Being a system admin can be a daunting prospect.

Especially if you don't consider yourself 'techy'. Content tags, permission groups, registration data, user groups, terms and conditions... from the outside it can be a swirling vortex of unknown terms.

But it really doesn't need to be: with a bit of prior planning, setup can be a smooth process and something that you won't need to revisit. A well structured and well thought out intranet will reap the rewards months down the line, so it's worth getting right.

Here we've made a quick guide for a hassle-free setup. We've focused on three parts of the system that really require you to get right first time – time spent getting things in order now will make things easy further down the line.

Configure your permissions groups

A good place to start is Permissions Groups – get these in order and you can start delegating some of the other setup jobs like content production and structure.

Permission Groups allow you to give certain users extra privileges, like creating blog posts and editing Knowledge items, so you can get your content team to work without giving them free rein on the system. You can create an unlimited number of groups – giving you the flexibility to create permission levels that match the complexity of your organisation.

There's a review of this process in our Permissions launch post and there's also an in-depth tutorial: The January Deep Dive.

Once you get this sorted, you're ready to begin thinking about getting your content in order.

Structure your content

Getting a coherent structure mapped out is imperative to get right in the initial stages. This means getting your categories and subcategories set up in such as a way that users will be able to navigate their way to the relevant information, whilst also allowing yourself a little breathing room to create future categories and content.

Trying to change this process once it is in place can become time-consuming for you and confusing for users who have become familiar with the current content structure.

We've written a useful guide to structuring and managing content that focuses on viewing, structuring, managing and maintaining – it's worth a read if you're not au fait with this process.

We also preach against keeping content in PDFs; this goes against the way organisations traditionally look at ordering their content, but it makes content so much more accessible for users. We make the case for this in another post about making internal content great.

You can start setting your categories up in the category management section of Twine. You'll find detailed tutorials of this in our support library.

Get your user data in order

Okay, so this isn't the most interesting of jobs – but sometimes they are the most important, and that's exciting, right?

Making sure that you are collecting the right information on registration and displaying relevant on user profiles is vital to success. Again, this is something that is difficult to reverse once you've rolled out, so it's essential that you think it through.

Do you want users to enter any extra information on signup? Maybe a small bio, or a perhaps a telephone number of their next of kin (only visible to admins). This is the time to think through these requirements. It will inevitably involve speaking to other stakeholders to see what is really needed here, so make sure you give yourself a bit of time to execute this one.

Again, putting the time and effort in to get this right will save you a lot of headaches further down the line.

Get it right first time

You'll notice that there's a common thread to all of the above: get it right now and you'll reap the rewards in the future.

The nice thing about Twine is how easy it is to get up and running – with a little bit of configuring you can have a platform that is customised to you. However, it's really important to get these tweaks right first time; take the time to consult other stakeholders, plan for the future and consult with our team or the support library if something has you stumped.

Happy setup.

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And if you missed the first two articles in this series, have a look at:  Part 1: Crafting a content library & Part 2: Keeping people coming back

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