The document discusses best practices for creating and maintaining a usable intranet at Tatts Group, including finding user needs through stakeholder interviews, task scenarios, log and feedback reviews, and usability testing, as well as maintaining content through various authoring models, training, support, communication, and regular content reviews. It is authored by Fiona Caldwell, Group Manager of Business Systems at Tatts Group.

1. Creating and maintaining
a usable intranet
Fiona Caldwell, Tatts Group

2. Tatts Group
• Provider of gaming, wagering and lottery leisure and
entertainment products and services.
• Brands include TattsLotto, Golden Casket, NSW Lotteries,
TattsBet (previously Unitab), Tatts Pokies, Maxgaming,
Bytecraft, and Centre Racing in Australia, and Talarius in the
UK.
• Originated in 1881 when founder George Adams organized a
public sweep on the Sydney Cup horse race, and in 1897 it
began operating the first government-endorsed lottery.
• 2,500 employees across Australia and UK

3. About Me
• Group Manager, Business Systems at Tatts Group.
• Wide portfolio – Projects and support for:
• Corporate Systems (Intranet, Phone Book, Collaboration Tools)
• Shared Services Systems (eg Finance and HR systems, CRM
systems, Marketing systems, Service Management and Call
Centre systems)
• Middleware
• Business Process Automation
• Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence
• Database Administration.
• Specialties: Applications Management, Intranets, Business
Intelligence and Information Management

4. Our Intranet Team
• 6 team members
• SharePoint 2007
• Key Projects:
• SharePoint 2010 upgrade
• Forms automation / workflow
Team Leader
SharePoint Content Developer x 3
Admin x 1 Manager x 1 (Workflow/.Net)

5. Journey of Tatts Group Intranet
2003
Basic
Information
Portal
- List of Hyperlinks
- News
Lotus Notes
Owner: Technology

6. Journey of Tatts Group Intranet
2005
Generation I:
Basic Intranet
- Corporate Information
- Basic HR information
- Links to applications
- Team Sites
- Project Sites
SharePoint 2003
Owner: Technology

7. Journey of Tatts Group Intranet
2007
Generation II:
Corporate Intranet
- Corporate Colours
- Corporate Information
- Noticeboard
- More HR information
- Links to applications
- Team Sites
- Project Sites
SharePoint 2007
Owner: HR

8. Journey of Tatts Group Intranet
2009
Generation III:
HR Centric Intranet
- HR Focused
- Colour themed areas
- More images
- Home Page Focus on HR:
• New starters
• Learning & Development
• Employee Services
- Communities
- MyWorkCentre:
• Personal Profile
• Personal Site
• Personalised Information
- Some Application Integration
SharePoint 2007
Owner: HR

9. Journey of Tatts Group Intranet
2011
Generation IV:
Task Focused Intranet
- Electronic Forms
- Integrated Workflow & Approvals
- Areas colour themed
- Personal and Team Sites
SharePoint 2010
Owner: HR

10. Useful & Usable
• More than marketing and promotion:
• Professional appearance • Content up to date
• Consistent design & layout • Information you cant get
across different areas anywhere else
• Standard page templates • Level of content detail
• Consistent font, navigation, consistent between sections
graphic design, page structure.
• Content owners actively
• Easily distinguishable from managing content & don’t
public facing website require HMTL knowledge
• Ease of finding information
• No bottlenecks in publishing
• Effectiveness of search engine process
• Ease of use of processes • Accessibility
• Cross links between different • Interactive features
sections of the site

11. Finding out user needs
1. Stakeholder Interviews (one-on-one)
• Discuss what their job involves and how they currently use
(or don’t use) the intranet – ask them to show you.
• You may learn about:
• Work-arounds for tasks
• Different paths staff follow to information (navigation, search)
• Parts of the screen or information that staff miss
• Areas of the intranet that staff don’t understand
• Sections of the intranet that staff don’t know exist
• Discuss future intranet requirements to support work
needs.

12. Finding out user needs
2. Walk through key tasks
• Prepare an extensive set of scenarios – what tasks do staff
attempt on the intranet?
• User Stories: As a <role> I Want <some Business
Functionality> So That <Some Business Value or Justification>.
The acceptance criteria describes the criteria by which
stakeholders will determine whether the product meets their
needs – in this case tasks that need to be completed.
• Eg. As an employee I want to book travel so that I can travel
to Brisbane next week. Acceptance Criteria:
• I need to know what forms need to be filled out request travel
• I need to seek approval
• I need to book travel and accommodation
• I need to find out where our Brisbane office is located
• I need to know about cab charges, what else I can claim back as expenses and
how to claim expenses. Etc…

13. Finding out user needs
• Walk through key tasks (contd):
• Identify all activities that make up the task
• What needs to be done to complete a task?
• What actions are inside the intranet or outside the intranet?
• Walk through the scenario (yourself or with the team).
• Pay attention to the decisions you make and the reasons for
your decisions. For example, do you choose a particular
navigation because you already know where the information is?
Do you use search? How else could the same task be done?
• Look for content that may need to be reorganised or
grouped with other content.

14. Finding out user needs
3. Review logs and feedback
• Look for patterns in logs and feedback:
• Frequently accessed pages: What pages are accessed most
frequently?
• Search logs: What terms are users typing into the intranet?
• Page Feedback Links: What feedback is being received?
• Help Desk Requests: What are the common questions and
requests?
• Use patterns found to:
• Create scenarios (user stories) for task walk throughs
• Add quick links to home page for frequent actions
• Remove content that is not needed
• Create content that doesn’t exist

15. Finding out user needs
4. Observing staff using the intranet (usability test)
• Create realistic scenarios to evaluate core tasks
• Recruit participants that are representative of the user
group
• Observe the participants attempting the scenarios
• Note what happens
• Look for repeated behaviours – if a problem occurs multiple
times then its worth investigating
• Key difference between this and stakeholder interviews is
that all participants working through the same scenarios.

16. Maintaining Content
• To keep Intranet content up to date, consider:
• Authoring and Publishing Models
• Easy to use Content Management System
• Training & Support
• Regular communications
• Content Reviews
• Action user feedback

17. Maintaining Content
1. Authoring and Publishing Models
• Consider authoring and publishing models used:
• Fully centralised
• Decentralised
• Publishing with review
• Federated publishing
• End-user content contribution
• No one model is right – mix and match different models

18. Maintaining Content
Personal
Centralised:
Communities •Corporate Information, Policies,
of Interest Guidelines, How-To, Corporate News,
New Starters, L&D Opportunities,
Staff Benefits, etc…
Project
•Controlled by HR and Intranet Team
(in Technology)
Team / Unit
Divisional
Organisational

19. Maintaining Content
Personal
Federated:
Communities •Business Unit Information and News,
of Interest Org Charts, etc…
•Business Unit appoints coordinator
Project who takes responsibility for managing
their area of the intranet.
Team / Unit •Mixed success with this model.
Divisional
Organisational

20. Maintaining Content
Personal
Decentralised:
Communities •Anyone can request and maintain.
of Interest
•Team Generated content –
Document Sharing, Shared
Project Calendars, to-do lists, Shared Links,
etc
Team / Unit •Extensive Training Requirement
Divisional
Organisational

21. Maintaining Content
Personal
End User:
Communities •Personal Site automatically created
of Interest for all employees and populated with
basic HR data.
Project •Users can add richer personal
information – skills, experience,
documents, create personal blog,
Team / Unit etc…
•Limited ‘Organisational’ areas open
Divisional to anyone to add Notices, Events,
Team Profiles, Glossary Terms, etc..
Organisational

22. Maintaining Content
2. Content Management System
• Content Management System should be easy to use
• Provide a style guide – but don’t expect people to read it
• Use templates and style sheets for consistent formatting
• Provide spell checking functionality
• Use workflow to manage content approvals (if needed)
• Add review and expiry dates to content

23. Maintaining Content
3. Training, Support and Guidelines
• Offer continual training, support and guidelines
• All employees are potentially content authors
• Different levels of training is required for different needs
• Employee Induction:
• Induction eLearning provides introduction to Intranet
• Quick Tours highlight where all employees can contribute
• Online Help 3
3
• Overviews, Quick Tours, Quick Ref Guides, Governance, where to
store information, how to write for the web, FAQs
• Formal Training
• Content Contributors: Roles & responsibilities, CMS basic features
(eg. SharePoint document libraries and lists, revision control, etc)
• Site Owners: Roles and responsibilities, CMS advanced features
(eg. Creating SharePoint sites, managing permissions, etc)

24. Maintaining Content
4. Communicate, Communicate, Communicate:
• Community of Power Users
• Regular Emails / Newsletters
• Monthly Newsletters, Tips and Tricks
5. Regular Content Reviews
• Target highest value content – don’t try and fix everything!
• Remove redundant, out dated, or trivial content
6. Intranet Feedback
• Provide feedback mechanism on all pages
• Address feedback in timely manner (or you will stop getting
feedback)