INTRANET FOR CORPORATE JOB

Abstract

An Intranet is an organisation's use of WWW (World Wide Web) technology inside that organisation, to distribute information to employees through the organisation's network. An Intranet has the same look and feel as the WWW in that it combines text, graphics and multimedia into one interface. Recently, many Intranets have been constructed with the aim of integrating internal business applications by applying Internet technology and services for intelligent communication systems and putting management resources to practical use. The distinctive features of Intranets are their seamless connection between internal corporate network and external networks through the Internet etc., single GUI (Graphic User Interface) using a WWW browser, and capability for fast, low-cost installation and reduced maintenance cost. Intranets represent a step towards a paperless office replacing printed documentation with electronic data. Just as the invention of the telephone, copy machine and fax machine produced great strides in communication, the Intranet has brought a revolution in the field of communication within, an organisation. Corporations and businesses are implementing Intranets to combat the competitive pressure of everyday business. The business has now expanded to the global market and the firms that will survive are the ones that can communicate effectively and efficiently. With the rapid growth of technology, organisations need to be quick to respond to change in order to collaborate on ideas in a timely manner. Employees need to have access to company information as well as information on the competition. Being wired is no longer a luxury but rather a necessity to compete and succeed in today's market. By implementing an Intranet, employees can access wealth of knowledge that will allow them to generate new products and services more effectively. An Intranet is truly amazing vehicle for communication. It allows immediate distribution and access to information, and it does this with an easy-to-use GUI that requires minimal training. The Intranet is a very cost-effective means of communication. In the present dissertation an Intranet has been developed in the Microprocessor and Computer lab, Department of Electrical Engineering, University of in Roorkee. The backbone of the Intranet comprises of one Windows NT server and the LAN connecting it to two Windows 95 clients. The first phase of this dissertation involved installation of an Windows NT server on an HCL-HP infiniti (Pentium - 100 MHz) computer and two Windows 95 clients on two 80486 microprocessor based computers. The physical connection among the computers has been done by constructing a LAN. The topology adopted in the LAN is Bus topology. In phase II of the work, using these platforms, the communication between the computers (server and clients) has been facilitated by installing the Domino server software on the Windows NT server and the Lotus Notes client software on the Windows 95 clients. Once all the above is done, E-mail facility becomes ready to be used. Lotus Notes offers a powerful mailing facility. Since only two PCs could be used as the network clients in the lab virtual clients have been created by creating many (40) Notes Users. The clients are said to be virtual because in actual practice every user, in an Intranet, is allotted a separate PC. But in the present system the users share the client (PC) and it appears as if there are as many clients as the users. The need of virtual client has been explained in the next paragraph. Lotus Notes has application developmental tools like forms, views, agents, subforms etc. to realise various operations on the elements of a document of a database. The programming can be done through the use of Notes formula and/or Lotus script language and/or simple functions. The simple functions are nothing but predefined set of Notes formula. The third and last phase of the dissertation- work uses these tools to automate three workflow , namely, scheduling of meeting, conferencing and dissertation topic approval process. Notes formulae have been used extensively for programming. The workflow implemented involves many Notes users to have a feel of an Intranet of a big organisation employing many persons. This purpose have been successfully served by the virtual client system. iv