Intranet Questions -- How do you functionally integrate?

Hi RobOK,

Interesting question!

With all the new development happening within Office 365 it looks like a single site intranet is a thing from the past.

Even if you created an intranet/portal that provides all the right links to the end user each application seems to be implemented as a separate solution.

When I look at team sites

5 years ago

A navigation structure that would match my organisational structure was pretty much the standard intranet that a lot of organisation had. Then some more team sites for each project where a project team needed to store some documents and your intranet was complete.

now

Team sites are created from within Outlook or Application or SharePoint. All the things that a team might want, need or not need are put in place. It all feels a lot less connected.

A lot comes down to how people work.

1. Someone is asking you to do something (quite often email, hence outlook being a starting point of your task)

2. You continueing with work that you started earlier. If this is document based then you're likely finding historical information within Word a useful start.

So what is the use for the old intranet? Sharing news, articles, announcements and searching for information that you might not be aware off. It all looks like the needs for the intranet are changing or at least the way Microsoft is implementing all these solutions.

I totally agree with you that it would be great to have a single look and feel, navigation and user experience across all solutions. Most likely Microsoft will pull all of this togther again once it's finished with the massive development job that they are currently undertaking.