Comments on: Open thread at Globally Local…what's on your mind?

By: Pernilla Webber

Pernilla Webber — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:57:40 +0000

I am in the same situation as Adam – we are taking our very old intranet and converting it over to our SharePoint 2007 platform where we already have our internet and extranet. The intranet, however, presents a different challenge when it comes to making content easily consumable from a local perspective and at the same time avoid creating local unique intranets for all countries. I have the same exact question as Adam, and am interested in what benchmarks, best practices and general standards are out there.

By: Adam Quinn

Adam Quinn — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:10:48 +0000

I am interested in learning more about how global companies deal with localized content on a global intranet. We recently deployed a new version of our global intranet (in MOSS), and have positioned content throughout the portal with both a global, and regional perspective. Content that is country-specific is being tagged as such, but presented from a Regional perspective on the site. We also have a massive “team site” (WSS 3.0) deployment of hundreds of sites, which are our avenues for active collaboration across the company.
Our challenge is when a request comes in for a country-specific “intranet” site. My fear is that if we provide a “team site” environment for this content, they will essentially build out their own portal that trumps the global intranet, including double-posting content already on the global portal (such as benefits; but on our global site we have country-specific benefits content). One issue is these teams want to have a way to provide a “home” online for employees in their local country, and right now country-specific news items are not really visible unless posted into a regional or global news site. So how and where should these communications be posted?
We are really trying to avoid creating information silos, and my thought is by incorporating local content into a specific home on the global intranet, you can pull country-specific content into one place, and have a home for localized news and announcements as well, without the fear of duplicating or recreating the intranet. From a taxonomy perspective it is very challenging as well: should UK Finance information reside on a UK-only site, or a global Finance site (which gets linked to or pulled onto a localized site for only UK based employees)?
Anyways, I’m finding it difficult to discover any standards or best practices related to this topic. I manage the intranet (full SharePoint/MOSS deployment) for a company with 35,000 employees in nearly 80 countries, and this is currently one of our biggest challenges. Any focused documentation or analysis you might be able to provide would be most appreciated.

By: Jane McConnell

Jane McConnell — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 22:00:58 +0000

Hi Chamika – sorry to be so late in my response. I’ll get the post done soon on governance for decentralized publishing.
I’ve been working non-stop on the Global Intranet Trends for 2010 Report, and have neglected a lot of other things in the meantime!

By: Chamika

Chamika — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 23:28:48 +0000

Thank you Jane. We are currently moving towards this decentralized model for distributed intranet publishing in our organization and are discovering that many people are confused about the process of intranet content development and intranet content management. The tool we are purchasing is not for content development, it is for content management. We have a high level Web sites policy, but not much in the way of roles and responsibilities related to intranet governance and maintenance. I’m looking forward to your response and hope others share their experiences as well.

By: Jane McConnell

Jane McConnell — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:31:30 +0000

Very relevant question, Chamika. I’ll blog my response soon, and welcome other readers to join in.

By: Chamika

Chamika — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 16:20:19 +0000

A topic I’ve been trying to research is how to set up workflow for intranet content using Sharepoint. There are several resources that explain the technical aspects of workflow set up, but rarely have I come across any articles about mapping out workflow from a centralized publishing model to a distributed publishing model. Another way it’s being perceived in my organization is the approvals process for intranet content. Any best practices and lessons learned would be great.

By: Zeb

Zeb — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 03:09:12 +0000

Am interested to know what tools, services, etc are available for companies to track trends such as mentions about their company, their competitors, whats popular and what people are looking for on sites like Facebook, MySpace, Bebo & Twitter.