We know you have plenty of questions about planning the perfect intranet and making the most of your digital workplace. In our #AskFresh series, we’ll be giving you the answers to some of the queries we most often hear from organisations just like yours.
We’ve created a list of the most common questions we get about SharePoint intranets, with helpful resources for you to dive deeper. You can easily find your answer by clicking on any of the questions below:
- How can I improve internal communications in the hybrid workplace?
- What makes a successful SharePoint intranet?
- How do you plan an intranet?
- How do I create a SharePoint intranet site?
- How do I drive traffic to my intranet?
- How can I get the most accurate and insightful analytics of my SharePoint intranet?
How can I improve internal communications in the hybrid workplace?
In the hybrid working world, your intranet is a new digital workplace: a twin of what was the actual, real-life in-person office. This gives your people a place to go to get work done, collaborate, and find useful information and resources. It should operate as a single place where content lives, with other communications channels such as email, Microsoft Teams, Yammer or even printed QR codes directing your people to the content.
Simply put, you can improve internal communications and seamlessly connect your people by creating a dynamic, modern intranet with useful information and resources all in one place. Find out more about how an intranet can support your hybrid workplace in our blog.
What makes a successful SharePoint intranet?
An intranet should empower your employees to thrive, whether they work on site, remotely or through a hybrid of both. We think an intranet should enable your people to:
- collaborate by bringing together day-to-day applications into one secure place, making navigating to, working on, and sharing content a breeze;
- communicate with personalised content, updates, alerts and knowledge to make your people feel connected;
- create innovative, cutting-edge pages, sites and content hubs, and prioritise internal idea-sharing and feedback.
Of course, there’s a lot more that goes into an intranet – find out how we can help you deliver a digital workplace with a Fresh demo.
How do you plan an intranet?
There are some best practices you can follow when implementing your intranet to ensure it’s an exciting and rewarding experience for your people. At Fresh, we recommend three strategies:
- An intranet strategy to highlight what you want to achieve and how it will be maintained
- A change management strategy that outlines how you will raise awareness
- A content management strategy that lists the types of content you have and how they will be managed
For more information about these strategies, take a look at our intranet implementation best practice blog.
How do I create a SharePoint intranet site?
There are two main options when building a SharePoint intranet site: an out-of-the-box intranet or custom-built.
If you’re building an out-of-the-box SharePoint intranet, you can quickly deploy a one-size-fits-all model within your organisation – but find out what you need to consider if you’re taking this route.
With a custom-built model, you can get an intranet tailored to your specific organisational requirements. We take you through the pros and cons of both options in this blog.
How do I drive traffic to my intranet?
In order to drive traffic to your intranet, you need to focus on engaging your people and making your site accessible, timely and relevant.
- Access: make sure your people can use your intranet from any device and simplify the login process.
- Timeliness: post fresh, new content and real-time updates to make your intranet a daily destination for your people.
- Relevance: all that content needs to be relevant to the information and applications your organisation.
You want to make your intranet a place your people want to visit – and while these three tips are a great place to start, you will be able to make more impactful, tailored improvements by delving into the analytics of your intranet.
How can I get the most accurate and insightful analytics of my SharePoint intranet?
There are so many analytical tools at your disposal just within SharePoint alone – but you might need deeper insights to find out what it really is your users want and need from your intranet to drive engagement.
Luckily, we’ve put together a guide taking you through built-in analytics in SharePoint and Microsoft 365, the powerful capabilities of Google Analytics, and another Microsoft solution: Azure Application Insights. We’ve also developed a Fresh Analytics Module, available even if you aren’t using a Fresh intranet.
Download our handy guide to SharePoint Intranet Analytics to find out more about your options.
Want to know more about all things Viva, SharePoint and intranet? Watch Fresh Product Director David Bowman and Head of Product Operations Madeleine Ryderheim on demand at the Digital Revolution³ virtual event hosted by Content+Cloud.
Get a Fresh perspective on your intranet
We’ve created Fresh for organisations looking to get the most out of a modern SharePoint intranet. It brings together all of the features, practices and functionalities that we know can deliver an engaging experience for your people.
If you’d like to know more or have any other questions, we can help. Get in touch about kickstarting your digital workplace strategy with a modern SharePoint intranet.