Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, Second Edition

Chapter 20. MSWeb: An Enterprise Intranet

What is the Holy Grail of information architects? It’s the secret that will help them develop and maintain a centralized, user-centered information architecture for a large, distributed organization—the kind made up of all sorts of autonomous, bickering business units that have their own goals, their own sites, their own infrastructures, their own users, and their own ideas of how to go about things.

It’s nearly impossible to develop a successful information architecture against a backdrop of explosive content growth, content ROT, and the political twists and turns common in any organization. And, we’re sorry to say, we don’t have the Holy Grail. But we’ve had the privilege of getting up close to a large number of corporate intranets. And the best approach we’ve seen so far is that taken by Microsoft’s intranet portal (MSWeb) team.

Before you protest, we admit that yes, we understand that you probably don’t have the same resources at your disposal as does Microsoft’s team. But we think everyone can learn from their efforts; what they’re doing today is what most intranets will be doing in three to five years, for two reasons. First, MSWeb’s approach is flexible enough to be customized for many large organizations. And second, knowing Microsoft, it’s a reasonable bet that the good ideas described here will soon enough find their way into Microsoft’s product offerings (if they haven’t already) and into your IT department. So perhaps you’ll ...