Recently, more and more of our customers are facing the SharePoint Modern dilemma: Should they adopt SharePoint Online’s new modern user interface and sacrifice control over the branding? Is Modern a mature enough product to roll out to thousands of employees across the globe? To help you understand the advantages and disadvantages of each approach, we created this infographic.
If you would like more info, read the eight things we love about SharePoint Modern pages.
SharePoint 2013 does not provide a great experience for content publishers out-of-the-box.
This is something that we need to address in nearly every intranet project we deliver.
There are two main approaches that can be taken:
Content publishers can click an onscreen element like this one.
The editor can then add information to the page by filling in a simple form.
This avoids any of the out-of-the-box SharePoint interfaces which can be confusing and overwhelming.
We have provided a demo video that shows an example page content editing task. See video below:
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There are many options when it comes to third party add ins for SharePoint.
Some are aimed at enhancing every aspect of SharePoint like Wizdom intranet-in-a-box.
Others are aimed at enhancing things like page editing and design. A good example of this type of product is ShortPoint.
Products like these still require some training for content editors, but offer an improved experience and greater flexibility when maintaining intranet content.
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Improving SharePoints content editing interfaces is not easy and comes at a cost regardless if you take the custom or prebuilt route.
Therefore, it is important to identify and prioritise the areas where you want to give a lot of control to content editors. Typically more options for ways and styles of publishing = greater cost.
By limiting the control given to content owners and making things as template driven as possible, you can keep costs more reasonable.
A positive side effect of a template driven approach is often a cleaner, more simplified experience for your intranets end users.
More recently, a significant way to improve the user and editor experience for SharePoint is to move to SharePoint Online as part of Office 365. SharePoint Online has a completely refreshed interface which makes things a lot easier for editors.
In the second of our series on planning your new intranet, John goes deeper into the discovery phase with end user interviews. Subscribe to our YouTube channel for more.
John Scott, UX Director
+ 44 20 7471 8500 | [email protected] | LinkedIn
At Content Formula, we advocate a user centred design approach; we involve users in the very early stages of the intranet project, because it’s vitally important to get people involved in the design of your new intranet, in fact we involve them in just the second step of the project.
We carry out a number of interviews, or sometimes we call them depth interviews. We do this by coordinating ten to twenty different people across the organisation that represent a good cross section of levels of seniority, different departments, regions or countries. It’s not a scripted interview per-se, but there are certain topics and themes that we want to cover and discuss with employees.
Our aim really is to discover more about their role, the information they need access to, and who they talk to and in what way.
We’re not asking them to design the intranet for us, in fact what we’re getting is insight so that we can make better decisions about what the right intranet looks like.
The personas we develop are fictional but they do provide us with a realistic representation of typical users across the business; they’re something we can always refer back to throughout the project so that we can make better decisions about how we design the intranet and make sure all users’ needs are catered for.
View John’s next video: defining information architecture.
View John’s previous video: stakeholder interviews.
Browse all ‘intranet planning’ videos.
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There are many ways to build a new intranet, or revamp an ageing one. Whatever your approach, your objective must be to create a useful, useable intranet that adds value to your business.
Design is a holistic process, but there are some foundation concepts that should be solidly addressed.
If your intranet is internally hosted, then your IT department will manage security as they do for your whole network.
If your intranet, or part of it, is hosted in the cloud then the host will manage security as part of their service. Its a fact that if youre using SharePoint Online or Office 365 then Microsofts cloud security is second to none.
As architects or intranet managers, your concern should be about password management and authentication. The weak chink in your security is employees reusing personal passwords on every system. What does your Information Security Manager advise regarding password complexity? Heres the official Microsoft password checker (other checkers might be fake).
Single sign-on is a must; people expect enterprise software to know who they are once theyve logged on to their computer and intranet.
What about two-factor authentication? Incredibly secure, but Aviva found log-ins declined sharply when they experimented with two-factor.
Ease of logging-in brings us to access; if your intranet is secure yet staff and authorised people cannot log-in without having to call the IT helpdesk, your intranet will not be a value-adding place of work.
Do you allow home access? If your intranet is in the cloud or simply hosted externally by a partner company, then access over the Internet should be easy. If your intranet is internally hosted then your Info Sec and IT people need to decide whether to open it up to the Internet or create secure access via VPN.
Its not all about working from home of course, knowledge workers might be on a train, waiting at airports, or working from a clients office.
Which brings us to the topic of mobile access. If people are allowed access to your intranet while out and about with their laptop, what about on a phone or tablet? You may already issue iPads to executives can they access the intranet over 3G or Wi-Fi when not in the office? What about their company issued smartphones?
Access via personal tablets and smartphones is also a consideration. The information security risk can be greater, depending on what people are able to access, but arrangements can be made to mitigate the risk. Many enterprises support BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) and deploy apps for secure communication. Mobile Device Management (MDM) can add a layer of security for company or personal devices.
A part of access is accessibility. Often swept aside as an issue that affects a small percentage of people, accessibility is actually about good design. Its about designing for real people, in different situations (in the office, walking in corridors, sat in a taxi) who have different needs and approaches to the screen and information.
Who was it that said make it valuable, then easy, then fast, then pretty?
The usefulness of your intranet can only be measured against how it helps people support your organisations objectives. The very purpose of your intranet must be aligned with what people already do and actually need in order to work more efficiently and effectively.
This focus on productivity in no way invalidates the human side of business. Employee engagement, social communications, change management, and L&D can all be empowered and facilitated by a decent intranet platform.
Employees will only use the intranet if its of use to them. Its a tautology, but worth remembering. Home page communications will not, alone, draw people in. If the HR teams only accept request via email then they will live in their inbox. For the intranet to be useful to such a team, it would need to manage requests and workflows. Such an online approach should reduce admin burden and provide a more robust, auditable, service.
To monitor and demonstrate the intranets usefulness:
Make your intranet into a company-wide service platform, rather than merely a cost to the IT and Comms departments.
Hand-in-hand with useful comes the user experience (UX). This isnt simply about reducing clicks, but about providing an interface that allows experienced users to get on with things enabling less experienced people as well.
The only way to meet peoples needs and expectations is through ethnographic research. Following best practices will only get you so far. For example, stakeholders and the intranet manager may have strong ideas around what the main navigation menus should offer, but only from research can you find out what people really need and expect. Even menu names can be optimised to match peoples vocabulary; why use the technical name for your expense system if everyone just says expenses?
Whats the loading time of various intranet pages? Is it slower at different locations? Consider the network, server technology, and intranet design options available to optimise the speed of your intranet.
Design cant be a committee matter; a clear vision is required, backed up by relevant evidence. Design isnt just about how things look; design is about how things work. This is just as true for digital services as it is for real-life products.
What are peoples pain-points right now? How long does it take to complete an expense claim? How hard is it to update a document? Go around your organisation and discover what damages peoples intranet experience, then work out how to delight them.
People make up their minds about things in all sorts of illogical ways. The intranet could save a person hours each day, and they could still claim to hate it if it looks like something from the previous decade.
Its perfectly possible to design a home page and publish news and updates without photos or imagery of any kind. Our advice, however, is to really focus on the visuals communications, reference materials, and even forms benefit from relevant photos and illustrative graphics. Theres a definite shift to multimedia communications; user-generated videos and webinar recordings can make for engaging updates and support online learning.
Page layout and content design can quickly show people what they can do on the intranet faster. While forms may be boring, designing them for ease of use (considering the number of fields, clicks, and the order of everything) can save minutes, and frustration.
People wont thank you for a good-looking intranet that does nothing for them. Consider peoples needs in light of your organisations objectives, and get the foundations right.
Once your IT department and leaders are assured the intranet is secure, you can work on opening up access to people at home, to commuters, and to partners within your supply chain.
Once your intranet is truly useful a real enabler of business, you can work to refine how people use it, simplifying and streamline workflows, forms, and navigation.
Then you can optimise the reading experience to create a more engaging intranet.
Now, where within the triangle do you think social should sit? Collaboration might fit well within useful, but what about your enterprise social network and private messaging systems?
Book in a free consultation call with us to discuss your project and find out more about our services and how we can add value to your digital workplace. Simply fill out the form and pick a time and date in our calendar.
Alternatively, if you have a question and would like to find out more about us first, please use our contact form and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
We look forward to meeting you.
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