Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC)

List of comments on poll about intranet technology

A recent poll on the Intranet Professionals LinkedIn Group asked the question, On what technology is your intranet based? Below is a list of the comments provided, sorted in alphabetical order (by technology):

For more information about the poll, see Poll results: what technologies do companies use to develop their intranets?

Technology	Likes
{s}hareCLOUD of course.	1
Adobe (previously Macromedia) ColdFusion.	1
Adobe CQ
Adobe CQ5.5 WEM, but the rest is a hodgepodge of HTML on IIS and ColdFusion, and a few running ASP.NET. We're also using a Google Search Appliance for intranet search. However, we're in the final phases of moving to a unified intranet all running on CQ5.5	1
Atlassian Confluence
Atlassian Confluence	1
Autonomy (HP) TeamSite
Bitrix - Social Internet + CRM + Task/Time Management.
Claromentis
CMS EPiServer 6, EPiServer Relate (community)
CommonSpot, and migrating to Drupal.
Current: Alfresco Enterprise 4.0 + Alfresco Cloud. Previous/recent company: Google Sites (destination site(s)) + Apps Script + App Engine + full Google Apps for Business suite + several third-party apps integrated with Google Apps. Both top-notch.
Custom PHP framework.
Documentum (not a recommendation!)
DotNetNuke
Drupal
Drupal
Drupal
DynamicWeb
Ektron
elcomCMS
Embrace
EPiServer
eXo Platform
eXo Platform
Flat html on IIS, moving to SharePoint 2010
Google Sites in our Google Apps environment.
HospitalPortal.net Healthcare CMS.
HTML, Autonomy Teamsite, Sharepoint 2007, Drupal, Salesforce Chatter.... no SSO... it's a mess! Hoping to go to SP2010 or Salesforce
IBM WCM
IBM WebSphere
IGLOO Software
IIS
Immediacy
Immediacy
Intelligent intranet by Smartmedia
Interact Intranet	1
Interact Intranet	1
Interact Intranet
Interact Intranet
Interact Intranet	4
Interact intranet
Interact Intranet	3
Intranet Connections	3
Intranet Connections	5
Intranet Connections	3
Intranet Connections	3
Intranet Dashboard	1
Intranet Dashboard
Our Intranet is based on the Intranet Dashboard platform
Intranet Dashboard
Intrexx
Introupe
Jahia
Java
Jboss
Jive
Jive
Jive
Jive
Joomla
Joomla
Joomla
Joomla	1
KenticoCMS
Liferay	1
Liferay
Livelink WCM
Lotus Notes + Atlassian Confluence + SharePoint 2010, slowly transitioning content from LN & Confluence to SP.	1
Lotus Notes with SharePoint 2007 sprawl, but we're in the process of moving to SharePoint 2010.
Lotus Notes!!!...going to SP2010
MangoApps
MCMS 2002
Notes Domino	3
Notes Domino
Notes Domino
Open Text (Vignette) for our main site with integration to Lotus Connections for some components.	1
Open Text RedDot CMS
Opentext Content Server
Oracle Database, Stellent (now Oracle) CMS, Ephox editor. 60'000 employees
Oracle Portal and content management system
Oracle UCM and Site Studio	2
Our intranet has been created 'in-house' in 2005 and been developed internally since then. Sharepoint 2010 will also be soon launched, but for collaboration purposes only (as they say in our IT), since it's mainly for the use of specific teams.
PHP and MySQL
PHP *AMP
Plone
Plone
Plone	4
Portal (front end): BEA - Publishing tool: Web based component - Content management: Lotus Notes - Search: Autonomy - Statistics: Webtrends
Red Dot
Salesforce and Chatter	1
SAP Enterprise Portal
SAP Netweaver Portal with Open Text WCM
SAP Netweaver/Leverage Software
SAP Portal and First Spirit CMS
SAP Portal and First Spirit CMS
SAP Portal technology and a Lotus hybrid CMS solution.
SAP portal, but we supplement with some SharePoint 2010 functionality
SDL Tridion
SDL Tridion + SP2007
Seamless CMS
Seamless Content Management System (Victrorian company)
ShadoCMS (Cold Fusion)
ShadoCMS by Straker
Sharepoint 2007 and TeamSite from InterWoven
Sharepoint 2010 at work (sad face) but Cushy CMS is great for small intranets, as well as www sites.
SharePoint for the front end and Oracle UCM for DM/RM I also have a client using Open Text 8.1 for the front end and SharePoint 2010 for the DM
Siebel
Sitecore	1
Sitecore
Sitecore
Sitefinity by Telerik
SlamCMS	1
SmallWorlders Sandbox
SmartSite iXperion from Seneca www.seneca.nl
SocialCMS!
SORCE	1
SORCE
SP2010 as that is the what my current organisation is using. I would however love to spend some time seeing what Intranet Connections could do in a well engaged organisation.	3
SP2010 but I also use TeamLab
Stellent (now owned by Oracle)
T4 Site Manager. However, we are currently involved in a project to launch a new intranet using SP 2010.
Teamsite
TeamSite + WebSphere
TeamSite by Interwoven	1
TeamSite by Interwoven, Lotus and Episerver
ThoughtFarmer
ThoughtFarmer	3
Tridion and SharePoint 2007	1
Typo3 CMS
Vignette
Vignette (CMS) and IBM Websphere Portal (front end), but will be migrating to Sharepoint 2010 within 2 months.
Vignette + Confluence Wiki
Vignette 6	1
Vindula - Plone Based
We use a home grown content management system based in Lotus Notes databases server through Domino web servers.
Websphere Portal / Lotus Quickr
We're just about to roll out SharePoint 2010 (so good news about Yammer!)
WordPress
Workvoices...finally your tailor made social intranet
Yammer
Yammer and Sharepoint 2010 with some Ning

 

Poll results: what technologies do companies use to develop their intranets?

A recent poll on the Intranet Professionals LinkedIn Group asked the question, On what technology is your intranet based? The poll was completed by 379 people. The results are below:

195 people indicated that they use a version of SharePoint while 184 use an alternative. So around 50% of organisations are using SharePoint for their intranets. Of the people who selected 'Other', 146 listed the technology they use in the comments section.

So what other technologies, besides SharePoint, are other organisations using to develop their intranets?

 

Top 20 alternative SharePoint intranet technologies

Listed below are the most popular alternative intranet technologies, based on the poll results.

Notes on how technologies were ranked

• It's not clear whether people selected the 'Like' as an indication that they also use the technology OR as an endorsement of the technology. For this reason, I allocated only half a point for each 'like'.
• Also some organisations use a combination of technologies. In this case, I've counted each instance of a technology as 1 point. For example, if an organisation is using both Vignette and IBM Websphere Portal, I've allocated one point to both of these technologies. 

 

Technology	Mentions	Likes (half)	Total
Interact Intranet	7	4.5	11.5
Intranet Connections	4	7	11
Lotus Notes	8	2	10
OpenText (Vignette)	9	1	10
Autonomy Teamsite	7	0.5	7.5
SAP Portal	7	0	7
Plone	4	2	6
Stellent (Oracle)	5	1	6
Confluence	4	1	5
Joomla	4	0.5	4.5
Drupal	4	0	4
Jive	4	0	4
IBM Websphere	4	0	4
Intranet Dashboard	4	0	4
Sitecore	3	0.5	3.5
Thoughtfarmer	2	1.5	3.5
Tridion	3	0.5	3.5
Liferay	2	0.5	2.5
SORCE	2	0.5	2.5
eXo Platform	2	0	2

See the complete list of technnology comments.

 

See also

• What alternatives are there to Sharepoint for an intranet?
• Technologies Organizations Use to Develop their Intranets

Intranet wish list for 2012: poll results

Nearly 300 people voted recently on a LinkedIn poll asking the question:

What is the one improvement to your intranet you would like to see in 2012?

The results are below.

Over 30 comments were received nominating other improvements that people would like to see. Interestingly a number of these comments received 'likes' (ie the thumbs up) so it was almost as if an informal poll was also taking place.

Of these additional comments, the following comment from Simon Thomson received 11 thumbs ups

I'd like to see a little less "this is my section", a little less "this is what I want" and a little more "how can we help our colleagues do their jobs better" and "how can we help them feel they are important to the success of the company"

 

This comment from Michael Broadhurst received 6 likes:

Interactivity and collaboration are important, but I try and keep one eye on "findability" of different types of content, through better organization, search optimization, etc. If people can't find what they are looking for and get frustrated, they won't come back to use the site as a venue for collaboration.

 

And Richard Cooper’s short request received 5 likes:

I'd like to see other people actually using it...

Other suggestions include

• To manage the balance between external and internally provided comment
• More of a business tool – a place to do things
• Push relevant content to the individual user
• Content to be provided in multiple languages
• Support of day-to-day processes
• Provide training and awareness sessions
• Begin an intranet steering group
• Provide interactive content – not stagnant or old news
• Business-focused improvements to make or save money
• Content publishing responsibilities as part of people’s job descriptions
• Promote the value of the intranet
• Provide a matrix of task based applications that focus around role
• Personalise the content delivered

View the complete discussion.

Quick poll results: the most useful intranet content types

I ran a poll recently asking people to rate the usefulness of 9 intranet content types that add value to your organisation. 221 people (as at Sat Oct 15) responded to the poll and the results were surprising.

In comparison to the other content types, the usefulness of news/blogs was relatively well down the list. And yet many intranet home pages continue to be dominated by news (see tables below).

 

Implications for intranet home page design

If we look at the intranet home pages submitted to the My Beautiful Intranets competition of 2011, we can see that the majority of these are comprised of news, articles, latest news, internal news, external news, company news, announcements, etc.

Where is the space for these other, more useful content types?

 

Implications for top level intranet navigation

If we go further and also review the top level menu items for each of these pages, it is difficult to find top level menu items called 'How to' or 'Procedures'. In fact from the 37 home pages submitted and the 13 top level navigation items identified in the article Intranet information architectures (50 in total), I counted the following: 

• 26 organisations have News or News & Events as a top level item
• 16 have an About Us item
• 11 had Tools 
• 5 had Policies
• 5 had Collaboration
• 4 had Forms
• and a measily 4 had Procedures or a 'How Do I' heading

 

Graph

Yet if we look at the graph below showing the average response for each content type, we can see that 'How to/procedures' is considered to be the most useful type of intranet content closely followed by 'Forms/tools/templates' and then 'Structured content'.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Surely, based on the above feedback, a good argument can be made that:

• more space on the home page should be given to listing popular forms, tools, how to topics and popular lists (such as key phone numbers)
• less space should be given to news
• more top level menu items should point staff directly to these types of content, instead of putting them at hard to find lower levels such as Business Unit headings or user defined categories such as Survival Kit, Campus, Workplace, Laundry, Employee Central or Employee Resources.

 

Breakdown of responses by role

Numerical results for the above graph, shown by Job Role, are listed below.

Note: The 76 responses from the Other group are comprised of the following roles: Other 30, Content Development 19, Management 14, Marketing 5, Sales 4, Human Resources 3, Public Relations 1

Results are reasonably consistent for each content type between the job roles, with the exception being the usefulness of News/blogs. People with Communication roles rate the usefulness at 4.31, IT roles at 3.77 and Other roles at 3.89. This would seem natural as the people most likely responsible for managing the news would have a communications background.

If you want to view the raw data for the poll, click one of the following links:

• View the results (Web page)
• View the results (CSV file)

 

Measure the effectiveness of your intranet content types

If you would like to measure how effective your intranet is at delivering the above content types, why not participate in the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC). There is no cost to participate.

If you would like to learn more about these content types and how to improve your intranet's home page and top level navigation, consider attending a Designing Successful Intranets workshop (USA & Canada only).