Essentials of a modern Intranet
Papyrs is a modern intranet. But what is it that makes an intranet modern? There are many things that come into play but essentially a modern intranet has to be great at least these six things:
- The intranet has to put people and interaction first. This means that it must be easy for everybody to contribute and explore the intranet. Papyrs does this with an Activity Stream where people get updates in real time on all changes in the intranet. It's a digital water cooler as well as a notice board. Of course, Papyrs also encourages everybody to make contributions to pages on the intranet. And because Papyrs keeps track of the complete version history of every page you never have to worry about somebody accidentally deleting important content.
- The intranet has to be accessible at any time and from any device. This should be obvious, and yet a lot of intranet products are not mobile friendly or are accessible only from behind-the-firewall. This is no good. An intranet should be available all day every day and from any device. This is why Papyrs is safely and securely hosted in the cloud. Papyrs also recognizes when it's being viewed on a mobile device (iPhone, Android, or a tablet) and it will make adjustments to make it easy to browse pages and communicate with your colleagues.
- The intranet has to have excellent email integration. It may be the 21st century, but business still revolves around email and this is unlikely to change anytime soon. This is why an intranet has to keep everybody up to date with email notifications. Papyrs goes a step further. With Papyrs you can reply to these email notifications and the replies go right back into Papyrs. This way people can participate in a group conversation right from their email client. Very convenient.
- The intranet has to adapt to the organization. And not the other way around! There are many software packages that are perfect if your organization works exactly in the way the software expects it to. But when you deviate from these expectations you have to fight to the system to get anything done. This ruins the entire experience and after some time of frustration one by one everybody in your organization will give up and turn back to their old way of working. A common problem and an unnecessary one. Papyrs encourages organizations to adopt the intranet gradually and organizations don't have to make any big internal changes to get most of the benefits. Does your organization only need a central place to store documents and a wiki? Papyrs can do just that. Does your organization need better internal communication? The Papyrs Activity Stream takes care of that. Does your organization need a central hub to communicate with customers, clients, agents or contractors? No problem, you can use Papyrs for that. Do you need a simple system for internal questionnaires, time keeping, or expense tracking? Done, done and done. Papyrs has a ton of functionality made accessible through an intuitive user interface. You simply take what you need and drop the rest.
- The intranet has to support Rich Media. Add photo galleries to your intranet. Localized discussion threads. Link to Google Drive (Docs, Spreadsheets) documents. Add a Google Calendar or Google Map on a page. Papyrs can do all these things and more. These are not the features you need every day, but these are the features that can make your intranet really come alive. Especially for customer facing pages and public pages (extranet) these little touches go a long way!
- The intranet has to respect your organization's style. Your logo on every page. Colors that match the colors of your organization. The right fonts and the right visual layout. An intranet shouldn't just work right, it should also look right. With Papyrs Themes you can change the colors and style of Papyrs to match your organization in minutes. And if you want to completely overhaul the look and feel of Papyrs? That's possible too.
These aren't the only things that matter, of course. It's just the beginning. But with Papyrs you have the tools to create an intranet that people will actually like. And you can get started in minutes. So why not sign up for a free trial and see for yourself?
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