Joe Perry, Author at Content Formula

SharePoint lists: The Beginner’s Guide

Posted on 29 January 202310 February 2023 by Joe Perry

SharePoint lists are one of the most useful features in SharePoint and the wider Microsoft 365 digital workplace. They are a highly flexible and convenient way to store and display data and content, with a variety of different options relating to formatting, access and workflows; they’re also super-easy to use.

At Content Formula we are long term fans of lists and over the years we’ve used them many times across our projects. If you have a SharePoint intranet or environment, it’s extremely likely that you will use a SharePoint list somewhere along the way.

If you’re relatively new to SharePoint lists or don’t use them as much as you could do, this beginners guide to SharePoint lists is for you. In this long read we cover:

What SharePoint lists are
The difference between Microsoft lists and SharePoint lists
The benefits of lists
The different features of a SharePoint list
Some of the use cases for lists
How to create a list in SharePoint Online
How to delete a list in SharePoint Online
How to import a list from Excel.

What are SharePoint lists?

SharePoint lists have been a core feature of SharePoint for many years. Lists are essentially a way of storing and displaying data and content within SharePoint in a set of rows and columns, similar to a table or a spreadsheet. A list is a highly flexible way to both manage but also display structured information and content within SharePoint, with a variety of options relating to formatting, access rights and different types of content. You can also apply rules and workflow.

What’s the difference between Microsoft lists and SharePoint Lists?

At the moment there are two separately branded lists from Microsoft – Microsoft lists and SharePoint lists; this can cause some confusion in the marketplace. Actually, these have the same features and user interface and can be considered the same – the only difference is that SharePoint lists sit within a SharePoint site while Microsoft Lists sit within a personal site, similar to OneDrive.

Microsoft introduced the “Microsoft lists” branding when it upgraded the list features in 2020 and wanted to emphasise that lists can also be deployed directly into Teams and be used standalone. However, since then the features within SharePoint lists and Microsoft lists are synchronised. Microsoft lists have their own dedicated web and mobile app. For a deeper dive on this topic, please read our article about the difference between Microsoft lists and SharePoint lists.

What are the benefits of a SharePoint and Microsoft lists?

Lists are an excellent way to store and manage data in SharePoint, Teams and Microsoft 365 and have several benefits:

Highly flexible and scalable

Lists are highly flexible and scalable. They can be very small or very large with thousands of items. They can accommodate different types of content including text, images, videos, audio, documents, formulae and metadata. They can also have a wide variety of different formatting. You can also apply workflow to lists and control the access. This flexibility means that a SharePoint list can meet a wide variety of use cases and scenarios – it’s one of the key reasons SharePoint lists are so useful.

Granular levels of control

One of the most powerful elements of lists is the high level of granular control that you have over lists down to the row, column and even cell level, for example relating to both formatting but also access control. For example, you might have a number of people who are updating a list of first aiders throughout your organisation that is displayed on your intranet, but you want to ensure they can only update one column within the list. The granularity of control means you can protect the rest of the list and ensure other information doesn’t get overwritten, for example.

Easy to create and manage

Another major advantage of lists is that they’re super easy to create and manage; working with lists is not dissimilar to working with spreadsheets. Because of Microsoft’s generally “no code low code” approach to modern SharePoint, you do not need to involve the IT function. Lists are open to use by non-IT professionals, such as the intranet team or even local site owners.

One source of truth for data and content

When organisations use SharePoint for their intranet or as a trusted repository of information, they are often trying to ensure there is one source of truth for data. SharePoint lists support one source of truth by having various features to support the governance of data, including granular access control and integration with Power Automate to ensure information kept in a SharePoint list is updated in other systems, and vice-versa. Because the list can also be surfaced across different Microsoft 365 tools it also means that there only needs to be one instance of the list, again supporting one source of truth.

Ready-made templates and formatting

Lists come with a set of ready-made templates with nice formatting to cover different types of lists such as asset managers, content schedulers, budget trackers, issue trackers and many more. Many of these are provided by Microsoft, but there are also many others available on GitHub from the Microsoft community.

Deep integration with other Microsoft 365 tools

One of the reasons that lists are so powerful is their deep integration with other Microsoft 365 tools. You can use lists within Teams, for example. Integration with Microsoft Forms is also particularly useful as you can easily create a Form for people to add information too and then instantly populate a SharePoint list; this can be very handy when you want to guide users to enter certain types of information, with a Form doing the heavy lifting on the data entry.

Integration with Power Automate, Power Apps and the other tools within the Power Platform is also key meaning that workflows can be triggered when information is changed or added, and then be updated in another system, and vice-versa. For example, if somebody changed their name in the HR system of record, this could then be updated in a SharePoint list of first aiders that was kept on the intranet.

Often better than an Excel spreadsheet

Many teams use Excel to store and manage structured information, but actually a SharePoint list is usually a superior tool for managing information. Reasons that lists are frequently better than Excel spreadsheets include the ability to maintain control over certain areas of the list, better data integrity and deeper integration with Microsoft 365.

Microsoft keeps on investing

Like most of the tools across the Microsoft 365 suite, Microsoft keeps on investing in lists and making improvements. For example, there was a major “upgrade” in 2020. Lists is also a heavily utilised feature in SharePoint and will almost certainly be around for a long time yet, so you are effectively future-proofed using lists.

What are the different features of a SharePoint list?

Three are a number of key features of SharePoint lists.

Cells, columns and rows

A SharePoint list is fundamentally a table that includes different cells set out in a rows and columns format. However, within a list the rows are known as list items. Within the columns you can define required different data types such as text, number, date / time and so on. A column can also define a look-up list of values; for example, all the locations within an organisation or the list of products your company offers to clients.

List views and formatting

It's possible to set different views to filter your list and use different formatting. This is now highly flexible so that you can create a range of formats to suit different use cases, reorder columns and even do things like pin items to the top of the list. There is even conditional formatting so that a list could change in appearance based on the item added, for example a status could be displayed as Red, Amber or Green depending on information being added.

Templates

As already noted, Microsoft has created a set of different templates which include asset manager, content scheduler, employee on-boarding, event itinerary, issues tracker, recruitment tracker, travel requests and work progress tracker. There are also community-driven templates available via GitHub.

Rules and workflows

You can also add various rules and workflows to your list, some of them through the integration with Power Automate. You can also control access to read and edit different areas of the list. The integration with a Microsoft Forms front end can also help to enforce different rules for content entry.

What are some of the use cases for a SharePoint list?

There are many different use cases for a SharePoint list, many of which are reflected in the templates available. SharePoint lists are excellent for scenarios where:

Information is often changed on a regular basis
Where a wider number of people may be inputting data
Where a wide number of people need to regularly refer to the data
Where the data needs to be displayed in more than one place
Where the data needs to be updated across different systems.

Here are a few popular use cases, but there are many others:

Using it as an events calendar to store on your intranet covering key dates and milestones, including holidays in different countries
An inventory list covering office equipment or technical equipment
Maintaining lists of people relating to roles such as fire wardens, mental first aiders, HR contacts for each location and so on
Maintaining a list of locations with related information about each office, such as address, opening hours, main contact etc.
Tracking a list of issues and their related status for a project
Maintaining a backlog of changes for a product or application – even your intranet!
Logging requests and feedback on a product or application and tracking their status
Keeping a log of different requests such as for a new phone and then allowing people to view the status for their request
A list of subscribers to different journals and information feeds
Maintaining a list of the required steps for a new starter during the employee on-boarding process
Providing the latest version of a user manual or documentation across a portfolio of products
Keeping a directory of apps in use throughout the enterprise
And many more!

How do I create a list in SharePoint Online?

1. Navigate to the SharePoint site where you want to create the list.

2. Click on the gear icon in the top right corner of the page and select "Site contents" from the menu.

3. Click on the "+New" button and select "List" from the options.

4. Enter a name for the list and a description (optional) and click on the "Create" button.

Once the list is created, you can add columns and items to it by clicking on the "Add column" or "New" button.

How do I delete a list in SharePoint Online?

1. Navigate to the SharePoint site where the list is located.

2. Click on the gear icon in the top right corner of the page and select "Site contents" from the menu.

3. Locate the list you want to delete and hover over its name.

4. Click on the ellipsis (...) that appears and select "Delete" from the options.

5. Confirm the deletion by clicking "Delete" in the pop-up window. Note: Be careful when deleting list, it will be permanently deleted and cannot be restored.

How do I import a SharePoint list from Excel?

1. Select the gear icon and choose "Add an App"

2. On the next screen, give your new app/list a name, then choose an Excel file. Click Import.

3. You will now notice an Excel file open up with a pop-up window where you need to select a range of cells to import. Once you choose the range of cells in the pop-up, click Import.

The table will now be imported to SharePoint. It will go ahead and create a custom list with proper column headers and values.

Need help with SharePoint list or Microsoft lists? Get in touch!

We hope this beginner’s guide has given you an overview of SharePoint lists, how they can be used and answered some key questions. We’ve been using SharePoint lists for years, so if you need any help then get in touch!

The power of SharePoint lists: 5 reasons why they are better than spreadsheets

30th September 2020

A SharePoint list is one of the most powerful and flexible features of SharePoint, but its potential is often overlooked. In this post we look at reasons why SharePoint lists can work better than Excel spreadsheets.

What is the difference between SharePoint Lists and Microsoft Lists?

29th January 2023

Lists are one of the most longstanding and useful elements of SharePoint and the now the wider Microsoft 365 environment. In this post, we look at the differences between SharePoint Lists and Microsoft Lists.

Should I synchronise SharePoint lists with SQL server database?

29th January 2023

In this post we look at the pros and cons regarding SharePoint list synchronisation with SQL server database and data import and exports. And provide our recommended alternative options for successfully utilising SharePoint lists.

What is the difference between SharePoint Lists and Microsoft Lists?

Posted on 29 January 20238 February 2023 by Joe Perry

Lists are one of the most longstanding and useful elements of SharePoint and the now the wider Microsoft 365 environment. Lists have multiple uses, are extremely flexible and are an easy way to store and manage controlled data and content that is frequently updated and needs to be displayed to many people, for example through an intranet or on Microsoft Teams. Here at Content Formula we’re long-time fans of lists and we regularly use them in projects for our clients.

In recent years, Microsoft has given lists some love and invested in new capabilities, effectively giving hem a bit of an upgrade. This attention has been welcome, but it has resulted in what appears to be two version of lists – SharePoint lists and Microsoft lists. From time to time we get asked what the difference between the two is. Are they the same thing? And if not, what are the differences between them? In this post we’re going to explore the differences between SharePoint lists and Microsoft lists.

What is a SharePoint list?

Our comprehensive beginner’s guide to SharePoint lists takes a deep dive into SharePoint lists where we cover what they are, the main benefits, popular use cases, different elements and characteristics of a SharePoint list and how to carry out some of the basics, such as creating and deleting Lists. In the guide we define a SharePoint List as:

“a way of storing and displaying data and content within SharePoint in a set of rows and columns, similar to a table or a spreadsheet. A list is a highly flexible way to both manage but also display structured information and content within SharePoint, with a variety of options relating to formatting, access rights and different types of content.”

What is a Microsoft List?

Microsoft themselves define a Microsoft List as a “smart tracking app in Microsoft 365” that allows you to “work with anyone, anywhere” and where lists can be configured to “better organise events, issues, assets and more.” In this way Microsoft lists are strongly identified as part of Microsoft 365 rather than as part of SharePoint.

However, a Microsoft list is essentially the same piece of functionality as a SharePoint List. It has more or less exactly the same capabilities and user interface but is delivered and packaged as a standalone app while a SharePoint list is directly part of SharePoint.

SharePoint Lists vs Microsoft Lists

While this separate branding might be a bit confusing, there is some logic behind it. In 2020 Microsoft added some key functionality to lists, including the ability to integrate some social features, extending formatting options and creating a number of very useful templates. They also wanted to emphasize that lists can be deployed within Microsoft Teams and were not just confined to being deployed within SharePoint sites. This new version of lists was branded as Microsoft lists to differentiate it. However, since then, the functionality of SharePoint lists and Microsoft lists has been synchronised, so they now share the same features.

If they are the same thing, why are they different?

Not everybody uses SharePoint but lists are highly versatile and can be used in their own right, particularly within Microsoft Teams and in integrations with PowerApps and the Power Platform.

The differentiation in branding does help to emphasise their independent use outside SharePoint but also some of the new formatting and power that has been brought to lists.

When Microsoft lists were initially launched, they had more features than SharePoint lists, but they now share the same feature set. However, there are some differences in where lists are stored. Microsoft lists are stored in the same place as OneDrive files – on a personal site – while a SharePoint List will be on the individual SharePoint site that its kept on.

What does the list app do?

Another major difference is that Microsoft Lists has its own dedicated web app and mobile app, that is available via Google Play and the iOS app store. The app can present an aggregated view of lists and help you to manage them. Can you move SharePoint lists to Microsoft Lists and vice versa?

There is a facility to copy lists from one place to another that would allow a list in a SharePoint site to be created as a Microsoft lists, and vice versa. There is also a workaround in copying SharePoint list into Excel and then copying that back a Microsoft list – a process that also works the other way around. However, there have been some reports that formatting can get lost when carrying out both these processes.

Still confused about lists? Get in touch!

Microsoft branding can be a bit confusing at times with so many different apps and services, and even different names for what is essentially the same functionality. The good news is that the feature set in Microsoft lists and SharePoint Lists are essentially the same, meaning that you can deploy a list with confidence in a SharePoint site or within Teams, or use lists effectively as a standalone app. You can also integrate with PowerApps and Power Automate and also leverage a library of helpful templates for key use cases, helping lists to become a highly useful feature within the wider Microsoft 365 digital workplace.

As we’ve often said, at Content Formula we love lists! If you’re still confused about the difference between SharePoint lists and Microsoft lists, or want to know how you can better use lists in your intranet or digital workplace, then get in touch!

The power of SharePoint lists: 5 reasons why they are better than spreadsheets

30th September 2020

SharePoint lists: The Beginner’s Guide

29th January 2023

SharePoint lists have been a core feature of SharePoint for many years. But if you’re relatively new to SharePoint lists or don’t use them as much as you could do, this beginners guide will give you all the information you need to start utilising them to best effect.

Should I synchronise SharePoint lists with SQL server database?

29th January 2023

Should I synchronise SharePoint lists with SQL server database?

Posted on 29 January 20238 February 2023 by Joe Perry

SharePoint lists and Microsoft lists are a wonderful way to manage and display information, for example in your intranet or within Microsoft Teams. Organisations that are keen to ensure there is one source of truth for their data and information can use lists together with Power Automate to help maintain the integrity of their data, so that when there is a change to one piece of data this is also reflected elsewhere.

Some organisations that use SQL Server to store and query their data, and also use SharePoint for communication and their intranet, are often keen to ensure that the data that is stored in SQL can also be surfaced in SharePoint lists.

A question that we occasionally get asked is what the best way to synchronise a SharePoint lists with SQL Server database, so information is updated in both systems. Other related questions include:

How do I import or export data from SQL Server to a SharePoint list?
Can I connect a SQL server to a SharePoint list?

While synchronisation and data import / exports are technically possible, these approaches have several disadvantages, and is a practice we do not recommend to our clients. In this post we’re going to explore the topic in more detail and suggest why there are better approaches.

What are SharePoint lists?

A SharePoint list (or Microsoft list) is a format for storing and displaying data and content within SharePoint in a set of rows and columns, similar to a table or a spreadsheet. Lists are a highly flexible way to both manage but also display structured information and content within SharePoint, as well as Teams and other part of Microsoft 365. For more detail on see our SharePoint Lists beginner’s guide.

What is SQL Server database?

SQL Server is a relational database management system that is frequently used by organisations to store, manage and query data used in core systems, reporting and business intelligence. It has been around for many years and is still a popular way of storing data in organisations, with SQL skills commonplace among IT professionals.

Why do organisations want to keep the data in lists and SQL synchronised?

It’s not surprising that organisations want to keep their data synchronised between SSL and SharePoint lists. Having one source of truth ensures that data is consistent wherever it appears, across core systems, dashboards, reports and communication channels like the intranet. Bringing data together from different sources is essential for decision making, management and leadership, as well as compliance, risk management and more.

It is essential that the integrity of data is maintained, and querying data dynamically has value. Commonly, digital workplace teams want to surface data and display information that managers and employees need to refer to, in popular channels like Teams, a SharePoint intranet or in SharePoint communication sites. Lists is a very useful format for visualising and displaying data.

Lists are also used to manage and update information too, and teams want to ensure that any information changed in a list is also updated in SQL too. With two-way synchronisation, teams can ensure there is one source of truth.

What are the challenges of synchronising lists and SQL Server?

If you are planning to go ahead and synchronise SharePoint lists and SQL Server, there are various pitfalls to be wary of.

1. You’re going to need to get IT involved

Synchronising lists and SQL is essentially a custom development and will come at a cost, as well as create technical debt which causes various problems down the line. There are connectors on the market, but these will need to be tested and again come with some risk. However you approach it, you will need to get a development resource involved in the synchronisation. If you haven’t got the expertise in-house, you’ll likely have to go external.

2. It needs ongoing maintenance and monitoring

Connectors and / or custom code will require ongoing maintenance and monitoring to make sure the synchronisation is taking place, and then to make any necessary fixes if a problem arises. Again, this results in ongoing costs and reliance on development resources.

3. You risk the integrity of your data

Perhaps the most significant issue with synchronising SharePoint lists and SQLs is that you are actually setting up two places for data to be stored. If the synchronisation fails, it means that you are risking the integrity of your data with two different versions.

If there is an issue and doesn’t get noticed straight away, it might take a lot of unpicking and effort to restore all the data to its correct state, There may also be potential consequence if employees are relying on out of date or incorrect data for decision-making and key processes.

4. SQL and lists are not the same thing

SQL is a relational database, but a SharePoint list is not a relational database. This can limit some of the information you can synchronise; if you are trying to synchronise you really do need to know what you’re doing or further risk your data integrity.

What are the alternatives?

In our view synchronising SQL and lists comes with associated risks, costs and ongoing effort. There are better alternatives.

Using Power BI

Sometimes teams want to visualise their data and content using a SharePoint list, because its an easy and flexible format. However, Power BI offers an alternative (and often superior) option for data visualisation and comes with a ready-made connector for SQL. Here, you can then set up your dashboard and report without undermining the “one source of truth” caused by syncing with lists, and also avoid the costs associated with a custom approach.

Using the Dataverse

The Dataverse is Microsoft’s solution for data storage that’s utilised across Microsoft 365 and the Power Platform. It’s an Azure-based relational database for storing data which can then be surfaced, updated and queried across different Microsoft applications, as well as non-Microsoft applications if required. It is bundled in with Power Apps subscriptions.

Using the Dataverse means your SharePoint list can easily utilise the data contained within it in a more effective and cheaper way thanks to seamless integration which means:

You don’t have actually have to involve developers; this can be carried out by Power Users all within a low code no code interface
No customisation and associated costs are required with everything covered in your PowerApps subscription
You don’t need ongoing maintenance and effort
You avoid the risk of creating conflicting data.

Overall, using the Dataverse rather than trying to sync a SharePoint list and SQL means lower risk, lower costs, less effort and avoids various other pitfalls.

Need advice on lists, SQL and the Dataverse? Get in touch!

Synchronising SharePoint lists or Microsoft lists and SQL Server has various pitfalls, and in our view there are better alternatives.

If you’d like to discuss lists, SQL, the Dataverse or how you manage and store your data across the digital workplace, then get in touch!

The power of SharePoint lists: 5 reasons why they are better than spreadsheets

30th September 2020

SharePoint lists: The Beginner’s Guide

29th January 2023

What is the difference between SharePoint Lists and Microsoft Lists?

29th January 2023

How to make Microsoft Viva the centre of your digital workplace

Posted on 3 May 202228 December 2022 by Joe Perry

Microsoft Viva – the employee experience platform launched by Microsoft in 2021 – has been receiving huge levels of interest from intranet, digital workplace and internal comms teams since its release. As adoption continues to rise, we decided to hold a webinar about placing Microsoft Viva at the centre of your digital workplace to deliver a more seamless digital employee experience.

In the session, which you can watch in full below, Content Formula’s Alex Yeomans, John Scott and Joe Perry explored issues including:

What Microsoft Viva does
The ins and outs of the Viva apps
How to use Viva Connections to integrate with other systems
What else you should consider when implementing Viva.

In this post, we’re going to explore some of the key takeaways from what proved to be a highly valuable deep dive into Microsoft Viva.

What is Microsoft Viva?

Microsoft Viva is a collection of apps that are generally viewed through Microsoft Teams, although some features of Viva Connections can be embedded as web parts into SharePoint. The apps focus on four different areas of employee experience:

Viva Connections: A gateway to internal communications and company resources
Viva Insights: Personalised analytics and related insights for individuals, managers and leaders that support well-being, collaboration, productivity and more
Viva Learning: A learning hub that aggregates learning resources from a variety of different systems and sources
Viva Topics: A knowledge discovery platform that uses AI to source resources and experts on different topics.

Here, we share some of the insights from the webinar.

1 Most people are in the early stages of their Viva journey

At the beginning of the webinar, the panel emphasised that Microsoft Viva is very new. Unsurprisingly, a quick poll of the participants revealed that most people are at a very early stage of their Viva journey, either experimenting or still investigating how it can be used. Even though Viva has been around for over a year, it is still evolving, and has only evolved to deliver value relatively recently as more integrations have emerged. The team expects this to accelerate as more and more organisations adopt Microsoft Viva this year and in future, and as Microsoft continues to invest in the platform.

2 Viva Learning helps to deliver learning in the flow of work… but it’s not an LMS

All too often, learning content is hidden away in different systems and repositories, such as a Learning Management System (LMS), a SharePoint library or a third-party solution. This means valuable content is often missed, and learning systems are poorly adopted. Viva Learning helps remedy this by delivering a discovery platform for learning content, surfacing resources from multiple places including your LMS, SharePoint and more right into Microsoft Teams, where people often spend their working day. The solution leverages AI to recommend relevant course content to users based on the Office Graph, and managers can assign learning and colleagues recommend courses while a personalised dashboard facilitates easier access. Learning content also appears in Microsoft Search. It is worth noting that Viva Learning is not an LMS; there isn’t any core functionality that you might find in a system like LMS365 such as e-learning, certification, employee attestation, learning journeys and sophisticated reporting. Organisations will need to have an LMS like LMS365 and subscriptions with learning providers to get the best out of the app, with Viva Learning principally acting as an aggregator.

3 Viva Topics is supporting knowledge management

Viva Topics is another app which helps to support knowledge management, using AI to bring together wiki-like pages on different topics and surfacing relevant resources, including SharePoint files and lists of recognised experts. For example, Content Formula is working with a house-building firm on implementing Viva Topics, and they have a topic page dedicated to loft installations, with a list of valuable AI-driven resources that can also be curated by a subject matter expert approving the AI suggestions. New relevant topic pages are suggested by AI, but can also be created manually to cover things like clients, projects, services and places. Viva Topics pages are represented by cards that can be referenced in a Teams discussion and also appear in search.

4 Viva Insights delivers personal analytics and insights while acting like a virtual assistant

Viva Insights provides a personal dashboard of analytics about work habits, shining a light on wellbeing, productivity and collaboration. These are derived from Microsoft Graph and your interactions with Office 365, revealing things such as your overall working hours, time spent in meetings, focus time and more. Viva Insights also uses AI to monitor your interactions across Teams, Yammer and Outlook and make suggestions about the need to follow up on meetings and emails, for example. This is already delivered in the Viva-branded emails that most of us receive, and is like a “virtual assistant” nudging you to follow up on actions. If you pay for an upgrade, managers can see analytics and insights based on their team’s actions, such as their overall time spent in meetings.

5 Viva Connections brings your intranet into Teams

Microsoft 365 is a complex and broad platform that contains multiple tools and channels. Viva Connections is a connector that consolidates content and information from some of these sources and displays them in Teams, although it can also be surfaced in SharePoint. One way Viva Connections is commonly used is as a way to effectively view your SharePoint intranet through Teams, meaning users don’t have to leave the Teams environment to see intranet communications and content. In the webinar, we saw an example of how Entain’s intranet is viewed through Viva Connections; in organisations where Teams has high usage, this is a great way to facilitate easier intranet access.

6 The Viva Connections dashboard helps users complete tasks across the digital workplace

One of the most valuable features in the entire Viva platform is the Viva Connections Dashboard. This helps you create a dashboard of personalised cards from other Microsoft tools, non-Microsoft apps and third-party websites to provide information, updates and nudges which help users complete tasks and keep on top of their work. It can be viewed through Microsoft Teams or within a SharePoint page – usually the intranet homepage or equivalent. This can help make Connections and your intranet not just a communications hub, but a comprehensive digital workplace tool too.

In the webinar, there was a demo of the dashboard that showed the kind of information it can display, including:

How much annual leave remains
The current valuation of a pension
Live data from share prices
The travel status of buses or trains
A map of how to get somewhere
A view of upcoming meetings
A display of praise received through Yammer.

The dashboard can also provide access to tasks including check-ins for office visits and manager approvals for travel expenses. Joe explained that each card is personalised, and can be targeted to different groups. One of the great things about the dashboard is that it leverages a low-code, no-code approach, making it easy for administrators to create and preview new cards. They can also utilise out-of-the-box integrations with enterprise systems like Workday and ServiceNow to deliver cards for high-value use cases like requesting time off or raising helpdesk tickets.

7 There are several elements to consider when deploying Microsoft Viva Connections

Finally, the team ran through some of the key factors that digital workplace teams need to consider before deploying Viva Connections:

A SharePoint home site and SharePoint global navigation are required to launch Viva Connections
Third-party integrations add value, and Microsoft has more coming soon
Multi-lingual dashboards have been released – attractive for larger, global organisations
If you’re launching Viva Connections, you can now add a custom name and logo in the navigation to align with your intranet branding
Viva Connections is free, but the full functionality of the other apps comes at an additional cost.

Want to know more about Microsoft Viva? Get in touch!

We’re working with several clients on Viva-related projects. If you’re considering deploying Microsoft Viva and have any questions, then get in touch!

What’s on the Microsoft 365 roadmap for 2022?

Posted on 17 January 202229 December 2022 by Joe Perry

One of the pleasures of working with SharePoint, Microsoft Teams and the Microsoft 365 platform in general is the continual investment Microsoft drives to improve the platform, introducing new tools and features. For example, in 2021, we welcomed the Microsoft Viva suite. Sometimes, these changes are modest but have powerful potential, such as extending the formatting options for SharePoint lists. However, it can be difficult and even overwhelming for admins and IT teams to try and keep up with all the changes.

In 2022, we’re expecting another very active year for Microsoft Teams, SharePoint and 365. It’s also going to be a big year for Microsoft Viva. In this post, we’re going to cover some of the changes we’re most looking forward to here at Content Formula, but really, we’re only scratching the surface of what’s coming.

The full detailed Microsoft 365 roadmap contains over 500 items in development at the time of writing, plus over 250 more being rolled out. The Book of News summary of main announcements from November 2021’s Ignite conference is a good place to start, showing a very active roadmap ahead. Of course, there will also be some surprises that haven’t been announced, or things that have been promised but haven’t yet appeared.

Here’s our pick of the 2022 Microsoft roadmap so far.

Additions and enhancements to Microsoft Viva

The Microsoft Viva suite of apps was a high-profile launch in 2021, and is getting huge interest from digital workplace, intranet, HR and internal communications teams. We think Microsoft will continue to push Viva hard in 2022, making it an increasingly accepted part of the digital workplace landscape.

Microsoft has announced a slew of changes that will continue to enhance Viva’s value. One of these will be a whole new Viva module related to OKRs (Objective and Key Results) emerging from Microsoft’s acquisition of ally.io, an OKR software vendor. The reporting within Viva Insights will continue to expand, with new areas covering management behaviours and meeting habits, the latter being an area where businesses still exhibit bad practices.

The power of Viva Topics is going to be extended, covering Outlook and Yammer communities while also trialling an intriguing Q&A concierge service which routes queries to relevant subject-matter experts; this will help expertise location and knowledge-sharing. The power of SharePoint Syntex can also be leveraged to build topics. The library of out-of-the-box connectors for different enterprise systems across all the Viva apps will continue to expand, with some significant additions Workday and DocuSign, in particular, launching in early 2022.

Microsoft Teams goes from strength to strength

The success of Microsoft Teams has been remarkable, and is an integral part of the digital workplace for many organisations. Microsoft continue to add to it, and the 2022 roadmap should see another round of enhancements, many of which cement Teams as the all-in-one communication system for employees.

One of the most far-reaching of these enhancements is further development of Microsoft Teams Connect – the feature that enables external collaboration. It will be easier to schedule meetings in a Teams channel that is shared across multiple organisations and individuals, providing a welcome addition to enable projects involving third parties and contractors. Chat will also be extended to allow individuals to use Teams with anyone outside a work network for personal calls while still sticking to organisational security policies, thus extending Teams popularity.

There are also some enhancements to Teams analytics in the pipeline. A new device-specific analytics board will be of particular interest to organisations who have rolled out the Teams mobile app, while a board that provides data and analytics per physical workspace will be useful in co-ordinating hybrid working or improving adoption in specific locations.

Other improvements and additions include:

The ability to join BlueJeans and GoToMeeting calls from a Teams Room, joining existing support for Zoom and Cicso
More support to use Teams as part of a hotdesking solution
More apps for Teams being added by partners
Some improvements to chat, including the ability for a user to send memo reminders to themselves on a chat thread
An improved design for the Teams app store
A new virtual green room for Teams events
A slew of improvements for event organisers, including better Q&A, having multiple moderators and more.

Microsoft Mesh for Teams

Support for augmented and virtual reality has been steadily improving in the background, although outside some online events, specific learning sessions and niche scenarios, these 3D experiences are yet to really seize the imagination of organisations or digital workplace teams.

Despite this, large tech providers are staking a lot of future investment on AR, VR and 3D experiences, particularly for remove events, meetings and collaboration. Facebook has changed its name to Meta and shared their plans for an immersive AR / VR world called the Metaverse, which is painted a little like Second Life on steroids. Microsoft’s response is to continue to roll out Mesh – its mixed reality framework – that is now being extended to Microsoft Teams.

The introduction of Mesh in Teams allows participants to meet in 3D scenarios as avatars that display their reactions. Microsoft says this means users can maintain their presence in meetings without turning on cameras, and interact socially in more informal spaces for those much-discussed water cooler moments. The adoption and utilisation of these features in 2022 is going to be fascinating to watch, partly because we genuinely don’t know if they will take off or not.

More power for the Power Platform

Along with hybrid, low-code and no-code have been the digital workplace phrases of the year, and that looks set to continue in 2022. Microsoft are investing in a round of improvements to the Power Platform.

Some of these are designed to help organisations leverage the apps and workflow of the Power Platform more easily within the Teams experience, particularly Power Virtual Agents, to bring bots more directly into channels or target them to specific security groups. A Power BI app for Teams is also now available.

A new capability called process mining within Power Automate generates analytics and process maps across processes and workflows, aiming to provide insights on the success of processes, analysing the time spent on steps and where there are bottlenecks. We think this forensic approach will be of interest to many teams, and support continual improvement.

There are a range of other smaller improvements, too numerous to go into in-depth here, which include some interesting developments to drive citizen development. For example, within Power Virtual Agents, bot developers will be able to have conversations inside the bot authoring experience – a simple feature which could allow citizen developers to seek advice or collaborate with IT experts and their peers. This ability to collaborate and comment is being extended across the other Power Platform apps too, with notes and feedback similar to commenting in Office. Again, we see this helping to drive citizen development or offer support in cases where central IT resources are seeking input from business process owners or teams.

Upgrades to Microsoft Stream

Video is now a popular medium in many organisations, complementing internal communications, leadership communications, learning and even employee blogging (logging). Previously, Microsoft Stream the video sharing platform within the 365 platform has made it easy to embed videos within SharePoint intranets or communication sites, but the actual Stream user experience has been more of a separate app experience.

Now, Microsoft Stream is being rebranded as Microsoft Steam classic, and Stream built on SharePoint is being introduced. Video and audio files will be stored in the same way that other files are stored in SharePoint, making it even easier to integrate Stream right across the 365 suite. It also means that video and audio files will align to other SharePoint governance put in place for content services, covering permissions, compliance and more. This will bring video more efficiently into the overall 365 experience, including within a SharePoint intranet, and remove any associated barriers around video sharing and podcasting.

SharePoint Syntex additions

One of the roadmap areas we’re most excited about is an expansion of SharePoint Syntex – the AI feature that can be applied to content in various imaginative ways. In the next generation of Syntex, there is better support for using the software to construct Microsoft office documents so you can build model documents, for example, with different data and sections based on information from other elements. For example, you could automatically build standard NDA or contract documents based on information generated from your CRM system, with some variation dependent on who the contract concerns, as may be the case for UK- or US-based businesses.

We can see great value in high-volume documents areas such as contract management, invoicing or procurement processes. Used in conjunction with other parts of the Microsoft 365 suite, there are certainly some intriguing combinations that could transform inefficient processes. The ability to leverage Syntex for document searching using Syntex-generated metadata is also being extended.

Get in touch!

The new year is going to be another big one for Microsoft 365, Teams and Viva. We’re excited for all that is to come! If you’d like to discuss your strategy and plans for 2022, then get in touch!

25 business processes you can automate using Microsoft 365

Posted on 1 December 202129 December 2022 by Joe Perry

Business automation and process improvement are key reasons why organisations launch Microsoft 365 and create intranets. They want to reduce costs, save time, increase productivity, speed up end-to-end processes and remove frustration for users.

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. The opportunity for business automation extends to some of the products that work alongside Microsoft 365, such as LiveTiles intranet, LMS365 or the Xoralia policy management tool, mainly because they are based on 365 technologies like SharePoint and Power Automate.

It’s also worth noting that Microsoft’s continuing investment in the 365 platform and Microsoft Teams means new opportunities for automation are opening up. For example, the Microsoft Viva suite of apps is providing exciting opportunities to increase productivity and improve employee experience, while Power Virtual Agents allows every organisation to leverage the power of bots. In fact, when we first published this post, we included 19 opportunities, but we’ve since expanded this to 25.

Let’s look at some of the processes you can automate, based on what we’ve seen with clients and other organisations. Just to be clear, there is a lot you can potentially do these ideas are just for starters!

1 Updating key business policies

Many intranets have a central library of key business policies. It’s important that these are kept up to date; there may be regular reviews in place to ensure this happens. Automated reminders to content owners based on review dates introduce an automation layer to support an effective central policy library.

Potential tools to use: Xoralia policy management tool, SharePoint, Power Automate.

2 Monitoring mandatory reads

Sometimes, it’s important for employees to read particular content for compliance, regulatory or risk reasons: perhaps a new policy, an important update or a critical communication. Monitoring who has confirmed they have read the content can be a real administrative burden. Automating this process saves vast amounts of time and effort. This can involve sending targeted reminders based on Active Directory (AD) groups to those employees still to confirm the mandatory read, and producing real-time progress reports.

Potential tools to use: Xoralia policy management tool, SharePoint, Power Automate, Power BI, Azure Active Directory

3 Adding document metadata

Having the right metadata for documents helps with findability, but also gives users important information about the content; it may define displays in web environments, and support other outcomes such as targeting. Getting the right metadata on a document is something some organisations struggle with, especially if it all needs to be done manually.

Automation can really help add accurate document metadata. For example, if there is metadata associated with a project and a new document is added to the project workspace, the document may be able to inherit that metadata. There are also opportunities to use AI to suggest the right metadata to add through the SharePoint Syntex service.

Potential tools to use: Power Automate, SharePoint, SharePoint Syntex

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 owner).

Potential tools to use: Power Automate, SharePoint

5 Updating employee profiles

The employee directory and profiles are a staple of the intranet environment, but the best ones always represent the one source of truth of HR data so that profiles are always accurate, and employees don’t have to complete information across two systems.

Updates to your HR system containing individual employee data should always be reflected in individual employee profiles. For example, an update to a job title in the HR system should also be displayed on the intranet, ideally in real-time.

Potential tools to use: LiveTiles Directory, Delve, Custom-built solution, Active Directory

6 Requests and approvals

This is 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, or even through a mobile app for frontline staff.

Potential tools to use: Microsoft Forms, Power Automate, SharePoint, Power Virtual Agents, Microsoft Teams apps

7 IT and facilities performance monitoring

Performance monitoring of different systems is an obvious area to automate, using dashboards to provide reporting and notifications when things don’t look right, based on different rules. We’ve seen many examples of this, including the monitoring of load times on different web channels or servers, or reporting on the temperature of different parts of a building.

Potential tools to use: Power BI, LiveTiles Intelligence, SharePoint, Azure application insights

8 Microsoft 365 adoption reporting

Unsurprisingly, digital workplace teams are always interested in driving adoption of Microsoft 365 and its constituent tools. With so many tools and channels in operation, automated reporting of the use of different applications and channels via a customised dashboard is almost always of interest to teams. Increasingly, some of the behaviours of Microsoft 365 are being rolled into the new Viva Insights tool which focuses on collaboration, productivity and wellbeing, offering some organisation-wide analytics.

Potential tools to use: Power BI, Microsoft 365 out-of-the-box, Viva Insights

9 Logging support calls

There are already systems like ServiceNow which allow users to log issues and automatically raise tickets for IT, HR and other support services. The ability to raise tickets is usually a prerequisite for running any scalable helpdesk or support service, and integrating this automation into your intranet or Microsoft Teams can be helpful. Increasingly, support calls are also being logged through chatbots. More lightweight processes might not always warrant investment in a separate system. In these instances, using your intranet platform or Microsoft365 may make a lot of sense as an affordable system to log support calls, and automation can really add value.

Potential tools to use: Microsoft Forms, PowerApps, Power Automate, Power Virtual Agents, Microsoft Teams Apps

10 Centralising notifications from different systems

Information overload is still a real 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.

Having a focused activity stream, list of notifications or notification dashboard from systems in one place (universal inbox) that can allow users to organise all the things they need to do, and ensure approvals are made more speedily. Here, there are an increasing number of options to deliver this capability within Microsoft Teams, to frontline staff via a mobile app or through a chatbot facility where employees can complete simple transactions.

Potential tools to use: Power Automate, PowerApps, Microsoft Teams Apps, SharePoint, LiveTiles Everywhere, Power Virtual Agents

11 Financial reporting and monitoring

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 and support decision-making. However, dashboards with simplified financial and performance data such as sales can even be presented to users on the intranet homepage as a way of keeping everybody up to date. This form of automation almost always has value.

Potential tools to use: Power BI, SharePoint

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.

Potential tools to use: PowerApps, Power Automate, Power BI, Microsoft Dynamics, Outlook

13 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. It’s incredible how 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.

Potential tools to use: PowerApps, Power BI, Power Automate, Microsoft Forms, Power Virtual Agents

13 360 appraisals

360 appraisals tend to be a process-heavy exercise involving data input from different users, reporting, approval workflow, notifications and the need to store all the data in a core system of record. In other words, 360 appraisals are ripe for automation and improvement! Appraisals can be cumbersome and time-consuming, so anything which makes them easier for everybody is welcome.

Potential tools to use: Microsoft Forms, Power Automate, PowerApps, SharePoint

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, as well as save huge amounts of time.

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.

Potential tools to use: PowerApps, SharePoint Workflows, Microsoft Office, Power Virtual Agents

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 interrogating external databases with company information, and performing credit checks. The extent to which KYC processes can be automated varies, but there is usually scope for speeding up the process, such as using a chatbot to gather initial information or running the process through Teams if that is the system where most work gets done.

Potential tools to use: Virtual Power Agents, PowerApps, Power BI, Microsoft Forms, Power Automate, Microsoft Teams apps

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 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.

Potential tools to use: Power BI, Microsoft Planner, Power Automate, Microsoft Shifts

18 Project management

Project management is a broad activity which is key to the way many companies operate. Microsoft 365 can help with many aspects of project management, including providing the base 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.

Potential tools to use: Microsoft Planner, Power BI, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Project, SharePoint Online, Outlook

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 before a new hire’s first day. 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.

Potential tools to use: PowerApps, LMS365, Xoralia policy management tool, Power Automate, SharePoint Online, LiveTiles content targeting, Power BI

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.

Potential tools to use: Power Automate, Microsoft Forms, Power BI

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 can make sure this information appears automatically in documents, databases, dashboards and even workspaces.

Potential tools to use: PowerApps, Microsoft Forms, Teams Apps, Power Virtual Agents, SharePoint, Power BI

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), 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 AD groups. Although it’s early days, learning automation might also involve Viva Learning in the future as its capabilities evolve and develop.

Potential tools to use: LMS365, SharePoint, Power Automate, Power BI, Microsoft Viva Learning, Xoralia policy management tool, Azure Active Directory

23 Keeping groups and lists up to date

Group and list management is often a time-consuming activity and can incorporate multiple aspects of your digital workplace, including e-mail distribution, content targeting, personalisation, security and permissions, subscriptions, employee directories and more. Groups can be highly dynamic, based on joiners and leavers, internal moves and individual preferences. Ensuring your Azure Active Directory groups are fully up to date and mirroring your needs is key. Here, automation is a must, including synchronisation with your HR system of record, as well as facilitating elements such as default membership of different communities, enabling topic subscriptions on your intranet and more.

Potential tools to use: Azure Active Directory, Power Automate, SharePoint

24 Meetings

We spend so much of our time in meetings, yet very little automation outside of what happens when you use Outlook tends to be applied to meeting booking, even though this is an area where there are multiple opportunities to improve processes. Automation could be applied to booking equipment, creating a space, sourcing tools such as whiteboards (if for a virtual meeting), diary management, sending out reminders, constructing minutes, determining agendas, regulating the number of people in the office (due to COVID restrictions), gathering pre-meeting data and even organising travel arrangements.

Potential tools to use: Power Automate, Outlook, Microsoft Forms

25 Knowledge Management

Viva Topics is an intriguing new part of the Viva suite of employee experience apps that uses AI to automate the presentation of content and identification of experts on different topics, and presents this information to users. In a way, this represents the partial automation of knowledge management, and is an exciting prospect. However, it comes with a caveat: Viva Topics is not plug-and-play, and requires active and ongoing knowledge curation, plus a necessary level of content, to get value out of the tool.

Potential tools to use: Microsoft Viva Topics, SharePoint

Microsoft 365 is a productivity and automation platform

You can do so much with Microsoft 365, providing a digital workplace where you can drive automation, reporting and more. In fact, there’s so much to automate, it can be hard to know where to start! If you’d like to discuss using Microsoft 365 to automate key business processes across your digital workplace, then get in touch!

7 secrets for a successful mobile intranet

Posted on 24 November 202129 December 2022 by Joe Perry

A mobile intranet is a critical part of the digital communications ecosystem of any organisation. It is especially important for any company that has a significant deskless frontline workforce. For employees with no easy access to a computer during the working day, and sometimes no corporate digital identity, a mobile intranet app available on a personal device can become their major channel for digital communication, as well as the most efficient. The mobile intranet connects employees who work in factories, shops and out in the field, or who are on the go with their employers and each other.

Successfully delivering a mobile intranet is not always straightforward, and some organisations end up with low adoption and low value. Many of the necessary prerequisites for the success of a standard browser-based intranet, such as governance and the right operating model, also need to be in place for the mobile equivalent. However, there are specific approaches to consider for a mobile intranet too.

In this post, we’re going to explore seven secrets for a successful mobile intranet implementation and launch.

1 Focus on the right features for a frontline or mobile workforce

Intranets have multiple purposes and support a wide variety of organisational processes. Mature platforms and integrations mean there has been a blurring between intranets, digital workplaces, collaboration platforms and employee experience platforms. Generally, a mobile intranet may feature slimmed down versions of the capabilities of a desktop intranet, although it might include similar access to all the content included.

When you select what to include on your mobile intranet, always ensure tools and content are suited to the needs of your frontline workforce, and capabilities that are useful for work on-the-go are featured. Previously, we looked at eight must-have features of a mobile intranet, all of which are relevant to frontline staff, including:

Ability to remove barriers to access for all, including your frontline employees
Strong news delivery
Social collaboration and community tools
Content and reference pages
Employee directory
Event calendar and registration
Integrations that make sense for on-the-go employees or solve frontline use cases
Easy administration and robust analytics.

2 Go for a mobile app over responsive design

SharePoint Online and in-a-box intranet software such as LiveTiles are now responsive, ensuring they are optimised for viewing through a mobile device. While this is good news for mobile intranets, it is rarely a good standalone approach. To drive adoption and value, you need to have a mobile intranet app that will:

Deliver a controlled user experience for your intranet
Make it easier to take advantage of the native features of a mobile device
Allow for better governance, and meet security and compliance needs that won’t compromise your user experience.

Most intranet software will have its own dedicated mobile application, such as the SharePoint app. Intranets are increasingly being viewed through Microsoft Teams, and your Teams app could actually become your mobile intranet app too. A mobile intranet that is only delivered through responsive design is unlikely to get good adoption.

3 Make your mobile intranet available on personal devices to reach frontline staff

A major use case for a mobile intranet is to reach your frontline employees. In many companies, frontline employees do not have access to a desk, a corporate owned-device or even a digital identity. To make a mobile intranet work for this population, it must be available on personal devices, both Android and iOS. This is the only way to realistically achieve good adoption with this demographic; kiosks, shared terminals or home access will not work so well.

Some organisations get nervous about doing this due to security concerns, but also because they don’t want to intrude on employees time outside of work. In countries like the US where some sections of the workforce are on the clock employees, and Germany where workers councils are deeply involved in decision-making, there may need to be more careful consideration. However, there are many examples where a mobile intranet available on personal devices has proved valuable and popular with frontline employees, and has been highly successful in delivering organisational benefits.

4 Take advantage of native device features

Mobile devices have a range of native features that we are all accustomed to using when interacting with apps in our non-working lives. A mobile intranet app can take advantage of these features to boost effectivity, including push notifications, the ability to upload photos, voice detection and even GPS detection. In particular, push notifications can prove essential for important alerts, although they should be used sparingly. The ability to submit photos can also be useful for creating specific intranet apps focused either on engagement or transactional processes, such as reporting on-site issues that are best illustrated by a photo. Intranet chatbots also work well on a mobile device.

5 Focus on an easy onboarding and authentication experience

If you are launching a mobile intranet app, you must make it easy for users to load it onto their device and authenticate into it. If this process has numerous difficult steps to go through, it can be a barrier to adoption and a major headache for the intranet team.

For users of corporate mobile devices, this is usually in your control, and there will be a standard way to distribute apps. For employees adding an app to their personal device, it gets more complicated. Most intranet software providers will have convenient ways to do this – often through the Google Play or iOS app store – with a relatively straightforward way to authorise and authenticate the device and person. When launching your mobile app, make sure this process is as smooth and simple as possible.

6 Always get compliance and security teams involved early

Compliance and security constraints can scupper the success of a mobile intranet, negatively impacting the user experience. For example, if a mobile intranet requires VPN access, or a user has to type in a long password each time they enter the intranet, it is going to be difficult to drive adoption. Mobile intranets and apps can make compliance teams and senior executives nervous, particularly when they are accessible on a personal device.

Security, regulatory and compliance needs must be met, and can impact what is on your intranet. By engaging early with compliance and security teams, you can usually achieve the best possible experience for your mobile intranet.

There is actually a lot of middle ground that can allow you to deliver an excellent mobile intranet experience that meets all your regulatory and security requirements with very little compromise on the UX. This is often achieved by removing a small amount of content or a particular feature from your mobile intranet that is difficult from a compliance point of view, leaving the other 95% of your intranet still delivering value. Ensuring MDM approaches and app governance is in place and adding the right Terms & Conditions when employees sign-up can also make a big difference here, ticking the boxes for legal and compliance functions.

7 Consider content and links in the mobile experience

Even if you have a beautiful, responsive mobile app or an adaptive design, the success of your mobile intranet is dependent on having the right content. Most intranet content is not designed to be read on a mobile, resulting in long text and endless scrolling, or the use of imagery which is hard to view or read on a mobile. (There are lots of issues with posting images featuring text on your intranet don’t do it!)

It’s not always easy to achieve, but make sure to consider content from the mobile point of view. Generally, taking a mobile-first approach to content for example, with more concise text broken up into shorter areas with indicative subject headings is actually good for the desktop view too. If you have a policy, for example, a clear, short summary with the salient points will be welcomed both by your mobile intranet users and those with desktop access.

Most intranets now act as a convenient gateway to the wider digital workplace. Providing links to other systems is very useful, but you may need to provide a different view on the mobile intranet as you might need to link to different apps or not link to systems that are unavailable or not optimised for mobile devices.

Making your intranet mobile

Making your intranet mobile is essential, particularly if you have a frontline workforce. Use these tips for a successful implementation. If you want to discuss your mobile intranet, why not get in touch!

3 ways to deliver low code SharePoint intranet development

Posted on 18 November 202130 December 2022 by Joe Perry

Low code development can be a great approach to deliver capabilities on a SharePoint intranet, helping to rapidly create a feature-rich environment at relatively low cost. When resources for your SharePoint intranet are tight or you are under pressure to deliver with ambitious deadlines, low code development can help overcome some of these challenges. In this post, we’re going to explore three of the main ways to deliver low code intranet development on your SharePoint intranet.

What is low code development?

Low code and no code solutions are platforms which empower IT developers and non-IT professionals alike to rapidly build apps, dashboards and sites that previously would have required a more traditional software approach. Using a combination of out-of-the-box templates and connectors, as well as intuitive authoring interfaces, these solutions enable development with minimal or no code needing to be written.

Note that there is a distinction between low code and no code in that the latter is designed for use by non-IT professionals, but in reality, this distinction can be a little fuzzy. For example, IT professionals might use a no code solution as part of their development. From here, we are going to refer to low code development to describe no code solutions too.

The attraction of low code solutions is compelling for both IT functions and business teams. By employing a decentralised, citizen-development approach to app design, they allow for the creation of more business-specific apps than would normally be possible with the constraints of current IT resources, and facilitate more rapid development at lower cost. All in all, low code development can play a part in digital transformation, and in enabling automation at scale throughout enterprises.

Microsoft 365 is an excellent platform for low code development, and many of the tools within the 365 suite are designed to be used via a low code approach. An intranet, with its enterprise reach and array of different features and content covering multiple uses, is also a good candidate for low code development. Carrying out low code development for an intranet based on SharePoint or SharePoint Online has real value.

You can carry this out in three main ways:

Using modern SharePoint or SharePoint Online out of the box
Leveraging the Power Platform
Formatting SharePoint lists.

Let’s explore each of these areas in more detail.

1 Using modern SharePoint or SharePoint Online out of the box

SharePoint Online and modern SharePoint straight out of the box is revolutionising the intranet world by providing a viable platform on which to build an enterprise intranet, either straight out of the box or in conjunction with an in-a-box product like LiveTiles. Both approaches allow you to use low code development, leveraging the native features of SharePoint.

Using a communication site, it is very easy to add and rearrange different web parts to a site or individual page simply by selecting the web part of choice, and using drag and drop. These web parts cover both SharePoint features like document libraries, lists, news, calendars, images and content spotlights, and elements from other 365 tools such as Yammer feeds. The range of easy formatting and configuration options for each individual web part allows for huge flexibility. Organisations can also deploy their own custom web parts.

The ability to add and configure so many web parts with ease means central intranet teams, IT functions and decentralised intranet site owners can create and configure sophisticated SharePoint intranet sites and pages at speed, covering the vast majority of information needs without deploying any code.

2 Leveraging the Power Platform

The low code heart of Microsoft 365 is the Power Platform, a suite of four apps that support a low code and even citizen developer approach through libraries of connectors, an intuitive authoring canvas and the ability to reuse what has previously been created. Because of the seamless integration between different tools within the 365 suite, each of the four apps provide opportunities for low code development with a SharePoint intranet:

PowerApps allows you to create specific apps that can be available as mobile apps, or be integrated into your intranet, such as an employee onboarding app to display tasks for new hires that could be embedded into the new hires section of your intranet.

Power BI enables powerful data visualisations, dashboards and reports that can integrate with your intranet to dynamically present organisational data, such as sales figures or health and safety reporting, and can also be used to manage and present intranet and engagement metrics.

Power Automate provides the ability to create automation and workflows between multiple systems that can power many capabilities across your intranet, including the ability to trigger any necessary workflows from forms that employees submit via the intranet, or present automatically updated information within pages, perhaps from another system.

Power Virtual Agents chatbots can be launched to integrate into the fabric of your SharePoint intranet, providing information to employees or delivering simple transactions.

3 Formatting SharePoint lists

Here at Content Formula, we’re long-term fans of SharePoint lists. Lists are one of the most powerful and flexible features of SharePoint, and are an excellent vehicle for storing and maintaining structured information that you might want to publish somewhere on your intranet, such as a directory of offices, an inventory of equipment or a list of relevant first aiders across each office.

Up to now, SharePoint lists have been quite basic in their look and feel, resembling online spreadsheets. But in the past few months, Microsoft have opened up options to format SharePoint lists, introducing attractive views for information presentation. Perhaps most excitingly, there is a growing library of pre-formatted SharePoint lists, some of which are offered out-of-the-box in SharePoint and include an asset tracker, an issue tracker and a travel request log.

Elsewhere, there is a substantial collection of list formats created by the developer community, which are available in GitHub with JSON code ready to copy and deploy. These cover use cases from budget trackers to London Underground train timetables, and are free and ready to use. Formats can also be tweaked right down to the column level to make any required changes.

We think list formats present an exciting and currently under-utilised opportunity for low code SharePoint intranet development. You can deploy these formats easily and quickly within SharePoint pages, saving hours of coding and creating a range of attractive and compelling information resources. When some of these lists are combined with flows from Power Automate, they are akin to intranet apps.

By creating and saving these list formats, you can start to create an organisation-specific marketplace of attractive, custom formatted list templates that your intranet publishing community can deploy directly onto pages. Alternatively, they might be saved as web parts and then deployed to different sites.

Go low code!

Low code intranet development is possible with SharePoint, with a variety of different options. It can help reduce costs, dramatically reduce the time to market and increase the business value of your intranet. It also engages owners of different parts of your intranet who can configure their sites to better serve user needs.

If you’d like to discuss low code intranet development, then get in touch!

How to communicate with employees without email

Posted on 6 October 202130 December 2022 by Joe Perry

Email is still the most prevalent digital communication method in the workplace, but it remains an inefficient and unpopular medium. Have you ever heard anyone say they really love their inbox? Employees can be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of emails they need to respond to, not to mention the time they need to spend doing it. Then, when they actually get to their inbox, not all of the messages in there are relevant. For example, all staff emails get sent out too frequently, many of which are not even intended for different groups. The result of this is that email communications end up being routinely ignored and missed.

Another key issue with email is that it is not always a fully inclusive method for workplace communication. Not all members of the workforce will necessarily have corporate email addresses; this is particularly true for frontline employees who may work in retail outlets, call centres, manufacturing plants, distribution centres and more. In recent years, some organisations have bridged the gap and given all their frontline employees email addresses, but this can prove expensive, particularly due to licensing costs. In organisations where an email address is also tied to a Microsoft 365 license, corporate email identities for frontline staff are often not enabled because of the costs involved.

Clients frequently ask us how they can communicate more effectively without relying on email. In this post, we’re going to explore eight approaches that can actively help in both reducing email and finding alternative methods of communication in order to:

Open up digital communications to those who don’t have or use email – mainly frontline staff
Reduce the amount of time employees spend on email to improve efficiency and raise productivity
Reduce the amount of data generated from email
Make employee inboxes less overwhelming to support wellbeing
Improve the quality of conversations and interactions
Make communications more impactful and ensure important messages don’t get missed.

We’re also going to place particular focus on some of the challenges associated with communicating with frontline or remote employees who may not have or actively use email.

1 Understand your workforce and communication needs

Any attempt to improve communications and reduce emails has to start with a good understanding of how and why your workforce use email. What are the main types of emails they send? What are their business objectives in sending them? What are the alternative channels they might use? What are their communication and information needs?

Undertaking a research and discovery process that involves speaking to stakeholders and employees, and that audits the use of email, is essential. From here, you can start to plan an employee-centric strategy that builds better alternatives to email.

2 Control all staff emails

An obvious but essential step in communicating to employees without email is to shut off some of the options. Often, one of the best approaches is to strictly control the sending out of all staff emails, limiting the use of this option to only when it absolutely needs to be used, such as for key updates from the CEO. This forces the use of better alternative channels for company-wide or wide circulation communications.

3 Pursue an omni-channel strategy for communications

Many IT functions and digital workplace teams have actively been trying to reduce their collective reliance on email. The principal way of doing this is to provide and promote the adoption of more efficient alternative solutions. These include:

Messaging and chat for one-to-one messaging
Social and collaborative solutions for communications involving more than two people
Intranet and portals for top-down corporate communication
Workflow and transactional systems to replace system notifications and / or workflow updates
Employee apps available on personal mobile devices for frontline communications.

These messaging, social and collaborative tools are now well-established and well-adopted across the enterprise. Anecdotally, we have heard that the use of a tool like Microsoft Teams has also been effective in reducing email consumption across some teams, so similar tools can work too.

Most organisations operate in this omni-channel world it’s unavoidable. But not everyone brings a strategic view of communications to it, and thus some fail to deliberately target the use of channels based on the purpose of communication, the audience, the message being delivered and other factors. Particularly for internal communications, having a more co-ordinated omni-channel strategy that takes into account the strengths and weaknesses of each channel can start to reduce the use of email, at least for internal communications.

For example, you may start to use an employee app like LiveTiles Reach to drive communications with a remote frontline workforce who predominantly use personal mobile devices for communication.

4 Bring communications and messaging to the daily flow of work

To encourage good adoption of email alternatives, they need to be brought into the daily flow of work. For example, many knowledge workers are spending their day in Microsoft Teams, and it therefore makes sense for employees to access internal communications and the intranet from there.

This can be more challenging for frontline employees as they are far less likely to be spending all day in a digital system. Sometimes, you need to think of creative ways to communicate with remote employees.

Recently, we completed a project with TTEC where we brought messaging into the daily flow of work through the creation of an innovative messaging system, hard-baked into the intranet experience.

TTEC provides outsourced customer experience solutions, including by providing call-centre staff for global brands. Employees actually already had email, but it was seldom used, and the TTEC team were seeking an alternative solution. An existing intranet was well-adopted, so we created a brand-new system for internal communicators and managers to send targeted messages to employees, all accessible from within a lively intranet. Frontline employees can also access these communications on their personal mobile devices via an intranet app.

This has had an excellent response from both communicators and employees, and we’re already working on the next phase of the release. In this case, bringing communication into a place where employees are more likely to be working has proved far more effective than email.

5 Ensure relevance by supporting targeted communications

Communications must be relevant to each employee for them to be read and resonate with the individual. If you bombard employees with messages that don’t apply to them, they will simply stop reading them. Here, targeting communications to employees based on their AD profile covering aspects such as location, division and role is key; any effective alternative to email must support targeting.

When we built our messaging system for TTEC, we included hyper-targeting capabilities with the ability for communicators and managers to select multiple attributes to pinpoint message recipients down to the individual employee level. Dynamic filters allow groups to be defined by country, location, department, level of seniority, type of employee, client team, team supervisor and more. Internal communicators love the ability to have such targeted messaging capabilities, while managers and supervisors can also use it to communicate with their teams. Note that having reasonably complete and accurate AD profile data is a pre-requisite for successful targeting.

6 Simplify the ecosystem and support digital employee experience

Whatever messaging system is in place, it needs to support a good digital employee experience. One way to do this is to help simplify the communication ecosystem in place, and reduce the number of channels that your employees have to access on a daily basis. For example, our solution at TTEC brought messaging into the intranet, reducing the need to access email as well. Attractive and intuitive interfaces have also contributed to the solution being well-received by frontline workers.

7 Drive self-service to reduce email

Self-service approaches can be highly effective in reducing the email traffic that is sent to IT and HR helpdesks relating to questions and issues. Here, a range of tactics can help, including:

Supplying content that provides answers to key questions
Encouraging interaction in online support communities using tools like Yammer
Using a chatbot to get answers
Encouraging users to submit and track tickets using a system like ServiceNow, integrating these with other key channels.

8 Focus on tools and tactics to engage remote employees

Engagement needs to be part of any internal communications strategy that reduces email, particularly to engage remote frontline employees who may feel less connected to an organisation than knowledge workers. Here, tools like polls and employee recognition channels, as well as tactics such as posting videos, can make all the difference compared to formal and often dreary formal corporate communications.

Communicating without email

Email has its place, but it’s simply not the best method for internal communications and communicating with frontline staff. A range of other approaches, tactics and tools can help find an effective alternative. If you’d like to discuss how to communicate without email, or find out more about solutions similar to the one implemented at TTEC, then get in touch!

ServiceNow and MS Office 365 integration

Posted on 28 September 202130 December 2022 by Joe Perry

ServiceNow is an increasingly popular employee service platform that helps drive HR and IT self-service through automation and content. As a core part of the digital workplace, many organisations want to integrate ServiceNow into their core Microsoft 365 experience in order to deliver a more unified digital employee experience, as well as to deliver automation and workflow across different platforms. Although ServiceNow is not produced by Microsoft, there are multiple ways to integrate it into a 365-powered digital workplace. In this post, we’re going to explore some of the different options.

What is ServiceNow?

ServiceNow is a platform that many organisations are using as an employee service portal, delivering IT and HR support as well as other employee services. ServiceNow acts as a place for users to:

Access a knowledge base of authoritative, service-related content
Raise tickets with the helpdesk and view progress
Ask questions and get answers
Make requests and trigger appropriate workflows
Access a chatbot and live chat
View other service-orientated communications and updates.

ServiceNow is one of the most popular non-Microsoft platforms being used by larger enterprises today. When introduced successfully, it can significantly relieve the pressure on busy HR and IT helpdesks, help employees resolve issues more quickly through a self-serve approach and streamline support processes.

One of the best things about ServiceNow is that it allows teams to present content in a user-centred way more akin to an intranet experience through creating pages and defining a global navigation, for example. In some service-orientated portals and HR platforms, content publishing capabilities are an afterthought, but in ServiceNow, content can be presented in high-quality ways to drive effective self-service.

Integrating ServiceNow with Microsoft 365

Because ServiceNow is often used as the one source of truth for service-oriented content either for HR or IT support, or both – it needs to be easily accessible for employees. Integrating ServiceNow with Microsoft 365 has real value, helping to create a seamless experience that is more efficient and drives a less fragmented digital employee experience. It also helps to drive adoption of ServiceNow, and encourages the employee self-service that is often the ROI sought when acquiring the platform.

When we consider integration, it is usually about surfacing ServiceNow content and providing routes to ServiceNow across key Microsoft 365 channels such as a SharePoint intranet, Microsoft Teams or a user support Yammer community. However, it’s also possible that you may want to access elements of Microsoft 365 within ServiceNow too, even if this just entails introducing links to take you back to your SharePoint intranet.

It’s also worth noting that ServiceNow and Microsoft 365 have some overlapping features; it’s quite likely that a digital workplace team may not be using all the capabilities within ServiceNow because they are already using Microsoft 365.

Connectors

Microsoft 365 and the individual tools within the platform support out-of-the-box integrations with an ever-increasing number of other digital workplace platforms. Because ServiceNow is now a popular enterprise application, there are connectors which appear in different 365 stores and connector libraries, such as:

Integrations with the Microsoft Graph to allow knowledge base items to appear in Microsoft Search
Microsoft Teams that allows ServiceNow tasks to be carried out
The Power Automate platform with a range of different flows.

On the other hand, there are also connectors to Microsoft 365 within ServiceNow, with further work on these in the pipeline.

These connectors mean that integrations are much more straightforward than they used to be, and are now geared towards the most popular use cases such as searching for ServiceNow content. Of course, the ability to use APIs to establish custom integrations is available as well.

Seven high value integrations with ServiceNow

There are several different popular integrations and links between ServiceNow and Microsoft 365 that deliver value. Let’s explore seven of these in more depth.

1 Single sign-on and Azure AD integration

Without doubt the most important integration that you can carry out with ServiceNow is with Azure Active Directory. This will enable single sign-on for your users, as well as automate the starters and leavers process governing access to ServiceNow. You can also leverage different AD groups to target ServiceNow content and establish workflows, such as for new hires.

2 Add favourite links

Most SharePoint intranets allow employees to access favourite links to popular tools, usually from within the homepage but also from a toolbar. For example, in the LiveTiles intranet product, the LiveTiles Everywhere toolbar allows employees to access key links to other platforms and tools. ServiceNow is a core system that employees use on a daily basis, so including a link to it by default on your intranet increases convenience and supports adoption efforts.

3 Search for knowledge base content in the intranet search

ServiceNow provides authoritative content on IT and HR services and processes through its knowledge base capabilities. Often, employees want to be able to access this know-how content within the intranet experience, and it make sense to be able to search for this content within the intranet or Microsoft search. Here, integration delivers a lot of value, so employees have just one search box and place to go to find the HR or IT content they are looking for with no duplication of content between systems.

4 Use the global navigation to navigate between channels

Increasingly, digital workplace teams are looking to provide a global navigation that spans across different digital workplace tools, establishing a way for employees to travel between platforms and applications in as frictionless a way as possible. Here, the global navigation of an intranet can support deeper links into different screens within ServiceNow, but can also work the other way round with links back to the intranet within the ServiceNow navigation. The LiveTiles Everywhere toolbar can potentially be accessed across different tools too.

5 View tickets in progress and submit tickets

A high value integration provides employees with the ability to view the status and information about ServiceNow tickets-in-progress and let them know if action is required. It can also be useful to have a call-to-action to submit a new ticket within ServiceNow, sometimes without having to even leave the system (such as a SharePoint intranet) that the person is in. For example, in our recent work for Entain Group, we delivered an integration with ServiceNow through the LiveTiles Everywhere toolbar that means employees can view the status of their ServiceNow tickets and receive related alerts within their core intranet experience. Further integrations with Workday mean that the toolbar is an essential part of the digital employee experience at Entain.

6 Support workflows and automation

ServiceNow supports automation and workflows related to employee services, and it makes sense to link these up with other workflows across Microsoft 365 tools. For example, you could update a SharePoint list, send out a specific type email via Outlook or add a piece of information to Microsoft Dyanmics based on an action within ServiceNow. Here, you can use Power Automate to link up workflows with ServiceNow. Other areas of the Power Platform, including PowerApps and Power Virtual Agents, can also involve integration with ServiceNow.

7 Interact through chatbots

ServiceNow comes with its own intelligent chatbot, but employees can find it hugely convenient to interact with bots outside ServiceNow, helping them perform simple tasks such as submitting a ticket in ServiceNow or searching the knowledge base. This has real value in Microsoft Teams where employees can perform actions without having to enter ServiceNow, bringing employee self-service right into the heart of the daily flow of work.

Want to know more? Get in touch!

Integrating ServiceNow into your core Microsoft 365 digital workplace has real value for employees and support functions. If you’d like to discuss integrating ServiceNow and Microsoft 365, then get in touch!

What are SharePoint lists?

What’s the difference between Microsoft lists and SharePoint Lists?

What are the benefits of a SharePoint and Microsoft lists?

What are the different features of a SharePoint list?

What are some of the use cases for a SharePoint list?

How do I create a list in SharePoint Online?

How do I delete a list in SharePoint Online?

How do I import a SharePoint list from Excel?

Need help with SharePoint list or Microsoft lists? Get in touch!

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What is a SharePoint list?

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SharePoint Lists vs Microsoft Lists

If they are the same thing, why are they different?

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Why do organisations want to keep the data in lists and SQL synchronised?

What are the challenges of synchronising lists and SQL Server?

1. You’re going to need to get IT involved

2. It needs ongoing maintenance and monitoring

3. You risk the integrity of your data

4. SQL and lists are not the same thing

What are the alternatives?

Using Power BI

Using the Dataverse

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What is Microsoft Viva?

1 Most people are in the early stages of their Viva journey

2 Viva Learning helps to deliver learning in the flow of work… but it’s not an LMS

3 Viva Topics is supporting knowledge management

4 Viva Insights delivers personal analytics and insights while acting like a virtual assistant

5 Viva Connections brings your intranet into Teams

6 The Viva Connections dashboard helps users complete tasks across the digital workplace

7 There are several elements to consider when deploying Microsoft Viva Connections

Additions and enhancements to Microsoft Viva

Microsoft Teams goes from strength to strength

Microsoft Mesh for Teams

More power for the Power Platform

Upgrades to Microsoft Stream

SharePoint Syntex additions

1 Updating key business policies

2 Monitoring mandatory reads

3 Adding document metadata

4 Archiving content and data

5 Updating employee profiles

6 Requests and approvals

7 IT and facilities performance monitoring

8 Microsoft 365 adoption reporting

9 Logging support calls

10 Centralising notifications from different systems

11 Financial reporting and monitoring

12 Marketing automation

13 Tracking assets

13 360 appraisals

15 Document building

16 Know Your Client

17 Resource planning

18 Project management

19 Employee onboarding

20 Employee offboarding

21 Collecting data from the field

22 Learning and development administration

23 Keeping groups and lists up to date

24 Meetings

25 Knowledge Management