The AI Intranet Difference

Think you know a lot about intranets? You may be familiar with intranets from the past, but the intranet of today us powered by AI, and it’s ready to change the way you work.
Table of Contents

Intranets haven’t gotten the best reputation over the past couple of years. To be fair, the intranets couldn’t help it; they were limited by the tech of the time.

To call intranets in the past “complicated” would be an understatement. Many were highly customized code-based tools that you’d need to be properly trained to use. Unfortunately, basic tech paired with not-so-basic usage skills created a lot of issues.  Overall, intranets ended up being more of a hindrance than a help, and people began to walk away from them in droves.

Luckily for us, that’s all in the past. The intranet of the now, an AI intranet that can learn and grow with you, is something entirely different. You thought you knew what intranets could do for you, but you need a refresher on what an AI-powered intranet can do for you and your company.

Truly discoverable knowledge

Do you want to experience what it’s like to find a needle in a haystack without exposing yourself to potential pinpricks and allergens? Find an old company intranet, then see how long it takes to find their most recent company mission statement. That seems simple enough, but that tends to open up a Pandora’s Box of search results.

Man searching through haystack and finds another man by surprise
You never know what you may find!

Be prepared to wade through the old iterations of your company’s mission statement. You may think you found the right one, but you realize it’s only incomplete musings from the CEO. And it’s also from 2012.

Searching for answers shouldn’t be a slog or generate more questions. That’s why an AI intranet with enterprise search can be a game-changer for companies. Semantic search paired with natural language learning makes searching for information simple. You don’t have to worry about missing keywords or going through pages of results; you’ll be able to find the right knowledge when you need it.

Simplified knowledge creation

Let’s take a trip down memory lane and think about typical intranet content from the past. Most intranets would include:

  • Documents that seem to have endless pages to scroll through
  • Incomplete entries managers promise they’ll fill out when they have the time (that promise has been going on for 2 years)
  • The one document you need, but you’ll never find because there’s a typo in the title

Not exactly the best experience for knowledge seekers, is it?

!Guru_Assist1

An AI-powered intranet can help handle the heavy lifting of content creation. We make it easy to add documents, files, charts, images, and other content to Guru Cards with the click of a button. We even make it easier for people to bring out their inner author when they create knowledge to share with Guru.

We created Assist to handle the heavy lifting of writing and editing. You don’t have to upload that 20-page doc as-is anymore; just use our summarize feature to condense it. Our editor feature can help reduce jargon and can even change the tone if you want to sound a little more professional or a little less serious.

Effortless Maintenance

Maintaining an old intranet was…a lot. Users would add content to their intranets without giving much thought to duplicate content. Updating content was almost unheard of, so it was easy for helpful content to become irrelevant as time went on.

Guru’s verification feature helps to ensure that people have access to the most up-to-date information possible, and our ability to automatically achieve old unverified content can keep your knowledge fresh.  Duplicate detection can also do a lot to help save people time. Our intelligent duplicate detection system can easily flag content and remove it so you don’t have to.

There’s also something to be said about the role security and permissions played (or, more accurately, didn’t play) in older intranet systems. Assigning user roles and permissions could be complicated and nearly require a developer to set up. Now, true governance is possible with an AI-powered intranet. Guru has admin-only controls, simplified permissions, and world-class security measures to keep your most important company knowledge safe.

Intranets that work where you do

In-the-moment knowledge can change the way you think about productivity at work. Most people have to switch between apps to find important information, and that context switching can really slow you down. There’s nothing worse than being taken out of your work groove, and it’s pretty easy to do that when you have to take 5 minutes to hunt down a certain document or shoulder-tap someone when you have a question.

We just went over how difficult searching for knowledge in old intranets can be. Now, imagine having to stop everything you’re doing just to access the intranet. New browser windows, complicated login processes, and server errors can really put a damper on productivity. That’s why our intranet is designed to work exactly where you do.

Did you know that Guru already integrates with your favorite workplace apps? You can pull information from countless sources and have Guru directly in messaging apps like Teams and Slack. If you want to take things to the next level, use our Knowledge Triggers to show people specific information when they visit a particular webpage.  

A customized experience

Close your eyes and envision an intranet homepage. What do you see? For most people, it’s not a very pretty sight. There might be one “recently added” section showing you a list of links to docs that aren’t relevant to your role. Maybe there’s a little bell showing you the 99+ notifications you have. It’s too bad you’ve ignored those alerts for years because you don’t need to be told that someone on a different team added more intranet content.

Guru Info-Overload1

Now, imagine a homepage that can tell you everything you need to know to do your best work. Something that shows you relevant and new information because it knows what you like. A tool that shows you critical team and company-wide announcements instead of pointless notifications. That used to be unheard of, but it isn’t when you have Guru as your intranet.

Our smart intranet learns and grows along with each individual user so it can make intelligent content recommendations based on what users read and search for. Talk about creating a culture that’s based on continuous learning!

A social experience

Intranets are supposed to connect you to your company’s most important information. If that’s the case, why does using one feel like such an isolating experience?

Classic intranets are good places to get company knowledge, but they weren’t exactly set up for users to learn about their companies. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but any tool that can give people more insight into company structures and roles is a pretty powerful one to have. And that’s especially true in a world where more people are working remotely and asynchronously. We want to give people all the knowledge they need to do their best work, including information about their coworkers and organization. That’s why we added our HRIS sync so everyone can easily see org charts and user profiles so they can make new connections. It also makes it easy to find verifiers and see who can help answer pressing questions.

!Guru_Collaboration3

The Guru AI Intranet Difference

Intranets have come a long way from their basic origins. The power of AI has made it easier to do more with intranets than ever before, and we want your workplace to experience that intranet magic with Guru.

Want to take a deeper dive into Guru? We know just where you need to get started.

Intranets haven’t gotten the best reputation over the past couple of years. To be fair, the intranets couldn’t help it; they were limited by the tech of the time.

To call intranets in the past “complicated” would be an understatement. Many were highly customized code-based tools that you’d need to be properly trained to use. Unfortunately, basic tech paired with not-so-basic usage skills created a lot of issues.  Overall, intranets ended up being more of a hindrance than a help, and people began to walk away from them in droves.

Luckily for us, that’s all in the past. The intranet of the now, an AI intranet that can learn and grow with you, is something entirely different. You thought you knew what intranets could do for you, but you need a refresher on what an AI-powered intranet can do for you and your company.

Truly discoverable knowledge

Do you want to experience what it’s like to find a needle in a haystack without exposing yourself to potential pinpricks and allergens? Find an old company intranet, then see how long it takes to find their most recent company mission statement. That seems simple enough, but that tends to open up a Pandora’s Box of search results.

Man searching through haystack and finds another man by surprise
You never know what you may find!

Be prepared to wade through the old iterations of your company’s mission statement. You may think you found the right one, but you realize it’s only incomplete musings from the CEO. And it’s also from 2012.

Searching for answers shouldn’t be a slog or generate more questions. That’s why an AI intranet with enterprise search can be a game-changer for companies. Semantic search paired with natural language learning makes searching for information simple. You don’t have to worry about missing keywords or going through pages of results; you’ll be able to find the right knowledge when you need it.

Simplified knowledge creation

Let’s take a trip down memory lane and think about typical intranet content from the past. Most intranets would include:

  • Documents that seem to have endless pages to scroll through
  • Incomplete entries managers promise they’ll fill out when they have the time (that promise has been going on for 2 years)
  • The one document you need, but you’ll never find because there’s a typo in the title

Not exactly the best experience for knowledge seekers, is it?

!Guru_Assist1

An AI-powered intranet can help handle the heavy lifting of content creation. We make it easy to add documents, files, charts, images, and other content to Guru Cards with the click of a button. We even make it easier for people to bring out their inner author when they create knowledge to share with Guru.

We created Assist to handle the heavy lifting of writing and editing. You don’t have to upload that 20-page doc as-is anymore; just use our summarize feature to condense it. Our editor feature can help reduce jargon and can even change the tone if you want to sound a little more professional or a little less serious.

Effortless Maintenance

Maintaining an old intranet was…a lot. Users would add content to their intranets without giving much thought to duplicate content. Updating content was almost unheard of, so it was easy for helpful content to become irrelevant as time went on.

Guru’s verification feature helps to ensure that people have access to the most up-to-date information possible, and our ability to automatically achieve old unverified content can keep your knowledge fresh.  Duplicate detection can also do a lot to help save people time. Our intelligent duplicate detection system can easily flag content and remove it so you don’t have to.

There’s also something to be said about the role security and permissions played (or, more accurately, didn’t play) in older intranet systems. Assigning user roles and permissions could be complicated and nearly require a developer to set up. Now, true governance is possible with an AI-powered intranet. Guru has admin-only controls, simplified permissions, and world-class security measures to keep your most important company knowledge safe.

Intranets that work where you do

In-the-moment knowledge can change the way you think about productivity at work. Most people have to switch between apps to find important information, and that context switching can really slow you down. There’s nothing worse than being taken out of your work groove, and it’s pretty easy to do that when you have to take 5 minutes to hunt down a certain document or shoulder-tap someone when you have a question.

We just went over how difficult searching for knowledge in old intranets can be. Now, imagine having to stop everything you’re doing just to access the intranet. New browser windows, complicated login processes, and server errors can really put a damper on productivity. That’s why our intranet is designed to work exactly where you do.

Did you know that Guru already integrates with your favorite workplace apps? You can pull information from countless sources and have Guru directly in messaging apps like Teams and Slack. If you want to take things to the next level, use our Knowledge Triggers to show people specific information when they visit a particular webpage.  

A customized experience

Close your eyes and envision an intranet homepage. What do you see? For most people, it’s not a very pretty sight. There might be one “recently added” section showing you a list of links to docs that aren’t relevant to your role. Maybe there’s a little bell showing you the 99+ notifications you have. It’s too bad you’ve ignored those alerts for years because you don’t need to be told that someone on a different team added more intranet content.

Guru Info-Overload1

Now, imagine a homepage that can tell you everything you need to know to do your best work. Something that shows you relevant and new information because it knows what you like. A tool that shows you critical team and company-wide announcements instead of pointless notifications. That used to be unheard of, but it isn’t when you have Guru as your intranet.

Our smart intranet learns and grows along with each individual user so it can make intelligent content recommendations based on what users read and search for. Talk about creating a culture that’s based on continuous learning!

A social experience

Intranets are supposed to connect you to your company’s most important information. If that’s the case, why does using one feel like such an isolating experience?

Classic intranets are good places to get company knowledge, but they weren’t exactly set up for users to learn about their companies. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but any tool that can give people more insight into company structures and roles is a pretty powerful one to have. And that’s especially true in a world where more people are working remotely and asynchronously. We want to give people all the knowledge they need to do their best work, including information about their coworkers and organization. That’s why we added our HRIS sync so everyone can easily see org charts and user profiles so they can make new connections. It also makes it easy to find verifiers and see who can help answer pressing questions.

!Guru_Collaboration3

The Guru AI Intranet Difference

Intranets have come a long way from their basic origins. The power of AI has made it easier to do more with intranets than ever before, and we want your workplace to experience that intranet magic with Guru.

Want to take a deeper dive into Guru? We know just where you need to get started.

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