Blackwood Housing Association Case Study

Blackwood's intranet requirements included social functionality such as event booking, blogs, forums, and swap shop. Because they are distributed across a number of sites in cities around Scotland, Blackwood also required that the intranet should be accessible from outside of the offices and responsive for all mobile devices.

For users within the Blackwood network, the organisation wanted integration with Active Directory for single sign-on, and for the staff information held in Active Directory to populate a searchable staff directory in the intranet, including contact details, personal bios, and profile images.

VerseOne undertook on-site design workshops to arrive at Blackwood’s eventual intranet design, which incorporates a tiled homepage layout directing users to key features and information areas. The homepage also emphasises the social interaction aspects of the site, pulling through upcoming events, news, and blog posts from the chief executive.

Other functionality in the intranet site includes a forum for posting wanted items or items to sell; a “thank you” page where members of staff can post recognitions for their colleagues, and an interactive library of policies and procedures which also displays the document’s lifecycle status.

The VerseOne CMS enables Blackwood to maintain and develop their website and intranet site in a single CMS.

• The intranet project has been successful, and staff are collaborating.
• The content and documents are up to date providing a social intranet and a document repository.
• Design updates for both their website and intranet.