Forum Discussion
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 does well - perhaps best - is information management. That said, SharePoint Online is a huge improvement on earlier iterations.
To fully exploit the features of SharePoint you need to understand the nuances of audience targeting and Microsoft groups, metadata to increase your search capabilities and lifecycle retention so the Christmas Jumper competition circa 1997 doesn't surface in your feed.
In-house SharePoint training has become a unicorn and online tutorials are rarely targeted at specific problems.
So, just how technically savvy do communicators need to be to use their SharePoint based intranets effectively - and more importantly - is this something they see as part of their role? Should SharePoint (out of the box) provide more intuitive features or bells and whistles in the way third party "wrappers" do, or is there just a huge gap in training offerings?
I'm writing an article for Reworked on this topic and would love to get the Microsoft and communications community perspective. š¤²
- Good discussion! In my opinion IC professionals shouldn't need to understand all aspects of SharePoint and the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. IC would influence an overall channel strategy and they need to be sufficiently trained on how to create / tag / manage the comms they put out on any channel.
Specialist knowledge is needed outside of a traditional IC role e.g. a detailed understanding of the platform and any technical considerations relating to the business architecture. An understanding of information architecture, metadata. It can also support IC for
- escalations when something goes wrong with the tech or requirements change
- platform / tech training
- special events where IC want to step outside of an existing template / process etc
A traditional IT role won't always sufficiently understand the needs of a comms team (exceptions can be business partners, as you've mentioned it could be someone in IT with a dotted line in to the comms business area.
The ideal would be a dedicated channels / intranet / IC tech manager who understands both comms needs and tech (I may be biased in this regard as this is my role). A dedicated role also helps ensure a wide variety of inputs are considered e.g. championing an overall user experience and needs from other teams such as HR / operational teams.
Expertise should live somewhere in the business. Whilst an initial view could come from an outside contractor knowledge should be embedded in to the business for ongoing maintenance, adaptations, training etc (unless there's a close, ongoing relationship with a supplier which is likely to be expensive).
For SharePoint specifically, there have been a lot of improvements but OOTB there are still big challenges when used for bigger businesses. I'd say it's impossible for large organisations to use SharePoint OOTB. It looks like Microsoft would prefer to allow 3rd parties to create customisations and fill in gaps.
SharePoint training does seem to focus on information management and only some specialists offer an intranet / communications management perspective. I can only think that this isn't more widespread due to 3rd party involvement for SharePoint intranets. You're often limited to training and consultancy with your 3rd party supplier on their specific flavour of SharePoint.- The final paragraph really resonates here; I've often said that what SharePoint does really well (and I was speaking more for on-prem versions) is information management. Its taxonomy and metadata, data retention functionality is awesome, it's real strength.
What I'm wondering is, what do these third party wrappers offer for Comms teams that OOTB doesn't? This is a big market and suggests something is missing from either the functionality or the traditional support - or the traditional training and support model provided by organisations?ALCorbett There are a lot of detailed functions that the third party products excel in. They will say, during a demo, that SharePoint is bad in a lot of areas. That is maybe true, but SharePoint is much better in other areas never mentioned during the demo. I've been part of (on the customer side) a couple of third party presentation and if you do not have detailed knowledge of SharePoint you will get convinced of the need to buy a third party product. When I, after the demo, sit down with the customer and explain what can be done with SharePoint OOTB they do not want to spend the extra license fee for a third party product.
One of the most important reasons to choose SharePoint OOTB is that you can follow MS roadmap and the integration between the different tools in M365 will work.
I can see one reason to go with a third party: They often have a project organization with workshops and training sessions prepared. If you do not have access to the same competence for SharePoint then you cannot do it by yourself.
Have a nice weekend whenever you read this:-)
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.- 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.
- Looking forward to this article! ReWorked is a great resource. Fully agree on the need to understand and leverage audiences and the concept of targeting specific info for specific people. Along those lines, the most glaring issue of SPO right now is a feature that was present in SP 2007 (maybe even earlier) but was dropped in the move to "modern" online pages. That feature is the ability to audience target the text web part. This is so basic and so critical and there hasn't been any indication (that I've seen) that is something that will be making a return any time soon.
ALCorbett - there is no doubt in my mind that access to SharePoint expertise will be highly valuable. It sounds like a cliche but a tight partnership between IT and IC is really important. I don't think the IC folks should be tech experts, but having trusted partners in IT who are should be a given.
I recall a conference presentation I attended last year with Swiss agritech business Syngenta on the topic of the importance of bringing IT and IC closer together. Syngenta had experienced a big failure when trying to run a live event, and that was the catalyst for building stronger ties across the teams. (read https://www.linkedin.com/posts/caikjaer_be-honest-be-humble-and-learn-from-your-activity-6986044838102147072-WNmC/ for a short summary).
You'll see that one of the points mentioned was that previously the IC team didn't know what tools were availble, and I'm sure we'd agree that there are loads of things you could do with SharePoint that the IC team had no idea could be done.Thanks for sharing the link to this post, Cai Kjaer and great to see an example of how IC and IT can work in harmony (eventually!) I once worked a contract to support the company intranet (and four subsidiary websites) which was positioned in IT with a dotted line to communications
While genuinely nice people, those in IT thought intranets were just a waste of time, a corporate mouthpiece and the skills required to run one were (literally) "copy and paste". Equally, I've worked with IT teams who support the intranet concept but simply don't have resource to fully engage with IC teams and limit their involvement to technical support (so, when something breaks). It feels that there is both a cultural and strategic shift which needs to happen before IC teams can have the support they need from their colleagues in IT?
- Hi Annette, lovely to see you here, and hi to everyone else too!
Having got my hands dirty with a variety of intranet platforms, I think it is the overall user experience, information architecture and content design savvy that is more important than, say, SharePoint savvy. The ability to critically analyse what's going into a page, why it's there, who it's going to work for, and how it interacts with other content is going to contribute more significantly to the success of SharePoint or any other platform.
Yes, there's a lot more to be gained from a deeper understanding of SharePoint (probably the greatest advantage it has over other platforms), and therefore IC needs to have a mindset that embraces this. I still feel it's better to start well with a universally useful tool that can be built-on and refined over time.- Hi Simon, completely agree on that second para, especially given the extent to which you can tinker with things like navigation with sufficient access. Your point actually adds another layer of potentially "ubiquitous learning" for the IC professional which I hadn't considered in the original post. The plot thickens...
There is a first step in setting up the internal communications for an organization and that is translating the requirements to a future proof information architecture taking into account all the bells and whistles in Microsoft 365. My experience, when that is done, is that it is very straight forward for IC-professionals to use/handle/improve IC. Noteworthy is that you need to let the functionality of the platform influence your requirements. Then you can fulfill 95% of the requirements by spending only ca 20% of the resources and on top of that get the possibility to use all built in functionality now or in the future.
Two important takes on the above:
- During the initial phase the combined knowledge of IC and MS 365 functionality is crucial. It is then possible to create very modern communications platform utilizing 100% standard functions.
- There are a lot of other tools/functions in MS365 that can/should be used. SharePoint will only get you half of the way. Stream for videos, Viva Connections for integration in Teams (makes it quite easy to target e.g. blue collars) and Viva Engage.
There is a lot more to say here but this is enough for nowš
- Oh this is so interesting! So, completely agree with what you're saying but I have yet to see this work in practice. Is this something you have seen? If so, would be great to hear more!
In my experience IC and IT are rarely aligned on their respective requirements and limitations. IC have the challenge of reaching the organization across different channels (often for which there is no clear strategy for use), which increasingly includes frontline and remote working audiences. Pitching to the right audience via the right channel is still a real challenge in our hybrid world.
IT in the meantime often outsource their 365 expertise (making it difficult to relationship build) and don't take a consultative approach to requirements gathering. I have often been told something can't be done (when I know it can) either because its assumed I don't have the experience to challenge that or that person doesn't I'm speaking to doesn't have adequate knowledge of 365.ALCorbett As @HelloBenTeoh states is always a struggle between the need of IC and the habit of IT to lock things down. But as a consultant working for IC, with an IT background and knowledge about what can be done and also how it should be done it is possible to achieve but you need to be trusted by both sides and that can take time.
The most common issue is the question from IT: Why should we use Viva Engage/Yammer when we already have Teams.
ALCorbett 100% agree - you've highlighted some really good points.
Although the modern web parts are a huge step forward vs Classic, the learning curve can be pretty steep once you want to do more. Setting up page templates and having admin who understand comms vs info management can help.
Right now, I think it's useful for IC to be across the technical aspects of SharePoint and M365 because once you start exploring other channels (Viva Engage/Yammer, Viva Connections, Teams, etc), it's easier to see how it ties together. If you want to elevate your comms strategy and get the most out of the tools/channels, you'll need to understand how it works.
Hopefully Viva Amplify can help simplify some of this but in the short term, I think there's definitely room for more content about SharePoint as an IC tool.
Looking forward to reading the article!
- Absolutely agree! On the face of it (and as mentioned in a comment below) Engage, Teams and Stream are an essential part of the comms toolkit but are also (arguably) more intuitive.
Create a page on a Communications site and you are faced with a myriad of content and tooling options in any given web part and, if you're considered an editor, its likely you have bells and whistles permissions to add people, change the navigation structure and look and feel of the page. That's a LOT for someone who has been tasked with building out a site with next to no training (or without functionality tailored to their specific needs e.g. through third party wrappers).
