How to Launch Your Intranet in 8 Easy Steps.

This is a long article. Please take 30 minutes to read through and digest it in its entirety. You'll be happy you did.

Implementing new intranet software might at first seem overwhelming. But it doesn't have to be that way. Creating an intranet and learning how to launch your intranet for your organization is easier than ever. With a little bit of planning and forward thinking, enhance internal communication and optimise business processes by exploring options to build intranet solutions perfect for your business. You can be up and running in a few weeks or less.

We've worked with hundreds of customers to launch Axero in organizations of all sizes. Each launch varies, but there are some common threads. We put together this list of best practices to help you with a smooth implementation.

For the best results, we recommend having a project team. Focus on each step together. Because making it a collaborative effort will only benefit you in the long run. However, if you're a smaller company and don't have a team of people, you can be confident following these steps. They work. And when you're finished, you'll have a functional intranet. While reading through these tasks, if you find you already have one ironed out, then skip to the next.

Before we start: What is a company intranet?

Company intranets is a private network used within organizations to communication, collaboration, and share information among employees. It operates using internet protocols but is accessible only to authorized members of the organization. Keeping stored data safe and secure via a secure network, ensuring your company's intranet is safe.

Task 1: Identify your purpose, your "why".

Since you're reading this article, you probably have some idea of the challenges you want to solve with a company intranet. That's great. You're already ahead of the game. If you don't know your why, then keep reading. Either way, this step is worth your time. Most organizations can put their "why" into these categories.

• To improve internal communication – Your goal is to communicate information, like news, announcements, and project updates, to the employees inside your organization. You want to make sure everyone knows what's going on inside your company. Do you want to open the dialog and let employees comment on the news and share their ideas? Do you want to allow people to break free from email and communicate in real-time with other team members in your organization?
• To manage organizational knowledge / content – You want to manage the creation, distribution, and use of organizational knowledge. Your goal is to capture and then make the knowledge and information in your organization easy to find and use via file sharing. This could be internal (for your employees) and/or external (for your customers or partners).
• To engage people in an online community – You want to connect and engage the people inside (employees) or outside (customers, partners) your organization. Your goal is to connect people, let them communicate, and share information, this is a large part of your intranet's purpose. Modern intranets aren't just a digital workplace but a cloud based platform for everyone to use.

If you were nodding your head in agreement to the first three categories, this is where we start combining them.

• To improve productivity & collaboration – You want a place where your people can work together, share files and documents, communicate, and get stuff done. You want a place where teams of people can work together on projects and share the latest up to date information.
• Intranet (to do all or some of the above) – This is where we bring everything together inside one unified platform. With an intranet, the key word here is internal. Intranets are used by the people inside your organization. An intranet platform is a place where employees are able to do content creation, communicate, collaborate, automate business processes, train employees, access training materials, share company information, access important documents, and build the company culture. In short, the different features of intranet software make it the perfect place to get work done!

Keep in mind that these categories are not the only use cases of Axero. They are the most typical. Most of our customers combine these categories and call them different names. Some include: Enterprise Social Network, Social Intranet, Customer Support Community, Collaboration Hub, Online Workspaces, etc.

Task 2: Identify your content inventory.

Your intranet should be the primary source for your people to access organizational information. To keep it useful, engaging, and relevant, populate it with your most up-to-date content. The most common content types are:

• Company policy & procedures
• Past and new news articles and announcements
• Frequently asked questions
• Photos of employee activities (volunteering, corporate hang outs, picnics, etc.)
• Promotional or training videos

Think about how your organization categorizes this information. In the most common scenarios, it might look like this:

• Your HR department handles company policy documents, benefits materials, and your company handbook.
• Your Communications department handles newsletters, company announcements, and updates.

I may be generalizing here, because your company may be different. You can group most content into a company department, project team, or a logical category. Don't overthink it.

Task 3: Choose your functionality.

The Axero intranet software includes a wide range of standard functionality out-of-the-box. You decide which features to use (this is what makes your intranet unique). Here are the most common features used to manage the content we mentioned above:

• Company policy documents – These are usually written in Word documents or in PDFs. You can upload them into the File Manager and let your people download them when needed. Or you can paste the content directly into an Article or Wiki post and link to your policy from there.
• News & company announcements – Since these happen more often and are ongoing, they work well in a format. The Articles or Blogs features lend well to this type of information. They show you the latest information at the top of the list, they're easy to use and they're searchable.
• Events – Think: company meetings, project deadlines, webinars, conferences, or training days. In this case, the Events feature in Axero is a no-brainer. They appear on a clean calendar view, you can invite people, and they can set reminders for themselves.

To get started, check out the Axero Feature Tour for an overview of all the features in the platform. Decide which of them best fit to organize or manage your types of content.

Task 4: Define your spaces or groups.

The goal for this task is to organize your intranet and define your Spaces and groups. What's a Space?

A Space is a place where you group people, content, and conversations.

Keeping everything organized in a way that is comfortable and familiar to how you already work. These subdivided areas help make it easy and intuitive for your people to find what they need, and to do their work.

We have two types of Spaces in Axero:

• Public Spaces – Everyone can see them, join them, and view the content inside.
• Private Spaces – These are hidden. Nobody will know these exist — unless you invite them.

Begin by creating a space for each of your company departments. So you might have a space for Human Resources, a space for Communications, a space for IT, etc.

From there, you can create more spaces as you see fit. You can even create a hierarchy of spaces inside spaces. It might look something like this:

HR Department

• Policies & Documents – This is where you put your company policy documents, FAQs, & company handbook.
• HR News – This is where you post the latest HR news & announcements.
• Benefits – Upload PDFs or documents about your benefits or health insurance plans.
• Calendar – This is where you'll post info for things like open enrollment deadlines, training sessions, or other HR meetings.

IT Department

• IT Policies & Guides – This is where you put your IT or technology policy documents, how-to's, & guidelines.
• IT Help Desk – You can use this as your Help Desk, where employees submit IT issues and you can track the progress on solving them.
• IT Documents – Upload your IT related documents — best practices, whitepapers, or software documentation.
• IT Calendar – Keep track of meetings, scheduled network updates, and training sessions.

Communications Department

• Company News – Great for publishing company wide news, announcements, updates, and press releases.
• Ideas – Use this as your online suggestion box, where people can submit and surface great new ideas.
• Files – Upload your PDFs, keep track of Word documents and make them accessible to everyone.
• CEO Blog – Set your CEO up with a blog to share industry and company insights, ideas, and happenings.

Then, once you've defined your spaces, you'll need to decide which features to turn on or off for each space. You already mapped your content to specific features in Task 3 above.

Task 5: Populating Axero with your content.

Now that you created your content inventory, mapped your content to features, and decided on the spaces that you'll create (and what goes in those spaces), it's time to start adding content to Axero!

It's ideal to have a team of people trained and organized to own their section of the intranet. HR manages their space and populates their content. Communications manages their space. IT manages their space. And so on.

Your intranet platform provides people with access to the information they need to do their jobs, making them more productive and engaged. Helping you to achieve your "why".

Task 6: Tailor the look and feel to your brand and your people.

Axero is flexible when it comes to changing the look and feel of your site. For beginners and non-technical people, it offers a default "template" for your homepage and other pages. All without writing a single line of code.

Design: Create a design that is appealing and matches your corporate style. Make sure it's not too "busy" or overwhelming to the point that it distracts the user from finding information.

Getting Started: A great place to start is by uploading your logo and choosing your header color. Then you can also explore customization settings.

Task 7: Your homepage.

First impressions matter. Your intranet's homepage is a mission critical component of success. It makes a statement. It says who you are as an organization. It sets the tone.

Your Homepage can make or break the success of your intranet project. Treat it with care, just as you would any customer facing home page.

Your Homepage serves as the aggregator. Use it to provide direct access to information your people need and what you want them to access. This is crucial. A few examples of common homepage widgets and sections:

• Corporate News/Announcements
• User Directory / People Search
• Most Viewed Resources (list)
• Highest Rated Content (list)
• Featured Articles (list)
• Photo Carousel (list)
• Quick Access to start a support ticket (IT, HR, etc.)
• Featured Spaces & Groups
• CEO or Presidents Blog

Here's what an example homepage might look like:

"Activity Stream" content on the Homepage allows people to see what their colleagues are watching, using, and consuming. This helps your content reach everyone in the organization and shows them what's going on. An excellent addition to your internal communication strategy.

Here's another example of an intranet homepage:

You'll notice in the right column, we've included a few sections: Work Apps, Launchpad, and Quicklinks. Your homepage is also a great place to provide quick access to external applications, shortcuts, and common links.

Design: Design a Homepage that draws users in. Create a powerful, positive first impression. Your homepage should be dynamic, so that users see new, fresh information every time they visit.

Task 8 - Add/invite users, accounts, and permissions.

So far you've documented your "why". You mapped it to Axero's features. And you populated the site with content and made it visually stunning. Now it's time for the most important step of all — getting people to actually use it!

Remember, setting access permissions isn't just about keeping users out of areas they don't belong. It's also about keeping their experience clean and simple. You never want someone to feel overwhelmed with too much information.

Axero's user admin and permissions is intuitive. Our support community can be a great resource. There's plenty of advice, how-to's, and best practices.

Add users and grow adoption by giving them access to the vital content they need.

A word about custom intranet development and integrations.

We're often asked about integrations. The topic deserves a small space in this "getting started" guide.

Sometimes integrations with other platforms make sense. For example, using Active Directory (AD) integration to synchronize user account data between Axero and your other systems.

Let's start by asking the most important question: what is the purpose for integrating another system or platform? Is it just a novelty? Or does the integration add value to what your people need to get done?

How to build an intranet + next steps.

Getting started with Axero, and learning how to build an intranet, is a straightforward process when you give it some thought. By following the tasks outlined in this guide, you'll be off to a great start.

reach out to our team. We're very engaged in our customers' success.

Learn more about Axero intranet software, its capabilities, features, and how it can work for you.

Watch intranet videos and walkthroughs designed to give you a high-level tour and overview of the Axero intranet software.

Discover how, with a 30-minute live demo.