Page 34 – Content Formula

SharePoint Customisation – You’d be surprised at what’s possible!

Posted on 30 June 201029 June 2022 by Dan Hawtrey

We’ve learned from our work with SharePoint for various medical devices clients that creating “pretty” functionality means thinking quite a long way past “Out of the box” and applying some “outside of the box” approaches. Content Formula have developed several good looking and interactive applications using a combination of Flash, JQuery and HTML/CSS. None of these required any SharePoint development, instead using standard SharePoint features and some creativity from our developers! Because of this, they cost our clients a lot less to develop than if we’d used the in-house development team.

This is just a little taste of the sort of things you can create with some good SharePoint knowledge, lateral thinking and just a dash of wizardry.

Interactive Q&A platform

Creating interaction on the intranet is one of the key points bought out in Nielsen’s 2010 report on the top 10 best intranets. It’s also one of the things our clients ask for again and again – how can we engage employees and start a two way conversation? As part of a project to provide a Q&A facility where employees could ask questions of their senior management we developed a widget for the site homepage which read questions from a custom list and then displayed them in a modified content query webpart.

Users could ask questions of their business leaders, see at a glance what other people were asking and visit a dedicated microsite where they could become part of the conversation.

Have a play!

Just click the images and the footer on our interactive mockup.

How we built this

1) Created a SharePoint custom list with the appropriate fields
2) Used SharePoint XSL stylesheet to customise the output of a Content Query webpart
3) Added some JQuery, CSS and Imagery to complete the transition!

SharePoint driven Flash dashboards

The second interesting project we’re working on is an interactive Flash dashboard which is driven by data placed in a SharePoint list. Normally, dashboards read data from XML documents, but without doing some ASP.net coding it’s hard to get SharePoint to let you have this. Instead we used SharePoint’s default RSS feed from the list, and then converted it to something Flash can use within the dashboard itself.

This enables sales managers and non-technical staff to update their sales dashboards right from within SharePoint without the need for IT staff or Content Formula to be involved.

Have a think about your SharePoint site – what could you be doing differently?

Bringing the internet indoors: socialising your intranet

Posted on 1 March 201029 June 2022 by Dan Hawtrey

Most intranets are largely static sites. On its own, an intranet is essentially a shared drive, serving up centrally stored documents alongside internal articles or communications. Some organisations use words such as “communication hubs” to describe them, but for the most part that communication is one-way.

These days, however, an intranet really can be a hub for your company. The intranet portal now closely mirrors employees’ expectations of world wide web functionality. Systems such as Microsoft SharePoint allow users to communicate with each other and collaborate, much as they would using social media tools such as blogging, Facebook and Twitter.

There are a number of capabilities that you can implement relatively easily, with SharePoint in particular making many of them available as standard.

Document sharing

This is the fundamental benefit of a SharePoint intranet and the simplest to set up. Document libraries offer version control features as well as configurable access levels. The Microsoft Office 2007 suite also offers on-the-fly editing of centrally stored documents.

Discussion boards

We’ve all seen discussion boards and forums on the internet, and they can be easily implemented on the corporate intranet. A discussion board can allow a regionally-fragmented team to keep in contact with each other, and to discuss issues or initiatives.

Some discussion boards particularly in larger companies may require moderation, but if a user is forced to participate using their real name, then the board is likely to be at least as polite as the actual office in real life.

Blogs

We’re not suggesting that you give everyone in the company their own blog, but employees will appreciate reading short and concise announcements from high-level superiors, especially if a less formal tone is used.

Commenting and rating

Add comments or ratings to your features so that users can give their thoughts and discuss ideas online. These are measurable indicators to content editors that offer an idea of what visitors find useful and relevant.

Microblogging

Implement a Twitter-like ‘microblog’ on a department sub-site, such as the HR department, to keep staff updated on events in the company. Like blogging, it allows your department managers to communicate with staff quickly and easily, and the shortened nature of the ‘tweets’ makes for a friendly, informal tone.

Profile pages

A fully-fledged profile for every employee would be a bit much for an intranet site but employees would greatly benefit from a visually appealing ‘Whos Who’ for each department. As well as email addresses and extension numbers, the page might offer employees’ particular skill sets, for example. This would allow for the functionality to search for certain skills or specialties in a group.

And moreâ€¦

There really is no limit to the functionality you can put on your intranet. Theoretically, if you see it on the world-facing internet, you can build it onto your site. That said, you need to make sure that the functionality you implement is worthwhile: will it improve or add to your business?

Whats new in SharePoint 2010?

Posted on 17 February 201029 June 2022 by Dan Hawtrey

SharePoint 2010 is in beta testing, with a probable release date somewhere in Q4 this year. In the new release of the collaboration platform, emphasis seems to be placed on breaking out the roles of people involved in the production of a SharePoint intranet, and the access to resources as needed by people in those roles.

SharePoint 2010 looks to be the biggest update in the Microsoft Office family this year, as all communications so far indicate that other Office applications will only undergo minor tweaks.

So what are the big changes for SharePoint?

Continue reading “Whats new in SharePoint 2010?”

Top 5 New Year resolutions for intranet owners

Posted on 6 January 201029 June 2022 by Dan Hawtrey

Maintaining an intranet can be a tricky business, but why not kick off 2010 with some New Year resolutions that will make your intranet fly? Read on for our top 5 tips for the year…

Continue reading “Top 5 New Year resolutions for intranet owners”

Scrolling on web pages is good for you

Posted on 24 November 20097 March 2024 by John Scott

Firstly I must point out that I am in no way advocating horizontal scrolling on web pages.

Assuming that you are using a screen resolution of at least 1024×768 pixels (96% of internet users worldwide in 2009), you will almost never see horizontal scrolling. This is because it has been recognised as highly unusable for some time. I wont be debating that here.

However, I take issue with the fact that vertical scrolling seems to have been tarred with the same brush.

Its extremely common for a client to request that users should not have to scroll to see any content on their pages (or a large majority of the content at least). This seems to be based on two assumptions. First is that users dont see content below the page fold (the point at which the content disappears behind the frame at the bottom of the web browser). Second is that users dont like scrolling and find it a chore.

Continue reading “Scrolling on web pages is good for you”

Intranets and features of social networking: friend request pending

Posted on 26 October 200929 June 2022 by Dan Hawtrey

On one of our intranets, we developed custom functionality to enable employees to rate feature articles. The client stipulated that ratings should appear itemised beside the article with each employees name.

However, there was the possibility that this would discourage members of the organisation from providing feedback, given news of soaring unemployment all over the world due to cutbacks.

The fear that all employees engagement is visible across the internal network potentially leads an employee to ask themselves will my manager scrutinise my level of participation in my next appraisal?

Continue reading “Intranets and features of social networking: friend request pending”

7 Tips for Writing Great Email Subject Lines

Posted on 14 October 200929 June 2022 by Dan Hawtrey

We send out a lot of newsletters for clients, as well as our own newsletter. There’s a lot to think about for each one how many articles, what images to use, what’s on the banner but the most important part of every newsletter is literally one of the smallest.

The headline.

Think of it this way: if you’re anything like me, you receive a lot of emails on any given day. You prioritise a lot of them by looking at the sender, and then you go through the rest in some kind of order. Anything that looks unimportant or dull goes straight to the recycle bin, because you simply don’t have the time for it. Most newsletters fall into this trap.

Continue reading “7 Tips for Writing Great Email Subject Lines”

Why SharePoint hasnt fixed the corporate intranet (and what you can do about it)

Posted on 17 September 20095 July 2023 by Dan Hawtrey

SharePoint has launched a revolution in the workplace. Thanks to its easy-to-use collaborative features all employees can now publish information about their projects, initiatives and skills onto the corporate intranet. We hear stories of blogging CEOs; departmental wikis that allow everyone to post the solution to their problem; forums buzzing with activity. Its like Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia all rolled into one. Oh, and dont forget Google.

Sadly, reality in most companies doesnt look like this. A typical SharePoint intranet is made up of many, many pages containing poor quality content. Theres an abundance of uploaded Office documents with filenames that tell you very little about the contents (do you really want to click on pm_update.ppt to find out what its about?). The countless forums you come across contain one or two obviously planted (and unanswered) posts from last year. Content that you do take the time to read is poorly laid out, badly written and boring. Images are either massive and take an age to download or they have been distorted and shrunk beyond recognition. Jo User is poorly served.

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Creating organisation charts for your intranet

Posted on 20 August 200929 June 2022 by John Scott

Its an almost universal requirement for corporate intranets to post organisational charts, but it can be pretty time consuming to maintain, especially if there are regular staff changes.

A common approach is to create the chart in PowerPoint and upload it as a downloadable document. Of course, this means that you have to spend a fair amount of time drawing the charts initially and then more when you need to download the file and make changes (especially if you need to add another level to the hierarchy). As a result, the charts often become outdated and unreliable. Continue reading “Creating organisation charts for your intranet”

Keep your intranet up-to-date with Dashboards

Posted on 11 August 200914 November 2023 by John Scott

A common problem with intranet content is that it is often out of date or, just as importantly, it is perceived as being out of date by users. Keeping all that content up to date can be a challenge, especially if the intranet is low down on the list of responsibilities for content owners.

A good way to keep your intranet current and relevant is to focus on key information and brevity. Intranet dashboards are supportive of this approach as they display only top level information, usually in a graphical format that makes it quicker for both the audience to digest and the content owners to share.