When, if ever, should we use the S word?

A bit late to the discussion but I wanted to share my experience. As a Change Specialist for a Technology provider I regularly come up against the stigma of the "S" word. As part of the transition to a new way of working I engage with the end-users, using the analogy of the "Digital house". As Microsoft continues to incorporate more and more features within the Teams workspace it's very important to educate end-users on the interrelationship of SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive. We now need to add the Viva Suite as well. There are many ways to enter the house, but ultimately everything is within the rooms (SharePoint sites) of the "Digital house", whether you access it by the front door, back door, or the chimney.

I hear you thompsonsimon. Yammer suffered the same stigma, even though it has improved and is now Viva Engage.

I think the typical person using M365 has mixed awareness of apps, tools and the names of products. Microsoft would love everyone to recognise an app and the name for it. But I think in reality, typical people will use the tools available and not think too much about the name. They know they use Teams for conversations and meetings. They have spent a good number of hours in Outlook.

I think an intranet is different. As some of said on this thread, it’s based on SharePoint, but we also want our intranets to have their own identity.

The counter point is that intranets in Microsoft 365 appear to be dissolving into other products. We can access pieces of our intranet within Teams via Viva Connections. Our Teams may use SharePoint pages in channel tabs to share information. Communication sites are popping up everywhere and when co-ordinated well, they are connected to the global navigation so people can find them.

We can’t avoid the ‘S’ word. But I would still lead with giving the intranet its own name, something the organisation can form a sense of ownership, and say it’s ’powered by SharePoint’. 

You could try branding it (the intranet/digital workplace and the associated experience) as its own thing with its own name, but that also carries some risks. We did this with an on-prem SP2007 based system we branded "ThePoint", which allowed us to talk about it and train on it from an interesting perspective. Unfortunately, we over promised and under delivered on it and it ultimately failed. Our current iteration in SharePoint online (and associated M365 tools) is simply called "the intranet" and this is going better, but we have some work left to do. No matter what you call it, though, the bottom line is it has to have some value - even if it is just one or two well managed libraries and a semi-regular news feed. If it has value now, it can grow. Talb about "SharePoint" and what it can do to your content owners and tech support staff, but let the masses enjoy the generic intranet and gain as much value from it as possible.

When it's explained as part of some short sharp user adoption training why it is called SharePoint, then it can make good sense. However first, introduce your OneDrive (Your personal Content/Files) storage that you only have access to. Then when you need to share your work with colleagues then collaborate into SharePoint. The sharing point for collaboration that can be easily managed by uploading into a Teams Channel that is managed by a Security Group -- so the right people only see appropriate information >> will then surface via Delve >> ultimately Viva Topics >> more via Copilot eventually...

That's a great question and unfortunately, I don't think there is just one right answer. One of the things I often tell people is that current SharePoint is NOT your grandmother's SharePoint - and it doesn't take much to see that it's different. It's just hard to avoid the "S" word when all the documentation that users might get value from on the web use the "S" word. I think saying that our intranet is based on SharePoint is a good way to start to overcome some of the negative connotation associated with legacy SharePoint.