Linchpin Essentials or Linchpin Intranet Suite: Finding the right solution for your organization - News, tips & guidance for agile, development, Atlassian-Software (JIRA, Confluence, Bitbucket, ...) and Google Cloud

A focus on knowledge management with Linchpin Essentials or a social intranet with the Linchpin intranet suite?

In our complex world, with its constantly changing market requirements, effective, sustainable knowledge management is indispensable. Ideally, knowledge would be shared throughout an organization, and there would be no knowledge islands. Employees would work together on content transparently and as a team. And there is a multitude of IT solutions made to support companies in one way or another on their way to achieving this objective.

The Atlassian family already has a thriving and established intranet solution for this in the form of Linchpin, which is based on the wiki and social collaboration software Confluence by Atlassian. With Linchpin, you are not only getting structured knowledge management but also creating the conditions for modern, thriving, transparent collaborations within your teams and beyond.

As of late, you now have two options to choose from – depending on which demands you are placing on your desired solution and how extensive it should be. The Linchpin Intranet Suite enables you to create a central platform for collaboration and the exchange of information that connects your entire company and is fully customizable. A second (and new) alternative is the product Linchpin Essentials, which is specifically tailored to facilitate information management and user activation without implementing a fully-fledged intranet right away.

Similarities and differences

Both solutions can be customized to fit in with your company's corporate design. Individual users have extensive user profiles, which also form the foundation for a company-wide expert search function. This puts faces to the names, and users can make direct contact with the go-to person on a given topic. Both Linchpin Suite and Linchpin Essentials both offer freely customizable top-level navigation, which enables you to make relevant content accessible at all times, in one central location. This saves both time and effort searching.

Together, these factors ensure that the system is more readily accepted and improve collaboration within and across teams. And while these are essentially the most important features of Linchpin Essentials, the Linchpin Intranet Suite also includes various intranet-specific features such as company news, event organization, or community timelines.

To summarize: Linchpin Essentials is (as the name already suggests) is a lean solution that extends Confluence with a few very helpful knowledge management features (user profiles with expert search, navigation, branding), while the Linchpin Intranet Suite provides additional, comprehensive options and turns Confluence into a full-fledged social intranet. Each user is shown tailored content based on the data in the user profile. News and events are also personalized. Furthermore, Linchpin also supports multilingual content. Resultantly, you have a comprehensive social intranet that gets your entire company involved.

We have prepared a precise comparison of the two software solutions based on their features that is now available on our website.

When is Linchpin Intranet Suite the right choice?

In some organizations, it's fully sufficient to begin by extending the Confluence system by a few central knowledge managment features, making it more attractive for users, and adapting its look to match the company's corporate design.

But requirements change and then a switch from Linchpin Essentials to Linchpin Intranet Suite could make sense. Perhaps you open new locations or want to connect international branches? Perhaps you want to bundle the continuously growing number of software tools in a central location? Or perhaps you just want to establish centralized information distribution and reach all of the employees in the company? Then an upgrade to a proper Linchpin intranet could be an obvious option.

The Linchpin Intranet Suite supports multilingual content as well as translations, so the platform is well-suited to international organizations.

In a Linchpin intranet, you can make all important (internal and external) applications that your employees need available and accessible at all times in one central location. This way, the platform can become an effective and efficient starting point for their daily work.

The well-engineered news features in the Linchpin Intranet Suite enables you to share personalized information and reach the target groups within the company that you really want to reach without bothering others with news that isn't of interest to them. This way, you create personal relevance – one of the main building blocks for the success of a social intranet. So, a Linchpin intranet means that the company's entire communication can take place via the software, allowing your employees to work together, even on content.

Conclusion

Your Confluence can do more! If you are currently trying to roll out Confluence on a broader level and reinforce knowledge management in the company, Linchpin Essentials is certainly a step in the right direction. Or have you already established that you need a proper social intranet? Then Linchpin Intranet Suite is a good option for you.

If you're not sure, which option is the best for your organization or how you should go about a switch, then feel free to get in touch: We'd be happy to speak to you about your requirements!

Social intranet and knowledge management with Confluence! Find out more and test now!

Do you want to find out more? There is more detailed information on features, advantages, and prices on the Linchpin Intranet Suite website and on the product overview page for Linchpin Essentials. Or take a look at their features in a fully configured system: Our open demonstration instances for Linchpin Suite and Linchpin essentials are available at any time and perfectly suited to making a first impression.

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