User Management & Intranets - Best Practices?

The good thing about intranet users is that you know them, that you know how many they are and that you know, which infrastructure they use.

The not so good thing is, that they also know you - and they will come and get you if they dont like what you do. The expectations are a lot higher; everything needs to be simple and great.

That's the way it should be; but dont forget: you cannot gain as much reputation through great features as you can lose through inconveniences with the basics.

Nobody will be proud to say "I'm in, I made it", if they just went through a painful registration process, you can't give them gimmicks and you cannot really reward them - so you have to make a good job.

Thats really challenging when you have to create a new usermanagement for several countries and companies that have acutally not been working together up to now.

It's kind of hard to decide when the challenge is out and the madness begins if you are talking about 60000 users, 9 languages and some really business critical applications.

There are a lot of Best Practices dealing with intranets, features, contents - but I did not find anything helpful dealing with the setup of a big usermanagement - any suggestions?

Communication and Organization

It is great that intranets are developing into something way bigger than "just" a communication media. They are supposed to be collaboration and cooperation platforms, interactive tools and an interface to legacy systems and business processes.
The last one makes a really big difference: this is were you get from talking to acting. That sounds as if communication was nothing (well, it's my job, so dont get me wrong), but what I'm trying to tell is that usually communication sets the agenda and makes the decisions (things are determined a lot by the way they are told; think about new products, organizational changes, new managers) but in the case of representing business processes through the intranet, you learn a lot about the limited power of communication:

• you have to understand the processes
• you have to convince the process owners that they bother to explain the processes to you
• you have to represent the processes in a way that others can also understand them
• you have to create the communicative processes that surround the business processes; thats actually some kind of marketing activity
• you have to question yourself if all this is actually worth it or if the world would not be much simpler and clearer if business processes stay where they are and intranets are communication media.

To keep it short: I definitely think that it is way smarter to combine things and make them visible via one source. The intranet should be something like a trademark - brought to you by your Intranet. It's the first and single access point, and it provides all the information you need. Maybe not in all available depths, but it tells you were to go.

How to research client infrastructure

Today, the deadline for answers to my questionnaire is ending.
I sent out a short form to collect information on monitors, screen resolutions, graphic and sound support, installed browsers and versions, plugins, settings (javascript, active x) etc.

I thought it was clear, but there always seems to be space for misunderstanding: how come that it coordinators tell me in answer #4 that flash plugins are installed, in answer #7 that no file formats are blocked and in answer #9 that employees can not play swf or flv files?

Everytime again it is surprising, but even in the very networked times we have now the only reliable way to find out what is really going is to go there, turn on the computer and have a look on your own.
That eats a lot of time, but it saves a lot of worrying.

Boy and girl intranets

In evaluating all the intranet solutions in our Group, this is one of my central findings:

There are boy-intranets and there are girl-intranets.

That does not only depend on who creates or manages them; the main criteria is how new content is treated.

New content in a girl-intranet is welcomed quite strictly: "Take off your shoes, hang your coat here, do you want tea or coffee? You will sit here; hand on a second, I will be right back".
That's a lot of work, but it creates a clear and tidy surface.

New content in a boy intranet has a more relaxed entree: "Beer is in the fridge, the TV is there - help yourself."
That's less work - but it works only, if the rules are simple and clear.

If you start thinking about exceptions - that's like marrying: can be heaven, can be hell, but it definitely only works if the rules are very clear.

(I will get back on this with some examples)