In a previous post I argued to call the intranet not the 'intranet' anymore. The reason is that the 'Intranet' is not always taken seriously, mainly because of an often unsuccessful history or a strategy that is not in line with the IT vision. Last week I was reminded to this when I visited a company where the IT department has a decisive vote on the tools that are used within the organization.

IT in charge of budget and tools to use

The current intranet is built with a CMS that has poor 'social' capabilities (This CMS is actually better suited for marketing websites) The IT department is not in favor of bringing in other applications to add some social features to the intranet. And they have a good point. Instead they say: "Use SharePoint". My advice: Go for it!

(Apparently there is plenty of budget for some tools when it comes from IT)

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There are many ways to get to content on the intranet: navigation, cross links, tags, via employee profiles and... search.

Most of us use Google to search on the internet and we are quite happy with the returned results. But often we are not so happy with the search in the intranet.

Intranet search is still a feature that leaves a lot to be desired in many organisations.

This article contains some lessons I learned implementing search in an intranet with the Google Search Appliance¹ and how to prepare the intranet content for it. There are also many tips you can use without the GSA. We took search serious and it turned into a mini project next to delivering the intranet.

Do we need search?

Gerry McGovern² says "I only use search when I can't navigate". I agree that the site navigation is the primary way to get to desired content. However search can be very useful to search in archives, in documents or other content that is not so obvious to place in the navigation. And some people just simply prefer search!

With the rise of social elements in the intranet, the intranet can become a mash up of different integrated systems. There is still the traditional content management system, but also applications for the wiki, the blogs or microblogging. A good intranet has one search feature that returns relevant results of all integrated platforms.

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Owning an intranet is not the same as being responsible for it

Two examples that can happen with your intranet:

The HR department keeps all the employee data up to date for their own records, but they defer the responsibility for the 'People Find' to the owner of the intranet.

The IT department has delivered the intranet, it works fine and the roll out was a success. But after that they keep rolling out there own portals and platforms to the business. They see building the intranet only as an item on their work program.

There are some tasks that belong to the owner of the intranet and of course there must be:

• a main budget holder
• a chair of the editorial board
• a chair of the steering committee
• a unit to co-ordinate daily tasks
• a unit dealing with first line support
• a unit to co-ordinate with the IT department

You have noticed that there is no mention of "content" or "processes" in this list. These are items that can't be the responsibility of one unit alone.

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