Webinar Video – Driving business productivity with PowerApps, Microsoft Teams and SharePoint
Watch our webinar video where we show you case studies and discuss the art of the possible with PowerApps, Teams and SP.
Watch our webinar video where we show you case studies and discuss the art of the possible with PowerApps, Teams and SP.
Should you adopt SharePoint Online’s new modern user interface and sacrifice control over the branding?
SharePoint 2013 does not provide a great experience for content publishers out-of-the-box. This is something that we need to address in nearly every intranet project we deliver. There are two main approaches that can be taken: Add some custom editing elements that simplify the experience, but are hyper-focused on a few key editing tasks. Use a third party add-in to provide a better user experience across a broader set of features and content types. Custom editing elements Content publishers can click an onscreen element like this one. The editor can then add information to the page by filling in a simple form. This avoids any of the out-of-the-box SharePoint interfaces which can be confusing and overwhelming. We have provided a demo video that shows an example page content editing task. See video below: Advantages Disadvantages Drastically improves the experience for content publishers Reduces or completely removes the need for training No on-going licence fees Restricted to a small number of important areas (otherwise costs can quickly add up) Requires additional budget to maintain and enhance these features over time Third party add-ins There are many options when it comes to third party add ins for SharePoint. Some are aimed at enhancing every aspect of SharePoint like Wizdom intranet-in-a-box. Others are aimed at enhancing things like page editing and design. A good example of this type of product is ShortPoint. Products like these still require some training for content editors, but offer an improved experience and greater flexibility when maintaining intranet content. Advantages Disadvantages Improves the experience for content publishers Reduces the need for training Has a wide ranging set of features (depending on the product) On-going licence fees (often fairly significant ones) You may be paying for features you dont need Requires support from the product vendor or consultancy Summary Improving SharePoints content editing interfaces is not easy and comes at a cost regardless if you take the custom or prebuilt route. Therefore, it is important to identify and prioritise the areas where you want to give a lot of control to content editors. Typically more options for ways and styles of publishing = greater cost. By limiting the control given to content owners and making things as template driven as possible, you can keep costs more reasonable. A positive side effect of a template driven approach is often a cleaner, more simplified experience for your intranets end users. More recently, a significant way to improve the user and editor experience for SharePoint is to move to SharePoint Online as part of Office 365. SharePoint Online has a completely refreshed interface which makes things a lot easier for editors.
===update 27th May 2016=== With the demise of Yammer Conversations what looked like quite a cool initiative to bring Yammer comments into Office Docs and vice versa you might be forgiven for thinking that there’s not been much progress in integrating Yammer into the wider Office 365 suite. I just returned from a Future of SharePoint session held at Microsoft’s London office for SharePoint consultancies. The talk was hosted by Jeff Teper, VP of SharePoint and One Drive. He’s the man with the vision when it comes to SharePoint. In the last month we’ve seen some really quite exciting announcements about SharePoint – it seems Microsoft is starting to really invest in this tool. However, what was surprising about this talk is that there was zero mention of Yammer. I went and spoke to the host at the end and asked him what are the plans for integrating SharePoint with Yammer. First, I was assured by the SharePoint team that Microsoft is not going to kill Yammer and that they are actively investing in it. Before any serious out-of-the-box Yammer integration can go ahead the team are rebuilding the back end of the application. This is so that it can be hosted in Microsoft’s various Office 365 data centres around the world. Once this is done they are going to look at hooking the two tools together. For example, we can expect to see a ‘share on Yammer’ button next to files in SharePoint and OneDrive. In the meantime, we are going to have to continue working with custom integrations and the Yammer app all mentioned in our original post from August 2014 below. Dan Hawtrey ====== Microsoft is working tirelessly to integrate Yammer with SharePoint 2013. We take a look at the features you can expect very soon that will make your intranet more social.
The intranet is no longer one thing. While the intranet may be the foundation of the digital workplace, it is made up of several platforms and tools. If SharePoint has always been your focus, prepare for the new wave of Microsoft tools to enhance your ways of working.
Most people are eager to update to the latest version of their favourite app, but its just not possible to press an update button with SharePoint. The wise intranet manager will have a certain amount of trepidation as they embark along the SharePoint migration path.
You might be most concerned with making sure site collections (Team Sites, My Sites) get upgraded to SharePoint 2013 smoothly; find out what to watch out for as you hit the metaphorical update button.