State Of The Industry: What's Changed In The Past Few Years With Digital Workplaces & Why It Matters

WHAT'S CHANGED IN THE PAST
FEW YEARS WITH DIGITAL
WORKPLACES & WHY IT MATTERS
Presented By: Richard Harbridge (@RHarbridge)
#E&P KM

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

DIGITAL WORKPLACE
STRATEGY…
Great, we know who you are Richard, but what do you do on a daily basis?
- Intranets?
- Extranets?
- Departmental Portals?
- Project Sites & Team Sites?
- Enterprise Social Networks?
- Document Management?
- Records Management?
- Process Improvement?
- Centers Of Excellence &
Technology Adoption?
- And much more….

NAVIGATION
What's Changed & Why Does It Matter?

NAVIGATION…
While mega menus and other innovations were implemented navigation was
always structure based, or managed. With special directory style pages.

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.

Office 365’s SharePoint home is now a more modern site directory experience.
New features like activity roll ups, and quick follow/share options are the start.
DYNAMIC NAVIGATION…

Navigation has more capabilities out of the box for connecting sites. However
this is pretty limited without customization or 3rd party support.
MODERN NAVIGATION…
Simple OOTB Hub Nav

Navigation has more capabilities out of the box for connecting sites. However
this is pretty limited without customization or 3rd party support.
MODERN NAVIGATION…
Simple Modern Global Nav (Custom)

While structured and managed navigation is still valid in today’s world it is also
important to improve navigation with powerful capabilities like search.
SEARCH BASED 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.
MORE NAVIGATION & CONTENT…

NEWS & PAGES

Easily create powerful,
beautiful looking pages
WYSIWYG authoring
Multi-column sections
Drag/ drop editing
RTE & Paste support
OOB web parts
Page Templates
PAGES & AUTHORING…
Fast and improved news/page authoring builds on what is already available.
Microsoft provides many new client side web parts.

Some controls like the hero spotlight or the ability to pin documents to the top
of a library can be great ways to spotlight key content and are quite intuitive.
PAGE CONTROLS…

There is still a great use for custom controls to simplify authoring, improve
experiences, or provide richer integration.
PAGE CONTROLS…

NEW HUB SITES & TEMPLATES…
Team sites and communication sites will roll up into hub sites. This allows
modern rich sites for all but the homepage and special situations.

Supported Via 3rd Party
Out Of The Box●
A PERSONALIZED CORPORATE CONTENT EXPERIENCE
More OOTB capabilities make it easier to add personalization to pages.
The creation of dashboard pages or personalized rollups continues to improve.
PERSONALIZATION…

A PERSONALIZED CORPORATE CONTENT EXPERIENCE
Employees can have the ability to control what content is important to them.
You can even extend what is there with custom or third party options.
PERSONALIZATION…

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

The model of news being personalized based on region was only the beginning.
We will go beyond this and target and share team, departmental and other news.
INTRANETS…
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’ll see team news
(that matters to you) on the
homepage soon enough.

MOBILITY

Your Intranet is responsive by design, but you could also enable better site
experiences on mobile devices. Extending team or departmental reach.
MOBILITY IS MORE THAN ACCESS…

NEW EXPERIENCES MATTER…
Capabilities like bookmarking, notifications, and more help you not only
stay up to date, but follow up when a better time is available.

ENTERPRISE CONTENT
MANAGEMENT

CONTENT SERVICES

Intelligent queries, predictive indexing, sort view by indexed column (like date),
and in the future auto index logic will work for libraries larger than 20,000.
SHAREPOINT ONLINE LIMITS…

Smart filters chosen by default, pin columns you filter often, thumbnail-centric
library view, inline contextual information panel, and simple move/copy gestures.
MODERN LIBRARIES & LISTS…

Helps users focus on files that are pending, incomplete, or otherwise need
Attention. Response to required properties in modern UI being too “soft”.
ATTENTION VIEWS…

Conditional Formatting Action Links Flow Buttons Data Visualizations
Apply styling to a field,
depending on that field’s value
or range of values
Create a hyperlink to
another page or Web
address, based on the
value in the field
Create a button that kicks off a Flow on
the corresponding item
Use icons and CSS to
decorate fields with visual
indications of trends and
progress
Column formatting can use scenario patterns to apply a format to SharePoint
views making it easier to differentiate key information.
COLUMN FORMATTING…

By centralizing and governing the creation of ‘spaces’ or sites we can improve
content organization drastically with things like default metadata and templates.
HOW CAN WE BUILD SITES BETTER?

Connect to/from document libraries, route, alert, & set actions. Moving document
attachments from email & use teams to establish email addresses for library folders.
FLOW FOR DOC MANAGEMENT…

Tap allows consume section of document in other documents via search. Can also insert
Metadata as quick parts. Word SharePoint properties panel. View and edit document
metadata directly inside Word 2016 on Windows. (Tap isn’t in Canada yet).
WORD INTEGRATION…

Configure labels and document retention across the suite.
IMPROVED COMPLIANCE…

SEARCH

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.
SEARCH BASED ON POPULARITY…

Great search is essential – and achievable – with attention
SIMPLIFY FOR
THE USER…
Apply best practices like predictive search as you type, personalization,
and zero-term search. Fewer clicks => More Adoption.

Familiar, fast, rich experience for users accustomed to using their Windows to
find what they are looking for. Local and O365 blended results.
SEARCH BEYOND THE BROWSER…

Search is about more than just documents. Capture whiteboards, business cards,
maps, screenshots, receipts, x-ray images, and more and watch it index.
BEYOND DOCUMENTS…

MULTI GEO SUPPORT…
Multi-Geo search and services stores data locally in a region and ensures data
remains in that region if desired. Combine this with site level conditional access.

Suggested content saves time. Over time the questions users ask can be used
directly and search will deliver the answer naturally to users.
QUESTION AND ANSWER…

DISCUSSIONS &
CHATS

DISCUSSIONS & CHATS…
We might do bulk IM messages, reply all emails, or if you are lucky you might
have some discussion boards.

Today we have a better set of IM and ad-hoc discussion tools, orgs are using
Office 365 Groups and Yammer to improve distribution lists and discussion boards.

Office 365 Groups
Outer LoopInner Loop
Files
Sites
Content
SharePoint
Where should we start a dialog? Shifting more and more away from email where
possible and into Teams and Yammer for our daily communication needs.

Where should we start a dialog? Shifting more and more away from email where
possible and into Teams and Yammer for our daily communication needs.

Microsoft Teams provides a way to work in a team focused hub that is persistent.
Teams integrates with the other convo tools while improving on the experience.
Teams

Even Outlook is becoming more actionable and integrated. Less about notification
and more about taking action that is streamlined. This is also true in Teams.

Nearly 20% of companies have already deployed chatbots in the workplace,
with an anticipated 57% by 2021.

MEETINGS

More people can participate, on more devices, from more places.

@RHARBRIDGE
Record your meetings, make them available to staff in you team, site or in O365
videos.

Meetings when conducted and recorded are closed captioned, this also allows
you to search against the full transcript to jump to that moment in the video.
MODERN MEETINGS WITH TEAMS…

We can target specific pain points such as how we handle preparing, organizing
and executing meetings or by going beyond basic extranet file sharing.
HOW COULD WE
IMPROVE OTHER
EXPERIENCES?

INTEGRATION

Build Business
Case
Secure Budget
(On Promise Of
Value)
Analyze Systems,
Needs &
Approach
Design Optimal
Solution
Build Solution
Test Solution (QA
& Then
Production)
Document
Deployment
Deploy Solution
(QA & Then
Production)
Deliver Value
Get Feedback
(Often As A
Separate Motion)
TIME TO VALUE FOR INTEGRATION…
When people want to see information in one place we would build, buy
and implement solutions. IT leads this and the approach takes time.

We optimize for MVP and iterative improvement today.
Accelerating IT’s ability to integrate faster and deliver value sooner.
Secure Budget
(On Promise Of
Immediate Value)
Build Business
Case
Analyze & Design
For Priority Needs
Build MVP Or Iterate
Solution
Test & Deploy
Solution (Often
Direct To
Production)
Secure Budget (On
Realization Of Value
& Feedback)

Arguably this is made much better by improvements in development
patterns, as well as a reduction in complexity of deployment/risks.

Our traditional waterfall model, and model where we build based on
server model development takes longer and doesn’t maximize IT effect.
Full Trust
Code
Web
Parts
Features
Event
Receivers

The new model accelerates development considerably as we can deliver
more tailored value faster, and often avoid server side delays or complexity.
Client Side
Web Parts
Cloud
Services

Now it doesn’t just need to be IT who is meeting integration needs. O365
Connectors, Flow, Team Tabs, 3rd Party solutions, all accelerate time to val.

Microsoft Flow allows organizations and individuals to automate workflows that
integrate with existing SaaS services and business apps that users rely on today.

Now it doesn’t just need to be IT who is meeting integration needs.

SIMPLE INTEGRATION…
When provisioning spaces connect them based on your IA and provisioning
process. Example change Outlook Conversations link to the Team.

INTEGRATION CAN BE EASY…
Using the connectors built in, or by using a simple sync model you can
connect systems and reduce clicks, or tie processes/data together.

FORMS & PROCESS

FORMS & PROCESSES…
We may have built forms in previous tools but they were not mobile enabled
and are often challenging to update or improve.
No new versions.
Supported to 2026.

SurveysCustomer Profile Collection
Customer Profile Collection
Employee Satisfaction Survey
Event Feedback
Organizing Team Activities
Quizzes
Classroom Quizzes and Assessments
HR Training
PollsQ&A
Town Hall Q&A
Presentation Polling
Ideation
Information Gathering
Partnership Application
Organizing Team Activities
Event Registrations
MICROSOFT FORMS…
There are many uses for Microsoft forms alongside PowerApps and Flow.

PowerApps that solve business challenges are added directly into SharePoint.
Better experiences for common flow activities like approvals are leveraged.
Teams

PowerApps Web Part can make it easy to add PowerApps to a page for many
common form scenarios throughout your Intranet, teams and sites.
Teams

ACCESS & CONTROL

MANAGING ACCESS & CONTROL…
While core documents are managed and controlled many other places
like team or departmental collaboration suffer from permission challenges.

We use dynamic groups with membership defined as a rule, rather
than as a static list of members. We expire groups (if need not attested).
Expiring Groups
Admins set a duration after
creation when group owners
need to attest the continuing
need for their group. Else it’s
deleted.
One Identity
Azure Active Directory (AAD) is
the master for group identity
and membership across Office
365 (Exchange, SharePoint,
Yammer, Teams, Planner, Power
BI, etc.)

Throughout the Office 365 experience for SharePoint or OneDrive content
access control is readily available and easy to understand as an end user.

Sharing is also intuitive and easy across Windows, Office and SharePoint.
This increases the ease of sharing SharePoint content wherever you work.

Make it easy to manage access and ensure the wrong kind of sharing
doesn’t take place – whether internal or external.

EXTERNAL
COLLABORATION

EXTERNAL COLLABORATION…
External access may have involved significant effort for onboarding, user
management, access control, and we had unsanctioned tools popping up.

We have an effective SharePoint Extranet strategy with many sites
while also providing lower friction options for specific users if needed.

1. Notifications To Track Access
2. They Can See All Files In One Place
3. Per Group – Sharing Controls…
4. Much More!
There is a lot of additional control, extensibility, and more options coming
to Office 365 and Azure that enrich the external collaboration story.

WORK MANAGEMENT

WORK MANAGEMENT…
We have had the need to manage tasks for ages, the issues we thought were
aggregating tasks and making it easier to manage them. Turns out the biggest
gap was actually collaborating on tasks (not working on your own).

WORK MANAGEMENT…
Now we have a modern task management experience focused on
easier collaborative task management.

Significant enhancements are coming for Planner such as templating,
integrating it with To-Do, and Project Online over time.
WORK MANAGEMENT…

PROFILES & EXPERTISE

PROFILES & EXPERTISE…
Typically we would customize profiles to try and make them even more
useful. OOTB was basic, the main issue was people not filling them out.

Instead of custom profiles we now have rich profiles where new
functionality is continually added. About more than just the user details.

Profiles are embedded in more places. Instead of just a contact they now
surface activity of that user (recent documents today, more in the future).

Tools already monitor your directory for information that is missing,
incorrect or out-of-date. Pro-actively reaching out to users.

…Don’t forget that there are more improvements coming from strategic
investments like Microsoft’s in LinkedIn that can improve the expertise story.

ANALYTICS

We have had analytics, but only administrators or really advanced users could
get them, and even then the format and usability was low.
ANALYTICS…

Analytics are now integrated into key experiences to help users improve,
understand, and take action. They are brought to the surface.
ANALYTICS…

Organizations and leaders are piloting and exploring merging models of individual
productivity analytics and organizational analytics that are very rich today (E5).
ANALYTICS…

Far more is tracked today than ever before, and better reporting is continually
being made available to help make sense of all this data.
ANALYTICS…

http://Office365Metrics.com contains guidance on ways to measure Office 365
& samples of common business impacts it can drive.
ANALYTICS…

ANALYTICS…
The trend for surfacing more actionable analytics to teams, and users
will continue.

Workplace Analytics (now available for orgs with over 5k users) is already
driving better guidance for all organizations based on analytics available.
ANALYTICS…

CLOSING

What if we look at our own organizations technology radar?
Inspired by StepTwo’s Digital Workplace Radar
Landed (Now to 6 Months)
Circling (6-24 Months+)
In Flight (Future)
WHAT DOES YOUR TECHNOLOGY
RADAR LOOK LIKE?

Getting AD
Integrated
Exchange Migration
Outlook & Office
Migration (Pro Plus)
Skype For
Business
Intranet
Social
(Yammer)
Extranet
OneDrive For
Business
SharePoint For Document
Management
Team Site
Deployment
Every organization’s journey is a little different, but often follow a similar
path to getting more out of Office 365. What do you need to plan for?
Trust The
Cloud
WHAT DOES YOUR TECHNOLOGY
RADAR LOOK LIKE?
MSFT Stream
(Video)

Thank You!
E&PKM’samazingteamformakingthispossible.
180+AwesomePresentationsAt.. Slideshare.Net/RHarbridge
300+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.

State Of The Industry: What's Changed In The Past Few Years With Digital Workplaces & Why It Matters

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Similar to State Of The Industry: What's Changed In The Past Few Years With Digital Workplaces & Why It Matters

Similar to State Of The Industry: What's Changed In The Past Few Years With Digital Workplaces & Why It Matters (20)

More from Richard Harbridge

More from Richard Harbridge (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

State Of The Industry: What's Changed In The Past Few Years With Digital Workplaces & Why It Matters

Editor's Notes