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An intranet is a website or app that only the people in your company can open. They sign in and find what they need to work: this week's news, the staff handbook, the forms, who is who, and more and more often tasks too, such as requesting leave or filing an expense claim. The difference with your public website is who sees it: not the outside world, only your team.
Intranet meaning in plain words
The word comes from internet, with intra, meaning inside. An intranet used to run literally on the office network: only someone at a computer in the office could open it. Today an intranet usually lives in the cloud and opens anywhere, on your phone too, but only after you sign in. The idea stayed the same: a place of your own for your own people.
An intranet holds personal data
Leave, payslips and the employee file are personal data. Who may see what has to be set per role, and the intranet logs who opened a document.
What is an intranet and extranet: the difference
| Internet | Intranet | Extranet | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who sees it | Everyone | Only your own employees | Your employees plus outside people you give access |
| Example | Your website | Leave, news and documents for your team | A client portal or a supplier portal |
| Signing in | No | Yes, with a company account | Yes, with an account per customer or partner |
| What it holds | What you want to show the world | What your team needs to work | What you share with customers or partners |
An extranet is an intranet with a door to the outside. Your customer sees their invoices, their file or the status of their order, but nothing meant only for your team.
What is a social intranet?
A social intranet looks more like a social network than an archive. Colleagues post news themselves, comment, wish each other a happy birthday and look each other up in a staff directory. The aim is that people open the intranet because something is happening, not only when they need a form.
For a large company with offices in many places, that works well. In a small business the posts often go quiet after a few months. What keeps an intranet alive then is tasks: if you request your leave and see your schedule there, you open it every week.
What is an intranet used for in a small business
In a small company, an intranet is mainly a place where questions stop landing with the owner or HR. How much leave do I have left? Where is the form? Who fixes the broken printer? A good intranet answers those questions itself, with:
- leave management with a balance you can trust;
- an expense claim app where you send a photo of your receipt;
- an internal ticketing system where every request reaches the right person;
- employee records software where everyone sees their own documents;
- news, the handbook and the documents everyone needs.
For a Belgian transport company we built such a platform: drivers request leave, send in receipts, see their appointments and report problems with their truck on their phones, in Dutch, English or Turkish. They sign in with a tile showing their name and four digits. Read it in the DA Logistics case.
How a shared folder becomes an intranet
- Collect the questionsWhich questions reach the owner or HR every week? Those decide what the intranet does first.
- Pick the first taskLeave, expenses or reports: one task everyone does, so everyone signs in from week one.
- Decide how people sign inA Microsoft account for the office, a link or a code for people without a work email.
- Add the restNews, documents and the staff directory follow once people already open it.
SharePoint, Google Sites or custom
If you work in Microsoft 365, you already have SharePoint, and for an office team that is often enough. If you work in Google Workspace, Google Sites is the simple start. If part of your team has no desk or work email, or the intranet has to take over tasks, a custom intranet pays off. The trade-off is in SharePoint intranet alternatives, and how we build one is in intranet development.
Is SharePoint an intranet?
SharePoint is software you build an intranet with. Many companies on Microsoft 365 use it for that, but you can build an intranet without SharePoint too.
Does an intranet work on a phone?
A modern one does. As a PWA it sits on your home screen, without an app store.
Further reading
The general trade-off between renting a package and building your own is in build vs buy software. Work out what a custom intranet costs with the software development cost calculator. We build intranets as a web application. Not sure what your team needs? Get in touch.