Intranets & Digital Hubs with M365: Communicate & Engage

INTRANETS & DIGITAL
HUBS WITH MICROSOFT 365
Richard Harbridge
2toLead Chief Technology
Officer & Microsoft MVP
#M365EduCon
Thu., Aug. 11, 2022 10:40 AM (CDT)
what you need to know

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

Human Resources
We have been focusing more and
more on employee engagement.
We need more than policies; we
need to help people adhere.
We need to make it easier for
employees to get support.
Hybrid work and new recruiting
demands require change.

Human Resources
Hiring &
Expectations
Employee
Engagement
Employee
Experience

Communications
Enabling more effective
communication matters.
We need to improve engagement
in organizational communications.
Need to enable consistency, brand
alignment and better experiences.
We need to highlight, amplify and
personalize communications.

Edit & Publish
Enable & Connect
Amplify & Engage
Communications

Administrator
It’s difficult or time consuming
to update and maintain.
I can’t safely delegate any
management to end users.
I can’t enforce any guidelines
for how it should be used.
I don’t have a good way to
surface coaching or guidance.

Administrator
Enablement
Projects
Automate &
Manage
Pro-active
Optimization Services

What do we generally see across our clients?
Improve
Communication
Provide a powerful channel
to communicate, reduce
noise, and help employees
feel informed.
Inspire
Confidence
Provide a trusted repository
for authoritative corporate
information, creating a
source of truth.
Drive
Efficiencies
Make it easier for employees
to find critical information
and get their core tasks done
with increased efficiency.
Foster
Engagement
Create a medium for two-
way communication,
allowing employees to be
heard and feel included.
Nurture
Community
Develop a platform to allow
employees to feel better
connected to one another
and part of a larger whole.

What do we generally see across our clients?
Simplification – This business driver represents absorbing complexity into management
and improving the user experience to be more intelligent, engaging, and personalized.
Responsibly – This business driver represents the need to provide a reliable, fast, stable,
and scalable digital workplace that is well-governed, and that aligns with our policies and
simplifies compliance.
Productivity – This business driver represents the need to automate services,
operationalize manual-work, allow employees to focus on what’s important, and
improve productivity.
Inclusive - Provide personalized content to our diverse employees, using intelligence to
drive the findability of information, engage with them through our communications, and
build our great company culture.
Productive - Provide employees with a suite of automated services that operationalize
manual work, allowing them to be more productive and to spend more time with our
valued customers.
Ready - Provide a strong, reliable, fast, stable, and scalable digital workplace that is
there for employees when they need it. Support with a well-governed experience that
aligns with our policies and simplifies compliance.
Sometimes keeping objectives simple
enables easier mapping and
alignment.
At the end of the day though they all
contain a lot of the same concepts as
what all organizations are often
trying to achieve or improve is
similar.

How the roadmap is broken down into categories
Facilitate Governance & Responsibly Empower
Absorb complexity into management, align with policies, simplify compliance, security and performance.
Establish An Effective Foundation
Foundational and important work from strategy to architecture that is necessary for continued digital workplace success.
Migrate & Modernize
Move away from legacy systems into long-term, supported, and more integrated experiences.
Foster Collaboration, Connection & Engagement
Make it easy and efficient for employees to onboard, teams to work together, from anywhere, to gain insights on
what is important and feel included.
Improve Communication, Navigation & Search
Provide more effective ways to communicate, reduce noise, feel informed, engaged and get their core tasks done
with increased efficiency.

PHASE 1 - Modernize
0-6 months
PHASE 2 – Connect & Integrate
6-12 months
PHASE 3 – Intelligent & Automated
12-24 months
A summary of the initiatives planned over the next 24 months
Digital Workplace
Strategy & Roadmap
Modern Navigation
(Custom Header & Footer)
Employee Preboarding
Portal(s)
Migrate & Develop
Intranet Content
Establish Digital
Workplace Backlog
Intranet Site, Page &
Team Template Design
Intranet Governance
Design & Planning
Employee Networking &
Connection App (Release 1)
Foster Collaboration,
Connection & Engagement
Improve Communication,
Navigation & Search
Migrate
& Modernize
Establish An
Effective Foundation
Facilitate Governance
& Responsibly Empower
Teams Company
Communicator App
Employee Onboarding
Organization Portal(s)
Employee Onboarding
Departmental Site(s)
Digital Workplace
Directory (Release 1)
Digital Workplace
Directory (Release 2)
Employee Networking &
Connection App (Release 2)
Teams Company
Communicator App (Enhancements)
Targeted Search Experience
& Search Refiners
Intranet Navigation
& Search Design
Intranet Integration
& Solution Design
Intranet Content Design
& Migration Planning
Build Of Sites, Pages,
Teams & IA
Intranet Launch
Automating & Improving Onboarding,
Transfers & Offboarding Solution(s) (Release 1)
Bring The Intranet Into
Context Of Work (Topics)
Bring Knowledge To Users In The Context
Of Their Work (Topics Broader Rollout)
Enhanced Intranet
Insights (Release 1)
My Links, Alerts &
Subscriptions (Release 1)
Digital Center Of
Excellence (Release 1)
Digital Center Of
Excellence (Release 2)
Targeted Viva
Learning (Pilot)

Intranets & Digital Hubs With Microsoft 365
Maximize Out Of The Box &
Microsoft
Leverage Less Landing Pages
Manage Sprawl With Directories
Advance Audience Targeting
Prioritize Personalization
Design For Dynamic (Not Static)
Improve Integration

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

Providing a consistent navigation experience across site collections
App bar
Global Navigation Frequent and followed sites Recommended news Recent files

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

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

Leverage 1st party supported integrations with popular industry leaders.

Leverage a unified news feed that aggregates yammer announcements and news
recommended for the current user all while empowering quick and easy engagement.

Amplify the reach of your announcements by leveraging the news boost feature which ensures
featured news gets the attention it deserves

Not (yet)
available

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.

You will love the way we work. Together. ™
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?

From improvements to the editor with context IQ for collaboration to improvements to
how creation journeys happen there is a lot that Microsoft is working on here.

Yammer is evolving and for corporate communications there are new ways to engage,
design and integrate Yammer capabilities into your digital hub experiences.

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

ESTIMATED COMPLEXITY
Enhancements for
Company
Communicator
Employee Communications
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 Another 40+ Solution Ideas In Our eBook

Microsoft Viva Engage further helps bring capabilities that help connect people, find and
share knowledge, express ourselves, and find belonging at work.

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.

Intranets & Digital Hubs With Microsoft 365
Maximize Out Of The Box & Microsoft
Leverage Less Landing Pages
Manage Sprawl With Directories
Advance Audience Targeting
Prioritize Personalization
Design For Dynamic (Not Static)
Improve Integration

PROBLEM: CONTENT GROWS OVER TIME…
The modern digital workplace and Intranet has a continually increasing number
of digital spaces or ‘sites’ where content is stored and shared.
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?

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

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.

Site Links are accessible directly from
the header via selecting the Site Title
Introducing a new variant which places organizational headings front and center. What if local
navigation could be integrated into your global navigation experience?

Ensuring external and support resources are always available
Footer Links provide easy access to important
external resources, help, or contact information
Social Links provide the ability to
link users to your core social
networks ensuring they get the
visibility they deserve
Footer is persistent and consistent across sites,
reinforcing brand identity and providing easy
access to your external website

PROBLEM: CONTENT GROWS OVER TIME…
The modern digital workplace and Intranet has a continually increasing number
of digital spaces or ‘sites’ where content is stored and shared.

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

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.

Keep in mind that while we should absolutely leverage audiences in the navigation, that when we do
it is a great opportunity to get feedback on how well designed our audiences are.
View All Links (Without Audiences) - Great To Track If People Click Through Here To Navigate
(Indicates Audience Filter Might Be Over Filtering Or Incorrect)
How Has This Been Filtered? (These Are Your Applied Audiences
& Option To Share Feedback To Improve Audience Alignment Or
Optimally Provide Self-Service)

PROBLEM: ITS OVERWHELMING…
Think about your typical Intranet. How many different things are organizations trying to
squeeze into that homepage when you open your browser?
Out Of The Box
●
These are all news
web parts.
There are also
multiple event web
parts and many other
roll ups on a typical
Intranet. Too much?

SOLUTION: DESIGN BETTER FEEDS!
Often customers might create their own visualization for news, events or activities rolling up
within their Intranet which drives greater usability, engagement, integration and more.
Clearer categories
and sources, greater
at a lance insights
such as comment
count can increase
engagement and
you can even color
code and style it the
way that best helps
the user.
This can bring together events,
different types of news,
spotlights, 3rd party activity
highlights, existing capabilities
like saved for later, and much
more into a single design.
◔

SOLUTION: PERSONALIZED!
Sometimes the capabilities built in aren’t quite enough (or may be years away from meeting your
needs) so it might make sense to add your own web part and targeting/personalization capabilities.
◔

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

Plan for extensibility to introduce modular functionality that can be integrated into the custom areas
you control such as the header and footer.
Objectives
▪ Extensions could be created and
deployed using a consistent model for
integration into the existing header or
footer solution. This enables flexibility in
how they are used across the
environment, better and easier
maintainability.
▪ Extensions could be designed to account
for new Microsoft 365 patterns as well as
known roadmap (e.g., Viva Connections)
implications and opportunities that
would promote better longevity of the
individual solutions.
▪ Prioritize and move your extensions
within the solution to meet your needs.
Track engagement in your extensions to
promote or demote their positioning
and how highlighted they are.
Extensions
My Links
Alerts
Stock
World Clock
Teaching Bubbles
User Preferences
Your custom needs

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

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
700+ Pages of Whitepapers at: 2toLead.com/Whitepapers
Elsewhere…
M365Ideas.com
Office365Campaigns.com
M365Sprawl.com
M365Intranets.com
M365Metrics.com
SharePointMigrations.com

Intranets & Digital Hubs with M365: Communicate & Engage

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