Every business wants to stand out, and having a custom digital space helps a lot. Think about your company’s intranet—the main spot where your team connects and gets work done. Maybe it looks okay, but does it really feel like it belongs only to you? Does it make everyone’s job easier or just add to their daily tech headache? That’s where tweaking SharePoint comes into play.
Did you know that by shaping SharePoint just for your business, you’re building an intranet that fits like a glove? This one change can streamline how everyone works together. In this article, we’ll guide you through the process of turning the standard SharePoint setup into a powerhouse tailored specifically for your team.
You’ll see better cooperation among colleagues, nifty automation that speeds things up, and reports so clear they might just make you smile. Ready to transform your workplace? Let’s get started!
Understanding SharePoint Intranet
A SharePoint Intranet is like a private internet for your company. It lets employees share information, work together on documents, and find what they need to do their jobs well. Microsoft 365 powers it so you can combine it with tools like Teams, OneDrive, and other Office apps.
This makes working together easy and keeps everything in one place.
Companies use SharePoint Intranets to make special sites called “team sites” or “communication sites.” These sites help each part of the company talk to each other and keep track of important projects.
You can put news feeds, libraries for storing files, and places for real-time collaboration on these sites. The beauty is that you can change how these look and work to match what your team needs.
Benefits of Customizing SharePoint
Customizing SharePoint offers enhanced collaboration and sharing, increased automation and efficiency, as well as tailored reporting and dashboarding to meet the unique needs of your organization. Integrating the “SharePoint to Outlook app” further enhances communication by seamlessly connecting these platforms, allowing for a streamlined experience in managing and sharing information across your team. This integration ensures a more cohesive workflow, facilitating efficient collaboration and communication between SharePoint and Outlook users within your organization.
These benefits can ultimately lead to improved employee engagement and productivity within your intranet solution.
Enhanced Collaboration and Sharing
Making SharePoint fit your team’s needs helps everyone work together better. You can set up spaces where people share ideas, like in Microsoft Teams. This makes talking and working on projects easy, even if team members are far apart.
With the right tools on your SharePoint intranet, teams can find what they need fast and talk to each other right away.
Getting feedback from workers helps make these shared spaces better. For example, new employees might have fresh ideas for making teamwork smoother. By using their suggestions, a company can build a digital place that really supports how its people like to connect and get things done together.
Sharing files becomes simple too; this way, no one wastes time looking for documents or information they need for their work.
Increased Automation and Efficienc
Customizing SharePoint helps make work faster and smarter. With the right tweaks, tasks that once took hours can now happen in minutes. For example, you can set up workflows that automatically send reports to team members or file documents where they belong.
This means less time clicking around and more time doing important work.
SharePoint’s tools let people share ideas easily and safely. You can blend it with other business apps too. This creates a seamless flow of information across your company, speeding up how fast projects move forward.
Now imagine having dashboards that show you exactly what you need to see, without any clutter – that’s next on our list: Tailored Reporting and Dashboarding.
Tailored Reporting and Dashboarding
Customizing SharePoint intranet allows for the creation of custom reports and dashboards to provide valuable insights. Tailored reporting helps in tracking user engagement, content usage, and adoption within the customized SharePoint intranet.
By aligning with specific business goals, these reports and dashboards offer a deeper understanding of the performance and impact of the customized solution.
Tailored dashboarding enables organizations to visualize data effectively, gaining actionable insights into the effectiveness of their SharePoint intranet solution. These insights can be tailored to meet unique business needs, ensuring that key metrics are tracked accurately and efficiently.
Limitations of SharePoint Out of the Box
SharePoint Out of the Box has limitations. One limitation is the inability to provide search suggestions as you type in the search bar. Another limitation is the lack of flexibility in site provisioning, content management, and retention policies.
Additionally, there are limited options for tailoring SharePoint to specific organizational priorities and audience needs.
The global navigation customization options are also limited within SharePoint. It provides restricted capabilities for classification based on sensitivity and doesn’t fully support developing unique intranet solutions within its platform.
Process of Developing Custom SharePoint Intranet
After understanding the limitations of SharePoint out of the box, the next step in developing a custom SharePoint intranet involves strategizing, designing, and architecting a tailored solution.
This process also includes migrating content, planning training for users, and ensuring that the intranet meets the unique needs of your organization.
Discovering and Strategizing+
Successful customization of SharePoint intranet begins with a thorough understanding of the organization’s business goals and key stakeholders. This involves reviewing existing intranet sites, identifying high-priority scenarios, and collaborating with business leaders to define objectives and metrics for measuring success.
Suggestions are also made for developing unique intranet solutions on SharePoint, such as understanding end user needs and engaging key stakeholders. Planning an intelligent SharePoint intranet is crucial, emphasizing the importance of governance for successful intranet management and customization.
Moving forward to the next stage in developing custom SharePoint Intranet – Designing and Architecting – let’s delve into creating an effective architectural plan that aligns with the discovered organizational goals.
Designing and Architecting
When designing and architecting a custom SharePoint intranet, it’s crucial to align with organizational priorities. Prioritize features that address high-impact initiatives and provide quick wins for user engagement.
Consider governance decisions around site provisioning and content management, ensuring that the intranet meets security and compliance standards.
Take an agile approach to development, starting with a discovery phase to understand user needs and then moving into strategic planning. Leverage Microsoft tools like Viva Engage and SharePoint Look Book as inspiration for design elements while keeping in mind the importance of branding to create a visually appealing and cohesive digital workplace experience.
Migrating and Content Planning
“Migrating and content planning are crucial steps in developing custom SharePoint intranet. To ensure successful migration, it’s important to deduplicate data and plan for managing the lifecycle of information efficiently. One specific aspect to consider is the integration of email management into SharePoint. Incorporating features that allow users to save emails to SharePoint enhances collaboration and streamlines document organization. By seamlessly integrating email storage within SharePoint, teams can centralize communication and ensure that important information is readily accessible, contributing to a more cohesive and organized digital workspace.
Additionally, as part of the content planning process, it’s essential to consider governance for effective management such as retention policies and classification based on sensitivity.
These aspects help in ensuring a smooth transition while also maintaining compliance and security measures.
Furthermore, understanding current business goals and key stakeholders is vital during the content planning phase. By aligning the migration process with specific business objectives, organizations can effectively prioritize content and streamline its migration to the customized SharePoint intranet.
Training
Training for customizing SharePoint intranet solutions is vital to ensure successful implementation. It includes providing thorough documentation, code samples, and assessments for global navigation.
To facilitate interactive learning, it’s suggested to review the SharePoint look book, the Guide to the Modern experience in SharePoint, and attend an Accelerator workshop focusing on SharePoint intranets.
These resources offer valuable insights and best practices that are crucial for developing unique and effective intranet solutions tailored to specific organizational needs.
Customizing Your SharePoint Intranet
This section will cover branding, setting themes and headers/footers, creating custom pages, and adding custom web parts to make your SharePoint intranet unique to your organization’s needs.
Read on to learn how you can personalize and tailor your intranet solutions for maximum impact.
Branding
Designing the branding for your SharePoint intranet is crucial to reflect your organization’s identity. By customizing themes, headers, and footers, you can create a consistent look and feel that aligns with your company’s visual identity.
Adding custom icons, colors, and fonts helps in reinforcing brand recognition and creating a cohesive user experience.
When it comes to branding on SharePoint intranet, remember that consistency is key. Maintaining a uniform appearance across all pages ensures that users feel connected to the brand at every touchpoint.
This approach fosters a sense of belonging and trust among employees as they navigate through the customized intranet environment.
Setting Themes and Headers/Footers
To customize the look of SharePoint, you can set themes and headers/footers. Themes help in creating a consistent appearance across the site by applying color schemes and fonts. Headers provide important information at the top of each page, while footers offer details at the bottom.
By customizing these elements, organizations can maintain brand identity and improve user experience. Moreover, it’s crucial to consider governance guidelines while making changes to ensure consistency and compliance with company policies.
Customizing themes and headers/footers in SharePoint requires careful planning due to their impact on overall site design and user perception. It’s essential to align these customizations with organizational branding guidelines for a cohesive visual identity throughout the platform.
Creating Custom Pages
Developing custom pages in SharePoint is a vital aspect of tailoring your platform to meet specific business needs. By understanding the governance requirements and effectively collaborating with business leaders, you can define clear objectives and responsibilities for your custom page initiatives.
Utilizing keywords like “collaboration tools” and “personalization,” these pages can be designed to enhance user experience (UX) and drive user engagement. The process involves strategic communication, leveraging agility in methodology, and incorporating innovative content such as dynamic elements, virtual meetings, or self-service resources.
This aligns with the business value by enabling more efficient internal communications while also contributing to enhanced knowledge management within the organization.
Adding Custom Web Parts
Custom web parts play a crucial role in enhancing the functionality of SharePoint intranet sites. By adding custom web parts, you can create tailored solutions optimized for modern SharePoint experiences.
Collaborating with business leaders to define objectives and metrics for measuring success is essential when embarking on custom web part initiatives, ensuring that they align with specific business needs and goals.
Next up: Measuring and Improving User Engagement with SharePoint Analytics
Measuring and Improving User Engagement with SharePoint Analytics
To measure and improve user engagement with SharePoint, use analytics tools like Google Analytics or built-in SharePoint analytics. Track metrics such as unique visitors, page views, bounce rate, and session duration to understand user behavior.
This data helps in identifying popular content and areas for improvement. With these insights, customize the intranet to better meet users’ needs and preferences.
Additionally, leverage social media platforms where your employees are active to drive traffic to your intranet. Use real-time chat for instant support and collaboration. Implement two-factor authentication for enhanced security.
By constantly monitoring user engagement through analytics and adapting based on the data, you can ensure an intranet that truly meets the needs of your organization.
Conclusion
In conclusion, customizing SharePoint for unique intranet solutions is essential for organizations. The strategies discussed are practical and easy to implement, ensuring efficiency.
How will you apply what you’ve learned about customizing SharePoint? Imagine the impact these approaches can have on improving your organization’s intranet. Further resources and training modules are available for deeper learning in SharePoint customization.
Your ability to develop unique intranet solutions can lead to significant improvements and success in your organization.
Discover how to effectively track and enhance user interaction on your platform by exploring our guide on SharePoint analytics for measuring and improving user engagement.
