Forum Discussion

ALCorbett's avatar
ALCorbett
Brass Contributor
Aug 20, 2023

Can IC work without SharePoint savvy?

I've seen a few posts on LI recently around the use of SharePoint in IC and associated frustrations.   Full disclosure, I'm a diehard advocate of SharePoint but would be the first to admit what it ...
Education and training
SharePoint Communication Site
kvadratmartin's avatar
kvadratmartin
Brass Contributor
Aug 30, 2023

I agree with almost everything in your post, except one thing. I've been part of too many:-) intranet projects and now the time has come to use SharePoint OOTB. During the last two years I've been responsible for the solution at a number of customers ranging rom 500 to 100.000 employees. It works great. The number one thing you need to be aware of is that you need slightly adjust the requirements to fit. For example: You cannot get exact the look that you want. You maybe need to implement e.g. the brand with images and other small adjustments as well. But you get a really great intranet that will evolve automagically when Microsoft updates MS 365.

If you go with a third party product, whatever they say (I've been part of that) they will lock you in and they will not be capable to follow in Microsoft's tempo. I understand that I'm a bit controversial here but I have the experience to back it.

Reena_V's avatar
Reena_V
Brass Contributor
Aug 30, 2023
Interesting to know, I'm trying to implement a mostly OOTB project at the moment and there are still major gaps. Some degree of compromise is reasonable, there's a very real battle between what I'd consider to be relatively standard business expectations and current SharePoint functionality. The SharePoint roadmap does seem promising at least.
  • kvadratmartin's avatar
    kvadratmartin
    Brass Contributor
    Aug 30, 2023
    Can you share some examples?
    • Reena_V's avatar
      Reena_V
      Brass Contributor
      Aug 30, 2023

      kvadratmartin Off the top of my head, my (mainly audience targeting moans)
      - Unable to re-order news items, ordering news items means audience targeting is ignored, you cannot keep the most important news in the most prominent position
      - From an aesthetics POV, you can only use the hero web part at full width which doesn't support audience targeting, the news web part cannot be used at full width
      - Cannot auto apply audience targeting groups to articles so a large number of comms people need to manually reference / add audience targeting group(s) for everything they create
      - Not all components have audience targeting capabilities so where you may be able to adjust a link, you cannot target e.g. associated text or an image.
      - All images are clickable even if just used for aesthetics, doesn't make for a great user experience. Where possible I've used a workaround with the markdown web part but for full width images you need to use the image web part and it's not ideal for other editors. 
      - Theming is extremely limited unless you involve a SharePoint developer, hopefully this will improve with the brand centre release

      - Microsoft recommendations engine seems very flawed and it makes it incredibly difficult for a user to influence what they see. On an individual note, it recommends I read news that I authored.

      • kvadratmartin's avatar
        kvadratmartin
        Brass Contributor
        Aug 31, 2023

        Reena_V 

         

        Thanks a lot for taking the time to write this. This list reflects differing mindsets between you and the IC departments in the organizations that I’ve worked for. They have decided that they, during the years, spent to much time on details and they have settled for a good enough approach. They accept the shortcomings in the hope that they will benefit in the long run from using OOTB and they also put focus on not only IC but also the ease of integration when it comes to collaboration and open dialogue.

        Right or wrong – We can debate this forever😊

         

        Just some comments on some of your points. Maybe obvious or/and not a fit for you at all

        • News ordering and audience targeting. It is possible to have a separate news channel (site) with promoted news. Promoted news are always news links. That is, links to already existing news articles. They can be presented in a separate space on the start page and they can be audience targeted. They are not "disturbed" by the publishing of less important news articles
        • When it comes to auto applying audience targeting. We usually use news channels (sites) for different sets of news editors. E.g. News for a location or for an organizational unit. They are then aggregated on to  the start page. In these news channels we have news(page) templates and the templates have the audience targeting defined. So when you create a news article in the news channel, the targeting is carried over from the template to the article.
        • Theming. The organizations that I work for think that the limitation is great. They can, with colors and images achieve a branded intranet but they do not spend the quite substantial number of hours they used to. Both discussing and then implementing the branding.
        • The rest of your points. Not good at all but no showstopper

Resources