Content from Microsoft TechNet Article.
The Power of Intranets
White Paper
Introduction
This white paper consists of excerpts from The Power of Intranets: Creating Workgroup Web Sites With Microsoft Office 2000 and FrontPage 2000,
a 350-page hands-on guide published by Microsoft Press.
If you plan to use Office 2000 and FrontPage 2000 with your intranet, this book has the detailed explanation and instructions you need.
The Power of Intranets is available from your favorite bookseller or directly from Microsoft Press at http://mspress.microsoft.com/.
A Web for Every Workgroup
We all need information to get our jobs done. Some of it comes our way in a printed format. Some in meetings or e-mail. Still more in online documents or Web pages.
And for many of us, the product of our work is still more information—which we then share with others.
If you can bring more of this information to each person's desktop in a way that's compelling and yet familiar and easy to use, you'll go a long way toward making the work environment more productive.
Today's organization-wide networks—while they serve many important purposes—don't help users share information as effectively as they could.
Employees and workgroups need more control over information on the network, and the way they share that information. Most companies have taken some steps in this direction as computer technology has evolved.
To understand where we're headed, it's worth taking a look at how we've shared information before the Web, and how we share information on intranets today.
Several years ago, before the Internet and Web technology emerged, it seems like we had a lot more paper floating around.
Where today you may likely surf the Web—the Internet or your organization's intranet—for a phone number or other reference information, a few years ago you consulted a phone book or other publication in print.
Of course, printing and distributing documents takes time and money, and documents are soon out of date.
Without the tools for sharing work in progress, individuals worked on documents one at a time.
To share information with your coworkers, you might save a document to the network and then tell folks the network address—or perhaps send it to them in e-mail.
They would locate the document on the network, perhaps contribute to it, and then save or print it.
Without an intranet, documents are saved on a network file server, sent in e-mail, or distributed in print.
Unfortunately, this work model means that the most current information is seldom available to you unless you've been told where it's located, and the computer doesn't really facilitate teamwork.
Nowadays, if you need information that is public—business addresses, for example—the World Wide Web is a great source.
And increasingly, organizations are making internal information and documents available on the Web—employee manuals, product data sheets, or press releases, for example.
Companies that have invested in an intranet are finding great benefits in reducing the cost of paper document distribution, increasing communication, and improving access to current information.
But the intranet isn't limited to organization-wide information. In fact, most workers depend more on the information that's produced and shared in their own workgroups.
But today, few users have direct access to the intranet; more likely, a Web expert somewhere in the group is in charge of the Web.
When you want to update the Web or put your own documents there, you probably send this information to the Web administrator.
Unfortunately, this lack of control over content by those who use the Web means the information will soon be out of date, just like a printed publication.
If you have an intranet, you probably send documents around in e-mail, or perhaps you have a Web administrator who posts them on an internal Web site.
For your intranet to be truly effective, everyone in the workgroup should feel involved and be able to contribute. The information should be searchable, easily updated, and easy to manage.
Fortunately, Office has powerful tools that make this possible. Anyone can create and manage a site, every user can contribute documents to the Web, and all your workgroup data can be accessed and analyzed online.
With an Office workgroup Web site, everyone in the workgroup can find and use up-to-date information, collaborate on documents, and contribute to the Web.
In short, Office can transform your workgroup Web into a team workspace.
Once you and your coworkers get the workgroup Web rolling, the ease of use and familiarity of the Web will help it catch on further—increasing your access to information as well as your workgroup's productivity.
Overview of IntraNets with Office 2000 Web Features
This section provides a graphical overview of the benefits you'll discover with an IntraNet and Office 2000.
Office gives you the option to save and open documents either in each application's binary format—as an Excel worksheet or a Word document, for example—or in HTML format.
More importantly, files in either format preserve virtually all their formatting in the same way as they move between file formats.
This provides a number of benefits: you can more easily save documents for use on the Web; you can view all your documents with one tool, the Web browser;
and you can efficiently gather information from the Web for use in your work. In addition, Office makes saving or opening documents on a Web server as easy as saving them on your own hard drive,
so anyone—not just a Web-savvy administrator—can update a Web site.
Office streamlines the process of working together. Office Server Extensions, which run on your Web server, allow it to track discussions and help you collaborate.
Within your Web browser, you can make comments about documents and carry on threaded, bulletin-board style conversations.
Additionally, if you want to be notified of changes to documents on your workgroup Web, you can "subscribe" to them.
When anyone makes a change, the Web server automatically notifies you by e-mail.
Office is easier than ever to use, especially when it comes to designing documents for online viewing or combining information from different sources.
For example, you can create hyperlinks to just about anything with ease—all the Office documents, Web pages, and addresses you've visited before are readily available.
Office helps you create great-looking documents with new graphics tools and themes, which allow you to impose a consistent design on any document.
Finally, an improved Clipboard allows you to collect information from a variety of sources and paste it all at once.
Office includes database, spreadsheet, and charting components that run in your Web browser.
Once you incorporate these in your Web pages, everyone in your workgroup can interact with the most recent data online, helping them make better business decisions.
For example, you can save a spreadsheet as a Web page, and users can adjust the numbers and see updated totals in their Web browser.
Other components provide interactive access to databases through your Web.
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