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I’m on the move and still able to use BT’s intranet

By markmorrell

Here’s another example the Intranet Benchmarking Forum identifed as best practice when benchmarking BT’s intranet.  You can find the first and second examples of best practice here.

IBF say “BT’s intranet is designed to support mobile workers so it is fully accessible from mobile devices.  Mobile users use a text-based interface.”

People in BT can use a variety of mobile devices – Blackberrys, iPhones, mobiles with media capability – on our intranet to:

  • Access all content needed for their work
  • Some applications like Directory can be used with more applications being enabled
  • Listen to podcasts
  • Collaborate on our corporate wiki
  • Post on your blog.

This helps improve productivity while people are travelling or just in a different workplace for a while.  It cuts down on that ‘dead time’ while on a train for example.  It also encourages a culture of working remotely from your main place of work when needed.

Here are some examples of best practice showing what the content and applications look like with full and PDA – text only - versions for you to compare.

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This entry was posted on June 24, 2009 at 10:59 am and is filed under application, benchmark, benefit, best practice, homepage, intranet, standards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “I’m on the move and still able to use BT’s intranet”

  1. Alex Manchester Says:
    June 25, 2009 at 6:54 am | Reply

    Hi Mark,

    Was the intranet designed to be read like this (text based) on mobile devices, or is it simply a preference/cookie if you’re using one?

    • markmorrell Says:
      June 25, 2009 at 8:35 am | Reply

      Hi Alex,

      It wasn’t either of these.

      We designed the CMS templates to avoid being “PDA hostile”. In some cases we provided a second template to do a “clean” version of the page. This didn’t require any extra effort for the publishers. It is built into the template.

      We don’t ‘browser sniff’ or set cookies and we don’t ask people to write extra pages for PDAs (though we do force accessibility rules and that has the lovely by-product of ensuring the content is PDA friendly).

      Mark

  2. Alex Manchester Says:
    June 29, 2009 at 5:21 am | Reply

    Ok thanks, Mark, useful to know.

  3. I now receive only the information I need « Mark Morrell Says:
    June 30, 2009 at 2:51 pm | Reply

    [...] Mark Morrell An insight into how intranets are managed « I’m on the move and still able to use BT’s intranet [...]

  4. BT today – BT’s great intranet news site « Mark Morrell Says:
    November 5, 2009 at 3:03 pm | Reply

    [...] PDA version available for mobile users [...]

  5. BT Directory – connecting people easily « Mark Morrell Says:
    November 11, 2009 at 3:18 pm | Reply

    [...] Mobile users can also use a cut down version of Directory to find people’s contact details (slide 8).  The results shown are the key contact details you will need (slide 9). [...]

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