Intranets have gone a long way from the static document repositories of times past.
Today, intranets have become the single portal where employees go to get work done. Intranets are now dynamic, social and mobile, easy to set up, affordable, and actually fun to use.
Below, we show you 101 cool things you can do with a social intranet (like Noodle, our very own intranet software).
1. Go to a single portal to carry out daily tasks, such as contacting co-workers, finding and sharing documents, making or reading announcements, scheduling activities, carrying out HR tasks, having a virtual meeting, and so much more.
2. Organize intranet content by departments, projects or office location — whatever makes the most sense to your company or organization.
3. Find your way around the intranet through navigation that’s similar to websites you’re already familiar with.
4. Find the intranet content you need through a Google-like search engine. The search box is at the top of every intranet page, where most people expect to find it.
5. Automatically log into the intranet without having to type your username and password every time.
6. Quickly edit item settings from the navigation.
7. Choose icons for intranet items, choosing from the built-in icons library or uploading your own.
Users
8. Find other users with a search engine, and know their expertise and background through their profile pages.
9. Create an attractive and compelling profile page using a WYSIWYG editor. Add photos, videos, slideshows, and audio.
10. Share your credentials, professional background, and personal interests, so your expertise can easily be discovered by prospective collaborators.
11. Track each user’s engagement and contribution in the intranet, and automatically display a badge of each user’s knowledge “score.”
12. Have a personal space for your own private applications, and control who gets what type of access to them.
13. Find out which users are currently logged into the intranet.
14. See all the users of the intranet.
Communication
15. Send other users instant messages, instead of firing off yet another email or making a phone call.
16. Embed photos and videos in your instant messages — even have the video play inside your message.
17. Start a conversation, read posts, and collaborate with co-workers in real time through Twitter-like microblogging.
18. Publish status updates on the go with the iPhone app.
19. Automatically notify users of new entries or changes in blog posts, calendar schedules, document uploads, and other intranet activities.
20. Access the POP or IMAP email account you’re already using at work, from within the intranet.
21. Send email to groups of users.
File Sharing
22. Store and share files in document folders.
23. Keep track of document versions, minimizing the email ping-pong when several people collaborate on a single document.
24. Quickly revert to a previous version of a shared document, if necessary.
25. Automatically put documents through a workflow, such as for review, approvals, and other actions.
26. Notify other users, either automatically or manually, when you upload a document.
27. Post comments on documents.
28. Monitor and record which intranet members have contributed to or viewed specific files.
29. Notify users who need to review files, without leaving the file sharing application.
30. Attach metadata (description and keywords) and tags to all files or documents shared in folders, to help improve the files’ searchability.
31. Search within document folders and sub-folders.
32. Search through the content of any uploaded document, and not just file names, using full text search.
33. Design workflows to automate business processes, such as document review, approval, and archiving, among others.
Database
34. Create custom web forms to collect different types of data for everything from contact databases to HR forms to surveys.
35. Sort data in databases and run reports.
36. Instantly or automatically notify another user or groups of users every time you create or modify a form.
Knowledge Portals
37. Create attractive portal pages for the main intranet and intranet sections with 8 different layouts to choose from.
38. Create an announcement Widget to present news and other featured content on portal pages.
39. Use Widgets to automatically pull content from various parts of the intranet onto the main home page or section portal pages.
40. Create a poll to get users’ opinions, engage users, and keep the intranet interesting.
41. Highlight a single user, such as the Employee of the Month.
What’s New
42. At a glance, see what’s new and relevant in the company, with an automatically generated list of content that has been newly created or modified. It’s color-coded by content type and displays the location, author, and time of creation or modification.
43. Subscribe to get What’s New fed automatically either via email or RSS feed.
44. Create a personalized view of What’s New to reflect the content that’s most relevant to you.
Calendar
45. Keep track of key events, project milestones and other activities with a personal, department, or group calendar.
46. Let co-workers access your calendar, or keep it private.
47. Merge various calendars together to help coordinate schedules.
48. Integrate calendars with Microsoft Outlook.
49. Publish and sync intranet calendars with iCal.
50. Automatically notify or remind other users of specific events in your calendar.
Wikis
51. Build wiki pages easily with a WYSIWYG editor, similar to Microsoft Word, which almost any computer user is familiar with.
52. Automatically or manually notify other users whenever you create or modify a wiki.
53. Embed different media types – photos, audio, video, and slideshows – in your wiki.
54. Access the HTML source code of a page or wiki, to add even more functionality, such as dynamic content.
55. In your wiki page, like to external web pages, or to any other part of the intranet.
Address Book
56. Keep track of important contacts, leads or vendors with the address book application.
57. Personalize the address book using custom fields.
58. Search inside the address book with its own search engine.
59. Add notes and attachments for each contact, so other users can benefit from the background info.
60. Sync the intranet address book with your Outlook or Palm Pilot.
Discussion Forum
61. Host discussion forums to share and generate thoughts on a specific topic.
62. Archive discussions forums and search through them.
63. Contribute your thoughts to a discussion forum on your own time, because discussion forums are stored in the intranet.
64. Share photos, videos and other media in discussion forums.
Conference Room
65. Meet with other users in a virtual conference room — even if you’re all in different locations.
66. Share photos, links, and documents in conference rooms.
67. Write a meeting summary while the conference is ongoing, without leaving the conference room, and save it for future reference.
68. Store and search through conference room chats and meeting summaries.
Blog
69. Demonstrate and share your expertise through an internal blog.
70. Blog in a familiar interface that’s as easy to use as a word processing software.
71. Co-author one internal blog with other intranet users.
72. Get feedback from other intranet users through the comments on your internal blog.
Question Manager
73. Create a knowledge base by storing user questions and answers.
74. Get answers to your questions from multiple persons, and select the best answer.
75. Categorize questions by solved or unsolved, helping the intranet manager to encourage answers to questions that have been neglected so far.
76. Archive questions and answers, and search through them for future reference by all or specific intranet users.
Task Manager
77. Assign tasks to employees using the task manager.
78. Use the task manager to create your own to-do lists.
79. Manage and monitor tasks by sorting them by lists, person responsible, or who assigned the task.
External Sites
80. Open and browse an external website without ever leaving the intranet.
81. Create a portal for useful sites or web links, for your own use or to be shared with others.. No need to bookmark each site, or keep a list of links.
Media Album
82. Store important product photos or company events in a photo album.
83. Attach keywords to photos, so they easier to find in the intranet.
84. Track the history of a photo, such as who created, viewed, commented, or modified it, and when.
Administrators Only
85. Customize the intranet navigation to reflect your company structure, programs or projects.
86. Control who employees can chat with, to keep the noise down and keep conversations relevant.
87. Create a set of tags users can choose from, to control the number and type of tags used within the intranet.
88. Control which users or groups of users have permission to read, create, modify or admin specific parts of the intranet.
89. Limit access to database entries to those who made the entries themselves.
90. Connect the intranet to the local active directory server and synchronize the user names and passwords of users, so they don’t need to remember so many usernames and passwords for different things.
91. Control which content individual users or groups of users can see and change within the intranet.
92. Organize users into groups to make certain activities and processes faster.
93. Pre-schedule memos to be sent to users on a specified date. Memos can be recurring.
94. Deploy the intranet either behind the corporate firewall, or in the cloud via Software as a Service.
95. Set up a social intranet with minimal installation and administration.
96. Protect the intranet with SSL-protected browser access.
97. Customize the look of the intranet is by uploading your company logo, setting your own wallpapers and icons, and changing the colors on the intranet log-in page and header.
98. Access the CSS to create your very own intranet skin.
99. Get detailed reports on site usage, such as which applications and items are most commonly used.
100. Set up the intranet in the language of your choice (English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Arabic, Mandarin or Japanese).
101. Create a full-featured, social intranet no matter what your organization size or budget.
This is only the beginning.
Intranet software is evolving all the time to make you more effective at work, and to make work easier for you.
If you want to see for yourself how your work processes and results can improve by having these features at your fingertips, we invite you to try Noodle intranet software for free. You’ll have access to all the functionalities for 30 days.