Authorized intranet users can search the database fields for, say, all employees who have public speaking experience and plan to be in Washington in June. Decisions, decisions The administrator determines who can view or change employee information. If users request changes to their own records, the requests go to an authorizer for approval. Small organizations that cannot afford their own intranet can lease one on a per-user basis. Such services, sometimes called virtual intranets or virtual offices, are secure areas on an Internet provider's Web site.
Users dial in, enter their passwords and work on the virtual site as if on a local intranet.
HotOffice from HotOffice Technologies Inc. was one of the first virtual intranets. It offers many services, but its strongest collaborative feature is document sharing. A user merely drags the document icon from the desktop to an icon that opens the publishing wizard. HotOffice documents are searchable by author, department or project. Another virtual intranet, Involv Team Intranet from Changepoint International Corp., has a group discussion application for navigating discussion threads and sharing file attachments.