LiveTiles named a strong performer among the 12 most significant providers in the intranet platform category.

LiveTiles named a strong performer with global presence and a rich set of digital employee experience tools

We are delighted that our partner LiveTiles is identified as one of the strong performers in the intranet category with the third highest score in the market presence category:

“LiveTiles continues to build a global presence and rich set of digital employee experience tools via its services know-how and focused acquisitions. Its strategy is to build a comprehensive set of intelligent workplace capabilities with the intranet as a foundation on which to grow. The vendor has a clear focus on serving large global enterprises and will make investments to extend its platform breadth as well as establish a presence in key markets.”

 

The report emphasises the importance of personalised experiences and cloud delivery as both critical to intranet adoption. Among our strengths, LiveTiles was noted for its…

“…design and templating capabilities. Nondevelopers have the ability to tailor and tune the user interfaces, and users can personalize their preferred communication channels, such as Microsoft Teams or mobile notifications.”

Five tips for migrating Jive to SharePoint Online

Jive has been a leading social platform for many years that also has the advantage of being able to present content in an integrated way, leading to strong social intranets and collaboration platforms. However, in recent years there is a feeling that Jive has had less investment than other platforms like Microsoft 365, and that it can be expensive.

With many organisations now fully wanting to leverage their investment in Microsoft 365, SharePoint and Azure, some teams are considering retiring Jive and migrating the content and capabilities to the Microsoft 365 platform. The driver for this is not to just reduce costs, but also to  consolidate communication and collaboration channels to drive a better employee experience.

However, migrating Jive to SharePoint or SharePoint Online is neither straightforward or easy and some thought and planning needs to be done to mitigate risk and plan for a smooth project.

Here at Content Formula we recently helped on a Jive migration project with TTEC, a US-based global provider of customer experience solutions with 50,000 employees. Previously we worked with TTEC on the roll-out of a new intranet based on Wizdom and SharePoint Online.

Here are five tips for migrating Jive to SharePoint:

 

1. Define the migration that works for you

No two instances of Jive are the same and neither is a roll-out of SharePoint Online or Microsoft 365. Because Jive can be used for social collaboration, team-orientated workspaces and for content, Jive implementations can differ from organisation to organisation. For example, TTEC has tended to use Jive for presenting content, but other clients use it more for community spaces.

Similarly, organisations use Microsoft 365 and SharePoint in different ways: t in terms of collaboration (team sites, Microsoft Teams, Yammer), content (SharePoint modern and classic) and cloud (some elements of the digital workplace may still be on-premises.)

For this reason you simply cannot take a cookie-cutter approach to a Jive migration, and you need to consider usage of your existing Jive platform, how Microsoft 365 is being used and the future value you want to drive from the platform. Take time to define the migration that works for you; there is no such thing as a like-for-like migration here.

 

2. Consider this a Microsoft 365 migration, not just SharePoint

Because Jive is a social platform, your migration  may be leaning on the use of the wider tools across the Microsoft 365 platform such as Yammer and Microsoft Teams. For example, a community space on Jive may well likely better leverage the power of Yammer.  For this reason, it is best to consider your migration in terms of all Microsoft 365 tools rather than just SharePoint.

However, for TTEC because the focus was on content and workspaces, the migration principally involved SharePoint team sites, although this is unlikely to be the case for every migration.

 

3. Don’t lift and shift, take a content and community-led approach

Often the migration to a new platform is often the perfect time to review what is really necessary to take over, both in terms of content and sites. More often than not the majority of content on a legacy platform can be deleted or needs to be rewritten; similarly, sites for teams and groups often need to be restructured and refreshed.  Teams should avoid  lift and shift, simply dumping the content from an old site to the new; instead they should take a more content and community-centric view of which content should be taken over to create a compelling new platform.

The team at TTEC decided to avoid this lift and shift. They encouraged all site owners to review their existing Jive content by exporting a view of it into a CSV file, and from this consider the structure and content of their new site. Site owners were then encouraged to create and build their new team site using this as a reference. While this approach sounds more time-consuming it has resulted in high quality team sites that are critical for adoption, and that have significantly cut out noise, making sites more relevant for users.

 

4. Automate where it makes sense to

Although avoiding lift and shift involves more manual processes in reviewing and rebuilding sites, it  still makes sense to automate as much of the migration as possible. For example, at TTEC the IT function ensured that documents and images from existing sites could easily be migrated into SharePoint team sites by content owners through a drag and drop exercise. This saved considerable time but still encouraged site owners to think about the documents that did not need to come over. Automation and related scripts can obviously help with more complex aspects of a migration such as discussion threads.

 

5. Empower your site owners

If you are asking your site owners to play a prominent role in the migration then it is absolutely critical that they are engaged and empowered, viewing the migration as an opportunity to improve their site and drive more value.

For example, we supported TTEC by running numerous online training sessions with site owners all around the world covering how to set up a site, the web parts to include and creating content. We also included tips and tricks and created model page and site templates to guide content owners to get the best out of SharePoint team sites.

 

Need help with your Jive migration?

The TTEC Jive migration has proved very successful. There was less push back from site owners than might be expected and employees are starting to use the team sites that are fully embedded within the SharePoint Online intranet environment.

If you are planning a Jive to Microsoft 365 implementation it is important to find an implementation partner with the necessary experience. If you need help with your Jive to SharePoint or Microsoft 365 implementation then get in touch.

Webinar: AI will transform the digital workplace. What are you doing about it?

Webinar details

Date:  7th July 2020
Time:  2:00pm to 3:00pm UK time

Covid-19 has driven massive digital adoption and there is consensus that the new/next normal will be more digitalized than pre-covid19. Artificial Intelligence is believed to be central in the industrial revolution 4.0, however research shows* that only 10% of AI implementations deliver the value expected.

Join Esben Rytter, Dan Hawtrey, John Scott and Joe Perry of Content Formula as they discuss the topic and answer the following questions:

  • What is AI and why is it important
  • What is AIs role in the digital workplace
  • When will AI disrupt my business?
  • What can I do about it?
  • Where and how to get started?

*State of the Digital Workplace Report 2019 Q2, CMSWIRE and Simpler Media survey based on 450 executives globally

Register now!

 

Webinar video: 3 great Power Apps examples that can enhance your digital workplace

Power Apps is a fantastic tool that allows organisations to quickly build bespoke apps.

These apps could enhance processes, enable communication, improve employee engagement and more.

In this webinar we show you 3 great examples of apps which were built for different scenarios, giving you insights into the possibilities and constraints of working with the Power Apps platform.

At the end we run a Q&A session and do our best to answer your specific questions about all aspects of working with Power Apps.

What is a Learning Management System?

A Learning Management System (LMS) is a common application found within the digital workplace but few of us actually stop to consider what it is and what it does. Defining an LMS and its main characteristics can be a useful exercise in helping think about how learning is supported within your organisation.

What is an LMS?

Generally, an LMS can be considered to be a software application that provides one central place for employees to be able to access learning material and courses, and for Learning & Development (L&D) professionals to manage all the processes related to providing access to this learning. An LMS is therefore both a training hub for learners and a system to administer and organise learning; it is the e-learning platform for an organisation.

What are the features of a typical LMS?

Typically, an LMS will include the following elements.

  1. A course catalogue that allows employees to browse the courses that are on offer and find out any related information about the course. Typically, this will include e-learning, but it may also include face to face courses as well as external courses.
  2. A facility to book a place on a course and any related workflow, for example letting the course organiser know that a place has been requested or alerting the learners line manager to provide approval.
  3. Giving access to course material allows the person to actually carry out e-learning with access to text, video, documents, quizzes and games, usually presented in a logical course structure. If face to face training utilises an LMS it is possible that pre-course reading can be made available too.
  4. A learning record or report that shows an individual learner the courses they have taken and the results. A persons manager might also be able to access their learning record or report, and that of a whole team they are responsible for.
  5. A learning administration module should allow course administrators to be able to distribute learning, manage individual learning events and organise elements such as certificates in order to manage learning and training-related processes.
  6. Learning paths, certificates, points and gamification An LMS may also be able to manage some typical elements of learning that help to drive adoption and motivation. These include displaying learning paths, issuing certificates, and introducing gamifications elements such as points and badges that help to increase adoption and take-up.
  7. Content authoring tools Not all LMS have this capability, but an LMS like LMS365 also contains useful content authoring tools that allow non-learning specialists to create courses and elements within it such as quizzes.

What are the benefits of an LMS?

1. Saves time and cost

A Learning Management System can help an organization save significant time and costs by streamlining the management of learning and reducing administrative effort required. It can also reduce the amount of time-consuming face-to-face training that needs to take place.

2. Provides visibility and proximity to learning

Because an LMS platform allows you to formalise and scale-up training across an organisation, it provides more visibility and proximity around your learning programme. This means you can increase adoption and value of your training and can start to nurture a culture of learning and development.

3. Opens up learning to all

An LMS is something everybody can access, regardless of their location. When organizations only focus on classroom-based training, they usually restrict who can access learning opportunities because of where people are located and budget concerns. When an LMS facilitates more e-learning it opens up learning to all your employees, and even potentially external third parties and customers.

4. Gives learners more control over their own learning

An LMS gives much more power to learners to control their own learning; they can browse a course catalogue to select courses of interest and also choose when to learn. Because LMS-based learning is often broken up into bite-sized pieces it also means learners can fit it around busy work and non-work lives, and at the time of need. This means learning has more impact.

5. Drives compliance and mandatory training

Some training will be mandatory, for example relating to professional standards, health and safety, risk reduction and more. Organisations may have to track this for compliance and auditing purposes. If this is the case, an LMS is absolutely essential in being able to track exactly who has taken and passed a course, and who has not, and being able to demonstrate this for auditing purposes.

6. Brings learning into the heart of the digital workplace

An LMS should be at the heart of a digital workplace, easy to access and allowing employees find courses and relevant items. When learning is brought into the heart of the digital workplace and made more visible it drives adoption of training. For example, an LMS like LMS365 that easily integrates with Microsoft 365 tools and your SharePoint intranet can really transform learning within a company.

7. Brings learning and knowledge together

Because an LMS such as LMS365 houses assets such as instructional videos, files, recording training and quizzes, these can sometimes act as useful items of individual knowledge that people can access when they have a particular need. This means an LMS can start to bridge the gap between learning and knowledge management, providing a rich collection of knowledge items for everybody to access, as part of a course or as an individual item, available on-demand at the time of need.

8. Provides data and insights

An LMS usually has powerful reporting and analytics that provides data and insights:

  • for the individual data who can track their own learning path
  • for managers who can track and identify learning trends and needs across their team
  • for L&D functions to track wider learning trends and needs
  • for organizations to compare learning and business data to gain powerful insights to support decision-making.

9. Standardises learning across your organisation

Often larger organisations wish to standardise and professionalise training right across their organisation in order to drive up standards and consistency relating to risk, health and safety, professional standards, customer service and support, sales and more. An LMS provides an opportunity to roll out standard training across your entire organisation in a way that is both practical and cost-effective.

10. Helps new starters get up to speed

An area where an LMS can really drive value is for an onboarding programme for new starters. Training is a key component of most onboarding activity for new hires; e-learning can help you standardise and streamline elements of this so new starters can get up and running more quickly, knowing all about your organisation as well as undertaking any mandatory training required.

The power of LMS365

It is important to find the right LMS that is going to work best for your organisation. One of the reasons we choose to work with the LMS365 Learning Management System is because it is an excellent tool that:

  • Can integrate seamlessly into the Microsoft 365 environment and its constituent tools such as SharePoint and Microsoft Teams
  • It is cloud-based and has a great mobile-based employee app
  • It has all the core capabilities you need from an LMS365 plus extras such as content authoring tools
  • It is very easy to use for both admins and users, removing many of the barriers to adoption
  • It consistently gets great feedback from customers and their learners
  • It continues to evolve and stays close to the Microsoft 365 roadmap.

Thinking about an LMS and on Microsoft 365?

If youre thinking about an LMS and youre on Microsoft 365 then it is definitely worth considering LMS365 as an LMS that can fit into your wider digital workplace and bring learning directly into the flow of everyday work. If you want more information or a product demo, then get in touch.

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