Integrating DotNetNuke Portals with Your Intranet DotNetNuke Portals, Connecting and Integrating your Intranet What is an Intranet? Intranet is a generic term defined as, a collection of private computer networks within an organization. An intranet uses a network as a tool for people to communicate within a group and to provide grounds for data sharing between the individual computers. Intranets generally utilize both software and hardware technologies; Web servers, web browsers, TCP/IP, Wi-Fi and Ethernet. Because of privacy concerns, a network is protect with a firewall, which blocks outside computers from accessing the network. Intranets are essential to the performance of a business. They help businesses save time and money, it offers various online business services, and provides tools to make your staff more efficient. What is DotNetNuke Portals? DotNetNuke Portals is a web application on portals that hosts advanced content management and security tools. With a variety of tools and applications, integrating DotNetNuke within your intranet can greatly increase your intranet’s overall efficiency and performance. DNN also offers other web applications, such as DNN Evoq and Evoq Social. DotNetNuke Features and Tools Security Add, Edit, Delete and manage groups or sub-groups where you assign roles to each user with certain permissions given to each role. Authenticate your users with either a Windows Form based authentication or an Active Microsoft directory. Branding From custom skins to unique containers, DNN has it all. Users are able to select unique skins to provide their main look and layout to their page. A container can be selected to wrap the content together using a DotNetNuke module. Document Management Actively manage and organize documents with DNN’s document manager. The manager has numerous features such as; Categorical and Attribute Filtered Sorting Hierarchical Organization Visibility and Access Permissions Content Sharing Microsoft SharePoint integration Document Editing and Managing Document/Folder Subscriptions Advanced Document Reporting Search DotNetNuke facilitates advanced search engines with DNN Professional and Enterprise. These search functions reduce the time spent looking for a file, article, blog post, or document for your company’s staff. The DotNetNuke Store also retails a number of additional search alternatives. Organization Chart and Staff directory For organizations that are of medium to large size, it is a priority to have an updated Staff directory and Organization chart. A directory enables staff to find their colleagues’ role, skills, or contact information. Using the Messaging tools, staff members are able to receive and send messages to one another. Knowledge Base DNN is capable of integrating an organization’s knowledge base with its website. You can create new pages and content that are all linked together providing seamless navigations. A knowledge base can be used to display guidelines, company information, practices and more. Another alternative would be to use a Wiki and allowing employees to add and organize the content. The Wiki is an effective way to manage content and share it across the company. Online Forms In an organization, it is essential to collect information from your staff. An efficient way to do just that is to create and manage online forms. Whether you are creating a text box, checkbox, radio button, or slider, making an online form is straightforward and easy. With your online forms, you can utilize a receipt to notify you when they submit a form or response. blogs The blog module enables users to post and comment in a social community. These blogs can be used to support and promote projects, products, events, etc. The module comes equipped with security features to hide visibility of a post from certain users and the ability to create, edit, and delete blog entries and comments. Community Exchange, Groups and Forums Similar to the blog feature, DNN is equipped with a social community exchange and group forum discussions. When searching for an answer to a question, or you are just trying to have a chat, having a community group can achieve that and more. A community is a feature that facilitates a question and answer environment. The members will be ranked for the quality of their posts and can develop themselves a reputation. Users can also create and manage groups or mini-communities within the site as well. This gives them a medium in which they can converse about a common goal within the community. Localization When your business goes global, and you begin to open offices in different parts of the world, there will be a cultural barrier that needs to be addressed, language. Language can be a key factor when doing business internationally. In order to address this issue, DotNetNuke provides a full set of localized features which allow your content to be written and uploaded in the language of your choice. All of the content throughout your intranet is localized this way, so you can translate your page regardless of where you are located in the world. Clarity is a global DNN Gold certified partner that specializes in the custom design, development and implementations of DotNetNuke Applications. For more information on DNN, read our review of their new version of DNN Evoq.