Having discussed the layout of the development of the D2D Intranet and all of the issues assosciated with running an Intranet, it would seem a fitting conclusion to this work to outline the future prospects for the D2D Intranet. Somwhat ironically, CFM took up the challenge of responsibility for the Intranet and on the day that the author left the company, they officially took charge of the running of the physical server and the appropriate news and WWW software.
This was a significant shift in policy and in a way signalled the transition from a private project to a mainstream company one. The great enthusiasm for the project amongst non-developmental staff within the company has already been described and the Intranet project should have a successful future.
As a final contribution to the project, the author felt sufficiently strongly about the way that things were going to make a few sugestions to Robert Wood regarding the running of the Intranet. That is not to say that some or all of these changes might not have been implemented anyway, but it was felt that if the author was to achieve some sort of consultative role then it was necessary to make his opinions clear.
Dear Rob
This note is intended to summarise the time that I have spent here, Iíd like to say thanks anyway for having me here and that I feel like I have learned a lot from my experiences. As a sort of benefit of that, I have formulated a few opinions about the running of the whole Intranet and I would like to share these with you as I feel strongly about the way that the Intranet is being run and where it should perhaps go to be able to be truly effective as a business tool within the D2D organisation.
Firstly however, I would like to point out that the talk that I gave on Monday 18th August was well received and seems to have stirred something in those who attended, people seemed somewhat shocked that such a simple means of communication was not available to them even though the necessary hardware is actually in place and the actual software required, ie Internet Explorer and the necessary TCP/IP stacks are free ! Some of those who attended actually got onto CFM straight away and got connected the next day. I have been approached several times this week by people who are interested in contributing sites and I have decided therefore to give web-authoring lessons on my last day here, Friday 22nd August, firstly using simple HTML and then Front Page. I have also persuaded CFM to set the default page on IE to 'http://man01.intranet01.icl.co.uk/'.
This then brings me to the main point really. The Intranet idea is a great one and I am glad to see that CFM are taking the server responsibility on-board, ironically on the day I leave it would seem. Monday's talk showed a large amount of enthusiasm for the Intranet, an enthusiasm which needs channeling rather than tapping. In all honesty though, the system as it stands is best described as chaotic and needs to be streamlined and made to run consistently as a matter of urgency. With 'Intranet.man01.icl.co.uk' being the only server currently running, everything and anything is currently sitting on it, I would hazard a guess that 50% of the webs on it are redundant or duplicitous, furthermore, there are webs within webs which confuse matters further. That is a consequence of the way in which work has been carried out and it is quite natural for this to occur. However, with the next IDC meeting rapidly approaching, and with the possibility of several new web sites being contributed over the next few months, I feel that it is time to take the bull by the horns and institute a web code of conduct which will ensure that the D2D Intranet becomes something to be admired and be proud of. On that basis therefore, I make the following recommendations.
1) That you become the person with the final say on the Intranet's running.
2) That Alex Buckley, his successor or a proxy become the official D2D webmaster responsible for the top level D2D Intranet site corresponding to the IP address 'http://Intranet.man01.icl.co.uk/'.
3) That the web 'intra' currently being developed by Alex becomes that which will be accessed by people searching for the URL 'http://Intranet.man01.icl.co.uk/', that is to say that the current index page be superceded by Alex's work.
4) That only the official D2D webmaster be able to make any changes to the top level site.
5) That only a limited number of sub webs containing specified services be kept within the confines of the top level web. These are as follows.
i) A search facility, Andrew Scheele and myself have been developing a search facility based upon Microsoft's Index Server program. This is a powerful facility which is capable of searching for formatted text within any Microsoft formatted document, eg Power Point, Word. The system needs further technical refinement but the technology does work quite well and makes for a very powerful Intranet tool, I have implemented a temporary version accessible from the page currently addressed as 'http://Intranet.man01.icl.co.uk/intra/'.
ii) A newsgroup facility, this being implemented to allow people to discuss features of the D2D Intranet, there is nothing to stop people implementing their own newsgroups elsewhere.
6) That all other sites maintained either by the official web master or by third parties be kept outside of the top level site. These webs will be self-contained and will have an index page for reference purposes, it doesnít then matter whether these webs are kept on separate physical server sites or on the main server.
7) That the official web master will reference these sites within the search facility once they have been created and once a formal request from the concerned parties to have their site indexed from the main D2D page has been received. This request could be made from a form made available on the D2D Intranet page. This will ensure that there are no 'dead' sites floating around and will also enable the official web master to add the sites address to the search facility outlined in section 5.i), thus enabling the valuable information contained on these web sites to become freely available for all to see.
I hope that these recommendations are acceptable. Finally, I have enclosed photocopies of the feedback forms that I gave out at the two talks.
Yours Sincerely
In addition to CFM taking on the mantle of server responsibility, a separate policy decision was made to drop the frame format of the web pages, it was felt that learning to design such pages was an additional burden upon people who were just beginning web design, frame based pages certainly have their drawbacks.
There is no doubt that the D2D Intranet will continue to grow and flourish, quite possibly taking on-board some of the new technology, e.g. Active-X [56] and Java [57, 58] that was barely touched upon by the author's work.
All in all, the author feels that they have learned much from the time spent at D2D and quite hopefully, that they have contributed something positive to the development of the D2D Intranet. Many thanks go to those whose inspiration and knowledge he was able to share.
| INTRODUCTION | CHAPTER 1 | CHAPTER 2 |
| CHAPTER 3 | CHAPTER 4 | CHAPTER 5 | CHAPTER 6 |
| 56 | J. Flynn and B. Clarke., Datamation., 1997 (January), 134-144. |
| 57 | B. Semich and D. Fisco., Datamation., March (1996), 28-49. |
| 58 | J. Ablan., Developing Intranet Applications With
JAVA., Sams-Net, 1996 |