Planning for Web Portals
»
»
»
»
»
»
»
»
»
»

 

Web Portals : corporate portal deployment

 



Time to execute your communication and promotion plan. Hang posters, send enterprise emails, run an update in your company newsletter or closed-ciruit TV system. Get the message out and make it clear "When you login Monday, your new corporate portal will be available". Why MONDAY? Because with any corporate portal, intranet redesign or website deployment, if you publish it on Friday, then you have all weekend to test the pages, functionality and hardware/network configuration.

Tips on Corporate Web Portal Deployment:

  1. Create a launch plan. This should be in sequential order of the events that need to take place, the date and person responsible of making it happen. Microsoft Project works very well for these type of plans.

  2. Create a testing plan. This includes who will test which areas of the corporate portal, intranet or website. Have them verify the testing by signing, dating and documenting any issues they encounter. Some may need fixed right of way, others can be logged and tended to later. This may having your DBA migrate databases and handle any application server configurations.


  3. Freeze the existing intranet to incorporate any page updates into your new corporate portal, intranet redesign or website.

  4. Team with your network administrators and project team to be sure all loose ends are tied up.

  5. Inform your project team and any others of when the new corporate portal, intranet or website is available for testing.

  6. Collect all testing documentation and get sign-off from the network administrators that the hardware/software is responding correctly. Make needed changes. Worst case scenario, initiate a back-out plan if things get really bad. Inform the users that testing showed a need to postpone the launch and that you will keep them informed of the next planned launch date.

  7. It's a Go! If testing is complete with little to no issue, consider it live and celebrate your success. Celebrate by having the company provide simple things like donuts and bagels to the employees on Monday morning, or take your project team to lunch or drinks after hours. You did it!

  8. Monitor usage and user issue. Expect to be busy over the next several weeks tending to missed training items or bugs that were not discovered during testing. No matter how hard you try, things will be missed. Do your best to handle them in a priority first fashion. Also, be sure to have your web analytics and statistical reporting setup ahead of time to show traffic patterns and for future enhancements.