An intranet is the generic term for a collection of private computer networks within an organisation. The purpose behind an intranet is to facilitate communication between people or workgroups to improve the data sharing capability and overall knowledge base of an organisation's employees.

There are many features that can be delivered through an intranet which are no different to any sophisticated website.

The main difference between a public website and an intranet is that the content and functions of an intranet are not available to the general public, only to the employees or members of a site. This means that users need to be registered, active, and logged in.

Taking advantage user roles and permissioning functionality, site admins can deliver very granular control to content. For example, specific groups of users (such as a department) can only see a certain piece of content or a folder of documents. Additional levels of access can be extended beyond view-only to include add and edit permissions, publish and unpublish permissioning, workflow permissions, and deletion permissions.

A business or member association may use an intranet to share and / or control access to content such as:

• staff personnel lists
• department content such as pages
• document access
• customer information
• management level reports
• payroll or HR data
• events and calendars
• news bulletins and billboards
• targeted ads