Andrew is from Archives New Zealand, and is talking about building an intranet for Archives NZ on a zero budget. Archives has quite a few offices, and people in the different offices don’t know about each other.

Version 1.0 of Link-In
Version 1.0 … Drupal in 2 Days For the first version, took out-of-the-box Drupal, and did a very basic Intranet in 2 days (totally grey). Technology was Drupal 5.0, MySQL and Apache 2.0. Provides some delegated ownership of content.

The good things … (a) increased communication in the organization, (b) forms and templates easily accessible, (c) important information being shared by individuals, and (d) semi-regular publications.

The bad things … (a) slow user uptake, (b) information was being lost due to poor organization, (c) cluttered presentation, (d) out-of-date content, and (e) updates not frequently enough to maintain interest.

Key learning points … (a) contact list is well used, (b) feedback and discussion is evident, (c) largely something that had not been seen before, (d) one-stop-shop for staff applications, and (e) increased exposure of organization initiatives.

Version 2.0 of Link-In
A bit more colorful … “grey makes me depressed” was a recurring point of feedback from Version 1.0. Simpler formatting, with 6 key tabs across the top … Home, Contacts, Resources, Policies, News & Views, and Groups & Regions. In the middle of the page, a focus on “new” things, eg, new announcements, new content.
– easier to find information
– reduced barriers to entry
– promote ongoing updates
– using full names, not short codes
– single sign-on through direct integration to Active Directory
– shared and private file spaces per user
– images were resized on the server, making it easier for the user

Re-doing the intranet took 10 days, with quite a bit of this being data migration.

Summary
– When you have no money to buy stuff, the open source community can provide things
– Pilot versions teach a lot
– When visitors are contributors, you need to make it easy
– An intranet is viewed very regularly … a bit of design goes a long way.