We have gathered a lot of information about the differentiators of stale Intranets and those that work. All our experience and knowledge is operationalized in our LINCHPIN - Social Intranet Suite. But unfortunately you never have enough resources, to implement all use cases. So this is a list of ideas we have:
Mobile design / Responsive Confluence
Although we already offer a customized Smartphone- and Tablet-experience in LINCHPIN, Confluence itself is not responsive yet. That should change.
SSO for AppStore
Add a Single-Sign-On (SSO) integration to the AppStore. Central IT or users themselves could provide login credentials for cloud services in the AppStore, that will be stored in your locally hosted Intranet. When they click the links, they will be automatically logged in to the services.
Easy and fast Intranet Forms
There is a general need for fill-out and predefined forms within the intranet in order to be able to fit the needs for organisational and administrational processes. A Intranet needs configurable forms to provide a easy and quick to use solution for Information and workflow processes.
Auto-generated Org Charts
With draw.io we market one of the most powerful diagramming solutions available for Confluence. It it the only solution with an API that can generate an Org-Chart automatically and come up with a decent layout, that is user-friendly. We want to combine this opportunity with our Custom User Profile plugin in Confluence to offer complete Org Charts whereever you want them in the wiki and Org Chart elements in user profiles. As all relations and roles can be pulled out of your existing employee directory (Active Directory or LDAP) you can be sure, that no one interferes with the Org Chart in the system and that you keep your single point of truth for your roles and relations.
Mass editing features for Confluence
Big Confluence sites often use loads of content and pages. A lot of employees feel overwhelmed by redundancy and perceived chaos. It is difficult for Intranet Teams to solve the problem, as the lack mass editing features to move, tag, merge, delete and basically work with the existing content. A mass editing plugin could be a big relief here.
Expert search
We have implemented a solution for a 8,3K employee company already but need to streamline the solution to nicely fit in the personalization magic of our LINCHPIN suite and be independent from customer-specific legacy systems. So this is a "low hanging fruit" where we can offer a lot of prepared results for little implementation time.
Even more social expert search
Connect profiles to social media sites like LinkedIn, Xing, twitter and facebook and populate data for employees in the intranet (e.g. profile pictures, latest tweet, bio / cv, skills, ...).
If any of these topics correlate with what you plan to do with your Confluence, please contact us. We'll be happy to partner up with you to do a so called "sponsored development" which makes available such use cases very customized and affordable for you. And you'll help us to provide, what we think is the best Social Intranet available for bigger companies.
Advanced Labelling tools
In Intranets the amount of information and content grows day by day and the user has a need for categorization, channeling and filtering of content to serve his individual need of specific information within the system. Label tools can support and improve the handling of vast amounts of Information: remote and sticky labels that are inherited, semantic web enhancements, smart auto-tagging, ...
Personalized Templates on Dashboard
Intranet user needs to customize their startpage to fit their needs. With templates LINCHPIN provides easy to use examples for individualized content on personal startpages.
Intranet carousels
In general, the reasons designers often give for using a carousel are: 1) to fit more content in one parcel of homepage real estate 2) to settle political disputes about whose content is most deserving of a visible location. Sample content for these carousels could be: a) Large, clear images b) Legible headlines and summary text c) Navigation buttons within, just below, or to the right of the main image d) Buttons with clear text and/or images that help users easily move through the items.
Intranet filmstrips
Some intranet teams opted to present a gallery-like experience for very similar content. This feature, often referred to as a filmstrip, lets employees scroll horizontally through a particular type of content. For example, Ooredoo’s intranet homepage had a scrollable set of icons, as did the Learn section on Abt Associates’ homepage. Likewise, the Mayo Clinic offered videos in a filmstrip in the Video area of its intranet.
Whatever the reason it, it these (carusels & filmstrips) are trending features in 2014th Intranet Design Annual by Jakob Nielsen. We want to make them available as a plugin in Confluence.
Improved Search
The search results, filtering methods and parameters to get to the right content can be advanced by additional Search Options and improved search algorythms and variables.
Simple Community "freeware" Application
Instead of selling stuff through eBay as an employee you announce it on the Intranet and give it away for free in your company. This way you know, where you do good and increase team building through the intranet.
Order-Systems and procurement
An order system brings booking portal abilities to your Intranet based on your special use cases. It could be used to e.g. place orders in the company library. Also procurement solutions for employees and your company could be collected in your intranet.
Moderated forum
There are still thousands of incredibly useful and active user forums on the web that live and grow. Some of our intranet contracts in big companies are approached by their employees with the need for a moderated forum. Do you experience the same?
Governance and endless change Guidelines
According to the Intranet Design Annual many winning intranet teams — including those at Allianz Australia, AMP, Mayo Clinic, and National Geographic — specifically planned for continual improvements post-launch, keeping resources in place, goals in mind, and governance committees convened. With this strategy, they’re making the intranet UX increasingly better for employees, and thus the organization. We want to help you get such a process going and establish easy to adopt and adapt Best Practices. (Admitted: This is more of a consulting product, than a software feature)