Many organisations are currently undergoing an Office 365 programme; this can be a complex multi-year programme involving multiple projects and workstreams, different phases, a wide number of teams, various moving parts and some real challenges. Its a major change for most organizations it takes a lot of planning!

We can guarantee that virtually every project team will make mistakes along the way. Implementing Office 365 is absolutely a learning curve and some setbacks and blockages go with the territory; they are inevitable in the path towards success. Usually these issues tend to mean a delay to your plans., although at their worst an Office 365 roll-out can feel like an epic failure.

Over the years weve seen some common pitfalls that Office 365 and digital workplace teams fall into when rolling out Office 365 and its constituent tools. Of course, hindsight is a wonderful thing, and some of these mistakes can be avoided. Here are four common mistakes weve observed with clients and what you can do to avoid them!

Mistake #1
Migrating all the content over from your legacy intranet

The problem:

Many Office 365 implementations involve creating a new SharePoint Online intranet, not only transforming internal communications but also acting as a front door to the new Office 365-powered digital workplace. Often much time is spent on getting the intranet to look great and integrating powerful capabilities; however, many teams fail to address the quality of the content on the new intranet.

One of the reasons for this is they just migrate the content over from the legacy intranet, even though poor content on the old intranet was one of the reasons for building a new one! Usually an intranet that is being replaced may have poor governance and become bloated with out of date, irrelevant and poorly written pages.

Migrating this content over may seem like the easiest starting point to get a new intranet project off the ground quickly, especially as preparing high quality content can be time-consuming. However, the net result can be a disappointment for users expecting a new platform with relevant and engaging content and the easy ability to find items. Frustrating your users who already dont trust the content on your old intranet is the worst possible start for a new SharePoint Online intranet.

The solution:

When you first launch an Office 365 intranet make sure all content is relevant, has a purpose, is accurate, well-written and conforms to defined publishing standards. Avoid simply migrating your legacy content over. Instead work with content owners to review all content and only migrate over what is necessary; many successful intranet projects end up deleting most legacy content. Some teams also consider hiring copywriters or content specialists to help content owners rework pages.

Once your new SharePoint Online intranet is launched then establish governance measures and processes to keep content high quality! This will help drive findabiity and effective search, as well as increasing trust, engagement and adoption.

Mistake #2
Underestimating the change management effort

The problem:

A key mistake some organisations make is to neglect the change management aspects of Office 365, particularly if the full range of tools are exposed to users without explanation, for example via the waffle menu. Office 365 has the potential to transform organisations with new ways of working, but the tools can be confusing. When employees arent properly prepared for Office 365 the result can be a lack of adoption, less than successful use or even misuse of different tools and general confusion. Users then tend to fall back on systems and tools they are more comfortable with, particularly email.

Many project teams underestimate the change management effort that needs to happen around launch, as well as afterwards in the business as usual phase. Operationally a project team may find themselves simultaneously focusing on the next wave of tools to be rolled out and trying to support new users on the tool they have just launched. This can be caused by not enough budget being allocated to change management, as well as an over ambitious launch schedule.

Overall, inadequate change management can be a significant issue that impacts user and stakeholder confidence in Office 365 and dampens the success of your roll-out both for the short, medium and even the long term.

The solution:

Make sure you plan properly for change management using a range of targeted interventions and communications. Users need to understand how to use tools but also why they would benefit from using them.

Approaches and tactics that have proved useful for companies include:

• using networks of champions to promote the tools in ways that make more sense to local teams
• providing learning resources, including videos
• having an expert community on hand to answer questions
• traditional comms
• training modules and e-learning
• using senior leaders to set an example
• establishing aids to show which tool to use in which scenario.

Additionally, having good governance and realistic budgeting for your change programme, as well as a realistic launch schedule. are also important.

Mistake #3
Establish OneDrive governance and ensure people know what they are posting

The problem:

One of the most powerful elements of your Office 365 environment will be the ability to search for documents that previously have been hidden and effectively lost in your file shares. All of a sudden, tools like Delve and Microsoft Graph-powered search will be suggesting content and surfacing those documents that individuals may have previously submitted to a Teams space, SharePoint library or may be sharing via One Drive for the first time.

This has lots of benefits, but it does come with a risk. If you dont have any governance in place for OneDrive and other document libraries, the new search capabilities can suddenly expose sensitive, private or restricted documents that dont have the necessary permissions on them. You dont want employees to accidentally stumble on a spreadsheet with everybodys salary details or find your CEOs highly sensitive restructuring plans.

Not putting the right permissions on a document may be a common practice if previously placing items on the network share made them effectively undiscoverable because nobody could usually find the document. Similarly, when employees share a document (or their desktop too) via OneDrive they may not realise that is discoverable by everybody. Your new Office 365 environment may no longer be a black hole but actually a highly effective way to discover and find files, including ones that employees shouldnt see.

The risks involved can be high, with a range of unfortunate outcomes. It may also result in nervous stakeholders who could halt or even pull the plug entirely on your roll-out.

The solution:

Before you proceed with rolling out Delve, Graph search or indeed any Office 365 rollout, make sure that you have governance in place around document sharing to avoid unfortunate slip-ups. There are usually three conditions that need to be satisfied:

• Documents exposed have the necessary restrictions on them
• Risks associated with sharing documents are minimized through policies and rules
• Users understand when they submit or share a document who can potentially see it.

Only the necessary content audit and clean-up exercise, definition and execution of polices and related communication and training can achieve this. This may sound onerous, but a package of governance measures is the only way to minimise the risk of something happening.

Mistake #4
Make sure you AD data is in shape

The problem:

When many organisations introduce Office 365 and also start to implement a powerful intranet like Wizdom they are attracted by the idea of being able to use personalization to target relevant content and experiences to different groups, for example based on their location, function and role. For internal comms functions and HR departments this is one of the most exciting reasons for deploying a modern communication platform like Wizdom.

However, companies can make the mistake of not preparing their Active Directory (AD) data so that is complete and up to date. Personalization and targeting are based on AD profiles but if this data is in poor shape, then it may not be possible to fully leverage the personalization capabilities of your intranet product right from the get-go; this will be disappointing for the communications team and result in a less relevant intranet and digital workplace.

The solution:

Complete and reliable AD data is a prerequisite for a successful Office 365 and SharePoint Online intranet. Content targeting and personalization needs to be both robust and granular, and its not unusual for Active Directory to have large gaps that are not exposed until you come to launch your intranet. To circumvent problems run a thorough clean up AD exercise to get rid of inaccuracies and fill the gaps. When you do have cleaner data, setting governance processes or even using AI tools can really improve your AD data and also keep it clean.

Learning from mistakes

Making mistakes and then learning from these is a common experience of rolling out Office 365. In this post weve explored some common issues that are avoidable we dont want you to repeat them!

If you need help with your Office 365 roll-out, your SharePoint Online intranet launch or everything just feels like an epic fail, then dont panic! Get in touch with us to discuss your options.

With news of the further spread of coronavirus (COVID-19) globally, Microsoft this week have announced a solution that is available to customers of Office 365 and PowerApps to help coordinate their own information sharing and team collaboration.

The solution combines capabilities of Power Apps, Power Automate, Teams, and SharePoint. It can be used on the web, mobile or in Teams.

Key features include:

• Employees can report their work status (e.g., working from home) and make requests. This helps managers coordinate across their teams and helps central response teams track status across an organisation.
• Admins can use the app to push news, updates, and content specific to their organisation, and can provide emergency contacts specific to different locations.
• The app includes the ability to add RSS feeds of up-to-date information from reputable sources such as WHO, CDC, or a local authority.

As part of this effort, Microsoft are also giving all Power Apps users temporary access to a premium feature, Power Apps Push Notifications, so you wont need any premium licenses to use Power Apps to push information to users. They have also reclassified Push Notifications as a standard connector for the duration of the COVID-19 crisis.

The solution also comes with PowerBI reports that will allow you to track the current presence status across locations of employees who have updated their status within the PowerApp.

If you’d like any more information on PowerApps and how you can roll out this solution, or any other solutions to employees in your organisation, then get in touch with us.

Source: Crisis Communication: a Power Platform template

Did you miss our ‘3 great PowerApps examples that can enhance your digital workplace’ webinar? Watch the video…

Over the past couple of years Microsoft has continued to release different functionality and features across Office 365 and, more specifically, modern SharePoint Online that intranet teams can use out of the box to enhance digital communications.

Communication sites, for example, have been a great way to deliver relatively simple updates with a nice user experience that is also easy to administer. There has also been a range of other measures such as hub sites and support for mega-menus that bring an intranet type structure and experience to SharePoint Online.

An intranet out of the box?

Of course, using SharePoint Online straight out of the box for an intranet is potentially a mouth-watering prospect particularly for IT functions who can see potentially huge savings with no need for a separate intranet product or CMS.

Internal communications functions and intranet teams may not be so keen as the publishing features such as content targeting, publishing workflow attractive templates and governance controls are usually not sophisticated enough to support the communications needs of large, medium and complex companies. These teams will still need to invest in a modern intranet platform like Wizdom to deliver the kind of intranet and digital workplace experience employees expect.

However, every time that Microsoft release a new intranet-ready feature in SharePoint it does offer teams more options. The latest of these is home sites, which should now be fully rolled out globally.

What are home sites?

Home sites were originally announced back in May 2019 and were described by Microsoft as the landing sites for your organization that bring together news, events, content, conversations and video to deliver an engaging experience that reflects your voice, your priorities, and your brand. Indeed, Wizdom was also announced as one of the partners working with Microsoft on home sites.

Essentially a home site is designed to replicate a corporate intranet homepage; potentially it is a structured entry point into a SharePoint ecosystem that could involve multiple communication sites and hub sites, and provides some kind of global navigation and search, as well as being the official home of enterprise-wide communications. Although this sounds complex, a home site is actually built on the same template as a communication site; in fact, you could consider it as a communication site with unique powers that:

• Allow for the site to be configured with organisation-wide news (that can be labelled as such with a special power block)
• Automatically sets the search scope to be tenant-wide not to just that SharePoint site itself (which is the usual default setting)
• Has some integration with the SharePoint start page that starts to deliver a more consistent intranet experience.

Renowned SharePoint and intranet expert Susan Hanley has written a very useful article that expands on how home sites integrate with the SharePoint start page in three ways:

• Via a link on the home site that automatically takes a user to their personalised SharePoint start page
• By automatically replicating the default mega-menu you have on your home site on the SharePoint start page, meaning this navigation can be more easily recached from any SharePoint site
• By automatically replicating the branding on your home site to the SharePoint start page.

Can I use home sites to create an intranet?

The potential for home sites is exciting, and IT functions and digital workplace teams will be asking themselves if they can now use a home site as the enterprise homepage for an intranet thats completely or more or less out the box.

If youre a smaller organisation with straightforward needs the answer could well be yes but before you plunge straight in, there are some questions to consider.

1. Will using SharePoint out of the box deliver the intranet we need?

Before you decide that a home site is going to be your de facto intranet homepage and youre going to rely on out-of-the-box SharePoint for your intranet environment, make sure you go on with your eyes open. Is it really going go meet the needs of your internal communicators and the expectations of your users?

If you are a smaller organisation with straightforward communication needs, then a home site could really make an out-of-the-box SharePoint intranet viable at last. However, if your communication needs and user expectations are more sophisticated, or you want your intranet to be more of a front door to the wider digital workplace, a home site may not quite cut the mustard. As with any major technology deployment, make sure you have fully worked out hour requirements before making the leap.

2. Are we ready for a home site?

If you havent had a proper intranet or a home site before and the intranet is more like a disparate collection of different modern team sites, communication sites and some hub sites, the temptation might be to get a home site up and running as quickly as possible. But you may not necessarily be ready.

A home site suddenly places the need for some order and governance on what may have been a much looser environment. Intranets bring structure and governance to your environment and a home site can throw up various questions such as:

• Who owns the home site?
• What do other site owners think?
• Who has the final say on what the navigation will be?

Its also worth considering whether the tenant-enabled search featured on a home site by default will highlight documents that previously have been hard to find but may now potentially be surfaced. Have sensitive documents got the right permission on them? Implementing a home site may throw up some content, search and governance issues that you previously hadnt thought about.

3. Will we need to implement any other out-of-the-box features with my home site?

To get the most out of home sites and to create a convincing out-of-the-box intranet you will need to combine a home site with other out-of-the-box intranet innovations introduced by Microsoft such as support for mega-menus and content targeting. Make sure you introduce all the necessary features that will make your sites a true intranet.

4. Do we have the skills in-house to set up and configure home sites?

The advances Microsoft, SharePoint modern and other Office 365 tools have made in allowing non-IT professionals to configure and administer tools is considerable. The over-reliance on IT functions for everyday changes from the days of SharePoint classic are truly gone; however its still worth remembering that SharePoint is still a highly sophisticated and complex tool, that is even more powerful when you combine It with other tools like Teams of Power Automate (Flow).

To get the best out of SharePoint Online you need to have some experience and know what you are doing. While adding individual widgets to configure a homepage looks super easy, information and data architecture is considerably more complex. Having experience of the platform will also allow you to integrate with other elements of the 365 platform in the best way possible. While its good to experiment, we often get called by teams either frustrated with their SharePoint configuration or who have got themselves into problems because of relative inexperience with the platform.

5. Should we wait to implement a home site?

Home sites have only just been rolled out globally and there arent many examples out there of home sites use. Other features that make out of the box intranets more viable will also inevitably on Microsofts road map. If youre not particularly in a hurry, there may be a case for waiting to see how home sites evolve and also seeing If some of your peers have successfully implemented one.

Need advice on an out-of-the-box SharePoint Online intranet? Get in touch!

Were working with more and more clients who are excited about the potential for an out-of-the-box SharePoint intranet but arent quite sure where to start or need an expert eye to guide them through the optimal set-up for their needs. If you need advice on setting up an out-of-the-box SharePoint Online intranet or arent quite sure if its a viable option for you, then get in touch!