Creating and maintaining a usable intranetFiona Caldwell, Tatts Group

Tatts Group

• Provider of gaming, wagering and lottery leisure and entertainment products and services.

• Brands include TattsLotto, Golden Casket, NSW Lotteries, TattsBet (previously Unitab), Tatts Pokies, Maxgaming, Bytecraft, and Centre Racing in Australia, and Talarius in the UK.

• Originated in 1881 when founder George Adams organized a public sweep on the Sydney Cup horse race, and in 1897 it began operating the first government-endorsed lottery.

• 2,500 employees across Australia and UK

About Me

• Group Manager, Business Systems at Tatts Group.

• Wide portfolio – Projects and support for:

• Corporate Systems (Intranet, Phone Book, Collaboration Tools)

• Shared Services Systems (eg Finance and HR systems, CRM systems, Marketing systems, Service Management and Call Centre systems)

• Middleware

• Business Process Automation

• Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence

• Database Administration.

• Specialties: Applications Management, Intranets, Business Intelligence and Information Management

Our Intranet Team

Team Leader

SharePoint Admin x 1

Content Manager x 1

Developer x 3 (Workflow/.Net)

• 6 team members

• SharePoint 2007

• Key Projects:

• SharePoint 2010 upgrade

• Forms automation / workflow

Journey of Tatts Group Intranet

2003

Basic Information Portal

- List of Hyperlinks- News

Lotus Notes

Owner: Technology

Journey of Tatts Group Intranet

2005

Generation I: Basic Intranet - Corporate Information- Basic HR information- Links to applications- Team Sites- Project Sites

SharePoint 2003

Owner: Technology

Journey of Tatts Group Intranet

2007

Generation II: Corporate Intranet- Corporate Colours- Corporate Information- Noticeboard- More HR information- Links to applications- Team Sites- Project Sites

SharePoint 2007

Owner: HR

Journey of Tatts Group Intranet

2009

Generation III: HR Centric Intranet- HR Focused- Colour themed areas- More images- Home Page Focus on HR:

• New starters• Learning & Development• Employee Services

- Communities- MyWorkCentre:

• Personal Profile• Personal Site• Personalised Information

- Some Application Integration

SharePoint 2007Owner: HR

Journey of Tatts Group Intranet

2011

Generation IV: Task Focused Intranet- Electronic Forms- Integrated Workflow & Approvals- Areas colour themed - Personal and Team Sites

SharePoint 2010Owner: HR

Useful & Usable

• Professional appearance

• Consistent design & layout across different areas

• Standard page templates

• Consistent font, navigation, graphic design, page structure.

• Easily distinguishable from public facing website

• Ease of finding information

• Effectiveness of search engine

• Ease of use of processes

• Cross links between different sections of the site

• Content up to date

• Information you cant get anywhere else

• Level of content detail consistent between sections

• Content owners actively managing content & don’t require HMTL knowledge

• No bottlenecks in publishing process

• Accessibility

• Interactive features

• More than marketing and promotion:

Finding out user needs

1. Stakeholder Interviews (one-on-one)

• Discuss what their job involves and how they currently use (or don’t use) the intranet – ask them to show you.

• You may learn about:

• Work-arounds for tasks

• Different paths staff follow to information (navigation, search)

• Parts of the screen or information that staff miss

• Areas of the intranet that staff don’t understand

• Sections of the intranet that staff don’t know exist

• Discuss future intranet requirements to support work needs.

Finding out user needs

2. Walk through key tasks

• Prepare an extensive set of scenarios – what tasks do staff attempt on the intranet?

• User Stories: As a <role> I Want <some Business Functionality> So That <Some Business Value or Justification>. The acceptance criteria describes the criteria by which stakeholders will determine whether the product meets their needs – in this case tasks that need to be completed.

• Eg. As an employee I want to book travel so that I can travel to Brisbane next week. Acceptance Criteria:

• I need to know what forms need to be filled out request travel

• I need to seek approval

• I need to book travel and accommodation

• I need to find out where our Brisbane office is located

• I need to know about cab charges, what else I can claim back as expenses and how to claim expenses. Etc…

Finding out user needs

• Walk through key tasks (contd):

• Identify all activities that make up the task

• What needs to be done to complete a task?

• What actions are inside the intranet or outside the intranet?

• Walk through the scenario (yourself or with the team).

• Pay attention to the decisions you make and the reasons for your decisions. For example, do you choose a particular navigation because you already know where the information is? Do you use search? How else could the same task be done?

• Look for content that may need to be reorganised or grouped with other content.

Finding out user needs

3. Review logs and feedback

• Look for patterns in logs and feedback:

• Frequently accessed pages: What pages are accessed most frequently?

• Search logs: What terms are users typing into the intranet?

• Page Feedback Links: What feedback is being received?

• Help Desk Requests: What are the common questions and requests?

• Use patterns found to:

• Create scenarios (user stories) for task walk throughs

• Add quick links to home page for frequent actions

• Remove content that is not needed

• Create content that doesn’t exist

Finding out user needs

4. Observing staff using the intranet (usability test)

• Create realistic scenarios to evaluate core tasks

• Recruit participants that are representative of the user group

• Observe the participants attempting the scenarios

• Note what happens

• Look for repeated behaviours – if a problem occurs multiple times then its worth investigating

• Key difference between this and stakeholder interviews is that all participants working through the same scenarios.

Maintaining Content

• To keep Intranet content up to date, consider:

• Authoring and Publishing Models

• Easy to use Content Management System

• Training & Support

• Regular communications

• Content Reviews

• Action user feedback

Maintaining Content

1. Authoring and Publishing Models

• Consider authoring and publishing models used:

• Fully centralised

• Decentralised

• Publishing with review

• Federated publishing

• End-user content contribution

• No one model is right – mix and match different models

Maintaining Content

Communities of Interest

Organisational

Divisional

Team / Unit

Project

PersonalCentralised:

•Corporate Information, Policies, Guidelines, How-To, Corporate News, New Starters, L&D Opportunities, Staff Benefits, etc…

•Controlled by HR and Intranet Team (in Technology)

Maintaining Content

Communities of Interest

Organisational

Divisional

Team / Unit

Project

PersonalFederated:

•Business Unit Information and News, Org Charts, etc…

•Business Unit appoints coordinator who takes responsibility for managing their area of the intranet.

•Mixed success with this model.

Maintaining Content

Communities of Interest

Organisational

Divisional

Team / Unit

Project

PersonalDecentralised:

•Anyone can request and maintain.

•Team Generated content –Document Sharing, Shared Calendars, to-do lists, Shared Links, etc

•Extensive Training Requirement

Maintaining Content

Communities of Interest

Organisational

Divisional

Team / Unit

Project

PersonalEnd User:

•Personal Site automatically created for all employees and populated with basic HR data.

•Users can add richer personal information – skills, experience, documents, create personal blog, etc…

•Limited ‘Organisational’ areas open to anyone to add Notices, Events, Team Profiles, Glossary Terms, etc..

Maintaining Content

2. Content Management System

• Content Management System should be easy to use

• Provide a style guide – but don’t expect people to read it

• Use templates and style sheets for consistent formatting

• Provide spell checking functionality

• Use workflow to manage content approvals (if needed)

• Add review and expiry dates to content

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Maintaining Content

3. Training, Support and Guidelines• Offer continual training, support and guidelines

• All employees are potentially content authors

• Different levels of training is required for different needs• Employee Induction:

• Induction eLearning provides introduction to Intranet

• Quick Tours highlight where all employees can contribute

• Online Help • Overviews, Quick Tours, Quick Ref Guides, Governance, where to

store information, how to write for the web, FAQs

• Formal Training• Content Contributors: Roles & responsibilities, CMS basic features

(eg. SharePoint document libraries and lists, revision control, etc)

• Site Owners: Roles and responsibilities, CMS advanced features (eg. Creating SharePoint sites, managing permissions, etc)

Maintaining Content

4. Communicate, Communicate, Communicate:

• Community of Power Users

• Regular Emails / Newsletters

• Monthly Newsletters, Tips and Tricks

5. Regular Content Reviews

• Target highest value content – don’t try and fix everything!

• Remove redundant, out dated, or trivial content

6. Intranet Feedback

• Provide feedback mechanism on all pages

• Address feedback in timely manner (or you will stop getting feedback)