October 21, 1999

Are your ready for an intranet?

By LISA LANNIGAN
Journal staff reporter

The days of standing around the water cooler, reading employee notices and company picnic postings off the bulletin board may be over, thanks to internal computer networks know as intranets.

"We've found it to be a great source of internal communication," said Steven Epple, a principal at Callison Architecture of Seattle.

As opposed to the singular Internet, intranets are internal networks connecting employees within a company, providing information from phone lists to project outlines.

Rather than receiving a paper copy of the weekly in-house newsletter, Callison employees can read the company's goings-on on their computer.

"We used to send out a hard copy to everyone, now it's on the intranet," Epple said.

Newsletters aren't the only thing companies are providing to their employees via computers.

"There's a myriad of uses," said Gentry Lange, a high-tech writer for Interactive Objects of Seattle. The software solutions provider uses an intranet for calendars, contact databases and human resource information.

Intranets developed as an evolution of Internet technology, a natural extension of the Web itself, said Kenn Herman, systems administrator for Interactive Objects.

While an intranet may look like the Internet on the screen, the difference is intranets are only accessible to employees in-house or sometimes from the outside using a password.

An intranet can be as simple or as complex as a company desires, Herman added. A small Web server is all that is needed to launch a basic system.

Getting an intranet started is easy. Several local firms, such as THINK New Ideas and Foci Technologies, are in the business of setting up intranets, tailor-made to specific needs.

The difficulty may be in deciding what to put on an intranet.

"It's always a good idea to get a group together and figure out what information they want to share," Herman said. "If it's just specific to your job, does it belong on the intranet?"

Herman says there's no real definition of what can go into an intranet. Content depends on company needs -- any company-wide information is usually a good bet for intranet material.

On the Callison intranet, employees can look up anything from which books or manuals are checked out from the company resource center to how much vacation time they've acquired. Epple said the entire employee manual is available on the intranet.

"When people have a question about vacation time or sick leave, instead of traipsing off to the human resources department to answer their question, they can just look on the intranet," he said. "Everyone has an updated version."

Intranets are also useful for day-to-day business, Epple said, such as the firm's internal "yellow pages."

"If there is someone who is a real whiz at roofing details, you might just type in 'roofs', and it will give you all the people in house who are experts," he said.

Employees can also find out what projects the company is working on.

"You can click on a project, and it takes you to a list," Epple said.

One of the most impressive sites on Callison's network is the in-house training program, called Callison University. Epple said their architects use the site to take classes and receive continuing education credits.

Away from the office, access to the firm's intranet is available over the Internet, with a password, so that access to the company's files via the Callison Web site is limited to employees.

"The Web site is a different animal," Epple said. "They aren't linked."

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