Company Intranet - Site Structure

Question

We're in the process of building our company intranet and trying to determine whether it should be organized as one space with multiple pages OR multiple spaces.  Is there an advantage to either option?  We're thinking that one space may be easier to manage from a technical stand point.

Any suggestions or best practices?

Maggie Modersohn · Answer

Hi Talitha,

We're hosting a webinar showing how to set up a sound information architecture in Confluence on December 9th. You can read more about it here: http://bit.ly/11udV5U

Davin Studer · Answer

We think of spaces as a place to put content for our functional groups within our organization. A functional group for us is simply a group of people that have a shared interest within the org. For instance everyone is part of the functional group of being an employee. So, we have a common space that everyone can access. We also have function groups such as departments. So, many departments have their own spaces. There are also functional groups that relate to job function such as managers, or for us physicians.

Boots Wang1 · Answer

a workspace for each working group and you also need a workspace for each major project

Having a generic space that you may use for company wide updates in important, but otherwise a space per working group and major project will allow you to take advantage of Confluence notifications, permissioning, and some of the more detailed features (macros, for example).

Most intranets that I've worked on have a similar structure to this. Your organization will evolve over time, so "restructuring" your intranet will also be necessary. There's no one-size-fits all approach as activities and size will dictate how you setup Confluence. We take our clients through an interview process prior to designing their intranet. Feel free to reference it for ideas (under the "Interview Outline" section):

http://www.brikit.com/display/services/Information+Architecture+Package