at the intranet from the perspective of its communicational nature and communicational features, its functions within the organization fall into three main categories: Continue reading “The three functions of an intranet”
Buyer's Guide to Intranet Projects 