Article 1 of Series: Haiilo Information Architecture
- Article 1: "Understanding the structure of Haiilo" (You are here)
- Article 2: "Principles for structuring your intranet"
- Article 3: "Ensuring content relevancy and access"
Haiilo's intranet is made up of a set of building blocks that fit together to form your platform's structure. Before you start making decisions about where content should live or how to organize things, it helps to understand what those building blocks are and how they relate to each other.
This article walks you through each one, from the broadest level down to the smallest. For additional context on navigating the platform as a user, see Navigating the platform.
Pages and Communities
Pages and communities are the main containers on your platform. All your content lives inside one or the other. They sit on the same level with no hierarchy between them, but they serve different purposes:
| Pages | Communities | |
|---|---|---|
| Definition |
Pages are organized around a subject area with a clear owner. A team is responsible for the content, and an audience comes to the page for it. Communication often flows in one direction (top-down or bottom-up): the team publishes, and employees consume or respond to that subject. |
Communities are organized around the members themselves. People post, respond, and build on each other's contributions without a single team or person acting as the authoritative source. The members are the audience, and the conversation most often stays within the community itself. |
| Access | Users can subscribe to pages, or they can be mandatorily subscribed and unable to unsubscribe, ensuring they always receive relevant news. | Users are members of communities. Membership is always voluntary. Users join communities based on their own actions and interests. They can always leave if they want to. |
| Typical examples | Department, location, news, and subject-matter pages. | Help and self-service communities, communities reflecting certain (in)formal interests, or communities for department or location internal exchange. |
➡️ Learn more in Pages overview and Communities overview
A department, for example, can have both a page and a community. The page handles official communication to the wider organization, while the community is a space for the team to talk among themselves.
Categories
Categories are tags or labels you can apply to pages and communities. They aren't like folders where a page is stored inside a category. Instead, think of it like a page or community that's tagged with one or more categories, so employees can filter by topic and find what they need.
Categories are additive. A single page can carry multiple category tags. For example, a department page that publishes news, introduces the department, and hosts relevant knowledge could be tagged with "News," "About Us," and "Knowledge & Services" at the same time. When employees filter by any of those categories, the page appears in the results.
This additive behavior is what makes categories flexible. But it also means they only work when applied consistently. A category that appears on some relevant pages but not all of them stops being a reliable filter.
➡️ Learn more in Using categories for pages and Using categories for communities
When setting up your platform, it's a good idea to define your categories before creating pages and communities. This gives you a clear structure from the start and helps avoid inconsistencies later.
Apps
Inside each page or community, content is organized through Apps. Think of a page or community as an empty container. Apps are the individual content areas you place inside them, each designed for a specific type of content or interaction.
There are different types of apps, and each one handles content differently. The most popular apps include:
- Blog app: For formatted editorial content with customized layouts, best suited for longer updates on projects or policies, thought leadership articles, employee spotlights, etc.
- Wiki app: A structured collection of articles and sub-articles. Good for process documentation and knowledge that needs its own internal hierarchy.
- Timeline app: A newsfeed for quick, informal updates and short announcements. Using the Timeline widget, you can show all timeline posts from a user's full list of subscribed pages and community memberships on a homepage.
- Documents app: Stores files in folders and sub-folders.
- Content app: A flexible, single-page space that can be filled with various widgets (learn about Widgets below).
➡️ Learn more in Apps overview
You choose which apps to add based on what the page or community needs to do. A department page might have a blog app for official news, a timeline app for quick updates and exchange, and a wiki app for guidelines. A community might work well with just a timeline app.
App groups
When a page or community has several apps, App groups let you visually organize them. An app group is a labeled section that groups related apps together under a shared heading.
For example, a department page could have an app group called "News & Updates" containing the blog and timeline apps, and another called "Resources" containing the wiki and documents apps.
App groups don't change how apps work. They simply make it easier for employees to scan a page and find what they're looking for.
You can create, rename, and rearrange app groups at any time, and apps can be moved between groups as content evolves.
➡️ Learn more in Organizing apps in groups
Widgets
Widgets are small content units used to display or manage specific content. They appear in two places: inside certain apps and on homepages (learn about Homepages below).
The most powerful app built solely from widgets is the content app. For example, a content app on a department page might include a rich text editor widget for an introductory paragraph, a user profile widget to highlight the team lead, and a downloads widget for a key document. Each widget handles one piece of content, and together they make up the app's full layout.
A few apps include preinstalled widgets, such as the rich text editor in blog and wiki articles. However, most apps handle their content independently and have no widgets.
➡️ Learn more in Widgets overview
Homepage
A Homepage is the first thing employees see when they open the platform. It's built from widgets, placed directly on the page to form the layout. A homepage might include a timeline widget, multiple link button widgets as quick links, or a subscriptions widget, depending on what matters most to the audience.
A homepage works best when it pulls together content from the pages employees are subscribed to and the communities they're members of, creating a personalized view. Think of it as the dynamic layer on top of your platform's structure. The pages, communities, apps, and widgets form the skeleton. The homepage is where that structure comes to life, showing each employee the content most relevant to them.
A platform can have multiple homepages for different audiences, each customized with its own set of widgets and layout.
➡️ Learn more in Homepages overview
Take a look at an example homepage:
How the building blocks fit together
Your platform's structure has two sides: the content structure where information is organized, and the homepage where it's surfaced to employees.
Here's how the building blocks relate to each other, from the broadest level to the most detailed:
| Level | What it does |
|---|---|
| Category | The broadest grouping. An additive label used to filter pages and communities by topic. |
| Page or Community | The main container where content lives. |
| App group | A visual section that groups related apps within a page or community. |
| App | A content area inside a page or community, designed for a specific type of content. |
| Widget | A smaller unit within certain apps, used to display individual pieces of content. |
Homepages sit alongside this structure. It's built from widgets and pulls in content from the pages and communities employees are subscribed to or members of, creating a personalized entry point and resource center for the platform's content.