ACES OF JACKSONVILLE, INC. Intranet Services

Intranets are an effective means for distributing information in an organization and for providing a powerful and flexible infrastructure for team collaboration. A dynamic publishing environment requires website creation and management tools that provide ease of use, advanced site management and seamless integration with existing applications, such as Microsoft Office. This document provides an overview of the services that Aces of Jacksonville, Inc. can provide to you in order to create an efficient multi-user intranet publishing environment.

 

Overview

Windows NT, Microsoft Internet Information Server and FrontPage make a powerful combination for creating and managing an intranet, especially a multi-department intranet. An intranet developed with such tools provides the maximum in convenience, security and performance. Running your intranet on Windows NT and using IIS as your Web server will also allow you to take advantage of the users/groups administration capabilities of Windows NT.

The Microsoft FrontPage development tool also allows you to create HTML-based Web pages easily without knowledge of HTML. Using FrontPage to create and manage your intranet is also an excellent solution for automating many common tasks, managing Web site security, and keeping your Web site fresh.

 

Intranet Structure

Key Points for Creating an Intranet with FrontPage

One of the great advantages of using FrontPage for creating and managing your intranet is the intelligence with which FrontPage can communicate with your Web server. Through the FrontPage Server Extensions, FrontPage is able to intelligently manage and update hyperlinks, automatically update navigation bars as your navigation structure changes, and even manage security permissions for your Web site. Other key reasons for creating and managing an intranet using FrontPage are:

• Ability to set separate browsing, authoring, or administering permissions for each individual sub-web (see "FrontPage Webs and Sub-webs" for more details).

• Ability to use the Windows NT User Manager to streamline management of Web site end-users, authors, and administrators.

• Ability to have new documents and modified documents reviewed before publishing (with the implementation of a staging server). Please see "Validating and Reviewing of Web Pages" for information on this. 

Per Department Intranet Structure

When creating an intranet it's often most logical to configure it similarly to the company's organizational structure resulting in one Web site per department.

Common characteristics of the per department intranet are:

• Root area of the Web site maintained by organization's intranet Web site administrator whose full responsibilities are to manage the company intranet.
• One "Sub-Web" site per department or project.
• "Sub-Web" content managed by either the overall intranet Web site administrator, or by each department's Intranet point-of-contact.

Planning for Growth

There are no predetermined limits on the number of sub-Web (or department websites) sites you can have on a Web server or on the number of pages in your Web site.  Frontpage can easily handle hundreds of documents per "Sub-Web" site.

As your organization's intranet needs grow, FrontPage can also serve as a key component of a larger scale solution that includes the powerful capabilities of some of the other Microsoft enterprise-oriented products, such as Microsoft Index Server, Microsoft Site Server, the Microsoft Visual SourceSafe version control system, and Microsoft Visual InterDev. FrontPage can also be integrated with most database and scripting applications.

 

Security Considerations

FrontPage and Microsoft Internet Information Server Security

Excellent security features are provided by the Internet Information Server, a Windows NT based Web server that takes full advantage of the security and permissions mechanisms of Windows NT.   FrontPage is able to leverage the network user and group management features of Windows NT, giving you greater permissions management efficiency than might be available on other platforms.

 

Validating and Reviewing of Web Pages

An intranet server can also be setup to provide department heads the ability to review intranet web page modifications and new additions before the documents are published to the Intranet.  The Intranet can be setup such that only after the pages are reviewed and meet department standards, will the new pages be published to the Intranet web server.   Note: This is totally an optional setup, but is recommended for companies who require Intranet quality control.

 

Training Requirements

Due to the WYSIWYG capabilities of the FrontPage Editor, authors familiar with Microsoft Office products generally experience a short learning curve when faced with designing basic web pages consisting of text and images. We recommend a 4-8 hour training session to provide an introduction to the product. Aces can either provide on-site training or we can recommend a local training facility for an introductory FrontPage class.

 

Please contact us at:
sales@acesofjax.com
for more information

 

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