Latest Intranet & Employee Experience topics

Permissions in Microsoft 365 can be complex, but a clear approach can help simplify management, protect data, and enhance collaboration. Below, we break down the highlights from our recent Ask Sympraxis session, The Many Faces of Permissions in Microsoft 365, which explores our philosophy on permissions, the many sharing settings, and best practices for permissions in Microsoft 365.

As we mark the milestone of our 100th episode of Ask Sympraxis, it’s incredible to reflect on the journey we’ve embarked on since our first episode on April 20, 2020. Back then, the world was quite different, and in many ways, so was the landscape of technology. Over the years, Ask Sympraxis has grown, evolved, and adapted, much like the tech ecosystem we seek to demystify.

Microsoft has introduced SharePoint Premium, a comprehensive suite of tools designed to enhance content experiences, processes, governance, and backup/archive functionalities. SharePoint Premium aims to elevate content management to a higher maturity level, integrating various advanced tools and capabilities. SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM) Located in the SharePoint Admin Center, SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM) offers a range of capabilities, including sophisticated reporting tools and data governance reports. SAM features change history reports that allow administrators to track changes at both site and organizational levels. These reports are downloadable, providing insights into who made specific changes and when.

Back in the day, SharePoint developers reveled in the ability to craft pixel-perfect intranets and websites, wielding full control over branding assets. However, this era of limitless customization came at a cost - considerable technical debt. If you built an intranet with custom branding, you had to account for every web part, how it was used, and how it was branded, often at the expense of performance. The good news is all that changes in the new modern brand center as it is slowly giving us back customization options.

In the latest Ask Sympraxis session, we delved into the world of templates for Microsoft Teams, unraveling the nuances that play a crucial role in ensuring consistency and efficiency. The session began with an overview of templates in general. If you’d like to dive deeper into the various types of templates available in Microsoft 365, please check out the other posts in this series.

At its core, a template serves as a blueprint, allowing repeatability, consistency, and encapsulating institutional knowledge. For more detailed information and an overview of templates in general, please visit our prior Ask Sympraxis session. Maturity Model approach As we love to often reference, templates can also be viewed in relation to the Maturity Model. Starting at level 100, templates are completely absent, and everything is configured manually on the fly. The Microsoft provided templates occupy the 200 level. Templates can go all the way to the 500 level, where an automated custom approach to template management is applied.

In this Ask Sympraxis session, we explore the intricacies of page templates in SharePoint and Microsoft 365. For a broader understanding of templates, check out our templates overview session. In short, templates play a crucial role in ensuring consistency, repeatability, and encapsulating institutional knowledge. Creating Page Templates To create a page template, we suggest starting off with building a page using your desired content. Once the content is ready, select the ‘Save as Template’ option, located in the upper left corner while editing the page, this clones the page and places a copy in the templates folder of your site.

This session the team focuses specifically on content types and document templates. Within the Microsoft ecosystem, we must emphasize their role in ensuring repeatability, maintaining consistency, and encapsulating institutional knowledge. Content types as templates Content types are defined as collections of structured or unstructured data representing business objects, for example: benefits, contracts, and vacation requests. Content types play a crucial role in defining these entities and the associated data, enabling the creation of intricate hierarchies of content.

Intranet owners have a wealth of resources at their disposal, catering to their needs across various aspects of intranet management. Whether you’re looking to configure your intranet, enhance your knowledge through self-guided learning, explore powerful user configurations, or seek inspiration from configuration examples, there are numerous community-driven assets available to you. Basic Configuration Intelligent Intranet by Microsoft Intelligent Intranet is a Microsoft site that offers insights into their vision for intranets, providing a comprehensive understanding of what an intranet entails. It’s particularly helpful for those new to the concept and serves as a persuasive resource when advocating for intranet solutions.

In this episode of Ask Sympraxis we begin by looking at the home and start page experiences in Microsoft 365 through the lens of the Maturity Model. The journey begins at level 100, where some users have isolated site collections. These site collections lack interconnectedness. At level 200, this could include the utilization of the Microsoft Viva Connections Home Experience, which consolidates news and conversations from various sites, along with surfacing the SharePoint app bar navigation. At level 300, we witness the adoption of hub sites. Level 400 sees the usage of Home Site capability, declaring a site as the home site and surfacing it in Viva Connections. At level 500, multiple home sites emerge, catering to diverse task-based requirements and accommodating audience targeting.