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An intranet is a powerful tool for streamlining communication within an organization, facilitating teamwork, strengthening employee engagement, and even retaining teams through the dissemination of a solid corporate culture.

But be careful: to yield its full potential, your organization’s digital workplace (DW) must be engaging. In other words, employees should want to use it daily and take full advantage of its various features (information sharing, document management, knowledge base, collaboration platform, etc.).

Are you looking for an intranet solution to create an engaging internal network? SharePoint Online is probably the application you need. In this article, Mozzaik explains why and how to create an engaging intranet with SharePoint Online. Happy reading!

What is Microsoft SharePoint?

Microsoft SharePoint is a software suite that allows you to create a dynamic corporate portal. But what exactly is it, and how does it differ from an intranet? Let us explain.

Microsoft SharePoint: Definition

SharePoint is a collaborative work tool. This software allows companies to create intranet sites, team sites, and extranet sites. It includes features for information sharing, document management, task automation (workflows), and search functionalities. The cherry on top: SharePoint integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft 365 applications (Teams, OneDrive, Outlook, etc.).

SharePoint is available in two versions:

SharePoint Online: A cloud-based option that offers flexibility and automatic updates.
SharePoint On-Premise: Hosted on the company’s own servers, this version is more customizable but also more complex to implement and offers fewer features than the cloud version.

Differences Between an Intranet and SharePoint

An intranet is a private computer network, i.e., accessible only to the members of the organization to which it belongs. Various solutions can be used to create an internal site, with Microsoft SharePoint being one of them. This software suite provides tools to build and manage a collaborative internal portal, including document sharing tools, communication tools, content management tools, collaboration tools, and more.

Why Choose SharePoint to Create Your Corporate Intranet?

Several reasons may lead you to choose SharePoint to set up your corporate intranet. This tool has several significant advantages. However, before creating your intranet with SharePoint, you should also be aware of its limitations and know how to overcome them.

Advantages of SharePoint

SharePoint has notable advantages that make it the ideal tool for your intranet project:

Accessibility and Flexibility
SharePoint Online offers cloud accessibility, allowing users to access their collaborative intranet and application catalog from anywhere and on any device (computer, smartphone, tablet) via the SharePoint mobile app. This feature also facilitates teamwork, especially in hybrid work environments. Employees can manage team sites together, share resources, and communicate effectively.
Individual and Collective Productivity
SharePoint integrates with Microsoft 365 applications (Teams, Outlook, Planner, etc.), enabling employees to navigate seamlessly between their work tools. Members of a team site can also interact live via Teams, share content (document libraries, calendars, task lists, etc.), and even co-edit documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) simultaneously. Finally, SharePoint enables the implementation of workflows to automate business processes (document review, project approval, etc.).
Advanced Security
SharePoint offers advanced security features. Multi-factor authentication restricts access to authorized users only. Additionally, if you opt for the online version, your data is stored in Microsoft’s secure data centers. You also benefit from automatic security updates, providing a high level of protection against intrusions and data loss.
Scalability
SharePoint is an intranet solution that offers numerous options and features. It can be finely tailored to the needs of organizations of all sizes and constraints. With SharePoint, you can opt for a customizable design to create a bespoke intranet, choose a ready-to-use version that is easy to implement (out-of-the-box), or go for a preconfigured but modular intranet (in-a-box).

Disadvantages of SharePoint

Despite its advantages, SharePoint has some limitations that should be mentioned. This intranet tool has functional and graphical limitations, particularly in terms of customization. Its basic features may not fully meet all your internal communication and collaboration needs.

That said, this should not prevent you from using this robust and reliable tool to build your internal communication and collaboration portal. Natural extensions of SharePoint, such as Mozzaik365, allow you to easily create an efficient intranet by adding features and graphical customization possibilities to SharePoint. All of this without ever compromising the security of the Microsoft 365 environment.

What Are the Different Types of Collaborative Intranets with SharePoint?

Would you like to equip your company with a new intranet and are considering using SharePoint to set it up? Several options are available to you:

The Basic SharePoint Intranet

Is your company small, and are you primarily looking for simplicity? You can opt for a “ready-to-use” version of SharePoint. This cost-effective solution (license price) allows you to leverage SharePoint’s native features, such as document libraries, lists, team sites, version control, search, workflows, permissions and access controls, and integration with Microsoft 365 applications (OneDrive, Word, Excel, etc.). However, you will not be able to customize your digital workspace to make it truly engaging.

The Custom-Developed SharePoint Intranet

Does your organization want a rich intranet that is perfectly adapted to its specific needs and constraints? You can choose a custom solution based on SharePoint. This option will allow you, for instance, to develop workflows tailored to your business processes, integrate your intranet with other enterprise systems (CRM, HRIS, etc.), or design an intuitive and user-friendly interface. However, this type of custom intranet project is time-consuming, very costly, and requires a reliable internal or external IT team.

The Enhanced SharePoint Intranet with an Extension

Adding an extension (add-in or plug-in) to your SharePoint intranet lets you benefit from the various advantages of a custom intranet without its drawbacks (cost and complexity). Quick to install, economical, and automatically updated, Mozzaik365, for example, allows you to double SharePoint’s power. This add-in adds more than 50 features to SharePoint to improve internal communication, internal collaboration, and knowledge management. Features include contribution support, AI, organizational directories, idea boxes, advanced search centers, custom searches, news walls, social network walls, navigation menus, or unified experiences. Mozzaik365 provides all the tools needed to create a rich and intelligent intranet with SharePoint or optimize your existing intranet.

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What Are the Key Features of an Engaging and Dynamic SharePoint Intranet?

To become an effective communication and collaboration tool that strengthens user engagement, your SharePoint intranet must include key features:

Design Features

Taking care of your intranet’s design is essential. An aesthetically pleasing and intuitive internal platform will be more successful among your teams than a dull and unreadable portal. Your internal network is also a prime medium for disseminating your company culture. Ideally, it should visually reflect your employer brand image and highlight your values.

In terms of design, SharePoint offers limited customization options. However, a natural extension of SharePoint, such as Mozzaik365, can overcome these graphical limitations. Mozzaik365 allows you, for instance, to personalize the pages of your internal communication sites by adding backgrounds and modifying SharePoint's default design. This can help create a truly modern and engaging Digital Workplace.

Targeted Communication Features

Managing information is one of the keys to making your intranet a tool that fosters employee engagement. Employees must have access to news, messages, and events that concern them without being overwhelmed by an unnecessary flood of notifications. To achieve this, your corporate portal must include targeted communication features.

Mozzaik365 makes it possible to add such features to your SharePoint intranet. Thanks to the "news wall," administrators can target specific groups to ensure they receive the right updates. The "events" component, designed to promote internal activities to employees, also enables targeted dissemination based on user profiles. Additionally, navigation menus and the "my apps" module can display links or applications tailored to specific audiences.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Features

A good corporate intranet is an intelligent intranet. The role of generative AI within intranets is now indispensable. Integrated into your Digital Workplace, this technology facilitates content creation (emails, reports, presentations, etc.), accelerates document searches, and helps users quickly find the practical information they need daily.

With its Genius solution, Mozzaik365 allows you to create personalized AI assistants integrated into your Digital Workplace within SharePoint. With Genius, you can implement custom bots tailored to your specific use cases, directly in your digital workspace. Want to boost the productivity and working comfort of your HR teams while enhancing the employee experience? With Genius, you can easily create an AI-powered HR assistant. This small bot, integrated into your SharePoint intranet, will automatically answer employee questions based on your documents, offering instant access to all basic HR information.

How to Create an Intranet in SharePoint 365?‍

Let’s break it down step by step:

First, choose the right type of site.

SharePoint allows you to create two types of sites: team sites (used for project management) and communication sites. The latter is particularly relevant for creating an intranet, as it enables sharing content with thousands of people and assigning contributor roles to appropriate individuals.
A team site allows a specific team to collaborate on a project (notably through a shared calendar and predefined task sharing), while a communication site is used to share news and information on a larger scale.

Next, create the structure and plan your intranet.

The objective of this step is to help you create a personalized intranet fully adapted to your needs and preferences. To create a good structure, identify how you want your intranet to be used, then list the pages that need to be most easily accessible and the different features to be displayed on those pages. You can then add pages and subpages, just like on a regular website.
Don’t hesitate to call on an integrator to help with this task.

Then, create your pages and customize the design to reflect your company’s branding.

If you plan to reuse the same site for several Business Units, you can create site templates and replicate them using Mozzaik365’s "site factory" feature.
Mozzaik365 is a SharePoint extension that makes it easy to add features to your intranet and give it a sleek and impactful design.
If you plan to create content with a standardized page design, you can create page templates, allowing contributors to add articles in just a few clicks.
Then, if desired, customize your intranet further.

Add features to build a tailored intranet.

SharePoint allows functional blocks, known as web parts, to be added to sites. A web part corresponds simply to a feature.
The functionalities site offered by Mozzaik365 can meet companies' needs in:some text

Internal communication
Knowledge management
Collaboration
AI tools

Here are some examples of features that can be added:

Display the company’s latest posts on LinkedIn, Twitter, Yammer (or any other social network) and enable likes and comments (via the Social Network Wall function).
Display the latest news.
Introduce new employees.
Provide a search bar to easily find all information on a specific topic.
Include shortcuts to other company sites.
Add a directory to find the right contact person and reach them in just a few clicks.
Create a unified navigation bar for seamless browsing across all company sites.

Creating an Engaging Intranet with SharePoint Online: Key Takeaways

SharePoint is a software included in the Microsoft 365 suite that can enable you to create an engaging and dynamic intranet. Secure, scalable, accessible, and flexible, a corporate portal built on SharePoint is ideal for boosting team productivity, improving communication, and fostering internal collaboration. However, in its basic version, SharePoint has limitations.

To overcome these and create an effective intranet, you have two options: build a custom collaborative platform from scratch using SharePoint, or add an extension to your SharePoint intranet. The second option is more economical, reliable, fast, and, most importantly, effective.

The plug-in to choose? Mozzaik365. Our solution doubles SharePoint’s power by adding over 50 features. This allows you to provide your teams with a high-performing and secure intranet, all while maintaining a controlled budget and a short implementation time. To find out more, click here.

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