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An intranet server is, in principle, just a web server but only open for access from inside the local office network. The purpose of a regular web server is to provide a public presentation and interface to your business; in contrast, an intranet server has the purpose of providing structure and convenience to the inner workings of the shop.
Internal documents are essential to any business: instruction manuals, data sheets for components or machinery, procedures, contact lists, solved problems that you would rather not have to solve a second time.
How often are these internal documents available easily and quickly? More often they are left around, disorganised, sitting in peoples cupboards or desk drawers. Getting them into electronic format is a first step but real organisation requires getting them onto an internal document server with an index, a table of contents and access from every desktop machine in the organisation. If necessary you can password protect some sections and you can decide who has access to update the documentation.
You can use Linux as an answering machine. Make a list of messages available on a website available to everyone within the office. Here is an outline of my implementation of a Linux answering machine.
Another simple but useful invention is the "Wiki" which is a bit like a giant, cross-indexed whiteboard space where everyone play at the same time. One amazing example of a wiki is wikipedia the free encyclopedia, which is being written and edited by many authors simultaneously right round the world. Although wikipedia is probably operating at a more ambitious scale than anything your average business would require, the principle works well for smaller groups of people who want to rapidly share ideas, collaboratively edit documents and maximise their teamwork through good communication.
Various implementations of the wiki exist, many of them available as free software. Custom modifications can provide your wiki workspace with special features to support your individual requirements.
FIXME: put list of implementations here
Most calculations require only a simple formula or algorithm and you can knock up a spreadsheet to do the job, or just do it on a calculator. However, in any trade there will be some formulae that you keep coming back to, again and again. You don't always want to look them up and there are too many to remember them all (besides, you have enough to remember as it is).
Why not make a bunch of applets on your intranet server? You can organise them to make it easy to find what you want and anyone inside your office will have easy access whenever they need to figure something out. No more excuses for incorrect results!
One example of this is the loan calculation tools provided by most banks to their customers.
Education is important, but making time for a formal course is difficult. Increasingly, it isn't good value to be sitting at the back of a lecture hall while someone reads to you from a textbook. The modern answer is online education, which is a way of organising course materials in an interactive system so that students can learn for themselves at their own pace. One example of such a system is Moodle which provides a course management system including a calendar, activities list, lessons, exercises, resources, assignments and online chat.
For some businesses, an online education website will be their main product and will be available (with suitable password) from anywhere on the Internet. However, a scaled down version can also be useful as an in-house tool for educating new employees about business procedures. For example, the IT department can create a self-education system that contains online documentation for commonly used business software together with frequently asked questions and similar materials. This becomes a way for ordinary users to familiarise themselves with the tools they have available and the online chat can be used as a place to ask questions. Such a system reduces the need for user support and keeps the business running smoothly, even under the stress of staff turnover.