My company asked for an portal: a centralised place for staff to find information, to communicate with each other and the different offices and to link to other information. SharePoint is also available on the intranet for document control, meeting spaces, etc., but is to cluncky for a nice and easy on the eyes entrance for staff. So we only link to specific spots in SharePoint (like the policy library) for staff.
General
We have the blog as the main page for internal communication. Each office has an author and writes posts from that office. The Internal Communication Officer takes care of the rest. We have a few pages for more information on training, OHS, etc with links to documentation stored in SharePoint.
Main issues
1. Updating is a real problem, since all the tweaks we have made to suit our needs. We decided only to update major versions. Security is not an issue, since it is run on the intranet only.
2. Automatic logins (ie windows authenticate) is an issue, but we have worked around this by only letting administraters to login when writing new posts. If staff wants to comment, they can type in their name and comments. We have deleted the URL and password fields. Problem is obviously that they can write up any name.
3. External Access is not possible at the moment. This is just because of our internal IT infrastructure. We won’t rely on WP for external access, since WP is not the only service running.
Theme
We have used the arras theme for its useability and prettyness. We obviously have a child theme that suits our needs.
What I would like to see?
– Windows Authentication: seemingless login for all users and permissions taken care off by WordPress.
– Better internal communication, Yammer style.
– Faster is always better, although I realise that it has more to do with our IT infrastructure than WP. I just don’t understand WP is so much slower than SharePoint.
Basically, because Windows Authentication is such a hassle, most functionality, like document control or online forms, are a real problem. People don’t like to login to often. Hence our intranet is mainly 1-way communication, while the objective was to communicate with each other and reduce email traffic.
