Internal information

General principles

The EMBL intranet is created on the principle that information must be easy to find, easy to access and easy to use. The site is a ‘one-stop shop’ for staff for all relevant information.

The basic principles of the intranet are:

• Navigation based on categories
• Three ways to find information
  • Categories
  • Improved search
  • Department pages
• One intranet for all sites
• All content published in one location
• Runs on the EMBL WordPress microsite platform
• Devolved publishing by content owners
• Uses the Visual Framework for improved
  • Accessibility
  • Design and user experience
  • Integration with the One EMBL identity
  • Faster feature development

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How to get started

As of Summer 2021, if you are one of the main content owners of the intranet, you have probably already been in contact with the communications team and participated in one of the training sessions. If not, please get in touch with us. Below are the steps to follow to start migrating your intranet content.

• Create your intranet account by logging in to the site.
• Take a look at your current intranet content and decide:
  • What is the external information, is it already on embl.org? Information will not be duplicated. If the information is already elsewhere (on the intranet or on the external website) make sure you do not duplicate it. If it needs to be accessed on the intranet, just add a link.
  • Discard what is not necessary.
  • Decide on the structure – where possible, include several pages of information on one page by using relevant blocks like Details or Tabs.
  • Make sure the information you want to include is relevant to staff and up to date.
• Start the migration process.

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Page templates and blocks

The content of the new intranet will be organised into two types of pages: department pages and content pages. The digital team has created some templates to get you started.

• Department pages are overview pages to guide a user to learn about the department, its members and the different tasks performed by each group.
• Content pages explain tasks in detail.

Make sure to coordinate with your team (in case several people from your department are working on the migration), who will be in charge of the department page.

Useful blocks

As you might have learned from the training sessions, the new intranet uses several components, which apart from making it much nicer, helps you to organise information, make it attractive to the users and reduce significantly the amount of pages needed for one piece of information.

Open the blocks library

You can find a repository of all available components on the block library, but two of the most important for the intranet project:

Example: IT Services

Example: Information about leave

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Adding media files

• Please only upload images that meet our standards (visually appealing, relevant, correct with respect to GDPR and legal aspects).
• Please upload files only with meaningful titles. Avoid naming images and documents with generic names, such as “image 1” or “untitled 1”, etc. In the case of documents, consider adding the date of the document version.
• Make sure that documents and images are tagged appropriately, this will make it easier for you to find them if you need them for other pages. The suggested way is to use keywords in the “Description” field.
• Do not add images or documents that are not included in the pages and remove all unused media.
• If you want to use an image in the library that has been uploaded by someone else, please check with the owner if you are also allowed to use it.

Read more about Media library here

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Documents repository

The repository holds the digital copies of internal EMBL documents, reports, brochures and various other publications. It is a powerful tool for staff to find information, and for content owners a useful feature to manage different versions of documents.

General guidelines

To add a document to the repository, you must first add it to the site’s Media Library. If you do not add it to the repository, you can still link the document to your page, but it will not be searchable in the documents repository.

Each document you add to the media library has its own link. In the content, link to the document’s page, do not directly link to the file.

The documents in the repository have their own URL which will not change after updating the file.

To update a document you need to:

1. Upload a new file to the Media Library.
2. Select the new file on the document editor page and click the “Update” button.
3. Please do not change the document’s title.