Launching a SharePoint intranet in 4 steps

A SharePoint intranet then and now

The global technological progress and changes to enterprise collaboration caused by business process automation have been shaping SharePoint, as a platform. Since its first version was released in 2001, the capabilities of SharePoint intranets have expanded substantially.

Cloud intranets. The release of SharePoint Online and Office 365 started the new era in the intranet history. Although moderately welcomed in 2011, Microsoft’s cloud suite grew into a collaboration giant with at least 200 million active monthly users. While the glory of SharePoint On-Premises has faded with the rise of SharePoint Online, the choice between different deployment options is still difficult for intranet owners.

Mobile-friendly intranets. SharePoint was long blamed for its lack of mobile adaptivity. Indeed, organizations often had to involve in extra mobile development to make their intranets available on mobile devices. Luckily, the cloud intranet has brought positive changes. Now, the iOS and Android apps are available by default for all SharePoint Online subscribers.

The shift from BPA to collaboration. SharePoint intranets have earned their reputation as multifunctional hubs. Objectively, SharePoint On-Premises portals often serve as all-in-one content, knowledge and workflow management solutions, sometimes even as fully-functional enterprise systems, such as CRMs or help desks. However, in the last few years, the platform became more collaboration-oriented for two major reasons:

• Forced customizations entailed performance issues. Microsoft kept advising organizations against extreme customizations of their on-premises portals and voiced their concerns about related performance risks. However, the wish to stuff SharePoint with all possible features at once often prevailed over common sense. To protect their cloud suites from similar issues, Microsoft put customization restrictions in place, which changed the approach to SharePoint development and use and forced platform adopters to make do with its primary collaboration focus.
• Organizational cultures became increasingly collaboration-centric. SharePoint, as well as Office 365 and Microsoft 365 suites, couldn’t stay away from the buzz. As a result, the platforms got enriched with numerous features and apps for various scenarios: from instant messaging to MR-enabled collaboration spaces.

Demand for the intelligent workplace. Finally, modern intranets couldn’t stay static content storages anymore. Intranets had to become working assistants, accompanying employees inside and outside the office. The modern intranet “intelligence” translates into smart content delivery based on employees’ preferences and activities, a greater freedom of communication, and deeper integration of intranet components, specifically within the complex Office 365 and Microsoft 365 ecosystems.

Step 2: Tailor your intranet’s core features

After selecting the optimal foundation for a SharePoint intranet, owners can move on to its customization. The ‘stuffing’ usually depends on the overall business needs, as well as on the specific activities and preferences of particular departments and teams. Overall, a typical SharePoint intranet should include several essential components.

The homepage is the face of a corporate portal. This is the first page that welcomes users once they log in and the starting point for employees to access corporate resources and systems. The intranet homepage needs to be designed with care as it determines users’ first impression about the intranet and defines how easily they can find the required information.

In SharePoint Online, business users can access pre-built SharePoint home sites that are based on SharePoint communication sites described below. Home sites can be the fastest way for organizations to set up well-structured home pages for their intranets without spending much effort on their customization.

Collaboration sites are the heart of a SharePoint intranet. They come with newsfeeds, discussion boards, calendars, rating and ranking features, mentions, and likes.

SharePoint owners can choose among different types of sites to cover various collaboration scenarios. Let’s take a closer look at the most popular SharePoint sites that can be part of an intranet.

• Team sites are the digital workplaces for team members to publish project updates, coedit documents, organize events, and discuss ongoing activities in a centralized manner.

  It is necessary to add that Microsoft Teams often take up the task of team collaboration in cloud intranets. For example, Helmerich & Payne, Inc, a US-based oil and gas well drilling company, launched over 2,000 Teams channels to support real-time team communication and content sharing, as well as synchronize the activities of distributed teams from different cities.

• Communication sites help employees share information with large audiences. This is a suitable medium for analysts, marketers, and HR managers to spread news and reports, showcase projects, and organize events or training sessions across the organization. The greatest advantage of communication sites is that they come with several pre-built templates, which makes it easier for users to launch them and fill them with content and features they need most.
• Hub sites (available in the cloud only) let SharePoint Online owners better organize their cloud intranets by putting similar sites, projects, content, and common activities under one roof.

• Project sites offer a set of collaboration features similar to those provided by team sites. Additionally, they contain default project management features, including project summaries and timelines, project-related tasks, and libraries for project documentation. They can also be extended with the Planner features or integrated with Microsoft Project to let teams collaborate on complex projects.
• Community sites help companies diversify social collaboration. In practice, they can serve both business and entertainment purposes. A community site can be a hub for employees from the same business domain to discuss their activities, share experience, and accumulate professional knowledge. At the same time, community sites can be a meeting point for users who share the same interests (sports, traveling, music, etc.) regardless of their professional status.
• Enterprise wikis host organizational wisdom. SharePoint wikis can also become learning and training centers in an organization. Smaller teams can use them to accumulate corporate knowledge and experience within particular projects or business domains.

Organizations can use all of the above-mentioned SharePoint sites as either separate collaboration units or building blocks of large business solutions that cover specific processes (for example, document management, quality management, reporting) or activities of particular departments (for example, legal, R&D, accounting, etc.).

Step 4: Zero in on SharePoint design

Last but not least comes SharePoint design. Again, with the growing popularity of Office 365, SharePoint in the cloud was the first among SharePoint versions to get a reworked look and feel, which facilitated intranet design. The common approach to SharePoint design is simple: it’s unreasonable to create unique designs for every single page of a corporate portal; instead, it makes sense to focus on the key components.

• The intranet homepage determines the portal users’ very first impression, encouraging users to continue their journey or making them leave.
• Custom site templates can be adapted throughout the entire intranet across team sites, community sites, and knowledge bases.
• Custom web parts can be designed in line with the SharePoint site to which they belong. Web parts can also include the elements corresponding to the team or corporate identity or styled symbols of the activities they support.