Building Intranet Portals With Microsoft SharePoint

What Can You Do With Microsoft SharePoint?

A versatile and user-friendly intranet is a powerful intranet; it means your team can make updates and effect changes on the fly, without the need for massive amounts of technical expertise or to defer to admin teams to get things done. 

Creating pages for knowledge and skill sharing, organisational information, client data, or for any reason whatsoever, is simple, intuitive, and looks great across any device. 

Most importantly of all, SharePoint operates as a central repository for all of your organisations’ documents, allowing files to be shared effortlessly between departments and across geographical locations. Multiple users can work on a single document at the same time, to facilitate closer collaboration, all of which are carefully version managed by SharePoint to ensure the most up to date versions are always available. Easy access to files, information and data means supports for employees are aways readily accessible. 

SharePoint’s seamless integration with other Microsoft programs, including Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, and CoPilot, means your organisation can effortlessly centralise its processes and workflows across platforms and departments. Being able to access documents and other files through the Teams interface helps streamline collaboration and communication. SharePoint also integrates with Microsoft Power Automate, allowing users to build in their own complex workflows that can connect with other Microsoft applications and third-party services. This integration enhances everyday productivity by automating routine tasks and ensuring that critical processes are completed accurately and efficiently. 

Planning Your Intranet Using Microsoft SharePoint

Microsoft SharePoint can help you effortlessly craft a great looking intranet that looks professional and works flawlessly across any device, handheld or desktop. But a successful intranet puts as much stock in substance as it does style. Knowing how to plan and implement your SharePoint system successfully is crucial to getting the most out of it for your team and organisation. 

Understanding Your Business Goals – Why are you seeking to implement a SharePoint system in the first place? What are the key pain points in internal communication you are seeking to address and, most of all, what KPIs will you follow to determine if these points have been addressed? Answering these key questions will help you understand what it is you want out of your SharePoint implementation, and help determine which features and add-ons to prioritise. As we detailed previously in our article on managing digital transformation, taking time to survey your team and cultivating employee buy-in will not only ensure a smoother transition, but highlight any additional needs and requirements your team may be able to bring to the table. 

Choose Your Components – With your business goals clearly identified, you will have a clearer sense of what SharePoint components you’ll need to implement in order to achieve the outcome you are hoping to. Choosing exactly the modules you require, and knowing what would be extraneous, will help your implementation team focus on what’s important, saving time and investment in your implementation program. 

Establish Content & Governance Protocols – Quality over quantity, none too surprisingly, should be a guiding light for what you decide to host on your SharePoint. If you allow your intranet to get oversaturated with extraneous content, both on its wiki pages and its file-sharing system, searches for files or important information will get bogged down and increasingly inefficient. Setting out a clear process for what should go into SharePoint, and where – and clearly communicating it to all relevant team members – will ensure you maintain standards of quality on what gets shared among your organisation and keep your intranet strictly relevant to operations. 

Test Your Pilot Program Thoroughly

Once the first iteration of your SharePoint intranet has been developed, choosing where and how to deploy it is a crucial step to ensure it gets tested comprehensively – without disrupting existing systems and workflows. 

Choosing to roll it out to a pilot group without your organisation can help contain any launch pains, and minimise potential disruption. If you choose to go in the other direction, and perform a full-organisation rollout all at once, ensure that your team is thoroughly prepped beforehand, both in the correct usage and purpose of the system, and that they are trained in how to use it effectively. 

Don’t be afraid to onboard learnings from the rollout process. Not everything will go smoothly, but those that don’t will provide valuable lessons for the rest of the rollout process, or for how your system can be fine-tuned moving forwards to better accommodate your existing team and processes. These learnings will also be crucial for future digital transformation initiatives in your organisation. 

Find Out More At Our Upcoming Webinar!

If you’re interested in learning more about how to carry out a successful SharePoint implementation, join us on Wednesday, July 24th at 12.30PM (GMT +1) for a sit-down and a chat about building your organisation’s intranet portal with SharePoint. 

Registration is free, so sign up now and discover how SharePoint could help you transform how your team works, chats and collaborate together!