Corporate Intranet Portal Development
A corporate intranet portal is a closed platform for company employees: news, knowledge base, requests and approvals, phone directory, task management, HR functions. The intranet replaces or complements SharePoint, Confluence, Bitrix24 — where off-the-shelf solutions don't cover business specifics or security requirements.
Modules and functionality
News feed: corporate news, announcements, birthdays. Access differentiation by departments — a sales rep won't see IT department news unless specified. Reactions, comments, pinned posts.
Knowledge base: hierarchical articles with WYSIWYG editor. Full-text search across the entire base. Versioning — change history with diff comparison.
Requests and approvals: universal form constructor (HR requests, business trips, purchases). Approval routes with sequential and parallel stages, notifications at each step.
Phone directory: search by name, department, position. Integration with Active Directory / LDAP for syncing employee data.
Tasks and projects: simple task-tracker, tied to company structure.
Authentication via SSO
Corporate portals almost always require SSO (Single Sign-On) — an employee logs in through their corporate account without a separate password.
Protocols:
- SAML 2.0 — integration with Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS), Okta, OneLogin
- OIDC (OpenID Connect) — integration with Azure AD, Google Workspace
- LDAP — direct authentication through Active Directory
Example SAML setup with Laravel:
// config/saml2_settings.php
'sp' => [
'entityId' => 'https://intranet.company.com',
'acs' => ['url' => 'https://intranet.company.com/saml/acs'],
],
'idp' => [
'entityId' => 'https://adfs.company.com/adfs',
'sso' => ['url' => 'https://adfs.company.com/adfs/ls/'],
'x509cert' => 'MIIC...',
]
Organizational structure
Org chart — a tree of departments and employees. Visualization via D3.js or react-org-chart. Data synchronized from 1C:ZUP or HRM-system.
Each employee has a profile: photo, position, department, manager, contacts, competencies, current projects.
Security
- All requests via HTTPS
- Sessions with IP binding (optional)
- Audit log: who, when, what did
- Two-factor authentication (2FA) via TOTP
- Access restrictions by IP or VPN-only
Integrations
| System | Integration method |
|---|---|
| Active Directory | LDAP sync, SAML/OIDC |
| 1C:ZUP | REST API (HTTP services) |
| Email (Exchange/Gmail) | SMTP, Graph API |
| Telegram/Slack | Bot for notifications |
| Jira/GitLab | Webhook for displaying tasks |
Mobile access
PWA (Progressive Web App) allows employees to use the intranet from a smartphone without installation from AppStore. Push notifications via FCM for important announcements and approval reminders.
Timeline
MVP (SSO, news, directory, knowledge base, simple requests): 3–4 months. Full-featured intranet with org chart, complex approval routes, integration with 1C and HRM: 5–9 months.