Re: Anyone use Community Server for an Intranet? Compared to Sharepoint? Or other 'portals'?

At 01:52 AM 11/03/2006, Austin, Darrel wrote:

>We're in the very early stages of trying to figure out what technology
>to use for our major intranet overhaul (going from static site to a
>CMS/DMS of some sort). We do need to pick a MS based solution (.net) :/
>
>We've been trained on Sharepoint, but, for a variety of reasons, I'd
>rather not go with that. Community Server has been getting some buzz in
>the .net world and it looks to be shaping up as a nice tool.
>
>So, my question is if anyone has implemented a portal-like product, or
>specifically Community Server, for a large corporate intranet?

Hi Darrel,

I haven't seen anyone specifically use Community Server for an intranet
(and to be honest, I had to use Google to look up what the product was).

That being said, I have seen a number of organisations go down the
route of positioning "collaboration" as the core concept of their
intranet.

This obviously has a very different dynamic to the traditional
web-page-based intranets deployed in most organisations, and I think
it creates a very different set of strengths/weaknesses/issues.

To my mind, it comes back to having a very clear vision of what
role the intranet will play in the organisation, and therefore how
best to deliver it.

Off the top of my head, intranets can (and should) play a number
of important roles:

* source of corporate documents
* source of online information
* platform for business tools (online forms, etc)
* communications channel (news, etc)
* collaboration (team level, etc)

In practice, you'll need to cover off all of these things, and it
may come back to looking the different "levels" of needs within
your organisation:
http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/cmb_threelevels/index.html

Apologies for the rambling email, so I'll try to come back onto
topic. In regards to a solution such as Community Server, I can
see that this could be great for the comms/collaboration side
of things, but I'm less sure about the rest of the needs,
particularly the "business tool" aspect.

In practice, I would design the "user experience" first, and
then work out which tools to assemble together to deliver it.

No one tool will provide the complete picture, and I think the
guiding "metaphor" for the intranet should come out of your
vision, rather than from the operating model of one specific product
(whether it's a CMS, DMS, portal, collaboration env, etc).

Cheers,
James

-------------------------
James Robertson, Managing Director
Step Two Designs

Email: [email protected]
Web: www.steptwo.com.au
Phone: +61 2 9319 7901