SharePoint Intranet Redesign Resulting in Higher User Adoption and Engagement

Customer

The Customer is a US provider of auto dealership management software.

Challenge

The Customer had an intranet based on Classic SharePoint UI Design. The intranet was non-intuitive and inconvenient to use, which resulted in low user adoption. So, the Customer needed to make the intranet user-friendly and encourage its wider use by employees. One of the main goals was to enable quick access from the intranet to the company’s website and internal digital tools for business process automation, learning, and communication. The Customer also wanted to make the intranet more engaging and encourage employee interaction by providing fresh and diversified news and extended social features.

Solution

The Customer turned to ScienceSoft as an experienced SharePoint intranet developer. After discussing the Customer’s needs, our team suggested creating a new intranet based on SharePoint’s Modern UI.

ScienceSoft’s team implemented a SharePoint Online intranet consisting of the homepage and department sites. The main web parts of the intranet homepage include:

• News. This web part pulls data from various resources and displays 4 categories of news: company, team, department and industry news.
• Employee Directory, Birthdays, Work Anniversaries, and Newcomers. Our team implemented these web parts with the help of Azure WebJobs, a special feature in Azure App Service. This feature provides automated filling of these web parts due to running a scheduled script. As a result, relevant data is pulled from Azure Active Directory and saved on a SharePoint list.
• Open Positions. The web part pulls data about open positions from the company’s recruiting software.
• Events. This web part displays upcoming events related to a particular user and synchronizes them with the user’s calendar. It allows users to enroll in corporate events directly.
• Quick links. The web part enables one-click access to the company’s website and a range of digital tools, such as ERP, a learning management system, a people management platform, a ticketing system, an employee recognition system, and more.

Results

The Customer has received a modern, easy-to-use, and functional intranet that serves as a unified repository of working tools, information, and communication. The intranet has empowered employees to handle their job tasks and interact with colleagues more effectively than before. So, no wonder the Customer has observed a rise in intranet usage. Also, the new intranet has contributed to the increase in corporate event participation, which has resulted in higher employee engagement.

Technologies and Tools

SharePoint Online, Microsoft Azure, PowerShell, SharePoint Designer 2013, Visual Studio Code.