Internet and Intranet Developing an Intranet for a Small Unit Capt. Dan Stormont U.S. Air Force The Theater Air Command and Control Simulation Facility (TACCSF) is a fairly small unit that works closely with contractors to develop simulation software and scenarios. The small size of the unit and the inter- action with contractors prompted us to develop efficient ways to share data and documentation. This article discusses the approaches the TACCSF has taken to set up an Intranet using limited resources. It addresses the use of shared memory devices and the problems associated with that approach as well as the efforts undertaken to develop a browser-based (Intranet) paradigm. The lessons learned from these attempts are presented, as are our current efforts and future plans to develop the most cost-effective solution that will satisfy our needs. OW DO YOU SHARE information and one operated by Lockheed Mar- The Intranet also needs to limit in your office? Pin pages on a tin—that are used to share project in- access to sensitive information and be Hbulletin board? Send E-mail formation but must limit access to accessible to everyone who has a right out to everyone you think would be competition-sensitive or government- to the information contained in it. This interested? Attach a routing slip to only information. requires the use of password protection something and drop it in someone’s in- Another constraint is that Intranet and possibly secure HyperText Markup box, never to be seen again? Write im- site development and maintenance is Language (HTML) to protect the sensi- portant meetings on a centrally located only an additional duty for the people tive information. calendar? Although there is a need at working on it, and funding for equip- Finally, the Intranet needs to be easy times for formal routing of correspon- ment and software is usually based on to maintain. The best Intranet site in dence and face-to-face coordination of the amount of customer funds we re- the world is useless if it takes too long meetings, much of the information ceive in a year. We have a small unit to update or demands that all changes passed around in the typical office with part-time Intranet employees go through a single choke point. would best be disseminated by having it operating with limited funds. Does this readily available on everyone’s desktop sound like your organization? Using a Shared Memory computer. Recognizing these issues at Approach the TACCSF motivated us to develop Why an Intranet? When we first tried to share informa- an efficient, usable Intranet for our Why did we want to develop an tion at TACCSF, we used what I call a organization. This article discusses the Intranet? We wanted to make as much “shared memory” approach. This meant trials, tribulations, and lessons learned information as possible available to that people who wanted to share infor- from these efforts. people in the organization: information mation, i.e., a document or a briefing, such as conference room schedules, would place it in a shared memory area About TACCSF important dates for the organization on the local area network (LAN) server The TACCSF is an Air Combat Com- (Commander’s Calls, etc.), and project and advertise its availability to people mand-operated advanced distributed information (schedules, funding charts, who might want to view the data. simulation facility. We are physically test plans, etc.). Most people are famil- There are a number of shortcomings separated from our parent units: the iar and comfortable with using a Web with this approach. The biggest chal- 505th Command and Control Evalua- browser, so an Intranet seemed to be a lenge can be to find the desired data. It tion Group (CCEG) and the Air and natural medium to share information. does not take long for directories to Space Command and Control Agency. proliferate in the shared area, which The TACCSF team is uniquely Implementation Goals makes files extremely difficult to find composed of military members of De- What should an Intranet offer to be unless you know the exact file path. tachment 4, 505th CCEG, develop- useful to a small unit like TACCSF? Also, unless you have a file plan for ment contractors working for Lockheed Most important, it needs to be easy to your shared memory, you start to get Martin Corporation, and support con- use. “Ease of use” is a phrase that tends several variations in organization and tractors working for Scientific Research to be ill-defined and overused; I define labeling of directories and files. Corporation. The team works in the it as the ability to find the desired infor- The shared memory approach is also same building and must work closely mation (if it is available) with a mini- a burden on the LAN administrator on development projects for external mal number of page changes. To make who must determine appropriate per- customers interested in using our simu- an Intranet easy to use requires a great missions on a directory-by-directory or lation facility. We have two PC net- deal of design and planning to logically often a file-by-file basis. The LAN ad- works—one operated by Detachment 4 organize and present the available data. ministrator also has to juggle server June 1998 CROSSTALK The Journal of Defense Software Engineering 3 Internet and Intranet memory management since some users tures of the editor were somewhat lack- database connectivity, interactive forms, post more shared files than others. ing, and a lot of custom page adjust- and on-line scheduling of conference ments were required. rooms and test-bed resources. Other First Attempt Another problem with this imple- possibilities for growth are collaborative Difficulties with the shared memory mentation was the lack of user involve- design and reviews with off-site cus- approach led to our first Intranet at- ment and requirements input, which tomers and password-protected Internet tempt—the TACCSF Intranet Software meant that the system was never access to the Intranet. Engineering Environment (ISEE). The widely used. Our preference is to host future intent of ISEE was to share information The second attempt took about 40 versions of the Intranet on its own concerning TACCSF projects. The site hours to create and was also hosted on server that runs Windows NT Intranet was organized by project and would the Compaq server running Novell Information Server. contain information such as on-line NetWare. documentation, project management Selecting Tools data (schedules, financial reports), and Current Efforts The quality and affordability of briefings. We currently are experimenting with an Intranet tools has improved consider- The biggest challenge with ISEE Intranet implementation that will en- ably since we first started experiment- was the lack of good Web development compass the entire range of our daily ing with an Intranet site. The text- tools at the time. Most of the HTML operations and incorporate most of the oriented Web page editors in common pages for ISEE were developed by hand elements that were present in previous use then have been replaced by graphi- using HTML editors that require the attempts. This Intranet is intended to cal tools; network operating systems author to work directly with the be more than a mere copy of the Web now routinely bundle Intranet capabili- HTML source code and refer to an page or a source of project information. ties as part of the package, and highly HTML reference guide. This made One of the more important objec- capable browsers are freely available. page development tedious and time- tives of our current implementation is The current range and quality of consuming. to increase usage of the Intranet. To Web development tools is impressive. There were, however, some good accomplish this, it is essential to keep Most of the popular office suites have ideas that came from the ISEE experi- the data referenced in the Intranet the capability to save documents in ence. We discovered that the best way pages current and to make the system HTML format, and the appearance of to minimize page changes was to nest easy to use and update. Fortunately, these documents has improved greatly. lists of data from the most general to improvements in Web authoring tools Of course, to develop a comprehensive the most specific. (This may seem obvi- and network operating system support site and not just an HTML page requires ous, but there are many examples on for Intranets, along with increasing a Web development environment. There the Web where this principle is not comfort levels with the Web browsing are a large number of Web development followed.) The other good idea was paradigm, make this objective easier to tools available at a reasonable price, linking related data in documents. For accomplish. either stand-alone (Microsoft’s example, this allowed us to create a The organization of the current FrontPage) or as part of a browser pack- hyperlink requirements traceability and Intranet is being improved by designing age (Netscape’s Communicator). One verification matrix. the site map in advance (similar to tool that is worth consideration is One person created the ISEE in doing a file plan for paper records) and AOLPress, which is a free package avail- about 80 hours using a freeware assigning an “owner” for each of the able at http://www.aolpress.com. There HTML editor. It was hosted on our sections of the Intranet site. is also a free server package that comple- LAN server, which, at the time, was a The latest Intranet sites were ments AOLPress. There are better tools Compaq Proliant 1000 running Novell authored by one person at a time, with available; however, until you have more NetWare 3.1.2.