Intranet
An intranet is a private website, accessible only to the people of an organization, that centralizes internal information and gives access to work tools. The word originally meant an internal network built on web technologies. Today it mostly means the internal site itself, reachable from the office or on the move after signing in.
Definition and how it works
When it also gives access to tasks (requesting leave, opening an IT ticket), it works as a web portal reserved for employees. The article Intranet vs Extranet: What’s the differences covers the subject in depth.
Related terms: Self-service portal · Extranet · Web portal · GraphQL API · Site search
Resources that cover this term
Intranet vs digital workplace: the differences
The term names an audience, employees. The confusion concerns its scope and where its accounts come from.
| Term | What separates it from an intranet |
|---|---|
| Digital workplace | Broader: email, video calls, collaboration tools. The intranet can be its front door. |
| Extranet | Opened to authorized third parties who are not in the company directory, so the end of their access has to be organized. |
| Self-service portal | Built around completing a task. One intranet may hold several (HR, IT). |
Intranet in practice
An intranet’s failure pattern shows in a homepage full of corporate announcements, a site search that cannot find the right document and services reachable elsewhere, each with its own login. Start from the tasks employees perform most often.
Frequently asked questions
Can an intranet show personalized content based on someone’s profile?
Yes. Personalization is what makes it useful in an organization spread across countries or jobs. It does not replace access control, though. Hiding a document from a profile is not the same as denying access to it. Only the latter protects confidential information.
Should an intranet be reachable from outside the corporate network?
As soon as the organization has remote workers or frontline teams, yes. Access can then go over the internet with strong authentication, such as the company’s single sign-on, without a VPN. What defines it today is the authorized audience, not where the connection comes from.