Brand your SharePoint site or intranet to your organisational needs

Many SharePoint sites look similar with a relatively standard look and feel. However, a SharePoint intranet sometimes doesn’t meet the full branding requirements that organisations need or expect. In our view, a SharePoint intranet and its sites are important sources of information, and a central intranet team should be able to brand them how they want. 

A SharePoint intranet is an official corporate channel so internal communications or the core intranet team might want to:

• emphasise this by applying appropriate corporate branding
• provide a particular look and feel to ensure there is a continuity of experience across other digital channels
• apply different designs to a number of sites in more complex organisations that cover a range of brands, so there are effectively a number of separate intranets or sub-sites.

SharePoint comes with some flexibility on branding, with options increasing with the release of the “SharePoint brand center” functionality. Using templates from the SharePoint lookbook can also help teams to explore the art of the possible with design.

If branding flexibility is still not quite to your needs or is difficult to implement, using Lightspeed365’s popular Branding customiser feature provides a simple way to customise your SharePoint design and theme options by extending what you can do with your corporate font and colour palette. Many of the other Lightspeed365 features also have configurable design options that extend beyond what can be achieved out of the box.

Integrate SharePoint with other Microsoft 365 tools

One of the most powerful aspects of SharePoint is its seamless integration with other tools across the Microsoft 365 suite. This means you can access data and interact with tools through web parts without having to leave SharePoint. For an intranet, this has several advantages in:

• Providing a more integrated, consistent and frictionless digital employee experience.
• Helping employees to get things done more quickly.
• Encouraging better adoption of Microsoft 365 tools.
• Increasing the ROI of Microsoft 365.

In particular, just using web parts that are out of box you can embed:

• Viva Engage conversations.
• Viva Connections feed and dashboard.
• Group calendars.
• Microsoft Forms.
• Microsoft PowerApps with custom functionality created within your organisation.
• Power BI reports
• Stream (Classic) videos.

Make your SharePoint intranet feel less corporate and more personal

Many organisations have SharePoint intranets that aim to be an essential resource to help employees get things done, stay informed. find what they need and feel engaged. However, many SharePoint intranets can feel too corporate and formal, which can ultimately impact adoption and value.

There are lots of ways to make your SharePoint intranet less corporate and more personal, helping to support engagement and adoption. For example:

• Using imagery which shows real photos of your employees (with their consent), rather than bland stock photography or silly AI-generated pictures.
• Having a feed of people-centred stories that feature inspiring and positive stories about employees both in and outside work.
• Surfacing user-generated content on the homepage, for example using a Viva Engage web part that surfaces discussions and conversations – this is available out of the box with SharePoint.
• Adding a personalised greeting to the intranet homepage that names the user accessing the intranet, not only making the homepage feel more welcome, but also reminding users it is a personalised experience – this is available with Lightspeed365.
• Adding personalisation to the homepage not only so content is targeted and relevant to the individual but also features such as the ability to add personalised links to tools (again available with Lightspeed365).

Make your SharePoint intranet available through Microsoft Teams

Today many employees spend much of their working day in and out of Microsoft Teams. It’s the place they communicate, collaborate, access documents and more. It also makes sense for your SharePoint intranet to be available within Microsoft Teams – not only is this convenient for users, but it is also helps bring the intranet into the flow of work and supports adoption.

Given the ubiquity of Teams, it’s surprising that not all organisations choose to make their SharePoint intranets available within Teams. The usual way to achieve this is through using Viva Connections which is included in subscriptions. There are also additional ways that intranet content can be surfaced within Teams, for example through the Viva Connections dashboard.

Put SharePoint site approval processes in place to avoid site sprawl

SharePoint site sprawl is a major issue for many organisations. Because it is so easy to create a SharePoint communication or team site, inevitably:

• many sites get set up and then don’t ever get used
• get abandoned after limited use or a site owner leaves
• are duplicates of sites already set up that have similar aims already set up.

The result of this is far too many SharePoint sites that take up more space, are hard for admins and IT teams to manage, cause confusion for users and makes it difficult for users to search for what they need. A similar process happens with the creation of Microsoft Teams spaces and Viva Engage groups.

A good practice is to ensure there is a proper approval process in place for creating a new SharePoint site. The request can then get reviewed to ensure the space is being set up for the right purpose, is not a duplicate and has proper ownership.

This is not available out of the box with SharePoint and is best done through using a request form with approval workflow which can be sent to the right people. With Lightspeed365 there is also a powerful site provisioning feature which has a form which guides the requestor through the right type of site to request (SharePoint, Teams or Viva Engage) and then triggers the necessary approval workflow and then even automatic site provisioning, making the entire process far more efficient.

Reduce the need for SharePoint customisation through configuration or alternative web parts

SharePoint is an exceptionally flexible platform where you can build multiple different sites and pages that support communication, collaboration, business processes and more. This is partly down to the numerous web parts that can be arranged on every single page. Despite its enormous flexibility and scalability, sometimes SharePoint or one of its constituent web parts doesn’t quite do what organisations want, in terms of the way it looks, or what it can deliver. There may also be some missing functionality in terms of what is available out of the box; this is certainly the case, including some popular features of modern intranets.

When this happens, there can be a temptation to use customisation to tweak an existing web part or build a new one from scratch. Most IT functions try to avoid customisation as far as possible because it is costly and also creates technical debt; it can become increasingly complicated with upgrades.

One good practice with SharePoint for organisations who want to avoid customisation is to look to other options to deliver what they need:

• Many of SharePoint’s web parts are surprisingly configurable and some very versatile, and there are always options to explore here, so it’s always important to see if configuration provides an alternative path.
• SharePoint’s wide set of native features, variety of options and seamless integration with other Microsoft 365 tools means there is often more than one way to achieve the same result – for example SharePoint Lists are remarkable versatile, so turning to alternative web part options may be answer.
• There are a variety of different products that can integrate seamlessly into SharePoint that can bridge the gaps and provide the extra design or functionality a business needs, avoiding the need for customisation or development. This is exactly what Lightspeed365 delivers – a rich set of additional web parts and features that fill all the main gaps within SharePoint to give you the ability to deliver a world-class intranet, that are also maintained by the Lightspeed365 team.

Investigating all three of these options can reduce the need for costly customisation that you may regret later down the line.