What should an internal employee portal be used for?
Efficiency question :
An internal portal should, among other things, centralize access to information while precisely controlling the rights granted to employees. Each user or group of users can have specific permissions based on their role and responsibilities.
A good practice is to apply the principle of least privilege: every employee should have access to all the data required for their work, but only to the data they actually need.
It is also important to prevent access granted temporarily for a specific need from becoming permanent by default. Permissions should therefore be reviewed periodically and adjusted when a user’s responsibilities change.
Key considerations:
It is often useful to separate current data from historical data. This distinction makes information easier to manage and can become especially important when integrating Copilot and agents that need access to certain data sources.
A clear structure makes it easier to determine which information should remain readily accessible, which should be archived, and especially which data can be used by different users, applications, or agents.
Challenges:
Cloud-data synchronization can become a challenge when file volumes grow large. Environments using OneDrive, for example, can encounter synchronization issues when very large quantities of data need to be stored or synchronized locally.
The portal structure should therefore consider not only access rights but also data volume, how the data is used, and how it should be synchronized or archived.
Technology:
Several technologies can be used to structure and store the data in an internal portal. The choice should consider the nature of the information, security requirements, and the rules that apply to the organization.
When sensitive data is involved, it is important to verify the legal, regulatory, or contractual requirements that apply to its hosting and location. Some Canadian organizations may be subject to specific requirements concerning where certain categories of data must be stored. These requirements should be verified based on the sector and the nature of the data.
Developer's advice:
Designate one person as responsible for data structure and quality. This person can, for example, control the movement of information between current-data and historical-data repositories and ensure that the established structure remains consistent.
Rather than allowing many users to freely change the organization of the data, a clearly identified person can act as the custodian of the structure, data quality, and the rules governing data management.