What is the intranet and why is the intranet so useful in your digital workspace? The intranet has changed over the years. In the past, the intranet was mainly very traditional and static, while today’s intranet is much more about interaction. Are you curious about the advantages of intranet in your digital workspace? Keep reading!
To integrate the intranet into your digital workspace, it is good to know what ‘intranet’ actually means. An intranet is, for employees within an organisation, an internal private network where you can share information with your colleagues. In addition to sharing information, you can also use the intranet to collaborate and share fun or important company news. The traditional intranet was mainly intended for sending top-down information. Now, the intranet is much more active and is all about creating interaction. That’s why now the intranet is often referred to as a social intranet.
What is the difference between the intranet and the digital workspace? A digital workspace is an environment in which you can open all your applications, information and documents to work anywhere and at any time. As mentioned before, the intranet is a private network within your organisation where you can share information with your colleagues.
You can, of course, integrate your entire existing intranet into your digital workspace. But you can also use intranet elements in your adoptive workspace, such as the announcement tile, birthdays tile, contact and much more. This combines your intranet and your digital workspace in one environment. The social aspect of your work is then not seen separately from you digital workspace, but as one whole.
A digital workspace and the intranet often have many things in common, such as working together in a file or in documents that are important for you to be able to sufficiently carry out your daily work. This way, you don’t have to switch between applications all the time, but you get to see all your information from your intranet in one digital workspace. For example, you can add videos, share information via the Announcement Centre and you can integrate Yammer into your digital workspace to stay up-to-date on all the information shared by your colleagues.
As mentioned before, there are many advantages to combining the intranet and the digital workspace. If you choose to do so, it simply makes sense to choose a digital workspace that already enables you to, instead of trying to make this integration work with one that doesn’t. By choosing a digital workspace that already supports the intranet, you seamlessly merge the digital workspace and the intranet and make us of both in the same way. This way, you can easily integrate your entire existing intranet or customise the workspace based on what features you need or , so that everything remains organised and you don’t have any unnecessary information that takes up space in your workspace.
This has become increasingly important since COVID-19, which caused people having to work from home more and more. Because of this, there must be good communication within the company. In addition, you no longer see your colleagues every day and chatting during lunch or taking a coffee break with your colleagues is also a lot more difficult. By choosing a digital workspace that supports the intranet, you can easily allow employees to get in touch witch each other and share information.
There are companies like Workspace 365 that integrate the intranet into your digital workspace, so you don’t have to do this yourself. There are a number of things to consider when choosing a digital workplace.
Do you want to have a specific functionality in your workspace? That doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to choose for a solution that already has this functionality. In the end, it’s cheaper to request a functionality with an organisation that will develop this quickly for you, than to choose for a solution that already has it, but doesn’t or barely develops anything else – and thus, in the long-term, won’t adapt quickly enough to your needs. The solutions that are constantly developing update their functionalities frequently and keep improving, to make sure that you can carry out your work in the best possible way. Within Workspace 365, you can expect new releases every three weeks.
With application such as Yammer, SharePoint and Microsoft Teams, you can collaborate with your team and/or post content. This makes it easy to collaborate in documents and share your content with the entire organisation. Check with your employees which application suits them the best to do their work and take into account whether you can integrate it when choosing a digital workspace.
It is important to choose a digital workspace that ensures that people can carry out their work as efficiently and well as possible. This way, people who do important work can focus on primary tasks and the work they consider important. By choosing a digital workspace that adapts to each individual’s role and environment, this can be achieved.