What the intranet does not do
This isn't another Workvivo. Our new intranet is what many of us have been wanting for the past decade or more. After years of looking, sitting through demos, and talking to more platforms and salespeople than we can remember, we simply couldn't find the solution we needed, so we built it. It's fully ours and fully customizable as our needs change, while also being simpler and fully integrated across all the places where we do our work.
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Nothing moves
No account is changed and, other than Workvivo and Freshservice, no tool has been turned off. Everything you've ever created, sent, or worked on is exactly where it's always been, except now it's all here too. Every message, file, and task you see here is the real one, read live from wherever it already lives.
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It goes both ways
Tick a task here and it is ticked there. React here and your team sees the reaction where they already are. There is no copy to keep in step, and no "the site would be great if everyone just switched". If it's here, it's there; if it's there, it's here. The difference: it's all here, regardless of what the other "there" is.
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Nobody has to follow you
A colleague who never opens the intranet gets your replies, comments and updates exactly as before. Nothing on the message says where you sent it from. They don't have to come here to see what you are doing, and you don't have to go to where they are to see what they are doing. We can each work where and how we are most comfortable.
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You can walk away
Close the intranet tab and every message, file and task is still sitting in the app that holds it. There is nothing here that would be stranded, and no work lost if you go back to a single-purpose app for deep work. Use it for the parts of the day where it helps, and leave the rest exactly as it is.
Every one of these tools does its own job well
That is why the intranet uses them instead of replacing them. The intranet is the only platform that brings the best of all of our tools into a single place.
Scroll the table sideways to see every column.
| What you do, and what happens here | The Intranet | Asana | Google Tasks | Gmail | Slack | Google Chat | Google Workspace | Google Drive | Okta |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Projects and tasks The work you are accountable for. | |||||||||
| Your task list Every list you keep sorts into one day view with your meetings, ordered by when things are actually due, so what today needs is one screen instead of three. | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| Opening and changing a task A task opens where you clicked it. Move the date, tick a subtask, tag a colleague in a comment, and it is done in the project too. | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| Turning a message into a task The thing somebody just asked you for becomes a task without you retyping it, and it lands in the real list with the real due date. | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| Projects and status updates Each project you are on has a page here with its overview, its people and its tasks, and you can post a status update from it. | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| Setting up a project, a template or a team The intranet works inside the projects you already have. Starting one from your template library, and building the team that owns it, happens where projects are built. | Limited. While the intranet's assistant can create a project for you, building one yourself, whether from scratch or from a template, is not possible here yet. | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| Email What everybody outside still sends you. | |||||||||
| Reading your mail Your mailboxes run down the side of one list that also holds your chats, so the morning catch-up is one pass instead of three or four. | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | No | No | No | No |
| Writing and replying You write in the same box you use for every other message, drafts save themselves, and you can schedule one to go out later. | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | No | No | No | No |
| Threads and who is on them A thread reads oldest to newest if you prefer it that way, and the header names everybody who is actually on the message. Or, if you hate threads, see each message on its own in chronological order. Your choice. | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | No | No | No | No |
| Attachments and links Preview, open and read files right there with the message rather than in yet another tab. | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | No | No | No | No |
| Team communication The back and forth of a working day. | |||||||||
| Direct messages Direct messages and group chats are in the same inbox as your mail, most recent on top. You can answer an email, reply to a direct message or take part in a team discussion and never leave the screen. | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| Channels and spaces Every room you belong to is listed in one place, and the ones you care about become a feed you read top to bottom like a message board. See across every channel you care about at once, stay up to date without clicking a dozen places, and give each thread the space and attention it deserves. | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| Threads and reactions Replies open under the post you are reading, and a reaction you add here is the same one your colleagues see there, custom emoji included. | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| Files and video in a message Photos and documents open in place, and a video plays in the message rather than making you download it first. | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| Announcements everybody should see The latest one sits on your home page, and an announcement that has more than one translation shows in your own language, with the others one click away. | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Scheduled posts You can schedule a post to go out later in any channel, and it works for email and direct messages too. | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Carrying a conversation onto any page Your conversations can follow you onto whatever page you are on, whether it is a document you are drafting or a company website whose updates you are tracking. Answer from the chat bubble and it arrives wherever the other person is, inside the intranet or in another app. | Yes | Cannot | Cannot | Cannot | Cannot | Cannot | Cannot | Cannot | Cannot |
| Starting a huddle A Slack huddle started elsewhere can reach you in the intranet with a button to join it. Starting one, however, means using Slack. | Limited. We will let you know somebody is inviting you to a huddle, with a button to join. Starting one from here is not possible yet, because Slack does not allow it. We recommend Google Meet: you can start one in the intranet with a single click, and it sends the link to the person even when you are chatting in Slack. | No | No | No | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Calendars and meetings The parts of the day that are already booked. | |||||||||
| Today's meetings Your daily agenda docks to the side of whatever you are working on if you want it there, and the intranet tells you what is now and what is next. | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | Yes | No | No |
| Invitations and replies The ones you have not answered stand out, and answering here is the same as answering in the tool. | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | Yes | No | No |
| Joining a call The join button shows up a few minutes before a meeting starts, alongside any files or agenda attached to it. | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | Yes | No | No |
| Scheduling a meeting The real scheduler opens over the page in one click, with the guest list and the rooms exactly as you always fill them in, and closes back to what you were doing. | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | Yes | No | No |
| Starting a video call One button inside a conversation opens the call and posts the link into it, so everybody there joins without you pasting anything. It works from any of your chat conversations, with a single click. | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | Yes | No | No |
| Files and search Finding the thing, and reading it. | |||||||||
| Searching for something One search covers your files, your mail, your chats, your projects and your colleagues together. Ask it a question in your own words and the answer comes back above the results, with a link to where it came from. | Yes | Limited. Searches its own content, and none of the others. | No | Limited. Searches its own content, and none of the others. | Limited. Searches its own content, and none of the others. | Limited. Searches its own content, and none of the others. | Limited. Searches its own content, and none of the others. | Limited. Searches its own content, and none of the others. | No |
| Reading a document It opens on the page you were already on, with its headings down the side, and it reads in your language if you ask it to. | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | Yes | No |
| Comments on a document They show as margin notes beside the text, and one you write from here is a real comment the author gets notified about. | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | Yes | No |
| Turning a document into a page A document can become a page of the intranet that stays live, so the team reads the current version instead of a copy somebody pasted. | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | Yes | No |
| Starting a document, spreadsheet or presentation The intranet reads, publishes and comments on the files you already have. Opening a blank one and writing your own content happens in the app that makes it. | Limited. The Intranet Assistant can create a Google Doc for you, but today it can't create a Sheet or Slides file. Creating any of these from scratch still happens inside Google Workspace only. | No | No | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| Org chart and contacts Who everybody is, and how to reach them. | |||||||||
| The staff directory Search a name and you get the person: their photo, their team, their hours, and what they say they work on. | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | No |
| Who reports to whom An org chart you can move around and search, built from the directory itself, so it stays current with nobody maintaining it. | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | Yes | No | No |
| Reaching the right person Ask who runs a team or who knows about a subject the way you would ask a colleague, and the answer is somebody you can write to from the card. | Yes | Cannot | Cannot | Cannot | Cannot | Cannot | Cannot | Cannot | Cannot |
| Seeing the organization drawn out A chart you move around, zoom out of and search. Open anybody and it re-centers on them, with their whole reporting line above and their team below. | Yes | Cannot | Cannot | Cannot | Cannot | Cannot | Cannot | Cannot | Cannot |
| Other daily activities The rest of what a week is made of. | |||||||||
| Launching an application Every app you have access to is behind one button in the header, on every page, and search finds them by name alongside everything else. | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| Translating a document A document, a page or an announcement reads in your language where it sits, with its formatting and its links intact, and the original is one click away. | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| Requesting something from another team The form sits on that team's own page next to the answers to the questions people ask them most, and what you send lands in the list they actually work from. | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | Yes | No |
| Getting help writing or editing The writing help is in the box you are already typing in, it knows who you are writing to, and it writes the way you write rather than the way a robot does. Better still, you can train it on your own writing, so it sounds like you wherever you are writing. | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | Yes | No | No |
| Asking an assistant a question It can see the document, task or conversation you are looking at, so you can ask about this one rather than describing it first. It drafts, it reminds, and it asks before it does anything on your behalf. | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | Yes | No | No |
- Does this
- Does this, with a limit the row explains
- Does not do this
- Cannot do this, because the job reaches across all of them
The deep work stays put. A quarter gets planned where projects are planned and a document gets written where documents are written. What you stop doing is opening 4 apps to answer 1 question.
What it looks like on a Tuesday
No new habits. The same day, with the switching and the tab management taken away.
- First thing
- One list holds the mail and the messages that came in since the day before, in the order they arrived. You clear it once instead of three or four times.
- Your manager or direct report has a quick question
- You can let messages from a team member pop up on any screen you are on, even a site that has nothing to do with the intranet. In the middle of a conversation about a company and need to check their website? Take the conversation with you and keep chatting while you read their actual page, then close the chat bubble when you are done.
- Ten minutes before a call
- With an agenda that docks and follows you across the intranet, your next meeting is a click away all day. Or hide the agenda, and when it is time for the next one the join button turns up quietly at the foot of whatever page you are on.
- Create a task from anything
- Email? Slack? Google Chat? A webpage? Wherever you are, you can create a task in whichever project and system you use, right where you are.
- Two things at once
- The intranet can go beyond the limits of working inside one platform. You can carry on a Slack conversation with a co-worker while reading and answering an assigned comment in a Google Doc, or send an email without leaving your Asana project plan. No switching away, no losing your place, no getting distracted when something else catches your eye. Every tool you need on every screen, whatever the platform.
- On your way out
- You tick 3 things off. They are ticked in the tools they came from before you have shut the laptop.
The questions people actually ask
- Do I have to stop using the tools I have?
- No. Nothing gets turned off and nothing gets migrated. Use the intranet for the parts where it saves you a trip, and keep doing everything else exactly as you do it now.
- Will people be able to tell I replied from here?
- No. A reply you send is an ordinary message in the app it went to, with your name on it and nothing else. Even your emails get your Gmail signature.
- Is this one more thing to check?
- It is the thing that stops you needing to check the others. Everything that would have made you open a tab turns up here first, which is the entire idea.
- What happens to my existing work?
- It stays where it is. The intranet reads it live and writes back to it, so there is never a second version of your work sitting somewhere getting out of date.
- Does it work in my language?
- The whole site switches between English, Español, and Português, and an announcement written in one of them reads in yours. You can ask search a question in your own language too.
- What if I try it and I hate it?
- Then you close it and your day is the one you had last week. Nothing you did through the intranet was stored only here, so there is nothing to move back. Even an email draft you start in the intranet is on your phone and in Gmail the next time you open it.
Give it a week
Sign in once and let it sit open beside the tools you already have. If it makes your day, keep it. If it does not, tell us where it falls short and we will improve it. It is your intranet, and we all get a say in what it becomes.
Start using the Intranet