What is Power Apps and how can I use it?

Posted on 16 July 20249 October 2024 by Joe Perry

Microsoft Power Apps is another powerful and versatile part of the Microsoft 365 suite that enable businesses to create different custom apps to improve processes, drive productivity and add value to any Microsoft 365-powered digital workplace. Power Apps is part of Microsoft’s Power Platform, an integrated suite of productivity tools that also includes Power BI and Power Automate. Power Apps provides multiple options for businesses to craft apps and functionality that t is suited to their specific needs, while avoiding the issues that come with customisation.

We’re often asked by digital workplace teams about whether they can use Power Apps to create a specific app, or how they can take advantage of it in general for their business. In this post we’re going to do a deeper dive into Microsoft Power Apps, looking at how it can be used, some of its key features, covering related issues such as licensing and even some recent developments.

What is Power Apps?

Power Apps is a tool that allows you to create custom apps, leveraging many of the features of the Microsoft 365 and the Power Platform. Apps can be accessed via mobile devices or via the browser, with possibilities for integration with different Microsoft 365 tools such as Teams and SharePoint.

Microsoft itself defines Power Apps as a solution that can “deliver apps embedded with AI to modernise your legacy applications and systems fast.” It can provide value as a rapid application development platform that can save huge amounts of cost and time.

As part of the Power Platform, Power Apps can be used both by developers, but also by non-IT professionals, supporting citizen development. Generative AI is helping this trend. However, realistically users will need to have some technical understanding, training and appreciation of the tools and data they are working with. There’s a long way to go before everyone is creating their own apps and realistically you may need to bring in developers to work on more complex functionality.

What is the value of Power Apps?

The beauty of building your own app within Power Apps is that you can also make sure it is completely wrapped around your organisations unique user needs and the way your employees work.

Additionally:

You can create business apps at high speed and low cost.
You can avoid risks and put in the necessary guardrails, avoiding some of the issues and technical debt that come with customisation.
You can create specific business apps for lines of business and departments, that would normally be beyond the capacity of central IT development teams.
Power Apps is highly flexible and scalable, and can be used for multiple use cases.
There are also multiple ways to build apps and can be used by both IT and non-IT professionals
And more!

What are the key features of Microsoft Power Apps?

Microsoft Power Apps comes with a set of features and tools to help design, create and manage apps. These include:

a library of sample apps and pre-built templates that you can work from as a starting point and then customise.
the ability to build both web-based and mobile business apps, with the latter potentially targeted or use by your frontline staff.
an extensive library of connectors to integrate data and systems including those across Microsoft 365.
Integration with other parts of the Power Platform, so you could use Power BI and Power Automate in creating a Power App.
Copilot in Power Apps, providing the ability to leverage generative AI to create and build apps, for example, by using natural language instructions, automatically generating code and getting AI-powered suggestions.
an easy drag and drop interface for the creation of apps.
close integration with other Microsoft 365, Dynamics and more.
governance features that provide an overview of apps, a robust deployment approach and more.
the ability to use both classic code and low code / no code approaches, meaning Power Apps can be used by both IT and non-IT professionals.
interoperability and integration with Azure, GitHub and Visual Studio.
opportunities to use the Microsoft Dataverse as a built-in data platform to store your data, and reuse it across Microsoft 365.
great support and learning resources, including extensive written and video instructions, an active Power Apps community, as well as Copilot.

Note that not some licenses and plans will restrict access to some features.

Multiple ways to build apps

Power Apps is both flexible and versatile, coming with multiple options on how to build apps, suiting different roles, use cases and approaches to governance.

Taking a canvas approach to developing a Power App is a bit like working from a a blank canvas where you connect data sources, add workflows and create interfaces for your app using the drag and drop interface, potentially relying on the library of standard connectors. Leveraging the connected world of Microsoft 365 allows you to even create canvas apps within other tools such as SharePoint as the starting point. Using the canvas approach also gives you complete control over an app you’re creating from scratch.

The model-driven approach for creating apps approach leverages Microsoft Dataverse which will already have information on the various forms, data structures and business rules you have already defined, and then allows you to start building your app on top of this. In this way the structure and data lead the creation of the app, a very useful approach when you are relying on potentially complex underlying data for your app.

With the introduction of Copilot in Power Apps you can also now start to use generative AI as the starting point for creating an app, providing suggestions, writing code and more, all in response to natural language prompts. We expect that the possibilities with Copilot will continue to evolve and expand.

For experienced developers you can also start to use more traditional coding to create your Power App.

Finally, there are also flexible deployment options that allow you to say create some standard templates for Power Apps specific to your organisation with the potential for these to be modified by local IT resources sitting in different lines of business or locations. For large complex organisations this allows teams to create specific line of business apps more quickly, but also with some governance from the centre. You could also integrate with approach with a GitHub repository, for example.

How can my organisation use Power Apps?

Power Apps can be used for multiple processes involving workflow, automation, data visualisation and reporting, collaboration and more. It could involve teams, field workers, your management team and even your customers. Use cases can range from the relatively simple to the highly complex. You can both be improving the basics – building or replacing legacy apps – or also be highly innovative and create new solutions. You can also drive automation and productivity across different divisions with unique needs.

Our comprehensive Power Apps page details some of the different types of apps you can create:

Workflow approval app: Simple requests for common business needs that require approval for both knowledge and frontline workers, for example ordering computer equipment.
Sales information app: Recording new sales opportunities and successes with notification triggers and integration with Dynamics or a CRM system like Salesforce.
Employee onboarding: Helping new hires to get information, provide any necessary details and complete learning, even before their first day.
Remote worker app: Enabling the capture of data from field workers from a mobile app, without the need to return to the office.
Asset tracker app: An app that allows IT teams to keep track of all their hardware, mobile devices, accessories and software licenses.
Marketing automation: Apps to enable an automated follow- up with customers based on their responses and actions.
New client or supplier app: An app to support due diligence on new clients or suppliers integrating external information and approval workflow.
Appraisal system: An app to streamline the performance review process that can be custom to the way you carry out your appraisals.
Log visitors: An app to log requests to visit an office, or to record actual visitors.
And more!

How does the licensing work for Power Apps?

Power Apps is bundled with some Microsoft enterprise licenses including the common E3 license, but there are also individual plans including a Developer plan and a Premium plan, with different pricing based on the number of users.

Plans provide different access to features within Power Apps and details can change from time to time, so it is always important to check with Microsoft for the latest licensing and pricing information.

What are some of the latest developments with Power Apps?

Like all of Microsoft 365, Microsoft continues to invest heavily in Power Apps and the rest of the Power Platform. There is a plethora of regular new announcements covering new features, enhancements and improvements to Power Apps.

The most significant recent evolution of Power Apps is the introduction of Copilot which has brings the power of generative AI to app creation, which itself continues to get better and better. There has also been a lot of improvements around better options to deploy Power Apps within your organisation, ensuring a smoother roll-out and sustainable approach across your environment.

Should I leverage the power of Power Apps?

You should definitely leverage the power of Power Apps! We love working with Power Apps and our clients tell us they love the results. You can create compelling apps that will help simplify ways of working, drive customer service, support frontline staff, enhance productivity, minimise risk and more.

If you’d like to discuss with us how you can use Power Apps to help your business, then get in touch!

Please note: for the most up-to-date information about Power Apps and its latest features and functionality, please see: Micrcosoft Power Apps

Power Apps is yet another offering from Microsoft associated with the Office 365 suite of tools that delivers exciting opportunities to build custom apps, drive process automation and create efficiencies for businesses of all sizes. We often find ourselves in conversations with clients and organisations either curious about Power Apps or with business issues where Power Apps could make a real difference.

To give clients an overview of Power Apps and its possibilities, we’ve written this article to explain what Power Apps is and how you can use it in your business. This is part of our occasional blog series on the fundamentals of the individual parts of the Office 365 universe. You may also be interested in our posts on Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Graph, and Flow.

What is Power Apps?

Power Apps is a tool that allows you to create custom apps, leveraging many of the features of the Office 365 and Microsoft platform. Apps can be accessed via mobile devices or via the browser.

What sets Power Apps apart from other offerings is that while it can be used by developers, it can also be used by non-technical employees such as business analysts. This means that it is quite possible for a Power Apps power user to create a custom app. Just like its Microsoft cousin Flow, Power Apps is successfully bringing the power of process automation to a non-technical audience.

Having said that, realistically users will need to have some technical understanding, training and appreciation of the tools and data they are working with. There’s a long way to go before everyone is creating their own apps and realistically you may need to bring in developers to work on more complex functionality.

Microsoft defines Power Apps as a suite of apps, services, connectors and data platform that provides a rapid application development environment apps for your business needs. While you can add integrations with other applications, a key strength is its ability to build apps based on Office 365 and also Microsoft Dynamics 365. If you have a particular process that uses different parts of the Microsoft universe, for example SharePoint Online, Excel and Dynamics 365, then an app based on Power Apps has the potential to bring them all together for your users in one handy, convenient experience.

The beauty of building your own app is that you can also make sure it is completely wrapped around your organisations unique user needs and the way your employees work.

Features

Similar to Flow and other Office 365 automation tools, Power Apps comes with features and tools to help create apps that don’t require any coding. These include:

a library of sample apps that you can work from as a starting point and then customise
a library of over 200 connectors to integrate data and systems including those across the Office 365 universe
an easy drag and drop interface for the creation of apps
close integration with other Office 365 and Dynamics tools
good support structures, including an active Power Apps community.

Canvas and model-driven apps

There are two ways to develop Power Apps via the canvas approach or the model-driven approach. The canvas approach is a bit like working from a blank canvas where you connect data sources, add workflows and create interfaces for your app using the drag and drop interface, potentially relying on the library of standard connectors.

Leveraging the connected world of Office 365 allows you to even create canvas apps within other tools such as SharePoint as the starting point. Using the canvas approach also gives you complete control over an app you’re creating from scratch.

More recently, the model-driven approach for creating apps has been introduced. Originally a feature of Microsoft Dynamics, this approach leverages Microsoft’s Common Data Service which already has information on the various forms, data structures and business rules you have already defined, and then allows you to start building your app on top of this. In this way the structure and data lead the creation of the app, a very useful approach when you are relying on potentially complex underlying data for your app, for example stored in Microsoft Dynamics.

How can my organisation use Power Apps?

Power Apps can be used for multiple processes involving workflow, automation, data visualisation and reporting, collaboration and more. It could involve teams, field workers, your management team and even your customers. Use cases can range from the relatively simple to the highly complex. You can both be improving the basics or also be highly innovative. Power Apps can be experienced as a mobile app, a website or even within an Office 365 tool like Microsoft Teams.

For inspiration, our popular article on different ways to automate business processes includes a number of ideas that can be achieved with Power Apps, including:

Enabling field workers to enter data when out in the field, for example logging repairs needed or the results of site inspections
A Know your Client app used for due diligence on new clients, covering various criteria and interrogating various databases
Building model standard documents such as contracts using automation based on different criteria and metadata
Building a customised 360 appraisal system with input from a variety of users, workflow and handy reporting
A system for IT departments to track assets such as hardware, mobile devices and software licenses
A variety of marketing automation tools to follow up with clients based on their interactions and responses.

New powerful capabilities

Like most of the tools and services within Office 365 Microsoft continue to invest in Power Apps, and the latest announcements for near future capabilities are particularly exciting.

An AI Builder capability allows Power Apps to tap into Microsoft’s AI and machine learning frameworks and develop smarter, more advanced apps. For example, Microsoft cite the ability for AI to analyse and categorise your customer feedback responses and then take particular actions, helping to bring marketing automation to the next level. They also quote a real example of how Power Apps injected with AI is helping workers in a manufacturing and distribution unit identify and track product items just by taking a photo. Additionally, there are opportunities to integrate blockchain (via Azure Blockchain Services) to develop even more specialist apps.

Microsoft has also announced Power Apps Portals, the ability to create websites aimed at external employees, in the same way as Power Apps. This feels significant to us, connecting customer actions on a website directly to internal and back-end processes, marketing automation and more. For example. if you set up a customer feedback portal using Power Apps Portals, you could create some pretty intriguing and powerful workflows and actions.

Should you leverage the power of Power Apps?

You should definitely leverage the power of Power Apps. We love working with Power Apps and our clients tell us they love the results. Were confident that you’ll love Power Apps too, creating compelling apps that will help simplify ways of working, drive customer service and more, potentially becoming more sophisticated as you expand capabilities with AI and website integrations later down the line.

If you’d like to discuss with us how you can use Power Apps to help your business then get in touch!

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25 business processes you can automate using Microsoft 365

Posted on 12 July 202412 July 2024 by Joe Perry

There is a constant pressure to drive efficiency and increase productivity within organisations. “Do more with less” is often the direction from management. Even if there is not particular pressure to do this, teams and individuals are often on the look out to improve the way they work and streamline processes.

Microsoft 365 and its constituent tools and services are invariably built around supporting productivity, offering a plethora of opportunities to work smarter. From implementing SharePoint intranets to using Microsoft Teams for collaboration to using generative AI with Coplilot – all can help save time and effort. Much of this is done through business automation – reducing the need for employees to complete repetitive manual tasks, or streamlining complex processes so they can scale.

Increasing automation with Microsoft 365

Overall, Microsoft 365 customers have an incredibly powerful platform from which to start automating business processes, both simple and complex. Using different combinations of features and capabilities, you can make a real difference to your digital workplace, organisational efficiency and employee experience.

Some of this automation centres around the use of the Power Platform and its tools such as Power Automate and Power BI, but opportunities for automation also feature within Microsoft Teams, SharePoint and across the Microsoft Viva suite of tools, as well as combining these different sets of tools.

There are also new abilities to highlight the different automated processes introduced, for example using the Viva Connections dashboard to allow users to initiate tasks and workflows. Generative AI and Microsoft Copilot are also creating ways to deliver even more sophisticated business automation that ultimately may change the way we all work.

In fact, there’s so much you can do, it can be difficult to know where to start! In this post, we’re going to look at some of the business processes you can automate, based on what we’ve seen with clients and other organisations. Use this post to kickstart conversations, give yourself some ideas or as a checklist to help you prioritise your next automation!

1. Updating key business policies and other controlled documents

Many intranets have a central library of key business policies as well as other related controlled documents. It’s critical these are kept up to date particularly if employees rely on them for decision-making. These documents require regular reviews in place to ensure they are up to date and accurate, but all too often these get missed. Automated reminders to content owners based on review dates introduce an automation layer to support an effective central policy library. Note that we built automation as a core feature of our Xoralia policy management software.

2. Build dynamic knowledge pages

Until it’s recent retirement announcement, Microsoft Viva Topics was a knowledge management (KM) solution developed by Microsoft to build partly curated and partly automated dynamic knowledge pages from a mixture of documents, updates, conversations and regular experts. While Viva Topics won’t be around, the idea of automatically building reference pages that bring together resources on a particular topic is still a good one. Using Copilot and automated tagging may now make it possible to build something approaching a knowledge page, especially if there is some level of curation on suggested knowledge items.

3. Tagging documents and content with metadata

Findability is critical in intranets and digital workplaces to connect employees to the right documents and content. Adding subject specific metadata using the right labels can help with search, and also gives users important information about the content. It can also help support the display of data, process outcomes and personalisation. However, getting the right metadata on a document is something some organisations struggle with, especially if it all needs to be done manually. Here there can be issues with consistency, scale and resourcing.

Automating tagging documents and content with the right metadata is a strong use case for automation. Generative AI has greatly increased the potential accuracy around auto-tagging and there are opportunities to use the SharePoint Premium offering as well as Open.AI’s large language model and Microsoft Copilot to automate tagging which can help transform search.

4. Archiving content and data

Governance around the archiving and deletion of content and data is critical for keeping your digital workplace tidy, aligning to company retention policies and enhancing findability. Adding some automation to this process really helps so that documents, content and spaces are automatically archived based on different criteria including review or approval from the content or document owner.

5. Image and text generation

When ChatGPT arrived out of the blue in late 2022 it felt like a sudden step change, with extensive possibilities for automation powered by generative AI. Generative AI is still evolving at pace with the creation and evolution of brand-new Large Language Models (LLMs) and new AI-powered services. Microsoft’s investment in Open.AI means that it is at the centre of opportunities to automate business processes. Currently many organisations are automating image and text generation in different ways across business processes, including the creation of images and text to generate emails, web-based content and more, usually as a starting point which can then be refined by the author.

6. Requests and approvals

Requests and approvals are perhaps the most common form of process improvement driven by intranets and Microsoft 365, using forms and workflow to deal with requests involving everything from booking travel, to organising annual leave, to requesting stationery, to ordering lunch for a client meeting. Usually, these requests need to go through an approval process.

In many organisations, there will still be request and approval processes which are done using email or even paper that are just waiting to be automated. Increasingly, requests and approvals are being dealt with through chatbots that might be accessed through Microsoft Teams. The Viva Connections dashboard can also be used to help automate processes more focused on frontline staff who access the digital workplace using mobile devices.

7. Performance monitoring

Performance monitoring of different IT systems, physical buildings or machinery is an obvious area to automate, using Power BI dashboards to provide regular reporting and notifications when things don’t look right, based on different criteria. This can cover anything from the monitoring of load times on different web channels or servers to reporting on the temperature of different parts of a building.

8. Microsoft Teams management and governance

Microsoft Teams sprawl is now a problem in many organisations, and digital workplace teams and IT functions are often keen to bring in more governance to control sprawl, as well as try to streamline Teams management to drive efficiency while also maintaining control over the platform.

There are many opportunities to automate aspects of Teams governance and management using different tools in Microsoft 365 including:

requesting and provisioning sites, spinning up a new Teams space and activating different templates relating to particular use cases
adding additional features to a Teams space such as external access through self-service, but adding approval workflow
identifying when a Teams space is not being used and instigating workflows with a view to it being archived.
archiving a Teams space based on certain criteria
performance monitoring and reporting
and much more!

9. Logging helpdesk support calls

Effective digital workplaces help employees to get things done quickly and effortlessly – and automation can help by enabling employees to complete small transactions and requests across multiple systems from just one place, using a combination of tools such as the Viva Connections dashboard, Power Automate for workflows, Microsoft’s library of out-of-the-box connectors and more.

A popular “task” to enable is logging IT or HR helpdesk support calls. There are already systems like ServiceNow which allow users to report an issue and automatically raise tickets with notifications for IT, HR and other support services. The ability for users to raise tickets is a prerequisite for running any scalable helpdesk or support service, and integrating this automation by enabling tickets to be raised via your intranet or Microsoft Teams can be helpful. Increasingly, support calls are also being logged through chatbots which can also point users towards self-service resources to see if items can first be resolved, before logging a call or even handing off a user to a support agent.

10. Centralising notifications from different systems

Information overload is still a huge issue for many users, especially with an overwhelming email in-box. Many users find it hard to keep on top of all the automated notifications, alerts, approvals and actions needed across a number of disparate systems. When they’re flying in and building up it can also impact wellbeing.

Automating these reminders so they are aggregated into a focused list of notifications and reminders, or into a dashboard, can reduce the potential for overwhelm, particularly if action can also be taken to help ensure approvals are made more speedily. This sort of “universal inbox” has been introduced into SharePoint intranets and worked well, but there are also options deliver this capability within Microsoft Teams, including using the Microsoft Viva Connections dashboard to make notifications more accessible from a single place.

11. Financial, performance and sales reporting

Power BI is one of the most powerful, flexible and versatile tools across Microsoft 365, automating reporting, dashboards and data visualisation to a wide range of different use cases. Financial reporting is an obvious use case for a dashboard which can have considerable value for senior management and finance departments, helping to drive accountability, support decision-making, achieve targets and minimise risks. Sales data can also be presented to sales departments to help focus efforts.

Dashboards with simplified financial and performance data at the organisational or divisional level can also be presented to users on the intranet homepage as a way of keeping employees up to date.

12. Marketing automation

Marketing automation is on the wish-list of most marketing functions but is not always put into operation. Marketing automation can be powerful in saving time and supporting your sales funnel. It can range from the simple (sending out an automatic email based on the completion of a website form) to the sophisticated (sending out a targeted message based on a range of user behaviour). Reporting on the success of your efforts is also automated.

12. Tracking assets

IT departments often need to track and manage the assets which are given out to users, including devices, equipment, software licenses and more. Many teams still rely on spreadsheets and email for this exercise, even though there may be some workflow in place to issue devices for new employees. Automating this process allows you to use one source of truth for keeping track of your assets, alongside stakeholder and user reporting. You can also potentially integrate this with the process for users requesting new assets, as well as the employee onboarding and offboarding process. Natural language interfaces can potentially be used here to allow users to make requests. In the background SharePoint lists can also be helpful in managing and displaying lists of assets.

13. Text summary

A solid use case for using generative AI is to automate text summaries of existing content including documents and pages. This can be used to display as a summary in search results to help employees decide if they want to actually download or read a piece of content. Summaries can also help with SEO and findability. Writing text summaries manually can be extremely time consuming and also quite dry, so there is an excellent argument to automate this process.

15. Document building

Building model documents based on different criteria is a theme often found in knowledge management. It’s of real interest in certain sectors, especially professional services, but also functions such as in-house legal teams. Being able to build automated documents like contracts and agreements based on different metadata (e.g. client name or document type) can help maintain document standards and therefore minimise risk, but also save huge amounts of time by automating much of the document creation process.

Often, the model document produced is a starting point which must still be completed and checked, but the process automation adds a lot of value. Generative AI is also making the possibilities around document automation even more exciting. Microsoft’s SharePoint Premium services offer solutions around building model documents.

16. Know Your Client

Know Your Client (KYC) is a standard process carried out by some companies as part of the due diligence and procurement process to onboard new clients, suppliers and vendors, and minimise risks involved. KYC may involve asking a supplier to enter information via a form, interrogating external databases with company information and performing credit checks, taking information from internal systems such as a CRM, as well as routing different checks to different internal stakeholders to review, based on information gathered from the supplier or an external database.

The KYC process can be complex and involve multiple steps. There are often opportunities to bring automation across many of the steps that can help to speed up a process, including pulling data from different internal and external systems, using a chatbot to gather initial information or running the process through Teams so it is more in the flow of work.

17. Resource planning

Resource planning for projects, teams and initiatives can be challenging, particularly if relevant information is scattered around different systems. For example, you may want to view core information from your HR platform, timecard systems and details of expertise from people profiles, to help you assemble the right team and check their availability.

Automating reporting with data from various systems to help with resource planning and specific views to aid team selection can be very powerful, helping you to create the best teams while ensuring capacity. This can be extremely valuable for managers and frontline teams where shift work is involved, or for businesses with a lot of seasonal work or intense projects.

18. Project management

Project management is a broad activity which is key to the way many companies operate, especially in a sector such as engineering. Microsoft 365 can help with many aspects of project management, including providing the opportunity for some automation. For example, some companies might choose to automatically create a collaboration space whenever a project is set up in their financial management system or equivalent, or choose to integrate real-time budgeting and financial or timecard information within their project space. This helps to embed collaboration and dashboards right into the project management processes, as well as drive efficiencies.

An organisation might also have a very set project management methodology that they follow with a set of resources available for employees to reference. An AI-powered chatbot can also provide an effective interface for teams to ask questions relating to the methodology, which then references any support resources.

19. Employee onboarding

Having a formal employee onboarding programme drives efficiencies and make new starters feel welcome, supporting better employee retention. With so many checklists and tasks to complete and information to provide, there are myriad processes which can be automated or semi-automated even in the pre-hire stage before someone’s first day. Behind the scenes too there is an extensive list of tasks that need to be completed by multiple departments including HR, IT. Learning and more, and could even involve multiple systems.

Ensuring that employees fill in the necessary forms before they start and in their first few weeks (and ensuring this information goes to the right people and systems) is a great starting point. They might need to read a policy, take a course, review information on the intranet, complete their contact details, supply particular forms and more. Some organisations particularly with frontline employees choose to invest in a dedicated employee onboarding app for this. Automating as much of the requisite workflows as possible can also save time for busy support teams, as well as ensure everything is ready for the employee on their first day.

20. Employee offboarding

Employee onboarding gets a lot of attention, but offboarding also involves multiple processes, including ensuring equipment is recovered and sent back, completing any necessary paperwork, making adjustments in different systems, carrying out an exit interview or even issuing an invitation to join the alumni programme. This is another process where automation can streamline interactions, workflows and reporting.

21. Collecting data from the field

Sometimes, field workers or mobile employees may need to file reports with data collected when they are out and about, such as engineers making site inspections. Ideally, data should be gathered and inputted directly into mobile devices. Automation – probably using Power Automate -– can make sure this information appears automatically in documents, databases, dashboards and even workspaces. Using the Dataverse from Microsoft to manage your data can also ensure there is one source of truth for data across Microsoft 365.

22.Learning and development administration

Learning and development is a critical part of employee and organisational life. However, it can take a lot of administration effort, particularly when enrolling employees onto mandatory training (which can occur annually),or monitoring progress and completions and reporting sometimes even to external bodies for compliance reasons. Automation makes a lot of sense in enrolment and tracking, especially when targeting different courses to different Microsoft Entra ID groups. While you can create learning apps and workflows using the Microsoft Power Platform, a robust solution like Learn365 from Zensai already has automation built into it and supports enrolment, reporting and more, doing much of the heaving lifting on learning administration.

23. Keeping groups and lists up to date

Group and list management is a core part of the digital workplace management and covers areas such as email distribution, content targeting, personalisation, permission, subscriptions, community management, managing lists of employees such as first aiders, employee directory profiles and more. Groups and lists can be highly dynamic, based on joiners and leavers, internal moves and individual preferences.

Automation can help ensure your Microsoft Entra ID groups are sychronised with your HR system of record and any other relevant digital workplace platforms, so when you make one change it is changed in all the other places it needs to be made. Using Power Automate could also be used to notify any relevant people of a change made.

24. Meetings

We spend a lot of our time in meetings, both in-person and online. Organising them, inviting people and then writing up the output can be time-consuming and is never the best use of people’s time. There are substantial opportunities for automation.

The meeting room booking process involves multiple steps including booking equipment, creating a space, sourcing tools such as whiteboards (if for a virtual meeting), diary management, sending out reminders and even booking travel. This can involve different systems so using automation to streamline this process will have value. Generative AI and Copilot s also having a substantial impact in helping to construct a transcript, writing a summary, creating minutes with actions and even responding to requests during the meeting.

25. Software development tasks

Software development has multiple tasks and processes, but Microsoft Copilot offers opportunities to automate some of these including actually generating lines of code. This service has already been offered by Copilot for GitHub for a quite a while. While automatic code generation does come with some risks and usually needs to be reviewed, there are other development related processes where Copilot automation is also saving a great deal of time, for example creating documentation detailing a development or code changes. These notes are very useful for developers to access further down the line, and in practice are not always completed because of the time involved.

Microsoft 365 is a productivity and automation platform

You can do so much with Microsoft 365 and related tools, providing a digital workplace where you can drive automation, reporting and more. We’ve mentioned 25 business processes to automate in this post, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

If you’d like to discuss using Microsoft 365 to automate key business processes across your digital workplace, then get in touch!

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15 top intranet best practices

Posted on 11 June 20243 October 2024 by John Scott

What is the best way to manage an intranet? What are some of the intranet best practices that we should follow?

These are typical questions that we get asked during an intranet project. Of course, there is no right or wrong or even definitive answer as every intranet and organisation is slightly different. However, over the years we’ve seen a LOT of successful intranet projects and there are a range of common approaches, techniques, tactics that work well time and time again.

In this post we’re going to explore fifteen essential intranet best practices that will help to drive adoption and value on your intranet. Of course, some best practices will be more relevant to particular intranet teams than others. You might also not agree with us, and we can’t absolutely guarantee that an intranet best practice will work for you. However, we’re pretty confident that if you follow all fifteen of these suggestions that you’ll have a successful site.

Let’s explore 15 essential intranet best practices.

1. Always have an intranet strategy based on user research

An intranet delivers benefits at multiple levels across your organisation. It supports communications, delivers change management, drives productivity, underpins learning and knowledge sharing, improves processes, minimises risk and more. It’s a strategic-level benefit and it is important to get it right.

It’s imperative to have an intranet strategy that will help to drive value and adoption. Having a well-thought-through overview of what you are trying to achieve with your intranet that aligns with your overall company strategy is essential. Having an accompanying plan and roadmap of how you’re going to achieve it also allows you to maintain focus, prioritise efforts, win over stakeholders, unite different team members around the same goals and ensure your intranet keeps moving in a strategic direction. An intranet strategy will also provide the framework for much of the detail around design, features, content and more.

A successful intranet strategy must focus on the needs of users and be wrapped around the way they work. This can only be achieved with a thorough understanding of your employees, their respective needs and their pain points. Undertaking user research and discovery exercise to fully understand the needs of different groups is key. You cannot formulate an intranet strategy and build an effective solution based on assumptions. I

f you’re going act on only one intranet best practice from this article, then this is probably the most important!

2. Involve cross-functional stakeholders from across the organisation

Intranets impact an entire organisation and also need input from a wide variety of different business functions and departments. Creating an intranet and ensuring it remains valuable and has good adoption, requires input and ongoing involvement from a range of stakeholders including HR, IT, Internal Comms, Business Operations, and more.

These cross-functional stakeholders not only provide critical feedback into the direction of your intranet but will also be responsible for important content and possibly some of the systems that you may want to integrate into your intranet experience.

Stakeholder involvement should usually be reflected in some kind of ongoing governance structure such as representation on an intranet steering committee or as part of an intranet working group. When different stakeholders from varying functions are continually involved in your intranet, it has more buy-in, relevance and value.

3. Focus on content governance

An intranet is only as good as the content published within it. Great content is purposeful, relevant, accurate, up to date, engaging and on-brand. Intranets often launch with content that has been refreshed so it ticks all these boxes, but then that content quality is not maintained, and the intranet starts to decline in value over time.

A key intranet best practice is to ensure that you have a content governance framework in place that will help to maintain the quality of your intranet content over time. This is particularly important if you work with a devolved publishing model with content owners and authors from right across your organisation.

A content governance framework will consist of a number of different elements including:

Clear ownership of content, down to the page level.
A set of clear publishing standards.
Having clear content owner training, guidance and support.
Providing site and page templates.
Having regular reviews of content.
Using automated reminders for page owners to review their content.

4. Ensure your users shape your intranet

The best intranets are often shaped by direct input from the users. Involving users through research, iteration and testing when creating your intranet will help to ensure it is user-centric, and also gives your intranet more legitimacy in the eyes of employees.

Another intranet best practice is to gather and act upon employee feedback regularly to inform changes. This not only provides hugely valuable data so you can tweak and improve your intranet, but it also lets employees know that their opinions are valued, emphasising the role of the intranet as a truly user-centric channel.

There are various techniques to support gathering feedback, including creating a regular user group, running polls and surveys, and creating feedback mechanisms via the intranet itself.

5. Leverage digital and intranet champions for launch

Invariably central intranet teams tend to be quite small, and sometimes can be just one-person or two-person teams. This can be challenging when launching an intranet across a large organisation.

Many intranet teams find that leveraging a network of voluntary digital and intranet champions is an excellent way to launch an intranet and drive adoption.

Champions provide a local point of contact to let different teams know about the new intranet, answer any questions, relay any feedback and provide any support. They may also promote ongoing changes and potentially play some kind of coordinating role with content. Digital champions provide additional value by being trusted by their peers and also by providing context about the role of the intranet with reference to local working practices and needs.

6. Make your intranet the front door to the wider digital workplace

A primary role of the modern intranet is to act as the “front door” to the wider digital workplace, providing easy access to the wider portfolio of applications used by employees throughout the enterprise. When the intranet acts as this entry point, it drives efficiency, supports intranet adoption and also the use of the individual apps.

There are multiple ways to achieve this. For a SharePoint intranet, integrations with other Microsoft 365 tools makes it easier to create this digital “front door” with web parts for tools like Microsoft Viva Engage. You can also add links to apps and tools so the intranet homepage acts as an “app launcher”.

It’s also possible to initiate specific integrations with enterprise systems like Workday and ServiceNow to help employees complete common tasks like logging a ticket or requesting annual leave. The Viva Connections dashboard and the ability to leverage out-of-the-box connectors is one of the best ways to create a task-based dashboard on your intranet so it is truly the entry point to the wider digital workplace.

7. Use personalisation on your intranet

Using personalisation is a “must-have” intranet best practice. Inevitably workforces are diverse, particularly in large, complex and global organisations. For intranets to succeed, content and experiences need to be relevant to different roles, divisions and locations. Invariably users also expect the technology they use inside and outside work to “understand” them and save time, reflecting their needs, interest and preferences. Internal communicators also want to be able to target items to different sections of a workforce to deliver effective messaging.

Leveraging personalisation so that relevant, targeted content appears based on an individual’s profile, groups and preferences is essential for any modern intranet.

8. Make sure your intranet helps employees get things done

Intranets support multiple processes but two of the most important are keeping employees informed and helping employees complete tasks and get things done. Because intranets are often owned by internal communication teams there is usually an emphasis on news and messaging, particularly on the intranet homepage. This is vitally important, but the truth is that most employees come to an intranet to complete their work rather than read the news. If your intranet is too focused on news only it can result in poor adoption.

An important intranet best practice is to ensure your intranet has a good balance between news and task completion. You can achieve this through using the intranet as an app launcher, integrating key enterprise systems, incorporating “How Do I” information, ensuring there is informative content such as policies, and even using the intranet to aggregate reminders from multiple platforms.

When your intranet helps employees get things done it will drive better adoption and in turn ensure news items get read when people visit, ticking both boxes for internal communications and supporting productivity.

9. Have a user-focused and task-based information architecture

Another way to help employees get things done is to create a user-focused and task-based intranet information architecture and site navigation. This guides employees towards task completion and support user journeys.

All too often an intranet has a navigation that mirrors an organisational structure, use terms that are not clear and has bad practices such using lots of acronyms. An intranet best practice is to avoid these traps and make sure your navigation uses intuitive labels and is orientated around the needs of users. The best way to make this happen is to carry out user research and testing for your navigation using techniques such as card-sorting and task-testing.

10. Use measurement to drive continual improvement

Intranets and digital workplaces are never finished. There are always improvements and changes to be made, and the best intranets are managed on a basis of continual improvement.

Measurement is a key component of continual improvement, helping to identify where changes are needed. Intranet teams collect analytics on adoption and usage, reach, engagement, user satisfaction, search results, the individual performance of different content and more.

When measuring, ensure you take time to analyse and understand what the numbers mean, make changes or adjustments, measure again to see what the impact was and then make further changes. In this way, measurement is part of the process to drive improvement over the long term.

11. Make your SharePoint intranet available via Microsoft Teams

If you have a SharePoint intranet it is easy to integrate it with a range of other Microsoft tools. Using Microsoft Viva Connections, you can also enable your intranet to be accessed via Microsoft Teams. While there are still some advantages in viewing the intranet through the browser, if your users are spending much of their working day within Teams it makes good sense to allow them to view the intranet there too. This will help to drive intranet adoption by integrating it more directly into the daily flow of work.

12. Make your site accessible

Accessibility is a neglected area in the digital workplace, and it is surprising how few intranet sites actually meet the AA level of the WCAG 2.2 guidelines – the acceptable level that most external-customer sites aspire to to support people with disabilities. Ensuring that your site and content is accessible is not only important from a diversity and inclusion perspective, but also improves the general usability of a site.

Several practices can help make a site accessible including ongoing testing, introducing policies such as always having transcripts for videos and videos, double checking that all images have alt text and more.

13. Engage and support your publishing community

We’ve already explored the importance of establishing content governance. A companion intranet best practice is to ensure that you engage and support your devolved publishing community so that they continue to produce high quality content.

Generally, any publishers or content owners that are responsible for an area of an intranet will be doing this as an additional activity that is above and beyond their day job. Spending tine on an ongoing training programme, providing an online community, driving engagement through recognition and providing the right resources and tools that will make life easier for a content owner, will all make a huge difference.

14. Ensure your intranet supports dialogue using social and community tools

Modern intranets are dynamic and lively channels with high levels of participation that ideally mirror an organisation’s vibrant culture. They have evolved from the dreary, static content repositories of the past.

An intranet best practice is to ensure that your intranet can support dialogue using social and community tools. This has multiple benefits including the ability to get feedback and input on initiatives, get a pulse check on employee sentiment and feeling, create valuable discussions for leaders, support employee engagement by giving everyone a voice and more.

There are a wide variety of different tools and features that can be used including blogs, polls, commenting, discussion forums, social feeds, hashtags and @mentions, feedback mechanisms, and more! Sometimes social tools can be added by integrating a social platform like Microsoft Viva Engage.

15. Hire an intranet manager

Intranets don’t look after themselves and they require some stewardship. While much of the responsibility for intranet content may be devolved, actually you do need someone to help coordinate everything, look after the intranet day to day, and continue to grow adoption and drive value. In our experience hiring an intranet manager or equivalent is critical to get best out of your investment in a new intranet.

Carrying out intranet best practices

In this post we’ve looked at some of our favourite intranet best practices that we’ve learned over the years. Of course, there are many more!

If you’d like to discuss a particular best practice, one we might have missed, or simply the best way to manage your intranet, then get in touch!

Intranet discovery: user and stakeholder insights

Posted on 29 May 202429 May 2024 by John Scott

Intranets play a major role in helping employees stay informed and get things done, easing any pain points, aiding task completion and enabling user journeys. But for an intranet to be successful there has to be a thorough understanding of the needs of users. It’s also important to understand the views of different business stakeholders to ensure an intranet is also meeting business objectives. An intranet that is built on assumptions is either going to fail or miss out on opportunities to really drive value and adoption.

Carrying out user research and the equivalent stakeholder research is the principal way to understand employee and business needs. An in-depth research and discovery phase is a core part of the huge majority of our projects.

In this article were going to explore why user research is so important and how we go about our discovery phase.

Why is user research, stakeholder research and discovery so important for intranet projects?

Intranet success and user research are intertwined. Here’s fourteen reasons why.

1. Building a user-centic intranet or digital workplace

User-centric intranets help employees to perform their daily tasks

Every successful intranet or digital workplace has to be centred around the needs of employees. They are the people who use the intranet in the day-to-day and it if doesn’t deliver value to them they simply won’t use it. Any intranet that is not user-centric will not meet its full potential to inform, engage and support productivity.

Business stakeholders and intranet teams often have a reasonable to good understanding of the user problems that the intranet is trying to solve. But that understanding is rarely complete and also open to bias. There are also always nuances that can be quite subtle and will impact the design, scope and more.

User research is absolutely critical in order to understand users and their pain points, preferences, habits, beliefs and more. Only from this understanding can you then design an effective intranet or digital workplace. As already noted, you cannot rely on assumptions about what your users want or need.

2. Getting the support of stakeholders so it is relevant and credible

Engaging key stakeholders from across the business will increase the intranet’s value

Intranets meet the needs of users, but there will also be business priorities at an organisational level, as well as across different functions such as HR, IT, Communications, Knowledge Management and Operations. For example, perhaps the intranet needs to specifically drive more employee self-service around IT and HR tasks.

As part of our research and discovery phase we also interview key stakeholders to make sure there is alignment between the intranet and the objectives of different functions. Stakeholder input provides an important strategic framing for your project that will determine scope and prioritisation; it will also influence detail such as the design and information architecture. Involving stakeholders in research also drives the buy-in which often proves critical for the delivery of the project, and alsos give your research and project credibility.

3. Establishing scope and related priorities

Prioritise your requirements and plan to introduce them across multiple phases

Intranets and digital workplace projects can be incredibly wide in scope, touching multiple aspects of work across the entire organisation. Working out the scope of your project is important, but it can be hard to know what to prioritise to ensure you deliver a successful intranet from day one. Many teams also choose to work with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) so the question of scope and prioritisation comes even more into focus.

User research gives you more clarity over the prioritisation of your efforts as you can identify the biggest areas of pain, the low hanging fruit that will impact most users, the more niche cases that fall outside the scope of your MVP and so on. It can also help drive consensus across your project team and wider business stakeholders about what to focus on.

4. Killing silly requirements from individual stakeholders

Very occasionally individual stakeholders have some very specific ideas that are misinformed and not necessarily a good idea. User research is a good way to show a data-driven approach that will (hopefully) show that a particular idea is not necessarily a good one.

5. Deriving an intranet strategy, roadmap and requirements

Inevitably user research will prove to be a significant data input into some of the key documents of your intranet or digital workplace project – the strategy, any related roadmap and your functional and non-functional requirements. These will often reference directly back to your user research.

In the projects we deliver we have a user research and discovery report which will make strategic recommendations and identify key requirements – all based on the research.

6. Designing for personalization and relevancy

Certain groups may need quick access to information or tools that others will have no interest in.

Workforces are highly diverse and complex, with a wide variety of different roles, backgrounds, locations, needs, preferences and perspectives. One size does not fit all. Moreover, a successful modern intranet should be highly personalised and relevant for different groups with targeted content and experiences, usually based on a person’s profile.

User research should always reflect the diversity of the workforce and be carried out across a representative sample. Undertaking user research helps you to understand the differences in how groups work and the relative nuances you need to make in terms of development, design, content and even change management interventions.

7. Ensuring your project is accessible

Make sure that you understand the accessibility requirements for your intranet.

Accessibility is very important for any digital project and also supports Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I). Carrying our user research can uncover some of the pain points for people that are living with disabilities and need to be taken into account in building your intranet and digital workplace. Improving accessibility also improves usability.

8. Getting the detail right

Make sure you plan the details – wireframes are a great tool for ensuring everyone has the same expectation.

Designing intranets and digital workplaces means often going into the detail. How do you decide on the best approach for user interface design, or a workflow process or even a piece of content? Returning to the detail of user research can help you get the fine-tuning right, as well as then further testing a design or solution with users.

9. Suggesting the backlog

Intranets and digital workplaces are never finished, and often deliberately so, by introducing an MVP. User research and stakeholder research will suggest multiple features, content areas and more. Some may be essential; others may be more nice-to-haves. One of the powerful outputs from any user research and discovery phase will be a backlog of changes, features and new capabilities that can define the fundamental roadmap for your intranet or roadmap for the short-, medium- and even the long-term.

10. Making the business case

Make your case – share your research findings and strategy with senior stakeholders.

Intranets and digital workplaces require investment and you may need to make a business case. User research will invariably produce data that can help make and improve any business case. Using a mix of quantitative and qualitative data from user research is often the best way to influence hearts and minds. A killer statistic about a pain point or a direct quote from a user that expresses the frustration of using an existing solution can be powerful.

11. Supporting adoption and change management

Adoption and change management are critical ingredients of every intranet project. User research supports adoption and change management in two ways. Firstly, the user research will provide valuable information on how to launch an intranet – what to focus on, what kind of messages will resonate with users and so on. We sometimes have a specific workshop about change management to help form an effective engagement and adoption strategy.

Secondly, carrying out user research is a form of change management itself. If users know they are being listened to it can create advocates and champions who may want to get more involved in the project in activities like testing, but also help to champion it after launch. Sometimes those involved in user research end up playing a critical part of your wider change efforts.

12. Setting up iteration, testing and improvement

User research often reveals those individuals and groups who may be willing to contribute further with feedback. As already noted, there is often a continuity between groups involved in initial user research who then give ongoing feedback to be able to iterate and test an intranet or application before launch, and then even improve it afterwards.

Ongoing user research and testing also helps power more iterative development which helps to drive better products. For example, we often use prototyping to be able to improve and iterate a design until it really ticks the right boxes for users.

13. Getting a baseline to track improvement and success

Measurement underpins efforts to improve an intranet over time. User research should give you baseline data to then re-measure later down the line to track success – comparing the “before” and the “after”.

14. Giving your project credibility

As an overall point, user research gives a project credibility not only with your stakeholders but also employees too. When everybody knows an intranet or digital workplace is based on a data-driven and user-centric approach, then everybody is more likely to take it seriously.

Our approach to user research and discovery

User research and discovery is a core part of our intranet and digital workplace projects. This comes in two phases. Firstly, we carry out initial discovery and research with users and stakeholders that will help drive scoping, strategy, requirements and more. This usually has some distinct activities:

A number of focus groups with users representing different sections of the workforce.
A number of individual interviews, again representing a cross-representation of users.
Interviews with key stakeholders, to understand their views too.
A heuristic review of the current intranet or digital workplace covering areas such as user experience, information architecture and content design.
Any additional research techniques such as observing users in their actual workplace or undertaking a wider survey asking additional questions.
Reviewing additional data inputs such as intranet metrics, help desk statistics, previous employee surveys and strategic documents.

What do we cover in our user research?

Interviews and focus groups cover a consistent set of questions and topics, covering elements such as:

User journeys
User frustrations and pain points
Information needs
How they use current applications
What a typical day looks like
Ideas and preferences
Adoption and change management
Wider business objectives (with stakeholders).

From our workshop and interview notes, we will then carry out our analysis, identifying themes, finding patterns and making recommendations. These are then summarised and collated in a discovery phase report.

What is in a typical discovery phase report?

Of course, no two discovery reports are the same! However, typically we cover the following areas usually in a presentation to key stakeholders and team members:

Overview of the discovery process.
User frustrations and pain points, often illustrated by real quotes.
Other insights from interviews and workshops.
Feedback and ideas from employees and stakeholders.
Overall emergent themes.
Recommendations suggested by the research for intranets, digital workplace, governance and more.
Any other detail associated with the recommendations such as a suggestion for an information architecture for the intranet or an adoption and change management approach.

Involving user research in the actual project

Once we have the go-ahead, users will continue to be involved in the project through workshops and testing where we might:

Iterate designs through prototyping.
Contributing to card sorting or tree testing to derive information architecture.
Giving specific views on deeper elements of design or features.
And more!

Examples of our work

Most of our work involves a discovery phase involving detailed user and stakeholder research. Here are just a few examples where research played a critical role in the success of the project.

For LEK Consulting we built a ground-breaking knowledge management platform to support client projects. This was based on extensive discovery with user and stakeholder interviews, and a series of focus groups, to understand needs of consultants and knowledge teams across different regions. Users continued to be involved throughout the project, for example carrying out testing and giving feedback on a clickable prototype.

For a high-profile racing team, we built a custom unified SharePoint intranet that ticked the boxes for engagement and productivity across a diverse workforce. We held both online and in-person workshops across different parts of the business to identify requirements and detail user journeys. Mocked up wireframes helped to further refine user journeys and iterate designs based on further user and stakeholder feedback.

Legal and General engaged Content Formula to carry our detailed user research to develop a strategy and roadmap to transform the digital employee experience; we undertook numerous workshops and interviews, as well as involving senior stakeholders. The research and related discovery output that also built on previous information helped form the basis for an ambitious roadmap that is still being followed today.

When TTEC engaged us to deliver a new intranet for a workforce with complex needs, we needed to completely understand the nuances of how employees worked as well as stakeholder priorities. The on-site workshops we held at TTECs campus HQ in the USA as well as the remote interviews we carried out proved essential for the successful roll-out of a strong intranet that meets TTECs unique needs.

Find out more

User research and discovery is essential for every intranet and digital workplace project. If you’d like to discuss our approach to user research, then get in touch.

How to use SharePoint communication sites

Posted on 14 May 202420 May 2024 by Dan Hawtrey

Communication sites are one of modern SharePoint’s most used and popular features, providing a set of templates that support digital communication and the creation of an enterprise intranet.

We often get asked about the best way to use SharePoint communication sites. In this article we’re going to go a deep dive into communication sites. We explore what a SharePoint communication site is, the main elements, the most popular use cases and their associated benefits, and also when to use communication sites rather than team sites.

What is a SharePoint communication site?

Communication sites were first introduced with SharePoint modern and still remain incredibly useful. It remains a modern SharePoint template that is frequently used as part of SharePoint Online.

Communication sites are primarily designed to help people communicate to wider groups about a particular project, group, process, department, team or topic. Microsoft themselves say a communication site is “designed to inform and engage.”

What are the main features of a SharePoint communication site?

SharePoint communication sites have a number of key features.

Pages

A communication site is a site that is usually made up of a number of different number of pages, with additional items such as news, events and quick links. Microsoft guidance is useful here in distinguishing between two different types of pages – navigation pages which guide

readers towards the information they need – and destination pages that then present information to read. There is some overlap between the two, but the distinction is a useful way to think about structuring a communication site, with an overall first “landing page” often acting as the entry point (a navigation page) towards the contents of the site.

Within each SharePoint page within a communication site there will then be a number of different web parts; these are the building blocks of SharePoint and make up the different components or widgets on a page such as news, links or document libraries.

News

As communication sites are about communicating, news is often one of the most important features. The News web part is attractive and easy for publishers to use, so can help support a decentralised publishing model.

Hero area

The Hero web part often sits at the top of a SharePoint communication site and is a visually striking way to spotlight particular content or news items and engage visitors. The hero area typically features a number of images chosen by a site owner with accompany text, with each linking to the relevant item.

Document library

SharePoint is frequently used as a document management solution in its own right, and a communication site will often feature a document library, for example for relevant reference documents. There are options to use different web parts to embed a document to read within a page, display a list of latest documents and more.

SharePoint list

Regular readers of this blog will know that we are big fans of SharePoint lists at Content Formula. Lists are an efficient and flexible way to store, manage and present information and data and establish one source of truth. For example, a SharePoint List in a communication site could present a list of first aiders, databases subscribed to, approved suppliers, a list of offices and so on.

Quick links

Communication sites often provide links to useful resources both included within the site, but also on other SharePoint sites or even external websites. The Quick Links web part is a versatile way to present frequently-used links.

People and contacts

The People web part allows you to display a summary of key contacts, and links to their profiles. It can be used to introduce a team, display a page contact, show who the leaders of a function are and more.

Events and group calendar

The Events web part can be used to advertise upcoming events and encourage registrations. Events can be presented in a calendar format and it is also possible for a person to add an event to their own personal calendar. You can also use the events calendar to display important dates such as milestones, deadlines or holidays.

Navigation

A SharePoint communication site will also have its own navigation to support browsing around the site. In simple sites this will likely be basic, but more complex sites will need an intuitive and user-focused navigation to improve findability.

Other web parts

There are multiple other web parts that can be added to a communication site. Many of these are available out of the box in SharePoint Online. However, an intranet solution product like Lightspeed365 adds multiple extra features that can be added to a communication site, helping to increase the adoption and value of any site.

Using SharePoint communication site templates

One of the most helpful things about communication sites is that there are a number of different templates suited around different use cases which can give you a head start on creating your own communication site. Each template comes with a set of default web parts already

installed, and you can then remove or add your own, to create a site and design that is suited to your needs.

At it’s most basic there is a “topic” template to share information on a particular theme and a “showcase” template that uses images to showcase something like a product or event. There is also a blank SharePoint communication site template that gives you a starting canvas to create your own design. In addition, there a number of other useful communication site templates to meet different use cases, including.

Brand central
Crisis management
Department
Human resources
Organization home
Event
Leadership connection
Learning central
New employee onboarding
Volunteer centre

When should you use a team site rather than a communication site?

As well as templates for communication sites, there are also templates for SharePoint team sites. These are intended to be used less as a general communication resource, but more as a place for collaborating and knowledge sharing, usually across a smaller team or group.

What are the use cases for a SharePoint communication site?

SharePoint communication sites are both flexible and versatile and can be used for many different business use cases.

Employee communication from a department, team or location

Unsurprisingly, communication sites are designed for communication! Philosophically, SharePoint is built on a flat, decentralised structure

that potentially empowers different parts of an organisation to manage their own employee communications independently of say a central internal communications function. While that has both upsides and downsides, a communication site provides a strong vehicle for employee communications from a specific department, division, function, team or location, that sometimes might sit outside an intranet.

This could provide information about a department, but for larger departments it could also serve for news for people within that group.

Information site or knowledge hub on a topic, process or initiative

Communication sites are also excellent for collating resources and information on a particular topic or process that will be relevant for employees. For example this could be a knowledge hub or an area such as Health & Safety or Cybersecurity, or perhaps a resource relating to a particular process. It might also be a site for an initiative such as a wellbeing program.

A portal for a specific group

A communication site could also be an information resource site aimed at a particular group of employees. A high value use case is a hub for new starters that supports the onboarding process and could include checklists, welcome videos and more – all to help them settle in and have a great start to working at the company.

Community sites

A communication site can also be more of a community site which supports interaction between a group of employees. It can focus on news and resources, but then also have a Viva Engage web part embedded for

discussions and knowledge sharing. It is possible that use case may be better served by a team site if it is a smaller group.

Self-service learning site

A SharePoint communication site also can be a good place to include learning resources that provides “how to” information and guidance on a self-serve basis. This can a wide different variety of topics. For example, a common type of “learning site” found in the digital workplace is guidance on how to use Microsoft 365 and which tool to use when. Again, an embedded Viva Engage community can also be a place for people to ask questions to experts.

Parts of the intranet

A SharePoint Online intranet usually consists of a collection of different sites tied to together with a common navigation, additional consistent branding, content types and more. Individual communication sites within a wider intranet might relate to different regions, functions, departments and topics such as wellbeing and strategy and more.

A simple intranet for a small company

A communication site can act as a very basic intranet for a small company that has simple and straightforward information needs. However, this isn’t always the best option as usually a more sophisticated approach may be required.

SharePoint home site

A communication site can be turned into your SharePoint home site, which could be a top-level site for your organization and might equate to your intranet home page (and could actually be that) and will act as employees’ default starting point, as well as defining some of the default settings for other communication sites. It can also power Viva Connections, which requires a home site to be enabled.

Need advice on using SharePoint communication sites? Get in touch!

SharePoint communication sites are highly versatile and can be used for a variety of communication needs. They are an important part of any SharePoint or Microsoft 365 digital workplace and also can be a major component of your intranet.

Need help or advice on getting the best out of your SharePoint communication sites? Then get in touch!

7 reasons a SharePoint LMS is best for learning

Posted on 5 May 20245 July 2024 by Dan Hawtrey

SharePoint is not traditionally viewed as a learning technology, but this is changing. There are now Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Learning Platforms available that are based on SharePoint, and can integrate seamlessly with your existing SharePoint and Microsoft 365 environment. The best SharePoint-based LMS on the market is Zensai (LMS365), a solution that we implement with our clients, but there are a number of different products available.

There are multiple reasons why an LMS must be part of any learning and development strategy, as they help to support a blended learning programme, put learners in control of their own learning, and facilitates remote learning, especially in the current hybrid working environment. But there are also additional features which make a SharePoint LMS likely to be the best option for your organisation.

Lets explore seven reasons why a SharePoint LMS will bring more benefits than any other system.

1 Bringing learning into the flow of work

Most digital workplaces are built on Microsoft 365, and that invariably involves SharePoint. Microsoft 365 is the platform where work is truly happening, with many employees using Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Yammer, and SharePoint throughout the working day.

When you seamlessly integrate a SharePoint LMS into your digital workplace, you can not only use AAD profiles to ensure single sign-on, but it also means you can leverage the familiarity of SharePoint Moderns design. With SharePoint, your LMS is truly embedded into the heart of your digital workplace, allowing learning to happen into the flow of work. It even gives you the ability to view learning material through a channel like Teams.

Accessing learning through Microsoft 365 helps drive adoption by removing many of the barriers associated with a traditional, non-SharePoint LMS; if your LMS is on the periphery of the digital workplace, often with a different password and a different interface to a users network ID, the extra effort required to access it can damage the take up of learning.

2 Integrating with your SharePoint intranet

If you have Microsoft 365, it is likely that you will have a SharePoint intranet. Integrating your SharePoint intranet and your SharePoint LMS brings a number of advantages, including the ability to:

Create additional interfaces, views and entry points into learning content to drive value and support adoption
More easily promote learning via your key communications channel, for example, reminders to do mandatory training
Bring learning content into your intranet search so course material is more discoverable
Bring different content on a single topic together all in one place, such as SharePoint documents, course material and a Yammer group to form a one stop shop which could be used to create a portal for new starters
Bring intranet pages and assets into your learning course catalogue
Leverage the power of SharePoint lists to integrate into your learning.

Ultimately, a SharePoint LMS and intranet helps you to create content and experiences which will support both adoption and wider learning goals.

3 Using social channels for peer-to-peer recommendations

SharePoint commenting, Yammer, Microsoft Teams and even (arguably) Outlook-based email, are all social channels where conversations between employees happen. When you have a SharePoint LMS, it opens up the possibility for peers to recommend and link to courses and learning content using these social channels across the Microsoft suite. Social learning and peer-to-peer recommendations can help to drive the adoption of more formal learning material that you have on your SharePoint LMS; this can also be the exciting point where you start to create a bottom-up learning culture which can have multiple benefits for employees and organisations.

4 Using Azure Active Directory (AAD) profiles

Many organisations use Active Directory (AD) or Azure Active Directory (AAD) profiles to target content and messages to different groups based on location, role, division, place in the hierarchy and so on. For example, content targeting on a SharePoint intranet usually uses AAD profile data. SharePoints integration with AD & AAD means that a SharePoint LMS can effortlessly use profile data to target learning to different groups, and also underpin automated enrolment to various courses, one example being a course for sales staff. This can save learning administrators huge amounts of time, as well as help ensure learning is relevant across a diverse workforce.

5 Leveraging the power of SharePoint search

With a non-SharePoint LMS, the findability of learning content is usually restricted to searches made through a course catalogue. This limits the discoverability of learning material, and also leaves you to the mercy of the quality of the search tools within your LMS. With a SharePoint LMS, you can leverage the full power of SharePoint or Microsoft search; this makes your content far more discoverable, not only because of the superior search facility, but also because you can include learning content in more general topic searches on your intranet. This, again, brings learning directly into the flow of work and supports adoption efforts.

6 Integration with the rest of the Microsoft 365 suite

Because a SharePoint LMS can integrate with Microsoft 365, it means you can easily take advantage of the suites power to make it easier to manage your learning programme, while also creating a better experience for learners. For example, integrating a SharePoint LMS with Power BI means you can create exceptional learning dashboards to track progress and even bring in data from other systems. These dashboards are not necessarily just for learning teams – they may even be useful as a personal option for learners and their managers.

You can also use Power Automate to create workflows around learning, for example, triggering bespoke registration for different new starters courses, or Outlook messages and calendar invitations when someone registers for a course. There are also exciting options to use PowerApps to create an app with a learning component which could be used to support employee onboarding. These kinds of opportunities are not always possible using a non-SharePoint LMS.

7 Future proofing

SharePoint and Microsoft 365 are not going to be disappearing any time soon. In fact, they are likely to be the dominant work platform for the next decade, and possibly beyond that. By investing in a SharePoint LMS, you are investing in an LMS that can evolve along with your digital workplace.

Need to implement a SharePoint LMS? Get in touch!

If you have Microsoft 365 or have a SharePoint intranet, then a SharePoint LMS is absolutely the way to go for your learning platform. If youd like more information about a SharePoint LMS, the LMS365 offering or your digital workplace, then get in touch!

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Top 7 Microsoft 365 updates from #M365Con

Posted on 2 May 20247 May 2024 by Joe Perry

This week kicks off the start of Microsoft’s annual community event M365Conf, which sees experts from across the Microsoft 365 community come together to showcase the different MS products and announce what’s coming soon.

The conference this year takes place for the first time in Orlando, Florida at the world-famous Walt Disney Resort and is headlined by influential people at Microsoft such as Jeff Teper – President of Microsoft Collaborative Apps and Platforms.

As always, we at Content Formula keep a close eye on events like this and follow closely the announcements made by Microsoft. Here are 7 of the things we’re most excited for in 2024 for Microsoft 365:

1. A simpler authoring canvas for SharePoint page creators

Microsoft have made massive improvements to the editing experience in SharePoint over the last 5 years and we’re excited to now see even less barriers for people to create great content on SharePoint.

An interesting announcement is the ability to co-author SharePoint Pages. This is an interesting concept and we will watch this closely to see if this eliminates the age-old problem of leaving pages checked out and having to discard peoples changes!

2. Permission state reports in SharePoint

For as long as we can remember, oversharing / mismanagement of permissions in SharePoint has been an issue. It has been an IT administrator’s nightmare trying to understand who has access to what, and if people had access to things they shouldn’t. Well with the introduction of a Permission State Report coming soon to the SharePoint Data Access Governance dashboards, this will hopefully make all that a thing of the past.

Using the new permission state report, SharePoint admins can get details on sites that are permissioned for greater than X users, say >5000 users. This report includes files and folders that broke inheritance from site permission. This report can be run for OneDrive and SharePoint sites.

3. Microsoft Copilot, in general!

As announced back in February, Copilot is being made available in more and more places. Soon you will be able to create pages in SharePoint with it, create and summarise documents in OneDrive and even build your own Copilots in Copilot Studio.

All of that, tied in with the latest announcements of multilingual capabilities, integration with Viva Learning and access to Copilot on the go, you’re going to see AI in more and more places in Microsoft 365.

4. Calendar notifications inside of Teams

You’ve now got no reason at all to ever miss a meeting again! Notifications for events in your calendar now appear within Teams – whenever you receive an invite, a meeting is updated / cancelled or about to begin, Teams will let you know about it.

5. SharePoint eSignature integrates with DocuSign and Adobe Sign

Pretty much what the title says! You’ll soon (if you’re a US customer at least!) be able to integrate with SharePoint document signing workflows with DocuSign and Adobe Sign, allowing you to store signed documents in one location, use the extra security and compliance policies that SharePoint and Microsoft 365 offer, and minimise the chances of data breaches.  

And here is how that will start to look for signature requests:

6. Custom group chat profile pictures

A simple one, but something long missing in the Teams app – the ability to set custom profile pictures on group chats.

7. The developer roadmap for SharePoint will allow for even more extensibility

The Microsoft developer ecosystem has been great over the past few years, with more and more endpoints being added to Microsoft Graph all the time, the SharePoint Framework becoming more mature and on top of that, the fantastic Microsoft 365 developer community. There has never been a better time to extend your Microsoft 365 environment.

A whole host more features have also been announced by the team at Microsoft including more SharePoint page extensibility options, Copilot integration with SPFx and even more Graph endpoints to take advantage of.

We hope you have found this article useful! If you have any questions, or would like to know more about anything else in Microsoft 365, reach out to us at [email protected]

SharePoint knowledge management: 8 best practice examples

Posted on 30 April 202423 May 2024 by John Scott

We often get asked whether SharePoint is a good base technology for knowledge management (KM). The answer to this is yes, and we’ve seen many of our clients use SharePoint to support and even drive their KM efforts. However, KM is not just about technology, and a flexible and powerful platform like SharePoint has to be used in the right way.

In this article we’re going to explore the use of SharePoint for KM and illustrate some of the ways it can be used with reference to some best practice examples.

What is Knowledge Management?

Knowledge management (KM) is a very important activity for most organisations and is critical for industry sectors such as professional services, engineering, energy and more. KM has many definitions but at a high level it is concerned with the capture, storage, dissemination, sharing and re-use of knowledge throughout the enterprise.

KM is mature and has been around for almost thirty years. Despite coming in and out of fashion, its never really gone away. In recent years KM has continued to be highly relevant and has even gone through a renaissance; KM teams are now playing an important role in helping build the right foundations to drive impactful AI and automation.

Can SharePoint be used as a knowledge management system?

A KM system is never just about technology. It’s also about the associated roles and processes that help to capture, codify, disseminate and manage knowledge within an organisation. However, SharePoint provides a robust base technology for a KM system that can support everything from facilitating the finding of experts to establishing specialist collections of knowledge to document automation. One of the strengths of SharePoint is its flexibility and scalability to meet multiple KM-related use cases. There also often rely on additional tools from across Microsoft 365 and the Microsoft stack including Viva Engage, Microsoft Teams and even Copilot.

Eight SharePoint Knowledge Management best practice examples

Let’s explore how we can use SharePoint for knowledge management.

1. Expertise location

A key knowledge management area is expertise location, helping employees find the experts throughout their organisation on particular topics, or facilitating questions and answers. This is primarily done through people profiles which might list the different areas of expertise and relevant experience a person has.

SharePoint intranets excel with expertise location, usually by providing an employee directory based on Delve profiles where expertise can be searched for, usually via the intranet. Employee profiles should provide information about a person’s role, but also their areas of expertise such as sector specialisms, technical knowledge and proficiencies such as languages spoken. s. Controlled metadata can ensure these expertise areas march an organisation’s taxonomy and allow users to search using appropriate filters to find the expert they need.

SharePoint’s flexibility also creates other possibilities. For example, we have created profiles that link to a SharePoint database of projects and display which ones a person has worked upon within their profile.

2. Communities of Practice

Communities of Practice (CoP) are a stalwart of KM systems and drive knowledge sharing within professional communities grouped around particular domains, topics or practices. For example, there might be a CoP dedicated to artificial intelligence, commercial property law or Agile methodologies.

Microsoft Viva Engage (formerly Yammer) is an excellent platform for community discussions and interaction and is often used successfully to support CoPs. SharePoint has a couple of out-of-the-box Viva Engage web parts that means a CoP can be effortlessly integrated into a SharePoint intranet – potentially to add news, documents and events relating to a CoP – and support broader knowledge sharing.

3. Knowledge collections and bases

Sometimes knowledge is structured and organised in a way that helps employees to find knowledge on a specific topic through a particular collection of knowledge, or a knowledge base. For example, this could be information on different projects, a collection of FAQs or a knowledge base of “How Do I” information. It could even be a collection of media assets. Within all these examples, knowledge usually needs to be formatted and codified in a standardised way so then it be more easily found.

SharePoint is a strong platform for organising specific knowledge collections or knowledgebases – this could be either pages or documents or both. It has the flexibility to create different templates and also add controlled tags and metadata to codify knowledge. You can then create ways for employees to find what they need either through browsing or through searching the collection and make this available through a SharePoint intranet.

We’ve created many different knowledge collections – from the policy library that is at the core of our Xoralia policy management software – to creating a custom global knowledge-sharing platform for a global consulting firm to support their client work.

4. Topic pages or knowledge hubs

Topic pages are an example of a knowledge collection, but they are frequently found on intranets. They usually provide a curated list or gateway to different knowledge resources – including experts – on a particular subject and might also include news and updates. A topic page may also be connected to a related Community of Practice, for example with an embedded Viva Engage community.

Topic pages was one of the outputs of Microsoft Viva Topic; this used AI and automation to help create the topic page. However, Microsoft recently announced that this will be discontinued in 2025. SharePoint is still a very good base technology for creating curated topic pages that might include links to knowledge resources, documents, news, updates, a list of experts, a discussion group, events and more.

5. Search and findability

Managing search and improving findability is a key activity for all intranet and digital workplace teams, but it often has crossover with KM. It’s not unusual for a KM team to be looking after search. Here, the KM team will be usually looking to add controlled metadata that aligns with a corporate taxonomy in order to improve search relevance and also add filtering options for employees to help find what they need.

Search is always to improve but SharePoint and Microsoft search in general are actually very robust, particularly as often most content and documents resides within an organization’s Microsoft 365 tenant and can be searched. SharePoint provides a flexible solution to also create customer search experiences. For example, you can add multiple custom filters to allow users to perform specific searches; these can also be added to create a custom people search.

The sheer flexibility of SharePoint also means you can also create contextual searches for particular knowledge collections or areas, such as just searching through projects or HR knowledge. Our Lightspeed intranet floating search web part allows you to embed an attractive search box anywhere on a page to deliver contextual search.

6. Model documents and automation

Model documents is another focus area for KM teams. Model documents are effectively templates for complex documents that can then be completed for particular purposes both saving huge amounts of time, but also ensuring they follow best practices and are in the right format. Model documents might be used for contracts, NDAs or other types of legal use cases. A model document can then also leverage workflow and intelligent automation to create a final version, saving huge amounts of time and cost, for example inserting the right client name in or building the document based on particular criteria.

SharePoint Premium (formerly SharePoint Syntex) provides exciting capabilities to build model documents and accompanying automation and workflow. We’ve found this is of particular interest to professional services firms and in-house legal teams who work with model documents at scale.

7. Project reviews

During any project usually there are documents, presentations and even frameworks that could easily be reused on other projects, not only saving time and costs, but also helping drive project success and even sparking new ideas. Project reviews are processes that occur when a project finishes or reaches a particular milestone. As part of the review, any valuable knowledge that could be shared is identified and then potentially put into a format that makes it easily reusable.

We’ve created business solutions based on SharePoint that support project reviews, for example allowing a project manager to trigger a workflow once a project is finished and make specified knowledge available to share within the intranet, as well as specific project information.

8. Support generative AI and automation

Generative AI and automation work best when they have the right foundations including using the right metadata, training any bot on the right document set, ensuring the right data management rules are place, and more. KM teams have a critical role to play in supporting generative AI so that it drives real value.

Many organizations are considering using Microsoft Copilot or are deploying OpenAI services for Azure in order to be able to navigate data privacy concerns. Here documents based on SharePoint are likely to provide a major set of the content that is interrogated to provide results. The structure of SharePoint can help KM teams to better manage the set of documents and the data that will effectively feed your generative AI efforts.

Using SharePoint for knowledge management

SharePoint is a robust and flexible platform to support knowledge management, particularly when combined with other Microsoft 365 tools including Viva Engage. This means a SharePoint intranet can be a good base to use for popular knowledge management use cases such as expert location. SharePoint also provides a strong platform to build a custom, comprehensive knowledge solution.

If you’d like to discuss using SharePoint for KM or any of the examples shown above, then get in touch!

15 essential features of a modern company intranet

Posted on 15 April 20242 May 2024 by Dan Hawtrey

What is a modern company intranet and what features does one typically include? Clients regularly ask us this question, particularly when they are considering a new intranet project. In this article, were going to explore the essential features that should be part of a modern company intranet.

What is an intranet?

There’s no exact consensus definition of an intranet is, but most people will have an idea of what it, especially as many of us have used at intranet at work.

An intranet can be considered to be an internal-facing private organisation website that is accessed by employees to stay informed and get things done. It enables users to read content, find information using search or through browsing, and to complete different tasks and transactions. It also supports communication and collaboration, facilitating both publishing and discussions.

Are intranets still relevant?

Intranets have been around for nearly 30 years and are now an established part of the workplace technology landscape. More or less every large or medium-sized company has an intranet and those that say they don’t, usually have some kind of equivalent portal or site which is essentially an intranet. Many smaller companies also have an intranet.

Despite analysts and product marketers periodically declaring that intranets are dead and have little value, that is clearly not the case. There is a thriving intranet software industry with multiple vendors reviewed in the ClearBox guide each year. Gartner has started producing a Magic Quadrant report for “Intranet Packaged Solutions”. Even Microsoft markets SharePoint as “Your mobile, intelligent intranet” these days, so the “intranet” is still a concept and product that very much has legs.

There are various reasons why intranets are still around:

The basic idea of an internal website for employees that helps them get things done and stay informed is fundamentally a good one, driving efficiency and productivity, minimising risk, supporting engagement and enabling knowledge management.
Over the years intranets have absorbed waves and waves of new features and approaches, including social tools, mobile, personalization, integrations and more. This has allowed them to stay relevant and continue to add value; the truth is modern intranets tend to be pretty feature rich.
Microsoft has continued to invest in SharePoint so you can build a great intranet; it has been the most popular base technology for intranets for a long time now. The ability to integrate other Microsoft 365 tools has also allowed SharePoint intranets to evolve and provide value.

What are the essential features of a modern company intranet?

Modern company intranets have many features. We could easily list fifty! But here’s our view of list of the fifteen of the most important.

1. An engaging homepage

The homepage on any intranet is always very important as it provides the “shop window” into the rest of the content and tools. It’s also got to be easy to use, attractive and have valuable resources and features to encourage wider adoption – it will be the most visited page on any modern intranet. The intranet homepage will usefully feature a promotional hero area, news, links to other apps (providing the entry point to the wider digital workplace), social feeds, more content spotlights, polls and more. Many homepages have similar features, but no two homepages are ever exactly the same.

2. News, events and promotions

One of the main jobs of an intranet is support internal communications throughout a company with messaging that is relevant, engaging and informative. News is therefore a key feature not only on the homepage but also on different sites on particular topics such as HR. An intranet will typically feature news that is targeted to an individual based on their role, location and even interests. Other content types also keep employees informed – these might include wider promotions as part of a campaigns but also events that employees can usually add to their personal calendar.

3. Information, knowledge and content hubs

Content is king is a phrase long associated with intranets. An intranet should be the one source of truth for reference content, information and knowledge usually through specific hubs, areas, sites or knowledge bases on a range of operational, departmental and process-related topics. Each “hub” or site is usually a set of published pages with additional resources such as documents and links to present content in an engaging and easy-to-read manner. This evergreen “reference” content helps drive self-service, supports efficiency, standardises processes and more.

4. A policy library

Another high-value feature of an intranet that also ticks the “one source of truth” box is a central policy library. This should provide an essential and trusted repository of firmwide policies and procedures that employees need to access and reference – from the employee handbook to the cybersecurity policy to the expenses policy. An intranet policy library should also always have version control for documents so it displays the latest versions only. Here at Content Formula, we’ve built the ultimate policy library for those who need advanced features through our Xoralia product.

5. A global navigation with megamenu

Intranets help employees find the content and tools they need for their day-to-day work. One way this is done is thorough a site-wide navigation that guides them intuitively to the right area; these usually work best when they are structured around the tasks that employees need to complete. Many SharePoint intranets have a megamenu for their navigation which lays out links to multiple resources and sites in a structured way under appropriate headings.

6. Search

Another way that employees can find what they need is through search. This will normally search more than just the intranet; for example, a SharePoint intranet search might retrieve a wider set of resources across the Microsoft 365 platform. There are usually two forms of search – a single box that is available within the intranet header and available across any intranet page. This usually has type-ahead functionality to enable faster searching. There may also be a more advanced search screen where it’s possible to filter results on particular custom terms used within your organisation. More sophisticated intranets may have more search features; for example, our Lightspeed365 product that builds on and adds value to out-of-the-box SharePoint features includes a sophisticated floating search feature that allows you to place a special contextual search on a page.

7. Personalisation and content targeting

Large organisations have highly diverse workforces with different type of employees spread across multiple locations. But how do you make the intranet equally relevant to a factory worker based in Brazil to a knowledge worker based in a London HQ? Modern intranets use personalisation and content targeting to ensure content and experiences are relevant to different groups based on their role, location, region, division, interests and language. Often these reflect attributes in their Microsoft Entra ID profile. Content targeting also enables internal communicators to target the right content to the right groups.

8. Access to apps and integrations

An intranet is often the best “front door” to the wider digital workplace. Being able to access and find the apps that employees need is a key use case for intranets and supports adoption. In modern company intranets access to apps is usually delivered through quick links that might appear on a home page – often in icon form, and act as a personalised “app launcher”. Access to other applications – or the data and tasks associated with them – are delivered through integrations; but in the most advanced intranets employees don’t even need to leave the intranet to complete tasks, leading to the emergence of the “everything intranet” concept.

9. Social and community tools

Intranets are no longer the static, stale content repositories of the past but dynamic channels for ongoing discussion and dialogue. Social tools that facilitate participation and conversation are now a core part of the intranet experience. These can vary and include commenting and liking, discussion groups, blogs, polls and surveys, and even features like peer-to-peer recognition. With SharePoint intranets some of these are already part of the platform, while others are enabled by integrating Viva Engage.

10. Employee directory, profiles and search

Intranets support connection and communication between employees. Arguably the most critical way to achieve this is through a searchable employee directory where every employee has their own profile with contact and role details, photo, pen portrait, list of skills and experience, and more. There also needs to be an accompanying people search so people can find details about their colleagues or the right person to contact. Knowing how important this feature is, we created an additional, attractive people search feature in our Lightspeed365 product.

11. Branding and design options

Invariably internal communicators are always keen to brand the intranet so that it aligns with their own corporate fonts, colours, logos and styling. Sometimes there might be more than one brand in operation. The ability to brand an intranet product and apply custom designs can depend from intranet product to product. In SharePoint Online many find that the intranet branding options are not quite as flexible as they want them to be; one of our most popular Lightspeed365 features is our branding customiser which greatly extends these options. The upcoming “SharePoint Branding Center” feature from Microsoft will also offer greater choice too.

12. Integration with Teams and the rest of Microsoft 365

One of the advantages of a SharePoint intranet is that it can integrate seamlessly with the rest of the Microsoft 365 and Teams to help deliver a coherent and consistent digital workplace experience, reducing digital friction. This ensures the intranet has value and supports adoption. This integration happens in multiple ways – from the ability to view Viva Engage feeds on your intranet home page to being able to access the intranet through Microsoft Teams to being able to bring custom workflows via Power Automate to intranet publishing. If you have a Microsoft 365 digital workplace, this integration is an absolutely essential intranet feature.

13. Page tours

Custom page tours are increasingly regarded as an essential intranet feature and a useful tactic to support adoption by walking users through key intranet features. For example, if you are introducing a new feature or site you can create a custom tour that will walk employees through its main elements. Unfortunately, page tours are not available out of the box within SharePoint, which is again why we built one within our Lightspeed365 product.

14. Intuitive UI for admins and editors

This post tends to focus on intranet features that are experienced by users, but the admin and editor experience is also extremely important. An intranet has to be easy to manage and maintain, otherwise it is going to struggle. It also needs to have baked-in content governance features to ensure sustainable, high quality content, but that’s a topic for another post. At its base, a good intranet needs intuitive interfaces for both admins and editors; SharePoint isn’t perfect but it is much better than it used to be and most admins and editors find it straightforward to use once they are used to it.

15. Artificial intelligence

Intranets aren’t normally associated with AI but its increasingly going to have an impact on different features, particularly with the advent of generative AI. Intelligent intranet solutions are starting to feature elements of AI, for example providing intelligent feeds of content based on a person’s role and interest; this is something already seen in the Microsoft Viva Connections feed which can be also added to a SharePoint intranet. Chatbots are also starting to be integrated into intranet solutions. The evolution of various different Microsoft Copilot services will also mean going forward we are likely to start to see more generative AI influence on SharePoint .For example, eventually it could eventually impact the intranet search experience.

Does your intranet have all these features?

Every intranet is different but in our view, they should feature most or even all of the fifteen features we’ve covered in this post. Many of the functionality is available in SharePoint Online out of the box; that’s why so many teams choose to use SharePoint for their intranet. However, not all of the features are, which is why we’ve created some in Lightspeed365365 so you can build a world-class intranet with all the essential features, extending the power of SharePoint.

If you’d like to discuss a missing intranet feature or arrange a Lightspeed365 demo then get in touch!

6 leading Microsoft 365 intranet examples

Posted on 27 March 202423 May 2024 by John Scott

At Content Formula we work extensively with clients who have Microsoft 365, delivering intranets that are based on Microsoft and Office 365 technologies, and leverage its many features. These intranets both improve processes but also help employees to take advantage of the extensive Microsoft/Office 365 suite, increasing adoption and value. Through our work we’ve built up a strong library of Microsoft 365 intranet examples that illustrate some the key good practices and approaches to consider when implementing an Office 365 intranet.

Clients frequently ask us for compelling Microsoft 365 intranet examples and to see screenshots. Here are five of our favourite examples with the relative key takeaway. You can also see some of our best SharePoint intranet examples too in a companion article.

Need help with your Intranet?

Book in a free consultation call with us to discuss your project, see some SharePoint intranet examples and find out more about how we can help.

1. Entain – a modern digital workplace hub in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams

Entain's Microsoft 365 intranet homepage — Entain’s Microsoft 365 intranet homepage

Entain needed a hub for their digital workplace serving 25,000 employees worldwide – including 15,000 retail workers. We designed and built a modern intranet that could be accessed from any device.

With the widespread adoption of Microsoft Teams across the business in the last year, we capitalised on this by delivering the intranet to people within the Teams app – also on mobile as well as the desktop app.

Entain Microsoft 365 intranet in Microsoft Teams including mobile — Entain’s Microsoft 365 intranet in Microsoft Teams including mobile

Delivering intranet content and features in Microsoft Teams means that the experience is more naturally integrated with the work day of the each employee. This has also provided us with an opportunity to connect with other systems – including Service Now and Oracle HR. The overall digital employee experience is vastly simplified versus the old, rather fragmented, approach.

2. Baringa – a global Microsoft 365 intranet that aligns to the wider digital workplace

The digital workplace has had a significant influence on the evolution of intranets; modern intranets are ideally placed to be an attractive entry point (front door or launchpad) into the wider portfolio of applications across the digital workplace. An intranet strategy should therefore address the intranets relationship with the digital workplace.

When we were asked by global consulting firm Baringa to undertake user and stakeholder research and craft a new intranet strategy, it soon became clear that the intranet had a critical role to play in the company’s digital workplace and Microsoft 365 journey. The communications team were keen for the intranet to help all employees, across the globe, to understand and navigate the company’s Microsoft 365-powered digital workplace.

We also advised on design and technical matters, including a personalised welcome bar and app launcher (provided by our Lightspeed365 webparts) as well as a people search tool that allows you to search for consultants based on their experience and skills. The new improved intranet is now ideally placed at the centre of the Baringa digital workplace, helping employees navigate the new array of tools at their fingertips.

View Baringa case study >>

3. Xcapital – an Microsoft 365 intranet that delivers critical business process

Xcapital Office 365 intranet that delivers critical business process

Microsoft 365 brings many opportunities to improve critical business processes using the variety of different tools available, sometimes in combination with each other. An intranet based on SharePoint Online that can integrate with Microsoft 365 tools such as Teams can also play its part. This means that the intranet can help to deliver an important business process; driving efficiency, increasing the value and adoption of the intranet and leveraging your investment in Microsoft 365 all at once!

XCapital is a UK-based private equity house that provides funding options for ambitious businesses. A core activity for the company is a research and due diligence process that identifies and assesses new businesses to invest in. In order to streamline and standardise a process that was primarily carried out by email and was highly inefficient, we were asked to create a digital workplace application that would automate the eight steps of the process and ensure staff follow correct procedures.

We used Microsoft Teams to create a place for templates, information and documents relating to each step, with automation ensuring each stage has been completed. The intranet also plays a key role. A custom SharePoint Online page displays key data about each target acquisition, including the stage at which the opportunity is at, and provides access to the relevant Teams space. This seamlessly integrates the due diligence process into the intranet, with users viewing key information and feeling they are accessing one system.

View Xcapital case study >>

4. ?WhatIf! – an Microsoft 365 intranet that enables Knowledge Management

Office 365 intranet that enables Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management (KM) has been around for nearly twenty years but many organisations still have not quite nailed down a successful way to find, capture and re-use valuable knowledge that is generated through everyday work, collaboration and projects. Intranets are often a part of the solution, and regarded as a key channel in knowledge-sharing.

?What If! helps organisations to innovate new products, services and ways to operate. The team engaged us to deliver a new modern intranet that would integrate with Microsoft 365, but they also wanted to solve the conundrum of how to manage the knowledge that emerges from projects. With Microsoft Teams being used for project collaboration, we built a compelling new intranet based on Livetiles intranet-in-a-box that also incorporated a simple but highly effective KM solution. In a special folder in Microsoft Teams, project teams can add valuable knowledge documents that can still be accessed once a Teams space has been archived.

On the intranet each project has its own page; these are automatically created with key data and have all the valuable knowledge documents accessible, all tagged with the correct project metadata. A custom search also helps employees find project files based on different criteria, increasing knowledge flow and exploiting the link between a SharePoint Online intranet and Microsoft Teams.

View ?WhatIf! case study >>

Find out about our Livetiles SharePoint intranet-in-a-box offering

5. Global consulting firm – a Microsoft 365 intranet with sophisticated knowledge management features including AI recommendations and search

Microsoft 365 provides organisations with a flexible and ever-expanding get of tools and services that help build up digital workplaces over time, for example increasing collaboration or using workflow to digitise simple processes. A SharePoint Online intranet that sits alongside Microsoft 365 can also take a similar approach, using the easy ability to integrate with Microsoft 365 tools and other elements of the Microsoft stack to keep on extending the power of the intranet.

At global consulting firm we had already deployed a Microsoft 365-based intranet that was full of useful features, but we continued to add new functionality. One of these was the introduction of a Knowledge Management platform which leverages Microsoft Search and Microsoft Cognitive Services (including Open AI). The ‘Solutions Centre’, as it is known, can be used by consulting staff to find company knowledge and IP and avoid recreating information, making them much more efficient.

Further extending the intranet capabilities, we also deployed AI services to provide a content recommendations engine which delivers highly personalised experiences, as well as AI assisted redaction and tagging as part of the knowledge upload process which greatly increases the speed with which the latest and best information is made available on the platform.

View global consulting firm case study >>

6. Moving Made Easy – an Microsoft 365 intranet that powers core operational processes

Office 365 intranet that powers core operational processes - example

Sometimes your Microsoft 365 intranet can actually be your digital workplace, with the ability to carry out all your core processes and activities without entering another system. This can be the case where you have unique needs to meet and where a customised intranet and digital workplace completely configured around the way you work makes sense. Although this approach will not be applicable to all companies, it can deliver significant efficiencies and support digital transformation.

Moving Made Easy help house builders sell their homes by assisting customers with the sale of their existing homes. We helped them replace their ageing property management system with a new highly efficient intranet and digital workplace based on Microsoft 365 where employees can carry out all the major activities associated with selling a house. Taking an end-to-end approach for the process for each individual sale, integration with external systems and automation has helped to increase productivity. Dashboards and reporting through Power BI has also given management a powerful overview of data, and even created different views for customers to check the status of their sale. We’ve also continued to work with the client to expand and improve the digital workplace, providing a system which has had a major impact on the daily work.

View Moving Made Easy case study >>

Need other Microsoft 365 intranet examples with screenshots?

Case studies and screenshots can provide a good reference point for what is possible with a modern intranet on Microsoft 365, as well as revealing good practices and impactful approaches. If you need other examples of great intranets why not check out our full list of case studies. Alternatively you can also get in touch.

Lightspeed365

Lightspeed365 makes it easy to create a beautiful and powerful employee intranet in SharePoint and Teams.

Looking for a fast and easy way to set up a Microsoft 365 intranet?

At Content Formula, we have recently introduced our own intranet product Lightspeed365. Lightspeed365 Modules adds custom web parts to your intranet, effectively extending the value of SharePoint, and filling many of the gaps in branding, design and functionality.

Because Lightspeed365 provides a complete set of web parts to support a SharePoint Online intranet, it can prove to be highly cost effective, because it reduces the need to purchase a more expensive “in-a-box” intranet solution.

If you would like to find out more about Lightspeed365 or any of our other services, get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.

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1. Updating key business policies and other controlled documents

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1. Always have an intranet strategy based on user research

2. Involve cross-functional stakeholders from across the organisation

3. Focus on content governance

4. Ensure your users shape your intranet

5. Leverage digital and intranet champions for launch

6. Make your intranet the front door to the wider digital workplace

7. Use personalisation on your intranet

8. Make sure your intranet helps employees get things done

9. Have a user-focused and task-based information architecture

10. Use measurement to drive continual improvement

11. Make your SharePoint intranet available via Microsoft Teams

12. Make your site accessible

13. Engage and support your publishing community

14. Ensure your intranet supports dialogue using social and community tools

15. Hire an intranet manager

Why is user research, stakeholder research and discovery so important for intranet projects?

1. Building a user-centic intranet or digital workplace

2. Getting the support of stakeholders so it is relevant and credible

3. Establishing scope and related priorities

4. Killing silly requirements from individual stakeholders

5. Deriving an intranet strategy, roadmap and requirements

6. Designing for personalization and relevancy

7. Ensuring your project is accessible

8. Getting the detail right

9. Suggesting the backlog

10. Making the business case

11. Supporting adoption and change management

12. Setting up iteration, testing and improvement

13. Getting a baseline to track improvement and success

14. Giving your project credibility

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