Intranet: the digital platform that holds your organisation together

An intranet is the internal version of a corporate website: a platform that only employees can access and that brings together everything needed in daily work, news, documents, employee directory, training, processes, tools.

In recent years the bar has risen: away from the static "digital noticeboard" toward living platforms with collaboration, search and integration with existing systems. This modern variant is called social intranet, and is what most organisations mean today when they say "intranet solution".

Employee directory

Who is new? Who is the contact person for what? Profiles with photo, role, contact data, location and expertise, searchable and maintained. Ideally mirrored from the HR system.

newspaper

News & communication

Top-down news, department- and location-specific announcements, crisis communication. With read receipts for compliance topics, filters by interest and clear prioritisation.

Documents & knowledge

Handbooks, policies, training materials, process documentation, structured, searchable and versioned. No more hide-and-seek on file servers.

message-square

Collaboration & groups

Project rooms, topic groups, departmental discussions. Comments, likes, mentions. This is where the social-intranet character emerges.

Federated search

One search across all content: news, people, documents, wiki entries, tickets. We often deploy Algolia or Solr, with permission-aware indexing.

link

Integration with daily work

Single sign-on (SSO), connection to Microsoft 365, Slack, Confluence, HR systems. An intranet without integration becomes an island, and dies.

Classic intranet is primarily a communications channel: management to employees, HR to all, IT to users. Content is published and consumed.
Social intranet adds collaboration: employees create content, comment, discuss, share knowledge. Bottom-up meets top-down.
Digital workplace goes further still and integrates applications directly into the intranet, from leave requests to contract management.

In practice the boundaries are fluid. Most organisations start with a classic intranet and grow into a social intranet. The important thing is that the platform grows with them, and that is exactly what Drupal delivers.

Granular permissions & SSO

Who is allowed to see which content, by department, location, role, hierarchy? Drupal brings this natively. SSO via SAML, OIDC or LDAP is standard: single sign-on against Microsoft Entra ID, Keycloak or your own identity provider.

Multilingualism

A must-have for international organisations: content, menus, search results, all in the language of the employee, maintained centrally by corporate communications.

Content types & workflows

News, employee profiles, documents, events, training, tickets, each content type with its own fields, permissions and approval workflows.

Extensible & integrable

Drupal is API-first: REST, JSON:API, GraphQL. Anyone who wants to connect SAP, Workday, ServiceNow, Confluence or in-house systems has an open base in Drupal, not a closed suite.

Mid-market corporate intranet with 1,500 employees across 12 locations, multilingualism (DE/EN), location-specific news, employee directory integrated from SAP HR.
NGO employee portal with ~11,000 international users: training materials, donation campaign briefings, internal newsroom, connected to an existing DMS and Microsoft 365.
Industrial platform with configurators, process tools and intranet functions on a single Drupal base (example: d&b audiotechnik). The architecture from 2018 runs today on Drupal 11.
Publisher newsroom with editorial workflows, internal topic briefings and employee communication, the internal platform running alongside the public site.

Pitfall 1: the platform is built but not adopted. Solution: involve employees early, launch a pilot area quickly, iterate. No 18-month project behind closed doors.

Pitfall 2: content goes stale. Solution: define content ownership. Automated reminders to owners when content has not been updated for X months. Outdated content is a bigger risk than missing content.

Pitfall 3: search does not work. Solution: plan full-text search from day one, with permission-aware indexing and sensible boost strategies. A search that finds nothing kills adoption.

Pitfall 4: too many siloed tools. Solution: plan the intranet as a hub that integrates existing systems, not as their replacement. SSO, embedded apps, clear linking.

What does a Drupal intranet cost?

A lean intranet platform starts at around EUR 40,000. Corporate intranets with multilingualism, SSO, several content types and HR integration typically lie between EUR 80,000 and 200,000. Running costs (hosting, maintenance) are between EUR 1,500 and 4,000 per month.

How long does the rollout take?

From first workshop to pilot launch typically four to six months. Full rollout with training, integrations and content migration: six to twelve months. The rule of thumb: launch early and iterate rather than plan perfectly and start late.

What is the difference between intranet and social intranet?

Classic intranet is mostly top-down communication. Social intranet adds bottom-up functions: employees create content, comment, discuss and form groups. Modern intranet platforms combine both.

Can we replace SharePoint with a Drupal intranet?

Yes, but in many cases a combination is more sensible. Drupal excels at news, employee directories, knowledge bases and community functions. SharePoint often retains its strength in document management. We integrate both worlds via SSO and embedding.

How secure is a Drupal intranet?

Drupal has a dedicated security team and a clearly defined update process. With SSO, role-based permissions, encryption at-rest and in-transit, and audit logs, a Drupal intranet meets typical enterprise security requirements, including GDPR and ISO 27001.

What happens when employees leave?

Via SSO integration accounts are automatically deactivated as soon as they leave the HR system. Posts remain with anonymised authorship; personal data is deleted in compliance with GDPR.

Intranet: the digital platform that holds your organisation together

What a modern intranet must deliver

Why Drupal is a strong intranet base

Intranet projects from 14 years of arocom

Typical pitfalls of intranet projects, and how to avoid them

Common questions on intranet & social intranet