Open up your corporate portal and try that search bar for something, anything. And tell me, if all you get is a puke of raw incomprehensible text¹ listing.

The only plausible conclusion I can draw is that people involved in design are either incapable of understanding that their portals are most usable when combined with an effective² search or, are incapable of implementing such a thing. Or may be both.

How should it be? — For starters, how about a readable title followed by a decent two-line summary, list of categories associated (for further narrowing down on similar / related items), date created or updated, targeted for specific groups, department, etc if any.

1. If you don’t, then I’d say you’re truly blessed.
2. I’d say effective, because there are tons of crappy options (as in software, services) that only give you a search bar and no results; or give you a myriad of options, as filters, that you don’t want or don’t know how to choose from, for the fear of not finding anything.

Email is such an integral part of a company, corporation, that I cannot stress enough. (I was looking for some real moving words to have an effect here, but they fail me. Oh, never mind. But you know the feeling, right?) So what is this about, then? Well, it is about the big announcement from Google.

A few weeks before this happened, someone in my organization called for views about deploying third-party email solutions to contractors based in our offices. This obviously came out of the problems of having to set up relatively temporary mailboxes on the company domain and get things working for specific non-staff groups.

The discussion evoloved, and some of us who have been using Gmail and Apps put our force behind this thing, enough to raise a genuine interest in not only thinking about options to deploy for non-staff contractors, but also a possibility of deploying them for over 100,000 staff worldwide. It’s a definite possibility, there are people really looking this up and other aspects around it at this very moment.

Now, why would we, as employees, do such a thing? Well, there’s this thing about have your say in making your life easier (as if there was a better and brief way of saying it). Let’s look at the wind-down version of why we would support Google Apps.

Let me start with Email.

My company lets me work from home or from a remote place, when I need to or when I cannot be in office, for some reason. In such situations, more often than not, the only thing I need to access is my corporate email. Presently, the only way we can do it is via the VPN. Somehow, email via the VPN, except on one occasion, never worked for me from home. And I was forced to haul myself back to office, so I could be connected.

Our present solution is Outlook + Exchange. The first time I saw it, I cringed. (I even bought a used Outlook 2000 in a nutshell, just so I could be productive without wasting time learning some basic things. But as it happens, the 600 odd page book lies neatly on my desk, unopened.)

From what I see around, a lot of people have attachment issues, mailbox limitation problems archiving, not to mention searching, indexing and a whole lot of other stuff. People complain about it all the time, but there’s nothing much they could do. But now, the prospects look better, because there’s a better solution available.

For some of us, the only email we have ever had is the corporate address. For that at least, I think we deserve a lot more than a crappy system.

Gmail’s amazing feature set is a boon for corporate users in any environment. Comfy offices to extreme weather conditions of up to -30ºc in near arctic zones.

Calendar is another. We have a lot of events happening. Some, I end up skipping because I didn’t keep Outlook open. Google Calendar sends SMS alerts to your phone, and that’s a great way of getting a notification while on the move about your appointments, events, et al.

We have a lot of specifications that a whole team of people are working on at the moment. The progress is often at snail’s pace, and in a serial manner. If there was a way to collaborate officially, the comment and review system could be a lot quicker, thus reducing the time taken to complete such tasks.

Google Apps provides all those, just lets us get our work done, quickly, effortlessly and without experiencing pain. I just hope the company sees our POV.

A very simple tool would be a web based query system querying, comparing projects of similar nature, apple to apple or apple to oranges, if you like. It would present parameters², which would in turn help engineers make decisions. And such a tool would be entirely parametric.

For example, think of a three legged platform and you would get a list of projects, water depths, weights, function, produce, et al, just to name a few. Narrow down further to a specific water depth and you could roughly get preliminary member sizes to ponder upon. They would only now be different based on environmental and geotechnical conditions.

Primary variables such as platform type, water depth, geotechnical data, environmental data could be used to compare and optimize in FEED, along with lessons learnt. This tool, if properly implemented, has enormous cost and time savings on any new FEED excercise.

As one would know, FEED projects literally start from scratch. A lot of planning, reference to old projects and lessons learnt goes into selecting suitable parameters for design. If preliminary designs could follow and use the experience of previous successful projects, half the FEED could be done just in comparison and finding parallels.

I tried unsuccessfully, over the years, trying to percolate this idea to previous managements of companies³, I worked for.

Being at SIEP and at the forefront of research, engineering and design, with great shoulders of giants to stand-up on, now allows me to dream up that possibility again.

1. My first attempt at this began in 1999, with very limited skills, as I was a fresh novice dappling with finding benefits of this new web technology. It was in dWorks that a linear system was built. And linear, it was. It was simply manually keyed platform wise information.
2. The tool would, of course, require a lot of raw data to be keyed in, before it can really be functional. But I much believe a sincere effort towards it would be more than worth it. And when you start adding previously executed project data to this database from all parts of the world and from every kind of environment, this will start to make a lot more sense. More data, better results, and hence, better comparison, quicker solutions.
3. And tried to get external help in getting such a system be implemented using competent team of programmers.

Just before I went offline, someone had left a comment on my post—titled Intranet problem: searching inside native files—with an alternate solution and pointed to a website that I cannot seem to recall now. (What a bummer!)

I had briefly looked-up the suggested site and had found it interesting. That was before I had a problem with my site. My database was screwed-up, and I lost valuable comments posted to the last couple of weblog entries—including your good wishes—before this site went offline in April.

I tried searching for some keywords related to my post, looked-up, Google cache, Wayback Machine, but I’ve come up against nothing but the wall. Google search points to a lot of stuff I can’t find good use of.

You know, sometimes you wonder how much the word of mouth, useful comments matter when a product is good but is yet to be listed on search close enough to be found.

This is an appeal to the person who suggested that solution. If you’re reading this, it would be a huge favor if you could re-post it or contact me via this page. Appreciate your help, honest. Thanks!

He was referring to a ton of reference material, reusable stuff in native files that we have. I shook my head sheepishly to convey that our portal couldn’t search native files, but indexing them on pages with links, keywords and titles would help a bit.

And no, we are not just about to jump to converting everything into html in order to make it searchable. Doing so is not only time consuming, painstaking, it’s just plain stupid. No, we are not going to do that.

But the question continues to stump me. More than that, it bothers me. When Google Desktop was released, I thought this problem was solved. But, it didn’t.

Here is my problem: I can install Google Desktop on a server that serves all the intranet content to users. But I can’t provide a Google Desktop interface within our intranet page.

To use Google Desktop, the user needs to access the computer physically or via a VNC which—to me—completely defeats the purpose (of the intranet). A classic chicken and egg case. I mean, the technology is right there–staring in my face–and yet, I cannot harness its power.

It could be as simple as a including a Google Desktop search form within the template with a couple of radio options [1]search portal [2]search raw server files. Option [1] would search from the database (default CMS search). Option [2] would search native files, parked in the server, that are meant to be served to users using Google Desktop installed on the server).

Has anyone ever embedded a Google Desktop search form inside your intranet portal page to serve from a webserver? There might even be a “slap-on-the forehead” simple technique to go about doing this, but I haven’t been able to see it so far. If you’ve done such a thing before, and if you’re reading this, I would be really interested in knowing how you could.

In addition, I wanted a flexible, portable system that I could backup and restore anywhere I liked and continue working from where I left off earlier. I’m spending a lot of time these days writing technical stuff, procedures and pouring in my experience into some sort of an intranet enabled archive, and so I could unload my aching brain. Sometimes, I’m writing at home and may want to continue it in office and then again back at home. So, the data is changing continuously. Instead of stopping the thought train for the limitation of the software, I’d prefer to jot down and finalize a write-up in one instance. New and additional ideas, I add whenever I remember something not recorded before. So, the portal is currently a pool of an overflowing thought-process. And I don’t want to stop it. Limitations of software were drawing my attention away from my actual writings and illustrations. So, that ends with ditching the wiki.

I have transferred all my content from the wiki on to Textpattern, yes, Textpattern! You may be surprised to know that I’m not using WordPress. The one thing I perfectly understood—after experimenting with so many systems—is that WordPress is a great blogging software, just not good enough to be a backend of a knowledge portal. I’ll give you a simple example: WordPress doesn’t even seach Pages by default. My requirement is not comment or comment moderating system, but simply to write and write lucidly, without distraction and without limitations, in addition to having a portal like, sub-sections like features. When I could do everything I wanted to using Textpattern, and more, I almost broke into a song =). For portability, I carry the database dump and use it back and forth—updating and keeping all systems in-sync.

Also, by now, I’ve mastered the art of writing in Textile—a web text generator that looked funny and complicated until I started creating tables. And now, I’m like wow, how did I live without it for so long?

Another thing I particularly like about Textpattern is that it can create linkable footnotes. I find this totally an invaluable feature. I now have the ability to link to and explain all the weird terms and keep it out of context at the same time—until I want to look-it up.

The CSS is a huge inspiration from Odeo blog. Don’t ask. I’ll change it someday. For now, I just wanted to make it usable and keep writing. When my brain cools-off, I’ll turn my attention back on screen and print versions of CSS code.

Before I go further, I really like this one:

You can go to any major IT department or division in any large company, and there will be a wiki, where people are communicating about projects and writing documentation. So, just like blogs, it started a nice cultural revolution that’s been going on about how to use this really dead-simple tool and its rise in popularity.

However wishful, sadly it is not true. Though, I would personally love to see that day, really! So, why are they not so? Here’s my why:

Software not service: If you are a service provider, you’ll only get your small fish. The big fish isn’t interested. Security, information leak and the general paranoia that their data is in your hands, never mind that their servers are much more vulnerable to crack than your own. Such is the state of the corporate mind. And no, don’t bother to try and convince them otherwise, for they will never believe you. Banks are an exception when they say your money is safe with us =).

Companies always prefer to run on their own servers managed by their own IT departments. So, focus there. Provide a software that can hold its own. And charge for what your software is worth and not by how big the company you’re selling it to. May be I’m an economist’s thud, but I fail to understand the otherwise. For your benefit, you could add a value added annual maintanence service for which, you could charge annual suppport fee. That works exceptionally good in corporations. In fact, they’ll grab it, because it loosens the noose around the floored IT departments.

Folder access problem: This is a problem I have faced personally in trying to run a full fledged department wiki and is a major drag, whether you’re using Instiki or MediaWiki.

If a Wiki can’t have a folder level view/access, then it only becomes a white board. You can’t expect people to re-write the mass of info saved in pdf files in wikis. Who in the hell will do the typing? That’s insane!

And for god’s sake, please don’t bundle your own webserver with a stupid port address tied to it (Instiki, this one’s for you). Most firewalls in corporate environ blindly block port addresses (again the IT paranoia).

Backup: I don’t understand why most undervalue or ignore this major one. I’m not talking about SQL dump. Any root level admin could do that. I’m talking about providing users/people (with relative management rights) with an ability to backup the stuff that they have put-together painstakingly. This is a fair request. If they’re unsure of restoring the info in case of any eventualities, then they’ll be wary of spending their manhours on this what should be a one-time effort.

So, If you want to get the wikis to the mainstream and corporate users, fix these problems first. All talk on Web 2.0 is blissful ignorance to the average corporate joe. No really! because he has more things to worry about than type out a feature request to you guys.

For the record, the company I work for is among the top ten global contractors on ENR and no, we don’t use wikis. And, now you know why.

It helps to take a page or two from the “concept” that is implemented from the likes of the giants of the software industry like Microsoft and Google. It helps even if that concept can be really stripped down to adopt to your company (big or small). Best of all, examples help create awareness and possibly forming ideas or simply the wants within your company that fuels the need to have an easy access to recyclable information to make the best of time and practices.

If pictures and flow diagrams are anything to go by, then Microsoft Web, which is Microsoft’s intranet (or Microsoft Knowledge Network as they call it), is quite impressive.

Image courtesy: Microsoft IT Showcase

Now, if only Google would put some documentation on how they have their intranet setup and manage their content (I’m aware that they have one of the best), that’d be a hoot.

There are a vast number of industries and businesses that are seriously looking at solutions and ending-up with a half-assed inhouse development either because these systems cost them an arm and a leg, or are too difficult to implement.

A typical example: The company I work for has a vast wealth of information in terms of number of offshore projects. Over 20 years in business in just this region alone, take an average of 4 projects a year. Each project to have approximately 1-4 platforms (although there have been exceptions where there have been over 20 in some projects!). We have over 10 engineering disciplines that would be working on a typical project, each generating a virgin set of documents, information, vendor data and deliverables in a given project. In addition, If we could append projects from elsewhere (America, Europe, Africa, South America and Australasia), the statistical information itself would be mind-blowing. But unfortunately, it is not accumulated.

If the company could somehow harness all that engineering done in a database and also set it to query any related info, comparative data, charts and engineering information, it could easily dismantle more than two-thirds of re-inventing-the-wheel cycle. If this an interesting and advantageous proposition for adding new data as new projects happen, then I think people would be more than willing to feed the necessary data to the system. Not only that, it would also automatically place an audit system that would provide some justification and authetication to philosophies adopted and decisions taken.

Who are the clients: Engineering companies that want to pool their past project experiences, Hospitals and doctors that want to document and collate case histories, Universities and Institutions and so many knowledge centered businesses that dig this. The concept of an internal web itself hasn’t been percolating much, if we leave the IT-tech companies aside. To non-IT companies, pooling info is still a new concept. The tendency is to think of it as a notice board, nothing more. While in contrast, in the information world, we are already seeing bursts of Web 2.0.

Here’s a proposition to software companies: If you think setting-up intranet systems is a problem due to a myriad of environments, sell a rack (something like a Google appliance), if you like, that comes bundled with the latest intranet management software, ready for deployment with documentation, firmware and software upgrades. With the need to collate and add information is growing, there is a serious deficit in terms of managed solutions to manage data and knowledge and put it to good reuse within and across company extranets and company offices elsewhere.

Seriously, we all need good and simple managed (intranet) systems, that are fully controllable and customizable by graphical consoles, so that we spend less time building one with the limited knowledge we have, and get back to what we’re good at: “creating and reusing content”.

I wonder how many IT managers and IT admins in non-IT companies would do a chorus with me on this one.