by Charlie Morris

Building an Intranet? IntraNetics does the heavy lifting for you.

Building intranets is a lot like building houses - the details of each one are different, but the basic frame is usually the same. Developers who build intranets often find themselves reinventing the wheel as they build the same basic modules like security, help systems and messaging systems for each client. We've got pre-fabricated houses, why not a pre-fab intranet?
February 25, 1999

As popular as intranets are, it's surprising that there aren't more development tools specific to intranets. The only real player in this field is a company called IntraNetics, which offers a powerful software package that may be thought of as a turnkey intranet solution, or as a full-featured, flexible development environment. All the components of a fully-functional intranet are provided, and all may be customized extensively. IntraNetics also integrates smoothly with other development tools like FrontPage, and provides wizard-like templates that can be used to build custom applications.

With IntraNetics, the tedium of building basic intranet functionality is already done for you, leaving you, the developer, free to concentrate on customizing the installation for your client's unique needs. IntraNetics is not a "service," simply a software package that you buy. They also offer a generous reseller program.

IntraNetics runs on Windows NT networks (the clients can of course be on any hardware platform or OS). There are two versions of the product. The standard edition is for up to 500 users, and will work with either IIS or Netscape Enterprise Server. It's theoretically compatible with any ODBC-compliant database, but has been extensively tested with SQL Server, Oracle and MS Access. There is also a lower-priced version for up to 50 users, which works only with MS BackOffice Small Business Server.

Out of the box, IntraNetics is powerful enough to handle all the basic needs, and then some, of a medium-size business. But this is no one-size-fits-all solution. You can integrate a wide range of other popular applications, or write your own from scratch. This product can save you a lot of work on the front end, but it won't limit your options later on.

IntraNetics is a little pricey, but if you can get half your job done by simply installing this software, and spend your billable time working on the details of customizing an intranet for a particular implementation, you may very well end up saving money for your client (and possibly scooping a little more for yourself, too). Anyone who develops intranets definitely needs at least to take a look.

These are the 20 built-in applications (info from the IntraNetics Web site at http://www.intranetics.com):

Employees - The Employees application is an online database that includes key employee contact and biographical information as well as photo.

Contacts - The Contacts application keeps a company database of vendors, customers and other corporate-wide contacts.

Org Chart - The Org Chart application creates a schematic of the company structure based on the information contained in the Employees application.

Jobs - The Jobs application provides a central location to communicate a list of current job openings.

Resumes - The Resumes application is an online database of scanned and electronic resumes.

Handbook - The Handbook application is a complete, online, professionally written employee handbook, which your company can customize.

Company Store - The Company Store application is a tool to easily create, market and manage your e-commerce site.

Training Room - Training Room contains over 150 popular training courses. These self-paced, multimedia online training courses are delivered directly to your desktop over the internet.

AMEX® Travel - The AMEX® Travel application allows all employees to book air, hotel and car reservations on-line from American Express.

Staples® Online - The Staples® Online application allows selected employees to order office supplies directly with Staples.

Expenses - The Expenses application is a database-driven application for inputting, maintaining, reporting and tracking expenses company-wide.

Documents - The Documents application is a central repository for company files.

Software Library - The Software Library application is a central repository for site-licensed or publicly available software.

PC Inventory - The PC Inventory application creates an organized list and tracking mechanism for PC assets such as computers, printers and monitors.

Events - The Events application is a corporate-wide calendar, which can be viewed by day, week, or month.

Newsletters - The Newsletter application is a forms-based tool for creating and distributing an online newsletter throughout your company or department.

Today's News - The Today's New application provides daily news feeds from more than 650 different news sources and are customizable from over 2,100% categories.

Press - The Press application is a database for distributing, searching and archiving company and industry press articles.

Bulletins - The Bulletins application is an electronic bulletin board for posting happenings, ads and notices.

Discussions - The Discussions application is an electronic forum enabling all employees to participate in departmental and company-wide discussions.

Services - The Service application provides links to various helpful publicly available services such maps, Yellow Pages, directories, weather, stock quotes and others.

To learn more about IntraNetics, check out their onilne demo at http://www.intranetics.com/demo.

You can also request a personalized Evaluation Report at http://www.intranetics.com/evlrpt (for this report, the reader completes an online checklist of what he or she wants in an intranet, and a specialist at IntraNetics drafts a customized research report and sends it within hours).