Personalization
As stated previously, personalization is impossible without some level of security. This is because access to private information that would likely be available in a personalized intranet needs to be restricted to only that user. There are many corporate policies and laws in some jurisdictions to this effect.
Very simple personalization such as a "Good morning Gwyneth" prompt, defined color scheme itemized template layout selections can be selected in forms and saved in cookies on users' machines, but this approach isn't recommended. The preference settings will not be transferable to other computers the user might move to. And extending the personalization to include personal information at a later date will necessitate taking one step backwards before taking a step forwards.
Practical, intelligent personalization involves authenticating users and then tracking their user sessions with either session variables (a relationship between the web server and a user's web browser) or token variables (a unique identifier which is passed as a string in the URL of all the intranet pages). Note that the latter method is less secure than the former.
Once you've authenticated a user and started to track them, you can display any personalized content to them that you (or they) might want. All you need to do is define WHAT content and function pages should be personalized, and then make sure that information is detailed in the Project Scope Document.
See Chapter 10 for more information on Personalization