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Intranet Requirements Documentation

by John Mileham, Michael Bryzek and many others

I. Introduction

The faster the pace of change in an industry or business, the more time and effort workers have to spend on coordination. Consider Adam Smith's pin factory. The boss has to stand up in front of the workers once per year and say "Thank you for your fine work last year. This year, I want you to make lots of pins. They should be really straight, blunt on one end, and pointy on the other. See you next year." In a university literature department, you need to have a meeting once per semester. Perhaps some of the curriculum should be revised? In a business facing innovative competitors, you need to have a meeting once every month to think about required responses. In a complex organization that is try to change and adapt, meetings and other forms of coordination may consume 20-30 hours per week.

II. Vision Statement

The Intranet module ties a workplace together from its recruiting pipeline, to employees and projects, straight through to to client interaction. This is a big task, but well worth the rewards of automation. The system allows teams to work together efficiently despite potentially immense seperations in space and time. It allows managers to see and understand what is being done, by whom, and whether everything is going according to schedule. It allows employees to get in touch with each other and share information. It allows accountants to keep track of where resources are going and who is to be billed for their use. With the help of randomly served employee photos and brief bios, it even makes the world into a little friendlier place.

III. System/Application Overview

  • Communication
    • Spam
        The Intranet module is based on groups. Employees are members of groups depending upon physical location (Boston office, Munich office, ...) and project (ACS Core, Client Services, ...). The ability to "spam" a group facilitates communication by eliminating the need of users to create custom mailing lists.
    • Client Access
        Client communication is improved by allowing them to see exactly what is going on with their projects through progress reports and contact information on all people who are working on them.
  • Personnel Tracking/Management
    • Employee Listings
      • Org Chart
          This enables managers to see at a glance the personnel resources that they have at their disposal.
      • AOL Instant Messenger buddy lists
          Employees can download an up-to-the-minute listing of all employees with Instant Messenger accounts, formatted for import into various different AIM clients.
    • Public Info (ext)
        This links to the external user information functionality of the ACS, and allows an employee ot provide contact information. The basic ACS functionality is extended by providing support for job title, work telephone, and other office related fields.
    • HR Info
        Employees can enter information about work experience and other vital HR information.
    • Vacation/Travel/Personal Days
        Employees who will be unavailable due to vacation, travel or personal days can enter this information. This is available to the company through reports.
    • Hour Logging
        This feature allows an employee to log hours under any project that she is a member of. This provides key information for both allocations and hourly billing.
  • Project Management
    • Projects/Subprojects
      • Project Reports
          A project member may write and associate reports with a project for the review of team members and the client.
      • Payments
          Client payments associated with the project may be tracked here.
      • Allocations
          Companies need to allocate employees to specific projects and to ensure that all of their employees are adequately allocated.
      • File Storage (ext)
          The project is linked with the File Storage module to provide file storage for project-specific files.
      • Dev Tracker (ext)
          An external dev tracker may be created and associated with a project to aid in scheduling and collaboration.
      • Ticket Tracker (ext)
          A ticket tracker can be created and associated with a project to allow assignment of project-related tasks and problems.
  • Reports
      A number of reports are provided to summarize various aspects of the company's well-being.
    • Status Report
    • Payments Report
    • Department Report
    • Utilization Report

IV. Use-cases and User-scenarios

There are 2 classes of user primarily concerned with the Intranet. Employees and administrators. A typical employee would draw upon the Intranet for information on projects and other information, to log hours, and to use the many external ACS functions for which the Intranet serves as a portal, such as the Ticket Tracker. Administrators, (being employees themselves) can do the same, though they have increased capability to view the work of employees, modify employee data (such as a given employee's placement on the org chart), and gain access to restricted data.

V. Related Links

VI. Revision History

Document Revision # Action Taken, Notes When? By Whom?
0.1 Creation 08/28/2000 John Mileham
0.1 Reviewed 08/29/2000 Michael Bryzek

jmileham@arsdigita.com

Last modified: $Date: 2001/01/19 21:36:45 $
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