Intranet

Project Aim

Heriot Watt University requires a staff intranet and departmental collaboration solution to centrally manage content, making access to relevant information more efficient to support business collaboration across the academic and Professional Services.

What is an Intranet?

An intranet is similar to a website but is an internal network exclusive to one organisation. It allows staff to share common information while still allowing security for confidential documents.

Intranet Benefits

  • Building an intranet can enhance communication. An intranet allows posting of critical information for all employees to see, up-to-date information and communication helps everyone to make better decisions.
  • An intranet saves time in locating documents, which means less need to be recreated from scratch.
  • By using an intranet, people can work on a shared file and have a central location for the most recent file.
  • It's better than e-mail, as e-mailing multiple versions of the same document or presentation leads to confusion and sometimes information overload.
  • The beauty of an intranet is its interactivity; you can save time (and trees) with interactive forms.

Heriot-Watt Intranet project

  • A pilot project to build three intranet websites for Finance, Procurement, and SML was completed in April 2012.
  • The Intranet is for staff access only; students are to use the VLE as their Intranet.
  • The work was carried out in conjunction with external consultants using Microsoft SharePoint 2010 software.
  • Phase 2 of the Intranet rollout started in July 2012.
  • SharePoint sites will be rolled out in manageable stages.

What is SharePoint?

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 is the software used to build the Heriot-Watt intranet. It is a set of software tools that help people in an organization to work together via the Web. It is used to build and run internal websites for departments, project teams, the whole organisation, and individual employees. SharePoint sites makes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files shareable so different people can edit them. It also has a search engine that combs through documents and sites on the University network.

Project resourcing

 Before a School or Directorate can begin to build an intranet site the following resourcing questions must be addressed:

  • A SharePoint site requires 1 to 2 site owners (administrators) who are formally trained and then responsible for on-going management of the site.
    • The site owner (administrator) is someone who has the time to take on the role and has IT/Web skills to be able to develop and support use of SharePoint. If a second site owner can be trained then there is cover for the primary site owner.
    • This involves a minimum of 1 days SharePoint training by external trainers. 
    • Site owner(s) will take on-going responsibility for site management tasks such as managing content, adding users, managing security, creating libraries, setting up forms, lists & surveys, adding announcements, provide advice and support to colleagues.