Review of Intranet Usage

A review of all existing intranet usage (by whichever method or system) and experience is currently taking place in order to:

> Help determine comprehensive intranet requirements that will better facilitate effective usage by the majority of staff.

> Establish issues & problems with intranet usage that need to be addressed in the new intranet system.

> Identify all existing intranet information, documents & functions that will need to be migrated to the new system.

Please report your usage and experiences of these or other methods using the comments or by email.

Sharepoint Usage

*Draft review below pending broader access to Sharepoint sites & stats.

IAT currently has installed Microsoft Sharepoint Portal Server 2003 which provides the ability for staff to manage collaborative activities online with direct integration to their MS Office applications and Windows user folders.

Usage of Sharepoint to-date has not deployed or utilised all features available (most notably portals or document/meeting workspaces). Indeed, usage of the sharepoint sites does not make much usage of Contact, Event & Task lists - which require a not insignificant level of active usage by all group members. Discussion boards, surveys and file library usage (e.g. images) are also not used by the majority of users.

The main usage of Sharepoint to-date has been as a means of sharing files needed by a staff team or project group - mostly Word documents.

Problems & Issues
Some of the problems and obstacles to wider or more effective usage cited have been:

- Lack of awareness of the Sharepoint facility or who can access it and how this is arranged.

- Some staff are aware of Sharepoint but do not feel any need or value in obtaining access.

- Usage by staff with access appears to vary significantly, even within the same group.

- Plenty of "areas" and "spaces" have been set up but a lot of these are currently unutilised.

- Some staff have login access problems and are unable to get reliable access to the sites or documents when they do use it.

- The ways in which Sharepoint can be used vary considerably and there is a significant learning curve for more intensive usage beyond simply sharing documents - both for administrators and users. There doesn't appear to be any training or support capacity available.

Summary Stats
Active Staff Users:
Active Group/Site Administrators:
Number of Active Sites:
Number of Documents/Files:

Shared Network Drive Usage

Some departments are also currently using shared network drives to store and make available common documents and files. However, this does not appear to be an organised activity and is just a facility available to some areas which they are using in their own way.

A review of the current usage of these shared drives is awaiting details to be collected and provided by the I.T. Department.

MS Exchange Usage (i.e. Outlook)

Calendars > Used by individuals to coordinate meetings, but very little or no usage of shared calendars has so far been identified.

Contacts > Groups exist and are maintained by I.T. in the Global Address List, but there is no simple, descriptive list of these - which would encourage broader utilisation by staff. It is likely that individual staff maintain their own contact groups too, but unlikely that these are administered and shared in an organised way.

Tasks > Used by some individuals (but probably not widely). It is unlikely that there is much usage of shared task capability and task requests among departments, teams or projects.

Email > Is used for the vast majority of communication & sharing functions through simple emailing and attachments. Unlikely to be significant usage of shared email folders.

Other Tools?

Please advise of any other tools or methods currently used by staff to communicate, coordinate activities or share information/documents.