Role of Flash on a Corporate Intranet

[IntranetSheriff]

Hello,
I am the business manager for a large corporate intranet. We have a distributive model (as opposed to centralized) with over 120 sites and 900 administrators.

Considering the challenges of this model, we have a very structured environment with standard templates, style sheets, etc. We utilize Vignette CMS and it has certainly helped with this. In my opinion, we've done a tremendous job maintaining our brand and site standards without overly playing Sheriff in this somewhat Wild West environment.

For five years, we have held off introducing Flash into the environment out of fear that it could damage our brand standards and the professionalism of our site when taken up by amateur designers with little Flash training. We're equally concerned that some of our more sophisticated administrators with programming skills might start creating full-blown applications that are merely hosted by our content management system.

As someone who took advanced Flash programming courses during the Flash 5 days, I have a healthy respect for the application and think it is a tremendous tool when used by the right person to achieve the right business goals.

Currently we have a business need to rotate banners on some of our sites, not necessarily because of the animation "wow" factor but due to limited space. This is obviously a very simple application of Flash but it does it well.

But by opening that door on our enterprise homepage, the "barbarians" are now "at the gates" and are demanding that they be given permission to use Flash on their own sites.

I am looking for any guidance or past experience from people who have managed a similar environment and have successfully integrated Flash. Specifically, I'm interested in any advice on:
• Providing Flash support
• Maintaining brand standards and "professionalism"
• Ongoing Maintenance (especially when people change roles and someone inherits a site who has no Flash knowledge)
• Proper use of Flash in an intranet environment
• ADA Compliance
• Training

As I said, I have a healthy respect for Flash, but also a healthy fear of what might ensue. Hopefully these fears are unfounded and we can successfully integrate Flash.

[skinnydan]

The keys to this are rules, rules, rules. Clearly you can't keep the Flash centralized when the rest of your organization is decentralized. They won't stand for it, and you probably don't have the resources to manage it anyway.

Here's one approach to take:

• Simple animations can be allowed sitewide - limits should be set on what counts as "simple", but they can do what they like
• Applications and complicated pieces must go through an approval process at the "corporate" level - no exceptions. This keeps the overenthusiastic from hogging bandwidth, creating problems, etc.
• Establish who's doing the work, and make that clear to the less technically savvy. You don't want people coming to you to build stuff you know nothing about and want nothing to do with. If someone builds cool functionality, it has to be their job to maintain it (not that you can't "liberate" really cool tools and apply them in other places if it's appropriate)
• In that vein, I'd suggest part of the project planning include a maintenance section - i.e., what happens if your brilliant flash programmer leaves? Who's going to maintain the site/piece/application? I'd include a requirement for thorough documentation for the flash piece, and that your dept get a copy so someone keeps track of what's been done.

I'm sure there's other things to think about, but this is what occurs to me now.

I think you can easily defend the decision to start with the Flash at the corporate level - it's a controlled experiment to understand the implications of adding the functionality to your site. If you get your rules in place before you open the gates to the Ravenous Ostrogoths, explain them clearly, and insist on compliance. As long as the rules are in place before you start, and apply equally to everyone, they can grumble all they want.

[Usography]

With the onslaught of new media authoring tools, simply refusing to permit a given content type because it may be used in an unprofessional manner is likely to lead to the type of skunkworks that were rampant before the advent of employee portals.

Instead, content governance should include an approval process for any media type that cannot be easily maintained by generally available IT resources. Whether it is Flash or video or social networking, the approval process should include a justification based on user needs and business requirements, as well as a lifecycle plan that addresses maintenance.

The business owner who wants to produce the media and upload it should receive a set of brand guidelines or style guide, a list of potential pitfalls for the specific media selected, and advice for selecting the development platform that is best suited to the objectives.

Kind regards,
Usography