Presentation and Evaluation of

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Presentation and Evaluation of
Virtual Office Intranet Demo

• By
• Gerald Ortega
• Power Point Virgin and Enthusiast

Intel not Inside
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Virtual Office Intranet Demo

• Overview
• In evaluation of this Virtual Office intranet
  demo site, it would be unfair to be highly
  critical of its shortcomings since it is only a
  demo site and would be tailored to each specific
  customers needs. In lieu of this, I focused
  more in addressing the issues regarding improving
  the site rather than its evident weaknesses.
  As learned from the course, intranets are
  tremendous tools in opening communications and
  expanding knowledge within a given organization.
  Thus we have concluded that intranets should
  include as many tools as possible to help it
  users achieve their communication and knowledge
  goals

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Recommended
Attributes
HomePage

• A sound and helpful homepage as a starting point
• highly visible contact info
• user friendly search engines
• clearly defined site maps
• feedback and comment links
• Readily accessible help desk
• company news and policy links
• clear and concise internet acceptable use policy
• company history and mission statements
• directories of departments, personnel, and
  related organizations
• promotional links to foster intranet enthusiasm

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Virtual Office Intranet Demo Site Attributes

• Employee directory
• Whats New
• Mill Documents
• Communications
• Customer Links
• Process data
• Industry links

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Recommended Additions forEmployee Directory Page

• The employee directory page started with a good
  tone to include what seemed to be the foundations
  for a search engine to help locate personnel. It
  was nice that included phone number, email
  address, and location within company. It would
  be nice to include directly links to email
  addresses. They might even consider some sort of
  directory broken up my departments. This would
  be helpful when the user was looking for a person
  holding a specific position and did not know
  their name. A search by title rather than name
  type of search engine. I would also recommend a
  help desk for visitors not finding the requested
  information.

• Links to email addresses
• Directory by department
• Search Engine by title
• help desk
• Personal Web Sites

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• Recommended Additions for whats new page
• The site also included a Whats new page for
  presenting announcements and the like. I would
  recommend that this be laid out in directory
  style to help guide the user to categorized
  information. These topics should include any
  links that may be relevant to the company. A
  link to allow for feedback is also suggested
  since most people enjoy opportunity to converse
  this is a great opportunity.

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• Recommended Additions for
• Mill Documents Page
• The page entitled mill documents was vague and I
  did not come to any strong conclusion what might
  be included on this page. Recommendations
  include clarifying this issue in the title. It
  might be their intention to include any company
  links to any libraries within the company.
• In this direction, including such libraries
  would be a great addition to the intranet.
  Allowing user to access database information that
  will increase their productivity will certainly
  be most welcomed. It is also recommend to site
  map the databases to help users in narrowing a
  searches. Moreover, a the availability of search
  engine would be tremendous plus.

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• Improving the communications page
• The page for communications was a good step in
  the right direction. I was nicely done and
  included some good topics. It would be nice to
  image map the photo to provide links to various
  departments within the plant. This page should
  have included a menu to view other pages and
  buttons to move around the entire site if
  desired. This may be a good place to include a
  Job Listings, Career Development, Financial
  Reports, and Risk Management links.

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A Sound Customer Links page

• The customer links page was a great idea. It
  could prove beneficial for employees to have
  access to information about the companys
  customers. After all we have learned from
  Peters Senges Theory on Learning Organizations
  that it is important it is to feed your
  employees any information that would promote
  greater knowledge. It might also be a good idea
  to flow-chart the customer usage. For example,
  if the mill was selling to manufactures, we could
  also flow chart to who these manufacture are
  selling products to.
• It is also suggested to provide a feedback link
  to provide a venue for greater customer
  relations.

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Increased efficiency for Process datapage

• Next, the site included a link to a page titled
  Process Data. This was also completely vague.
  I could only conclude this page of left very
  general so that it could be customized to fit any
  organization sampling this demo. As to be
  specific to the mill operation, I would suggest
  the site include a page that would allow the
  users to update their personnel information
  files. This of course should have some kind of
  security access to keep individuals to editing
  only their own files.

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A better Industry Links Page

• The last page on this site was to industry links.
  This should be quite simple and could be helpful
  to the mills overall intranet services. Links
  to industry will user to view trend information,
  technology changes, and other related material.
• This page falls under support services and should
  provide a broad spectrum of information relating
  to the industry.

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Other RecommendedBells and Whistles

• On-line training guides
• human resource development page
• safety training
• database management systems
• discussion forums
• internet services
• Resource Libraries
• Stock Quotes
• company credit union
• company perks - healthcare, daycare, gyms

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Final Thoughts

• In conclusion, there are many issues that an
  intranet should address when being considered.
  Most of which were covered revolved around the
  home page. It is important to remember the total
  package of an intranet. We would not want to
  forget services to help improve productivity.
  Other useful tools might include chat lines,
  discussion forums, resource libraries, video
  conferencing, EDI, inventory tracking tools and
  many other helpful resources. Regardless, it
  would be an exciting challenge to actually design
  and implement an intranet for an organization
  after making all the above mentioned
  considerations. Moreover, developing a
  well-balanced intranet would be a tremendous
  challenge that would require great deal of
  dedication and time as we have learned from our
  fearless leader, Dr Wayne Summers.