Building an intranet is not for the faint-hearted. Being internal resources, intranets tend to evolve rapidly and reflect the changing focus that a line-of-business has as it iterates towards gathering and presenting the data and intelligence it needs online to function.

The result of this evolution is that the IT guys are going to need antidepressants due to the extra workload. That is, unless they have a tool kit that can provide an easily edited and managed framework.

Such a framework is what Intranet Dashboard, published by the ADWEB Agency, is all about.

The Intranet Dashboard can actually be used to create intranets and extranets and provides centralized management facilities. You can control users and intranet applications across your site and provide different tools; and look and feel for different constituencies making it easy to tailor solutions for individual lines-of-business or departments.

The bundled applications include document management; meeting room booking; project workspace; forms management; digital assets library; company calendar; various search facilities including people and resources; employee training; a survey system; portal push & pull feature; layout manager; and localization.

Building an intranet with Intranet Dashboard is easy, using the browser-based tool you simply drag and drop the intranet site components onto a layout, arrange them as required, and publish when ready. Hierarchical administration is provided, allowing for editors with granular access to defined areas of the intranet content so that departmental administrators can make their own changes.

Intranet Dashboard requires Windows 2000 SP4+, 2003, or XP Pro with the .Net Framework 1.1 and optionally Microsoft Internet Information Server, MDAC 2.7, MS Word 2002 (XP) or 2003 (recommended) on the server as well as MSDE option (bundled with Intranet DASHBOARD) or full MS SQL Server 2000 (SP3a).

The company has an impressive client list and pricing for Intranet Dashboard starts at $ 3,746. A 30-day free trial is available and check out the product demos and tours.

Mark Gibbs is a consultant, author, journalist, columnist and blogger.