Intro
Organizations produce a lot of documents. We write documents. We update documents. We refer to documents. We read documents. We find documents. Sometimes we try to find documents.
Many organizations use their intranet to house important reference documents such as policies that need to be accessed by all employees. The intranet acts as an essential one source of truth, providing a trusted place to easily find the very latest version of a document.
Use this blog as a guide to help align and optimize your intranet to support the management of documents in your organization.
8 Essential Intranet Features that Support Document Management
Intranets are built to provide the ability to publish content and provide easy access to it. Intranet software has several key features that help to streamline document management in any organization.
Document library with version control
A core intranet feature for disseminating documents is the document library where employees can access files. Along with different subject folders to help locate the right item, each document will have different metadata applied to it – including an owner, when it was created and so on.
Document libraries will come with in-built version control to avoid duplication and so employees can access the very latest version. Check-in and check-out facilities will also support there only being one version of a document being worked upon.
At municipal corporation Huran County the intranet helped staff to implement effective version control over their documents, preventing each staff member from forming their own version of a document with every revision.
Flexible display document options
An intranet will also come with different ways to present, promote and display a document. There are many options for different library views, such as the ability to link to a document, embed a document within a page so you can scroll through it or promote a document on a page with a call to action or an image.
Metadata, tagging and search
One of the reasons intranets are effective for document management is the improvements in findability they bring. Core features such as megamenus help employees browse the intranet, but there are also capabilities which power search.
The ability to add flexible custom metadata (tags) to documents, or tags to pages or apps that include documents, ensures that employees can carry out custom searches and filter results using familiar terms. Tag-driven search really helps your users to find that elusive document much more quickly than endlessly searching SharePoint sites or looking through dusty network drives.
Governance and lifecycle management features
Intranets have governance and lifecycle features that support effective content management – and these can help document management too. These including having the right permissions so only the right person or people have access to edit and replace the document they are responsible for, and also having approval workflow for adding new documents.
Automated reviews also can send a reminder to the person responsible that they need to review their document – helping them to keep them up to date! Meanwhile dashboard features show a person all the documents they are responsible for and any upcoming reviews.
Policy library and knowledge bases app
One of the things that Intranet Connections customers love about the platform is the pre-built apps, templates and features that come with it. These include functionality that supports document management. One example of this is an app for a ready-made policy library, while another covers a knowledge base feature. Both these can then be easily configured to suit the needs for your employees with the flexibility that you don’t always find in SharePoint.
Mandatory reads (“Read and confirms”)
In regulated sectors like financial services there’s often the need to ensure that employees to read particular mandatory documents and policies.
Intranets deliver this capability through “mandatory reads” functionality where an employee must confirm they have read and understood a particular policy, usually by ticking a box. These confirmations can then be tracked to help drive 100% compliance, but also to report on progress to third parties such as regulatory bodies or certification authorities.
Access control and personalization
Intranets help to deliver relevant, personalized experiences across diverse workforces – it’s one of the reasons Intranet Connections is still going strong after more than 25 years! Personalization also extends to access to documents. Some documents are only relevant to particular groups or locations – for example the evacuation plan for a specific office. An intranet can help target the right documents to the right people, based on their profile data.
Metrics and reporting
One of the key strengths of mature intranet software like Intranet Connections is robust analytics and reporting capabilities that allow you to track usage and adoption, content and publication trends, and more. In terms of document management this helps teams to:
- Identify how often documents are being accessed, providing insights into making any necessary improvements.
- Indicate how often documents are being updated and when, again identifying areas for improvement, for example the need to introduce training or reminders for document owners.
- Provide reporting for compliance, for example tracking “read and confirms” and demonstrating that important policies are actually being read.
Learn More
Documents are central to everything we do, however, a staggering 97% of organizations only have “minimal document processes” in place. Break out of this crowd and learn more about in our free eBook “Document management: The Key Role your Intranet Plays”
