What every SharePoint intranet should do? by @s2d_jamesr #congressp

Intranets have been around a long time, but not necessarily well loved. SharePoint brings huge opportunities for intranets. But new technology does not make problems go away.
So, how do we deliver SharePoint intranets that are really great? This is the question that James Robertson will answer in the 1st masterclass at the SharePoint conference 2013.

Great intranets in words
We start out with the question: what words describe great intranets? The audience says: connected, collaborative, accessible, social, information value, support daily work routines, usable, fast, mobile, task-based, updated, interactive, single-point of trust, attractive, innovative, easy to maintain and affordable.

Purposes

James goes into five purposes of intranet: content, communication, collaboration, culture and activity. James shows many examples of intranets that fulfill these purposes.

Content

We need to deliver usable and valuable information. We quite ‘good’ at this and we have way too much of this. There are intranets with 3,5 million pages.

Examples: a facilities page of the Department for Culture, Media & Sport intranet (DCMS), a page about My Employment from British American Tobacco (BAT). The BAT example also shows that good navigation is important for usable content.

Communication

The intranet is used a lot as the communication channel for global and local news. The SharePoint news features have always been horrible and are still quite horrible. James shows News Limited as an example. They use the news page to manage change. He also shows an example with targeted news, based on locations mentioned in ADS.

Collaboration

What collaboration is, is pretty clear? Document collaboration, discussion forums, etc. Shows several examples like Stockland has a SharePoint 2010 intranet with Newsgator. James mentions there are still many companies not open to putting collaboration on the homepage.

Culture

Create a beautiful intranet that engages staff. The intranet should also reflect the culture of the organization. Focus on how the intranet can communicate and cultivate the core values and business. Don’t use SharePoint out-of-the-box and pay attention to design, even if you do just a little bit of design. But useful first, beautiful second. Most people want both.

Activity

This is about integrating key tasks into the core of the intranet. E.g. SharePoint is great for building and sharing forms. And moving excel files online for sharing and collaboration.

A week in the digital workplace by @s2d_jamesr

What’s it like in the digital workplace? James Robertson recently published a report to answer this question. He took a storytelling approach and gave us insight in what working in a digital workplace looks like.

In this way he hopes to make the digital workplace more concrete. This is necessary because James there's lots theoretical and abstract talk about it. James’ report wants to bring the digital workplace closer to us.

I enjoyed reading the report. In several steps James takes us through the digital workplace. He shows how a new employee would use the workplace during the week using all kinds of concrete examples. Like a personal welcome message, a pre-populated tasklist, information about working methods, mobile intranet, accessing operational information about e.g. hotel bookings, an overview of company numbers and real-time performance data.

James rounds up his report by listing 6 keys to the digital workplace (Identity, Awareness, Trust, etc) and also points to organizations that show the digital workplace is happening now.

I do think one important key is missing though. Clearly the digital workplace can only come to be if there is an integrated backend. Shouldn’t 'integration' be a 7th key? Or is integration tackled in the keys 'Access' and 'Design'?

The sub-title of this nice report points to the future. For many this is the future. And still, the examples of the week in the digital workplace aren’t futuristic. Maybe a next report should address the futuristic digital workplace. For instance, extend the mobile intranet with a location-sensitive expertise locator. Or automatic, real-time updates on any devices based on where you are?

Finally, what is the digital workplace? Shouldn’t the report contain a short definition? Or don’t we know what it is yet? James seems to have a broad view of the digital workplace. It’s not only digital but also hardware, like laptops and other devices. To me the digital workplace is the sum of all the digital, web-based tools a knowledge workers need to get his/her work done. And if this implies some information should be accessible via mobile devices (hardware), we’ll have to get that done as well.

If the definition is broader than my definition I agree with Efraim Freed on the ThoughtFarmer blog, we should then also extend to other hardware, like sensors, GPS etc.

I hope you read the report! Let’s continue the discussion here or on James’ blog. What’s your definition of the digital workplace? What are the challenges and where do you see it happening?