The document presents an in-depth overview of intranets and digital hubs using Office 365, emphasizing modernization benefits, navigation options, and the significance of personalized content. It discusses various tools and features such as dynamic navigation, improved search capabilities, and integration with third-party ecosystems. Additionally, it highlights the importance of analytics and user engagement in creating effective digital workplace experiences.

1. INTRANETS & DIGITAL HUBS
WITH OFFICE 365:
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
Presented By: Richard Harbridge (@RHarbridge)
#SPFestChi

2. @RHarbridge #SPSNH
RICHARD
HARBRIDGE
My twitter is @RHarbridge, I’m super friendly & I am proud to work at 2toLead.
CTO & MVP | SPEAKER & AUTHOR | SUPER FRIENDLY

3. DOWNLOAD OUR 100+ PAGE
WHITEPAPER ON INTRANETS
WITH OFFICE 365
It goes into much greater depth and can be found at Office365Intranets.com

4. BENEFITS & OPTIONS
NAVIGATION & ACCESS
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
PAGES, NEWS, & EVENTS
COLLABORATION & SEARCH
ENGAGEMENT & ANALYTICS
NEXT STEPS
100+ pages of Intranet & O365 guidance: http://Office365Intranets.com

5. BENEFITS & OPTIONS
NAVIGATION & ACCESS
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
PAGES, NEWS, & EVENTS
COLLABORATION & SEARCH
ENGAGEMENT & ANALYTICS
NEXT STEPS
100+ pages of Intranet & O365 guidance: http://Office365Intranets.com

6. THERE ARE FINANCIAL BENEFITS
Infrastructure savings, pay per user per month, price bundling, automatic scale and more…

7. SIGNIFICANT INNOVATION BENEFITS…
Continually improving experiences, continuous rollout of new capabilities, continued integration
with more technologies, and much more. (https://roadmap.office.com)

8. NO MORE TECHNOLOGY UPGRADES…
It is more challenging to meet modern expectations on legacy technology.

9. GETTING TO MODERN…
Using this scanner you can prepare your classic sites for modernization. Or review the many
resources available to help you with this transition.
Transform classic
pages to modern
client-side pages
http://bit.ly/githubspmodernizationtool
Advice on
modernization
http://bit.ly/ModernAdvice

10. ORGANIZATION SITE DESIGNS & SAMPLES
You can use the Look Book to review various site designs and then with a few clicks provision
them to your own environment to get started quicker (and see how much can be done OOTB).
Tenant administrators can take advantage of the SharePoint
Provisioning Service to automatically provision SharePoint Look
Book designs to any tenant in the world.

11. 3rd PARTY ECOSYSTEM
Understand the vendors and options in the ecosystem today. Not all are equal. Trust but verify.

12. BENEFITS & OPTIONS
NAVIGATION & ACCESS
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
PAGES, NEWS, & EVENTS
COLLABORATION & SEARCH
ENGAGEMENT & ANALYTICS
NEXT STEPS
100+ pages of Intranet & O365 guidance: http://Office365Intranets.com

13. BENEFITS & OPTIONS
NAVIGATION & ACCESS
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
PAGES, NEWS, & EVENTS
COLLABORATION & SEARCH
ENGAGEMENT & ANALYTICS
NEXT STEPS
100+ pages of Intranet & O365 guidance: http://Office365Intranets.com

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

15. DYNAMIC/PERSONALIZED NAVIGATION…
Office 365’s SharePoint home is now a more modern site directory experience that is more
personalized and dynamic. From recent sites you visited to recent activity relevant to you.
Out Of The Box
●

16. IMPROVED NAVIGATION…
Navigation has more out of the box for connecting sites. By leveraging the hub navigation we can
now have a consistent navigation across site collections.
Simple OOTB Hub Nav
Requires Advanced Configuration
◕

17. OOTB MEGA MENUS…
Mega menu layout enables you to better organize and showcase the related content and sites
based on topic categories and headings. At the hub or site level with audience targeting (soon).
TOP OF MIND
Global mega still needed for
multiple hubs?
Out Of The Box
●

18. HEADER IMPROVEMENTS…
Continued updates are coming to customize header sizes, hide the site title and site logo
thumbnail.
Minimal Header
Compact Header
Strongly branded

19. FOOTER IMPROVEMENTS…
Continued updates are coming for managing links in the footer with background color
options and ability to organize footer links.
Extended
Simple
Stacked
SPFx solution using PnP
footer extended
(personal links)

20. NAVIGATION INVESTMENTS…
The hub navigation is still relatively simple and many organizations still invest in developing or
purchasing a custom global navigation to use across their sites.
Requires Minor Customization
◑

21. SEARCH BASED NAVIGATION…
While structured and managed navigation is still valid in today’s world it is also important to
improve navigation with powerful capabilities like search.
Bring the power of SharePoint
Home and that dynamic
personalized navigation into the
global/top nav experience.
Requires Customization
◔

22. 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.
Consider bringing targeted
documents and content to the
user inside the navigation
experience.
Requires Customization
◔
THIS DESIGN
ONLY SCALES TO
SO MANY LINKS

23. 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.
Consider bringing targeted
documents and content to the
user inside the navigation
experience.
Requires Customization
◔

24. 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
◔

25. APP LAUNCHER/QUICK ACCESS…
While many Intranets build out quick access or app launchers this is in O365 already.
Whatever we build should compliment this and not look to replace it.
Out Of The Box
●

26. MASTER SITE LIST NAVIGATION…
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

27. SAMPLE OF NAVIGATION PLANNING…
Navigation doesn’t need to be limited to top level links, or simple UI layouts. Here we have
examples of content in the nav, and richer/deeper nav in key spaces in the header/footer.
1 2 3
HEADER GLOBAL NAVIGATION QUICK LINKS FOOTER
• App Launcher
• Office 365 taskbar
• ‘Home’ button
• Global search
• World Clocks?
• Office sites?
• Sections mega-menu
• Departments mega-
menu
• Tools
• Hub-site navigation
• Recent sites/teams
• Top Links
• My saved links
• Favorites
• Site directory
• External websites
• Social media
• Getting Started
• Corporate Community
sites
4

28. MANY MOBILE CAPABILITIES…
Enable better site experiences on mobile devices. Designed for the user. Extending team or
departmental reach, notifying of comments or posts, bookmarking to read later and more…
Out Of The Box
●

29. BENEFITS & OPTIONS
NAVIGATION & ACCESS
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
PAGES, NEWS, & EVENTS
COLLABORATION & SEARCH
ENGAGEMENT & ANALYTICS
NEXT STEPS
100+ pages of Intranet & O365 guidance: http://Office365Intranets.com

30. BENEFITS & OPTIONS
NAVIGATION & ACCESS
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
PAGES, NEWS, & EVENTS
COLLABORATION & SEARCH
ENGAGEMENT & ANALYTICS
NEXT STEPS
100+ pages of Intranet & O365 guidance: http://Office365Intranets.com

31. SITE CREATION & LIFECYCLE…
While OOTB can work great for many smaller orgs, most need more structure to support
governance, lifecycle management, and better search/navigation experiences.
Out Of The Box
●

32. SOME IMPROVED SUPPORT…
The ability to add custom themes, set a default site design, add additional site designs, scope site
designs to users, and more have given us some capabilities to extend this…
Requires Minor Customization
◑

33. PROVISIONING AUTOMATION…
By centralizing and governing the creation of ‘spaces’ (groups, teams, sites etc.) we can improve
content organization and apply things like default metadata and pre-configured templates.
Major Customization Required
◔

34. HUB SITE PLANNING…
Go ahead and plan how you aim to implement hub sites within your organization
https://aka.ms/PlanningSPhubsites

35. HUB SITE PLANNING…
Hubs will have join approval, bulk association, hub permissions, hub analytics and more. Of
these the permissions has the most significant impact on planning.

36. HOME SITE PLANNING…
It’s worth implementing a modern SharePoint home site.

37. BENEFITS & OPTIONS
NAVIGATION & ACCESS
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
PAGES, NEWS, & EVENTS
COLLABORATION & SEARCH
ENGAGEMENT & ANALYTICS
NEXT STEPS
100+ pages of Intranet & O365 guidance: http://Office365Intranets.com

38. BENEFITS & OPTIONS
NAVIGATION & ACCESS
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
PAGES, NEWS, & EVENTS
COLLABORATION & SEARCH
ENGAGEMENT & ANALYTICS
NEXT STEPS
100+ pages of Intranet & O365 guidance: http://Office365Intranets.com

39. PAGES & AUTHORING…
Fast and improved news/page authoring builds on what is already available. Microsoft
provides many new client side web parts, much easier to use sectional layouts and more.
Easily create powerful,
beautiful looking pages
WYSIWYG authoring
Multi-column sections
Drag/ drop editing
RTE & Paste support
OOB web parts
Page Templates
Version history
Wiki linking
Out Of The Box
●

40. PAGE & CONTENT ROLLUP…
It’s extremely easy and intuitive to setup roll ups and tailor, target and manage these on hub
or landing pages throughout your Intranet.

41. PAGES & AUTHORING…
Use modern pages/news whenever possible. It is richer with sharing, personalization,
integration and more.
Out Of The Box
●

42. PAGE TEMPLATES & DESIGNS…
Provides an approach that can be use for saving a page within the same site so others can
repeat and recreate pages using the same content structure.
Out Of The Box (SOON)
●

43. PAGES & AUTHORING…
Use modern pages/news whenever possible. Control of page design or page layout is the only
exception (but there are ways to design better anyways). Process and metadata aren’t blockers.
Out Of The Box (SOON)
●

44. PAGES & AUTHORING…
Targeting audiences for pages allows for roll up and display control while not restricting based
on permissions. This applies to all news and pages and can enable some great new scenarios.
Out Of The Box (SOON)
●

45. IMPROVEMENTS FOR AUTHORS…
Organizational asset library (thousands of stock images OOTB) help authors add images without needing to be
creative leaders. Section background (vertical or horizontal) colors can help improve readability.
Out Of The Box
●

46. CURATED NEWS…
Link to existing news from your public website, LinkedIn articles, and more. These can show up as a news article
visible on the site, SharePoint home in Office 365, and the SharePoint mobile apps News tab.
Out Of The Box (Soon)●

47. MORE NEWS FROM TEAMS…
It can’t just be regional, departmental and corporate news on your homepage anymore. You
need to think about how you will surface team and project news.
As team and departmental news increases we
want to ensure our digital hub is helping by
giving a broader view of that important
information. You should be integrating team
news on your homepage design ASAP.
In this example perhaps green team news.

48. CUSTOMIZATION EXAMPLE: ACTIVITY FEED…
Often customers might create their own visualization for news, events or activities rolling up
within their Intranet.
Requires Minor Customization
◑• News and events filter to
separate content types.
• Color-coded categories with
quick filters above newsfeed.
• Events receive nearly the
same visual treatment as
news, but includes the event
date icon.
• Featured news/events
display as a larger card.
• Where no visual image is
available or required, a
colored background is
shown.

49. MULTILINGUAL PUBLISHING…
Publish pages/news in multiple languages, consume content in preferred language, receive
automatic notifications​ for translation (what in the page changed) and enter into page directly.

50. BENEFITS & OPTIONS
NAVIGATION & ACCESS
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
PAGES, NEWS, & EVENTS
COLLABORATION & SEARCH
ENGAGEMENT & ANALYTICS
NEXT STEPS
100+ pages of Intranet & O365 guidance: http://Office365Intranets.com

51. BENEFITS & OPTIONS
NAVIGATION & ACCESS
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
PAGES, NEWS, & EVENTS
COLLABORATION & SEARCH
ENGAGEMENT & ANALYTICS
NEXT STEPS
100+ pages of Intranet & O365 guidance: http://Office365Intranets.com

52. SEARCH IS IMPROVING (LIKE A LOT)…
Relevancy has historically been based on general criteria like the date or how popular an item
is. How well results match compared to the rest of the index.
Out Of The Box
●

53. SEARCH IS IMPROVING…
Today we still use classic search for refinement/taxonomy driven search. Soon we can get the power
of modern search and still leverage our own taxonomy to enhance the search experience further.
Out Of The Box
●

54. SEARCH WILL WORK WHERE WE ARE…
Familiar, fast, rich experience for users accustomed to using their Windows or Office clients to find
what they are looking for. Over time search will be more an more universal as an experience.
Out Of The Box
●

55. SEARCH WILL WORK WHERE WE ARE…
Familiar, fast, rich experience for users accustomed to using their Windows or Office clients to find
what they are looking for. Over time search will be more an more universal as an experience.
Out Of The Box
●

56. UNIVERSAL SEARCH IS COMING…
You will have ability to crawl external sources of data, connect for specific needs or process as well
as manage the configuration.

57. UNIVERSAL SEARCH IS COMING…
Search will be removed from the site header to the Office 365 Suite bar.
Current suite header
Coming soon suite header with universal search

58. UNIVERSAL SEARCH IS COMING…
Search will be removed from the site header to the Office 365 Suite bar.

59. BENEFITS & OPTIONS
NAVIGATION & ACCESS
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
PAGES, NEWS, & EVENTS
COLLABORATION & SEARCH
ENGAGEMENT & ANALYTICS
NEXT STEPS
100+ pages of Intranet & O365 guidance: http://Office365Intranets.com

60. BENEFITS & OPTIONS
NAVIGATION & ACCESS
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
PAGES, NEWS, & EVENTS
COLLABORATION & SEARCH
ENGAGEMENT & ANALYTICS
NEXT STEPS
100+ pages of Intranet & O365 guidance: http://Office365Intranets.com

61. DYNAMIC/PERSONALIZED CONTENT…
There are more capabilities to create personalized pages and “My SharePoint”. Whether it’s
notifications, saved news, saved documents, personalized news, sites, or more.
Out Of The Box
●

62. MORE ANALYTICS FOR EVERYONE…
The trend for surfacing more actionable analytics to teams, and users will continue.
Out Of The Box (SOON)
●

63. EVERYTHING CAN BE CAPTURED…
Far more is tracked today than ever before, and better reporting is continually being made available
to help make sense of all this data.
Requires Advanced Configuration
◕

64. INSIGHTFUL NEWS…
News should have insights such as the number of comments, likes, views and more to bring
content forward while encouraging engagement.
Out Of The Box
●

65. COMMENTS GET MORE INTERACTIVE…
Embedded capabilities in article pages like @mentions makes comments more valuable and
useful.
Out Of The Box
●

66. YAMMER INTEGRATION…
Targeted embedding of Yammer or your enterprise social platform in key parts of the Intranet, and
digital workplace are provided by your org and MSFT.
Out Of The Box●

67. YAMMER INTEGRATION…
Keep in mind Yammer has a really important role to play in an Intranet!
Out Of The Box
●

68. YAMMER INTEGRATION…
Yammer is especially helpful on content like news where comments and social interaction can
create more opportunities for engagement.
At Scale, Some Customization Required
◔

69. YAMMER & TEAMS INTEGRATION
Over time powerful capabilities like search will better integrate these places people work.

70. CONSIDER INTEGRATING OR ENHANCING
• Unify Teams notifications into your Intranet with
the SharePoint framework.
• Automate the provisioning of a new Project site by
also setting up a link to teams conversations in
SharePoint, adding appropriate tabs, Teams
connectors and other Teams configuration to
reduce manual effort and integration.
• Improve navigation across teams by creating a
great teams directory navigation experience with
the SharePoint framework.
There are always ways to improve and better align these tools and their capabilities with your
own working environment or working needs.

71. MICROSOFT FORMS
There are many uses for Microsoft forms alongside PowerApps and Flow. These can be
embedded in any news article or modern page via the Forms web part.
Surveys
• Customer Profile Collection
• Employee Satisfaction Survey
• Event Feedback
• Organizing Team Activities
Quizzes
• Classroom Quizzes and Assessments
• HR Training
Polls
• Town Hall Q&A
• Presentation Polling
• Ideation
Information Gathering
• Partnership Application
• Organizing Team Activities
• Event Registrations

72. MICROSOFT POWERAPPS
With modern pages you can make it easy to add PowerApps to a page for many common
form scenarios throughout your Intranet, teams and sites.

73. STREAM & VIDEO EXPERIENCES
Ready to go portal experiences like Microsoft Stream are easy to enable and embrace. All
included in Office 365.

74. STREAM & VIDEO EXPERIENCES
Inserting and offline viewing, subtitles and captions, automatic transcripts, facial detection, and
more - Video experiences are always undergoing constant innovation and greater integration.

75. BENEFITS & OPTIONS
NAVIGATION & ACCESS
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
PAGES, NEWS, & EVENTS
COLLABORATION & SEARCH
ENGAGEMENT & ANALYTICS
NEXT STEPS
100+ pages of Intranet & O365 guidance: http://Office365Intranets.com

76. BENEFITS & OPTIONS
NAVIGATION & ACCESS
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
PAGES, NEWS, & EVENTS
COLLABORATION & SEARCH
ENGAGEMENT & ANALYTICS
NEXT STEPS
100+ pages of Intranet & O365 guidance: http://Office365Intranets.com

77. DOWNLOAD OUR 100+ PAGE
WHITEPAPER ON INTRANETS
WITH OFFICE 365
It goes into much greater depth and can be found at Office365Intranets.com

78. THERE IS LOTS MORE TO TALK ABOUT…
We only scratched the surface. There is a lot more we could discuss around personalization,
integration, business process improvement, etc...
MOBILE EXPERIENCE
Provides the Intranet to employees
anywhere at anytime, and on any device.
ENTERPRISE SOCIAL
Integrate and enhance from
commenting to interactive
polls.
VIDEO
Storage, conversion
and optimized
playback of video.
FORMS
Providing
rich forms.
ENGAGING SOLUTIONS
Foster engagement with
compelling solutions to business
challenges.
SHARED STORIES
Giving employees a voice
and way to share with the
organization.
NEWS & PAGES
Keeps employees informed
by targeted, easy to publish
articles.
LEADERSHIP MESSAGING
Amplifies reach and impact of leader
communications.
EVENTS
Shared calendar experiences to stay
up to date on corporate and
divisional events.
RECOGNITION
Celebrating
talent/connecting people
within the organization.
PEOPLE SEARCH
Intuitive, intelligent and
modern people search
experiences.
CONTENT SEARCH
Powerful full text search available
across the entire Intranet and in
specific collections.
TOOLS &
QUICK ACCESS
Accessible and rapid access
to key tools/apps.
FLEXIBLE
NAVIGATION
Powered by metadata, site
structure or search.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
Foundational for the Intranet and ECM and includes site, file, and sensitive data
classification, planning and defining audiences, site templates, page templates, content
types and much more.
ACTIONABLE
ANALYTICS
Provide actionable
insights based on usage.

79. It would be great to find content easily over the Intranet
using search and be able to access work related
documents and materials while I am out of the office
GOALS
Create work related documents
efficiently with reference to existing
documents and templates.
EXPECTATIONS
Consolidate personalized
mechanism to find relevant
content. Personalized
communication/notifications.
FRUSTRATIONS
Difficult to sift through search
results / documents to find the
relevant documents, and lack of
communication relevance to his
work.
“
KEY CHARACTERISTICS
Age
Occupation
Education
Family
Location
41
Field Employee
Bachelor’s Degree
Married
Canada
FUTURE STATE
OUTLOOK
SHAREPOINT
ONEDRIVE
TEAMS
YAMMER
CURRENT STATE
OUTLOOK
SHAREPOINT
ONEDRIVE
TEAMS
YAMMER
Judy
Consumer Persona
Straight Focused independent
ATTRIBUTES
TECHNICAL PROWESS
TECH. AVOIDANCE
ONLINE EXPERIENCE
SOCIAL
DRIVE
TOUCH POINT CHANNELS
Phone Website
Speech Chat
Mobile App
Goal Oriented

80. DIGITAL WORKPLACE PLANNING…
Intranets?
Extranets?
Departmental Portals?
Functional Areas?
Project Group Sites?
Team Group Sites?
Enterprise Social Network?
Document Management?
Records Management?
And much much more….
Intranet planning is a small part of your broader digital workplace planning.

81. Thank You!
SPFest,Sponsors,&YouForMakingThisPossible…
200+AwesomePresentationsAt.. Slideshare.Net/RHarbridge
600+PagesOfWhitepapersAt.. 2toLead.com/Whitepapers
WhenToUseWhat.com Office365Intranets.com
Office365Metrics.com Office365Campaigns.com
Office365Extranets.com Office365Resources.com
Message Me On LinkedIn or Email Richard@2toLead.com
CTO & MVP | SPEAKER & AUTHOR | SUPER FRIENDLY
Let’s connect and find ways to do more and work together.