Intranets & Digital Hubs What You Need To Know M365Cincy

INTRANETS & DIGITAL
HUBS WITH MICROSOFT 365
Richard Harbridge
2toLead Chief Technology
Officer & Microsoft MVP
#m365cincy
Friday., October. 21, 2022 10:00 AM (EST)
what you need to know
Community Days
M365 Friday Cincinnati!

My Twitter is @RHarbridge, I’m super friendly & proud to work at @2toLead.
Richard Harbridge
2toLead Chief
Technology Officer &
Microsoft MVP
Speaker & Author
Super Friendly

Arguably the Intranet has undergone a few major transformations. Are we in the midst of another major
transformation? How impactful is the change that Microsoft Teams, Loop and Viva have on Intranets?
Intranet 0.1
•Portals
•Links
•Simple News
•Technical To Update
Intranets 1.0
•Search
•More Content
•Services
•Audience Targeting
•Updatable By
Business
Intranets 2.0
•Enterprise Social
•Engagement 1.0
•Personalization
•Mobile
•Digital Workplace
Intranets 3.0?
•Engagement 2.0?
•AI Powered & More
Intelligent?
•More Dynamic?
•Richer Integration?
•Where You Work?

Arguably the Intranet has undergone a few major transformations. Are we in the midst of another major
transformation? How impactful is the change that Microsoft Teams, Loop and Viva have on Intranets?
From Here To Here

We understand that there is a lot of change happening right now – what should we start with
understanding?
How can we help our users navigate this?
With so many spaces (sites,
teams, yammer communities and
more) how can an Intranet (a
Digital Hub for your Digital
Workplace) improve navigation
of these spaces?

Intranets & Digital Hubs With Microsoft 365
Maximize Out Of The Box & Microsoft

From Viva Connections dashboards to Viva Topics navigation can be targeted, dynamic and
integrated where users already work (Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Teams Mobile App & More)

▪ Designing custom cards for your dashboard | Microsoft
▪ Samples and Templates | Adaptive Cards
▪ Designer | Adaptive Cards

AUDIENCE TARGETING MATTERS…
Every organization should be targeting information and experiences for new staff. The more
specific the type of new staff the better. Out of the box many experiences support this.
Example 2
The navigation you use should have some ‘getting
started’ links and material for new employees.
Navigation & Quick Links
Pages
News
Documents
Events
Dashboard Cards
Apps
Example 1
You could organize news with a special news
item that shows up first for new employees.

Leverage 1st party and 3rd party supported integrations with popular industry leaders.

If it’s so easy to add
dynamism to pages
why are so many
static today?

Enhance Personalize & Integrate Navigation

When it’s not static content it’s static links. Why are there so many table of contents landing pages?
of these spaces?

M365Intranets.com
https://2tl.co/NavBook

Providing a consistent navigation experience
Suite bar
– Shared across O365 suite
– Logo graphic (organizational)
– Link to SharePoint Home
– Access to Microsoft Start
– Access to App Launcher
– Link to organizational ‘Home’
– Header background color
– Set in O365 Admin Centre
Hub navigation
a.k.a. “Portal Navigation”
– Shared across hub
– Logo graphic (hub)
– Link to hub home
– Background color
– Set in Change the Look
App bar
– Shared across O365 suite
– Global navigation links
– My sites (graph driven)
– My news (graph driven)
– My files (graph driven)
– Can be disabled temporarily
a.k.a. “Global Navigation”
Site navigation
a.k.a. “Current Navigation”
– Shared across site
– Logo graphic (site)
– Link to site home
– Background color/picture
– Minimal, compact, standard,
extended
– Set in Change the Look

SOLUTION: LEVERAGE OOTB NAVIGATION?
Mega menu layout enables you to better organize and showcase the related content and sites
based on topic categories and headings. All with audience targeting and more…
Out Of The Box
●

SOLUTION: DESIGN BETTER NAVIGATION!
Navigation doesn’t need to be limited to top level links, or simple UI layouts. Here we have two
examples of content in the nav, and richer/deeper nav.
Requires Customization
◔

Menu design can be more tailored to your needs and support everything from an integrated local
navigation model blended with global navigation to iconography to support rapid identification.
Organizational links are
displayed in the user’s
preferred language and
can be targeted to certain
groups.
Links are organized
under headings to
allow categorization
of links.
Links specific to the current
site are always displayed here.

Navigation can also display more ways for users to personalize and manage their apps,
resources, tools, places they work and more.
◔
◔
Personalization options that
allow users to define their links,
apps, tools and resources can
make a global navigation that
much more helpful.
This doesn’t have to be in
the core menu design and
could always be a header or
footer control.

Effectively combining a user’s personal links with links that have been promoted by the organization.
The user can pin Promoted Links suggested by the
organization as useful.
The user can add Personal Links of their choosing.
Sorting based on user’s preferences

SOLUTION: BRING IT INTO GLOBAL NAV!
While structured and managed navigation is still valid in today’s world it is also important to
improve navigation with powerful capabilities like search and dynamic navigation.
SharePoint Home In The Global Navigation
Bring the power of that dynamic
personalized navigation into the
global/top nav experience.
◔
You can improve what MSFT
provides with icons, more filters,
more personalization, and your
own styling.

Navigation can be targeted and dynamic. Consider even having individual results show in the
global navigation around key and frequently accessed resources for that user.
Consider bringing targeted,
personalized documents, forms,
policies and content to the user
inside the navigation experience.
◔

SOLUTION: MORE INTEGRATION!
You can always build your own webparts, solutions and controls to make things easier and improve
the end user experience. As an example you could bring information into the nav menu.
◔

SOLUTION: MORE INTEGRATION!
As another example you could bring key information into the Intranet via a custom SharePoint
Framework webpart on a key page, or across pages via the header or a panel design.

Giving critical announcements high visibility or integrating important signals from other systems around
emergency announcements can be extremely valuable when combined with targeting and tracking.
Integrate high visibility alerts into the persistent
header to flag critical announcements and
ensure they are seen and read

Giving critical announcements high visibility or integrating important signals from other systems around
emergency announcements can be extremely valuable when combined with targeting and tracking.
Integrate high visibility alerts into the persistent
header to flag critical announcements and
ensure they are seen and read
Okay so we can do a lot
custom… but I thought
you said OOTB was
powerful?

Extensively outlined in our 170+ page Intranet whitepaper at www.M365Intranets.com.

Extensively outlined in our 170+ page Intranet whitepaper at www.M365Intranets.com.
Makes sense to me!

conversations
Build trust and transparency
with two-way dialogue
Share polls and surveys
within the familiar apps
Keep a feel on the pulse
of the organization
Gain insights about
what’s top of mind
and build transparency

But if we have customized,
personalized, integrated
navigation why is sprawl still
such a problem?

Manage Sprawl With Directories

Amazing enhanced, integrated and personalized navigation… it’s still not enough?
of these spaces?

SOLUTION: DIRECTORY EXPERIENCES!
What is shown below is a really simple mockup of a filtered OOTB site directory experience.
You can create many pages with different views/visuals and relevant links to resources (Team, Site, Yammer, etc.)
Our communities can be filtered or explored by hierarchies (site explorer), by focus area (topic map), by the ones you recently visited or have favorited (your sites, your
teams, your communities) or by filtering the columns below (just click the column header).
Link ID Community Manager(s) Practice Groups Date Created Category Private Owner
International Bank Of Banking EB001 Strange, Stephen; Connor, Sarah; Ripley, Ellen Corporate Securities 11/16/2018 RFP Y Snow, John
Travis County, Washington TCT001 Opel, Glenn; Knight, Misty; Allen, Tim; Banner,
Bruce; Marco, Polo, Rambo, John
Litigation; Environmental 11/15/2018 RFP Y Jones, Jessica
Gotham Housing Authority SAH012 Balboa, Rocky Government; Real Estate 11/03/2018 Pitch Y Jones, Jessica
Harbridge Corp HIL003 Parker, Peter; Spector, Marc; Segal, Steven; Bond,
James
Trademark & Copyright 10/30/2018 Proposal N Danvers, Carol
Metropolis Independent School
District
DIS020 Brooks, Mel; Knight, Misty; Grey, Jean; Banner,
Bruce
Public/Education Law 10/27/2018 RFP N Jones, Jessica
International Bank Of Banking EB001 Strange, Stephen; Connor, Sarah; Ripley, Ellen Corporate Securities 11/16/2018 RFP Y Snow, John
Travis County, Washington TCT001 Opel, Glenn; Knight, Misty; Allen, Tim; Banner,
Bruce; Marco, Polo, Rambo, John
Litigation; Environmental 11/15/2018 RFP Y Jones, Jessica
Gotham Housing Authority SAH012 Balboa, Rocky Government; Real Estate 11/03/2018 Pitch Y Jones, Jessica
Harbridge Corp HIL003 Parker, Peter; Spector, Marc; Segal, Steven; Bond,
James
Trademark & Copyright 10/30/2018 Proposal N Danvers, Carol
SITES, TEAMS & COMMUNITIES IN OUR ORG Not Following
BROWSE SECTIONS DEPARTMENTS SITES, TEAMS & COMMUNITIES MY LINKS
Org
Logo
Search
Out Of The Box
●
OOTB Lists and web parts
can give you directory
experiences if you simply
store the data from the
request process
(approved or already
created spaces).
* Public by default scales and
works better in the long run

Design and implement a simplified experience that gives you quick access to teams, sites, communities,
and more. Complimenting your Intranet and Digital Workplace Strategy. www.M365Sprawl.com

M365Sprawl.com
Okay so directories support
managed sprawl, good
governance AND great
Intranet experiences.

But this still means I have to
go navigate, search and
explore… can’t it just come
to me?

Amplifying & Bringing It To Where Users Work

Amazing enhanced, integrated and personalized navigation, complimented by digital workplace
directory experiences… it’s still not enough?
of these spaces?

This is great!

But how do we
work towards this
change?

Amazing enhanced, integrated and personalized navigation, complimented by digital workplace directory
experiences AND the it comes to you where you work in the context of your work.
of these spaces?

You will love the way we work. Together. ™
Contextualized navigation and discovery based on where and how users work benefiting from
cloud scale AI, digital behavior capture & continual content analysis.
In emails, instant messages,
team messages, pages, news,
documents and more… the
knowledge, people, digital
spaces, and more are
available in context.

Contextualized insights based on the topic discovery that includes people, resources, sites,
communities and more can improve our curated assets and support our extended team of content
leads and departmental stakeholders.
Content leaders can
leverage the insights
provided by Viva Topics by
rationalizing them with
curated resources to
improve them.
Does that product site
internally have
links/connections to the
people, resources and sites
suggested by topics?

Content leaders can
improve them.
internally have
So pilot with my
curators to deliver
immediate value
and seed/support
the future today!

Content leaders can
improve them.
internally have
But what about the
fact I don’t always
read the news?

Microsoft Viva Amplify further helps bring capabilities that help collaborate, coordinate,
distribute, measure and manage communication campaigns.

ESTIMATED COMPLEXITY
Company
Communicator for
Microsoft Teams
Employee Communications
Take company communications to
the next level with an enhanced
company communication
experience that enables pushing
key messages to people and
channels in Microsoft Teams.
Try It Yourself Today
Microsoft Solution Discover More (40+) Solution Ideas: M365Ideas.com

Enhancements for
Company
Communicator
Take your company
communications to the next level
with this powerful enhancement.
User experiences, authoring and
publishing methods have been
improved inside the Company
Communications Solution in
Microsoft Teams.
See A Demo Of This In Action Today
2toLead Solution Discover More (40+) Solution Ideas: M365Ideas.com

Enhancements for
Company
Communicator
Take your company
communications to the next level
with this powerful enhancement.
User experiences, authoring and
publishing methods have been
improved inside the Company
Communications Solution in
Microsoft Teams.
See A Demo Of This In Action Today
2toLead Solution Discover More (40+) Solution Ideas: M365Ideas.com
So we target and amplify
our communication across
multiple channels in
different ways.

Yammer is evolving and for corporate communications there are new ways to engage,
design and integrate Yammer capabilities into your digital hub experiences.
BUT HOW CAN WE DO
THIS IF WE AREN’T
COMMS PEOPLE?

Amplifying & Bringing It To Where Users Work
Connecting Employees & Leaders

Microsoft Viva Engage Storylines enables us to have an experience that is easy to use, creates
deeper connection, and allows for easier sharing of experiences.

Microsoft Viva Engage Storylines enables us to have an experience that is easy to use,
creates deeper connection, and allows for easier sharing of experiences.

Microsoft Viva Engage Leadership Corner enables us to have an experience that is easy to use,
creates deeper connection, and allows for easier sharing of experiences for leaders.

Microsoft Viva Engage Leadership Corner enables us to have tailored and templated experiences
that simplify campaigning around shared goals or running events like Ask Me Anything.

People In Viva & Viva Goals as well as countless other experiences further enrich the ways we communicate,
align and connect. All elements of a good Intranet strategy.

Don’t worry I’ll wrap this up for you…

M365Intranets.com
M365Sprawl.com
M365Campaigns.com
Explore 800+ Pages of
Free Expert Guidance…
M365Metrics.com
M365Ideas.com
SharePointMigrations.com

Download our free
80+ page whitepaper
Transform your Employee Experience
at every stage with Microsoft 365
and Microsoft Viva!
Download Today

Let’s connect and find ways to do more and work together.
Message me on LinkedIn or email Richard@2toLead.com
200+ Awesome Presentations at:
Richard Harbridge
2toLead Chief Technology
Officer & Microsoft MVP
Super Friendly
Thank You
Slideshare.Net/RHarbridge
800+ Pages of Whitepapers at: 2toLead.com/Whitepapers
Elsewhere…
M365Ideas.com
Office365Campaigns.com
M365Sprawl.com
M365Intranets.com
M365Metrics.com
SharePointMigrations.com
Please scan and provide
feedback:
https://forms.office.com/r
/r8MPqy2aMY

Thank you!
Community Days
Cincinnati

Intranets & Digital Hubs What You Need To Know M365Cincy

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