Creating SharePoint Intranet from scratch - What would you do?

[mdcastorena]

Hello,

I've just started at a new company and they desperately need an intranet created for the purpose of communication (announcements, etc.) and document management. The company I came from had already begun their design and development journey with a particular vendor prior to me being onboarded there. They mostly used out-of-the-box functionality with a bit of custom development for some things. It was a Classic site.

This vendor did fine work but I am overall curious which direction you'd go given the opportunity to do it from scratch; either using any vendor you want and/or developing it yourself and the resources you'd use to accomplish that. I've of course Googled this myself but any direction or insight is greatly appreciated!

Thank you,
Morghan

[#2]

You have different approaches here:
(1) Do yourself taking advantage of default SPO features + ideas taken from the SharePoint Lookbook: https://lookbook.microsoft.com/
(2) Ask an integrator specialized in SPO development to make a proposal and make the job
(3) Buy a product already made and simply deploy it taking into account your needs (Valo, Attolo and some others are good examples of Intranet in a box)

[#3]

I did this. I came to a new company that had been using a badly designed "intranet" with classic SharePoint. After extensive research, I moved to SharePoint Online communications sites. We have a main site (Hub) where news, calendar, and some "catch all" info is posted. We have sites for each department, which are part of the hub site. If you want more insight, I'm happy to connect offline.

[#4]

Hi @Joni_Kirk ! Thank you for the response. It sounds like we've been in the exact same position. Did your company build the Hub site + Communication sites yourselves or did you hire an outside vendor? Let me know your preference of connecting offline

Thanks again,

Morghan

[#5]

I built the Hub site and communication sites myself. Send me a note at joni.kirk@lcnw.org.