BizPace Enterprise: Build and manage multiple department intranets

Multi Department Intranet – this feature allows separate versions of the corporate portal to be launched for each division or department.  This functionality is particularly useful for companies with multiple office and branch locations which need to have a large degree of autonomy.  In essence, each branch has its own intranet that can have a separate structure and design.  Simultaneously, integration among the departments and with the main office is maintained

In an intranet with multiple departments, each department actually has its own ‘site’ which shares information with the main site, but operates mostly independently.  
Functionality that exists globally throughout all branches of the organization, includes:

•     Personal calendars, tasks, files, photographs and internal messages
  
•     All Employee sections in the main menu
  
•     CRM
  

Data and features that are independent to each branch:

•     Blogs (including microblogs), forums and the live feed
  
•     All Company sections in the main menu
  
•     Documents
  
•     All services
  
•     All workgroups
  
•     All Communication sections: Shared photos, Forum, Blog, Classifieds
  

Note that news feeds and other data can be shared among various departments via settings in the control panel.

For readers familiar with the multi-site function of Bitrix Site Manager, we’d like to note that the multi-department technology is precisely the same thing.  That is, for each department, a new site is created whose files are located in its own root folder and subfolders.
Multiple departments are included only in the new BizPace Enterprise edition of Bitrix Intranet.

The number of departments that can be created is not limited.
So, let’s get the point:  creating an intranet with multiple departments.

The three lower editions of the intranet allow a 90-day trial of BizPace Enterprise with the multiple departments feature (and the web cluster feature if desired).  So below I have BizPace installed right now, and using the Configuration Wizard, I’ll turn on the multiple departments feature.



I’ll stop only at the step in the wizard which concerns us, Step 8:



When the master is finished, a new button appears in the top administrative console:



We use this button to create a new department intranet.  In essence, it launches the configuration wizard again, only in the 9th step, we will indicate for which department the new portal will be created:



After the wizard is finished, the new intranet opens:



To navigate between portals, you can use one of the following methods:





Users can visit the company intranet, the intranet of their department, and, depending on the settings (the Make Portal Unavailable to Department Outsiders box), the intranets of other departments.
Demo-data in the department portal can be removed using the demo-data removal wizard.