An Intranet is the application of web-based technologies inside a business network. Information here is private to the business, and less restricted by the bandwidth limitations and security problems of the World-Wide-Web. The concept of a "portal" being a doorway from which many services can be delivered directly to staff from an single "home-page" from a web browser or your email client (e.g. Outlook). The key here is information sharing and responsiveness to changing business needs. Important reasons for deploying an Intranet include:

• A single access point to many sources of business information, both static documents and dynamically created reports or charts.
• No need to deploy specialised application software on each desk-top, i.e. zero-deployment costs, with none of the hassle of conflicting component versions ("DLL Hell")
• Centralised storage and access to information, allowing control and security of knowledge to be enforced
• Reduced processing power requirements (and hence cost) for each workstation
• Enhancements are easily added and deployed
• Integrates within a web browser, or replacing "Outlook Today"

The Self-Service, Business Portal

Your business can make considerable savings on internal administration costs by implementing an Intranet where employees are "empowered" to enter information directly into the company internal systems using forms available from their Intranet. This information makes its way into supporting database systems, and if necessary can be routed for authorisation by appointed members of staff, and consolidation into the appropriate control, CRM, or financial database. Such self-service systems are not only applicable to the employee intranet, but can also be extended to the customer and supplier interfaces - providing a fully integrated business control system, minimising re-keying mistakes, improving productivity and quality of service, and offering considerable cost benefits to all concerned. So powerful are such mechanisms that they have been branded as the next "killer application" for the Internet era.

The Digital Dashboard

A digital dashboard is web page that users personalise with "web parts" selected from a library of software tools. These web parts are either standard downloadable components or customised tools made using Microsoft Office or Visual Studio developer tools. Examples include:

• My tasks, calendar, inbox, contacts and appointments (from Exchange Server)
• Calculator
• Company news
• Articles of interest to me
• Weather and International news
• Company sales results (by region, product, and sector)

Microsoft SharePoint Portal

With nothing to do with stocks and shares (!) this product allows you to build information sharing portals within your business. From within a browser you can search for documents across your enterprise, the Internet, and within Exchange server databases. Full collaboration and document management services are provided, and integrated with Microsoft Office XP. You can subscribe to special interest groups with notification of newly published documents.

A really exciting feature of SharePoint portal is its support of web parts, allowing you to create a personalised “Digital Dashboard” within your intranet. This means you can design your own Intranet home page simply by adding web parts (such as a News Viewer, Calculator, Outlook Appointment List, or customised report charts).

The ASD Business Portal

If your IT budget doesn’t stretch to SharePoint Portal, Anderson Software can customise our own business portal software to your business needs. Within this portal we can deliver database-driven content direct to your web site. Technologies useful in building intranet portals include ASP.NET and Microsoft Office InfoPath forms.