Intranet Launch Plan: 14-Week Roadmap From Content to Go-Live
9 min read ยท 2026-10-25
An intranet launch plan is the schedule that takes a new intranet from approved project to daily habit: content cleaned up and moved, page owners trained, a pilot group testing it, a go-live day with a clear message, and a few weeks of fixes once real employees arrive. A typical plan for a mid-size company runs about 14 weeks once the platform is chosen.
Most intranet projects do not fail on the technology. They fail because nobody owns the content, the launch is a single email, and the old intranet stays up so people keep using it. The roadmap below fixes those three problems. It names an owner for every phase, gives each phase a milestone you can check, and covers the part most plans skip: what happens in the four weeks after launch.
The roadmap at a glance
Goal: The new intranet is live, the old one is retired, every section has a named owner, and a majority of employees visit it each week by the end of week 14. Duration: 14 weeks
Goals, audit and governance (Weeks 1-2)
Agree on what the intranet is for and who is responsible for each part of it.
- Write three launch goals with the executive sponsor, such as one place for policies, a weekly news habit and faster answers for new hires.
- Export a list of every page and file on the current intranet or shared drives, with last-updated date and views where available.
- Name a content owner for each section (HR, IT, finance, facilities, each department).
- Write a one-page governance note: who can publish, who approves news, and how often owners review their pages.
Milestone: Goals signed off by the sponsor, a content inventory spreadsheet, and a named owner for every section.
Structure and content plan (Weeks 3-4)
Decide how the intranet is organized and what content moves, gets rewritten or gets deleted.
- Run a short card sort or tree test with 15 to 20 employees to check that navigation labels make sense to them.
- Mark every inventory item as keep, rewrite, merge or delete, and set a rule of thumb such as deleting pages untouched for two years.
- Agree on page templates for news, policies, team pages and how-to articles.
- Set a content deadline for each owner, ahead of the pilot.
Milestone: An approved site map and a content plan with a status, an owner and a due date for every item.
Build and content migration (Weeks 5-9)
Set up the platform and get the priority content in place.
- Configure the site structure, navigation, search and permissions, and connect single sign-on with IT.
- Train content owners in a 60-minute hands-on session using the templates they will actually use.
- Migrate or rewrite the top tasks first: policies, benefits, IT help, the org chart, office information.
- Prepare the first four weeks of news posts so the homepage looks alive on day one.
- Test on mobile and on the browsers your company uses.
Milestone: All priority content published and approved by its owner, search returns the right page for the 20 most common queries.
Champions and pilot (Weeks 10-11)
Test with real employees and build a group that will help their colleagues.
- Recruit one champion per department or site, with their manager's agreement.
- Give the champions and a pilot group of about 50 to 100 people early access.
- Ask the pilot group to complete five real tasks, such as finding the travel policy or requesting a laptop.
- Log every issue in one tracker and fix the blockers before launch.
Milestone: Pilot feedback collected, every blocker closed, and the champions confirmed for go-live week.
Go-live (Week 12)
Make the switch clear, easy and hard to ignore.
- Send a launch message from the CEO or sponsor with the three things employees can now do faster.
- Set the intranet as the default browser start page where IT policy allows, and add it to the main app launcher.
- Redirect the old intranet URLs to the new pages and make the old site read-only.
- Run short drop-in demos and have champions answer questions in team meetings.
Milestone: Old intranet redirected and read-only, launch message sent, and the support channel staffed for the full week.
Post-launch tuning (Weeks 13-14)
Fix what real use reveals and hand over to business as usual.
- Review search terms that returned no results and add or rename pages to answer them.
- Check the page views and the support tickets for confusing sections.
- Hold a retrospective with owners and champions, then set the monthly content review rhythm.
- Report the first adoption numbers to the sponsor.
Milestone: A launch report shared with leadership, and the intranet handed over to the owners with a review calendar.
Who owns what
An intranet touches every department, so ownership has to be explicit from week one. Put the roles below on a single RACI page and share it in the kickoff deck.
The most common gap is between the project team and the content owners. The project team builds the platform, but only department owners can keep their pages accurate. If owners are not named and trained before launch, the content goes stale within months.
- Executive sponsor (often the head of internal communications, HR or the COO): signs off goals, sends the launch message, unblocks departments that miss deadlines.
- Intranet project manager: owns the plan, the risk log and the weekly status update.
- Internal communications lead: owns the homepage, news and the launch campaign.
- IT lead: owns single sign-on, permissions, redirects and browser settings.
- Content owners (one per section): write, approve and review their pages on a set schedule.
- Champions: test in the pilot, answer questions in their teams, and pass feedback back.
Example: a 14-week plan for a 1,200-person company
Picture a company with three offices and a field team, moving from an old intranet and a mess of shared drives to a new platform chosen last quarter.
The project manager tracks one milestone per phase in the weekly update. Anything late gets a new date and an owner, not a vague amber status.
- Weeks 1-2: sponsor approves three goals; inventory finds about 3,000 pages and files; 14 section owners named. Owner: project manager.
- Weeks 3-4: tree test with 20 employees renames People Hub to HR and Benefits; owners mark about half the inventory for deletion. Owner: internal comms lead.
- Weeks 5-9: single sign-on live; owners trained in two sessions; policies, benefits and IT help migrated first. Owner: IT lead and section owners.
- Weeks 10-11: 18 champions and 80 pilot users; 40 issues logged, 12 blockers fixed. Owner: project manager.
- Week 12: CEO video message, old intranet redirected, drop-in demos at each office and one for field staff on mobile. Owner: sponsor and internal comms.
- Weeks 13-14: zero-result searches cut by fixing page titles; first adoption report sent. Owner: project manager.
Go-live week checklist
Launch week is where most of the adoption happens or does not. Plan it day by day, and put one person in charge of each item.
Keep the old intranet read-only rather than deleting it on day one. That gives you a safety net if a page was missed, while still making the new site the only place where content is updated.
- Day before: final content check by every owner, redirects tested, support channel open.
- Launch morning: sponsor message by email and in the main chat tool, with a short video or three screenshots.
- Launch day: default start page switched where IT policy allows, champions mention it in team meetings.
- Days 2 to 4: drop-in demos by office and one online session for remote and shift staff.
- Day 5: quick pulse survey with three questions and a review of the first week's search terms.
How to present the plan to leadership
Leadership does not need the content inventory. It needs to know why the intranet matters, what it will cost the organization in time, and how you will prove it worked. Build a one-slide summary: the three goals, the six phases on a timeline with the go-live date, the asks from each department (named owners and their hours per week during migration), and the four metrics you will report after launch.
Ask for two specific things: a sponsor message on launch day, and a rule that departments cannot keep their content in the old system after go-live. Those two decisions do more for adoption than any feature.
Metrics to track after launch
Pick a small set and report it the same way every month so the trend is visible. Your platform's analytics will cover most of them, and a short survey fills the gaps.
Set a baseline in the first two weeks rather than an arbitrary target. Early numbers are often inflated by curiosity, so the real test is weeks 6 to 12.
- Weekly active users: share of employees who visit at least once a week.
- Search success: share of searches followed by a click, and the list of zero-result terms.
- Content freshness: share of pages reviewed by their owner within the agreed period.
- Support load: tickets for questions the intranet should answer, such as where to find a policy.
- Employee feedback: a simple ease-of-finding score from a quarterly pulse survey.
How to adapt it
For a small company of under 200 people, merge the first two phases and run a pilot of one week with a single team. Ownership can sit with fewer people, but every section still needs a name next to it.
For a large or global company, add time for translations, regional content owners and works council or employee representative reviews where they apply. Launch in waves by region or business unit, with the same checklist repeated for each wave. Frontline and deskless employees need a mobile-first plan, such as QR codes in break rooms and launch demos during shift briefings.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Moving every old page to the new platform recreates the clutter, so delete or merge anything outdated during the content audit.
- Launching with one email and no follow-up leads to a spike and then silence, so plan four weeks of news and champion activity after go-live.
- Leaving the old intranet fully active means people keep using it, so redirect it and make it read-only on launch day.
- Naming a department as content owner instead of a person lets pages go stale, so put one named person on every section with a review date.
- Testing only with the project team hides real navigation problems, so run a pilot with employees from several departments and sites.
- Measuring page views alone hides whether people find what they need, so track search success and zero-result terms from week one.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to launch an intranet?
Once the platform is chosen, many mid-size companies plan around three to four months for audit, build, migration, pilot and launch. Content work usually takes the longest, not the setup. Large or multi-language rollouts often launch in waves over a longer period.
What should be on the intranet at launch?
Start with the tasks employees do most: finding policies and benefits, getting IT help, looking up colleagues and office information, and reading company news. A few weeks of planned news posts make the homepage feel active. Add team pages and less used content after launch.
How do you get employees to use a new intranet?
Make it the only place for content people need, and make it easy to reach with redirects and a default start page. Have a senior sponsor announce it, train champions in each department, and keep publishing useful news after launch. Fix the search terms that return nothing during the first weeks.
Who should own the intranet after launch?
Usually internal communications owns the homepage and news, IT owns the platform, and named people in each department own their sections. A small governance group that meets monthly can review metrics, approve new sections and chase stale pages.
Should you do a soft launch or a big launch?
Most teams do both: a soft launch with a pilot group and champions to catch problems, then a clear company-wide go-live with a sponsor message. Skipping the pilot risks a poor first impression, while a soft launch with no big moment often leaves the intranet unnoticed.