Session information

Structure and use of spaces

• Define the requirements of each space - project, team (across departments), general, department (business unit).
• Define the content and page structure within each space (overarching themes/categories and storage of new information within existing categories).
• Ensure the structure is scalable (for usability in the long term - hierarchy and structure play an important role).
• Define the breadth and depth of the information structure (depending on the requirements of each space, one or both may be important).
• Define a logical structure for the information within each space, that is appropriate for the majority of users (not just from one person's or group's perspective).

The following questions should guide your decisions:

1. How are we going to use our spaces, and which content do we want to include and maintain in each of these spaces?
    
2. What content creation requirements and rules should our editors and employees follow:
   1. Guided content creation and automatic maintenance (requires appropriate knowledge and conceptual training)?
   2. Free content creation and design, including the location within the page hierarchy and the structure of a page's elements (no uniformity of information)?
3. How should the spaces be structured? Do we need a landing page for each category (such as departments or projects)?
   1. Define the layout and content of these landing pages.
   2. Define blueprints and templates.
4. Do we need special functions or features in specific spaces? For example:
   1. Documentation control process.
   2. Form creation and submission.
   3. Surveys.
   4. Other functions or features - usually required by specialist departments or project specifications.

Visibility restrictions on the content

It is common to need to restrict viewing and/or editing some content to a small group of users. In principle, even specific elements within a page can be restricted. It is often difficult for customers to specify their authorization concept without prior experience, because the need for restrictions becomes obvious only when the system is in use. In some cases, appropriate restrictions are obvious, especially when clear requirements have been defined. Therefore, it is best to develop clear requirements to see if there should be visibility restrictions.

Defining the logical content structure - using metadata and semantics

In addition to the visual information architecture, it is important to define a logical structure for the content with metadata (keywords). Keywords provide a useful way to search within the intranet, and can be applied to all important content. Confluence also provides functionality that allows keywords to be used to configure features, for example to limit the display of aggregated information to display only content that has a specific keyword.

Keywords provide another way for users to navigate the content within the intranet. Users can use this type of navigation as their own customized search mask, and can find semantically related content based on their selected and also similar keywords. 

Session results