A common intranet requirement is the ability to personalize the user’s experience by targeting relevant content to them. This is an area where out of the box SharePoint functionality is limited. That process is now much easier with the release of Rise 2.5, which allows you to manage how content is tagged with core metadata and target content to users based on matching their user profile properties and personal preferences.

In order to create a truly personalized experience we require two things: content and a user profile tagged with relevant metadata.

Core Metadata

The process begins by determining the Core Metadata fields for your organization. These Core Metadata fields are those that matter most to your organization and will apply to both content and the user profile. Determination of Core Metadata fields often begins with an examination of the User Profile and Information Architecture of your portal.

Determining the available data in the user profile and how content owners wish to segment audiences. We find that most organizations will identify between 2 and 5 metadata fields that they consider “Core”. For our example, we will target content based on Department, Location, and Job Title.

Content Tagging

Tagging of content is critical to the ability to target for individual users. Once the Core Metadata fields are determined and configured, Rise provisions these fields to all relevant content types such as News, Pages, Calendar Items, Documents, and more. Content tagging provides context to the content and determines the relevancy of content for individual users.

Figure 1: Core Metadata fields on a Calendar Item

User Properties and Preferences

For optimal results, it is important to have clean data in the User Profile. Organizations often need to perform data cleanup in Active Directory before populating data to the User Profile. For example, it is common to see multiple variations of Department names in the User Profile such as Information Technologies or IT. These types of inconsistencies will make it more difficult to target content effectively. There are often circumstances where a user may want to expand the content targeted to them beyond the values in their User Profile. We can accomplish this by introducing User Preferences. Rise enables the ability to store User Preferences enabling content targeting based on User Profile and User Preferences. For example, as a user in the Human Resources I may also be interested in seeing content from Corporate Communications and Finance, two departments that I work closely with. Based on my User Profile I will have Human Resources content targeted to me, I can then expand the targeting scope by setting a User Preference for Corporate Communication and Finance. The Rise My Profile view allows users to easily manage their User Preferences and maintain some aspects of their User Profile

.

Figure 2: My Profile screen showing User Profile and Preferences

Using Content Targeting

Now that we have content tagged with Core Metadata, reliable User Profile data, and User Preferences we can begin targeting content to users. Rise 2.5 supports two types of content targeting Ranking and Filtering. Ranking leverages SharePoint Search to give more weight or priority to items that match the user’s Profile or Preferences. Items that match more closely will appear at the top of the results increasing their visibility.

To use the Ranking method in Rise set the Sort By: to the User Relevance sorting method. The “Search result priority:” can then be set for each Core Metadata value. The “Search result priority:” is a value from 0 to 10, the higher the value the greater weight the Core Metadata value adds to the content prioritization while a value of 0 means that the value will not be considered. In addition, the content editor may choose to “Prefer User Profile over User Preferences”. When this checkbox is set, User Profile property values carry more weight than User Preferences.

Figure 3: Configure Ranking for Rise Web Part

Filtering works with both Search and List based queries to filter out values that do not match the User Profile or Preferences. The filtering options are highly flexible allowing the content editor to specify placeholders for User value (User Profile), User preferences, and Page value (the current page metadata). In addition specific values can be selected as well. In the example below, content tagged with “All Locations” will be returned as well as items matching the User Profile and Preferences. This is a great way to provide location specific content for a user.

Figure 4: Configure Filtering for Rise Web Parts

The Ranking and Filtering methods can be used together or separately to enable very advanced content targeting abilities. Content targeting is available for all Rise web parts that utilize Search or List data opening up a wide array of capabilities for targeted user content. The below example shows the result of content targeting for two different users. In the examples below the first example shows a member of the Human Resources department, the second example shows a member of the Marketing department. The Recent News web part shows content targeted to the individual users based on their User Profile values.

Figure 5: End user content targeting example for Human Resources user.

Figure 6: End user content targeting example for Marketing user.

Testing Content Targeting

As you can see Rise 2.5 enables a multitude of advanced content targeting capabilities. It is important for content authors to have the ability to test that content is being targeted appropriately. It would be very difficult to force content authors to update their personal User Profile properties in order to test content targeting, and in some organizations, this may not be possible due to restrictive policies. Rise 2.5 includes a Personalization Testing page that allows authorized individuals to override their User Profile and Preference values without modifying the underlying values. This enables content authors to simulate browsing content as another user matching their criteria. The example below demonstrates the ability to override the User Profile and Preferences value. Overrides are persistent during the user’s session or until the overrides are reset.

Figure 7: Personalization testing page for Rise 2.5

Rise 2.5 now offers a complete solution for content targeting and personalization. Get in touch with us to schedule a demo of the content targeting features and other enterprise portal features available with Rise.

Perficient is pleased to announce the availability of Rise 2.5 for SharePoint. Rise Intranet is an advanced platform for delivering modern intranet and portal experiences for Office 365, SharePoint Online, and SharePoint On Premises. Rise 2.5 is packed with new features, many of which our customers have requested.

New Features

The latest Rise 2.5 release represents an important evolution in the product capabilities introducing advanced capabilities such as:

Core Metadata

Core metadata allows you to specify metadata values common to content and the user profile which can be used to influence content targeting and personalization.

Content Targeting and Personalization

Rise Web Parts that utilize Search and List Data now have the ability to target content based on the user’s profile and preferences.

Localization

Rise 2.5 allows for translation of Page Content, Menus, Web Part Titles. Support is provided for automated and manual translations in over 50 languages.

Additional Features

• Rollup Pages – New page layouts and web parts supporting generalized rollups of content pages. For example: Programs, Initiatives, etc.
• Site Tagging – leverages the Core Metadata features to allow tagging of Site Collections with key metadata values.
• Favorites – User favorites have been refactored to allow categorization of favorites and an new “All Favorites” view.
• Modern Provisioning – Allows for the creation of Site Collections based on approved templates.
• Analytics (Beta) – Rise 2.5 introduces a lightweight analytics platform to identify usage of Rise components and page popularity. This feature is in beta and will evolve over time.
• Directory Search – new web part enabling quick search of Rise Directories
• My Profile – new application page that shows a basic view of the user’s Delve profile including the ability to edit a subset of properties and configure personalization values based on Core Metadata settings.
• Sharing Buttons – a new web part that allows integration of Print/Email/Favorite/Alert buttons on any Rise page.
• Yammer Share – a new web part allowing page sharing through Yammer

In addition to all of the items listed above there are over 20+ Improvements to existing features and 400+ fixes and updates.

Stay tuned for upcoming posts highlighting the newest Rise 2.5 features or contact us today for a personalized demonstration.

In today’s diverse working environment, organizations face a challenge of providing systems that cater to a diverse audience. We’ve previously discussed this trend in our series of blog posts, “Anatomy of a Modern Intranet”. By 2020, there will be five generations active in the workplace. All with different work styles and comfort with technology solutions. It is vitally important to understand these differing audiences in order to engage users and drive adoption. Understanding our audience allows us to cater to their individuality and create an inclusive user experience. We thought it would be fun to examine some personality types that you will encounter on your journey to a modern intranet or digital workplace.

Here are four personality types for the modern intranet:

The individuals depicted here are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons within your organization is purely intentional.

1. Newspaper and Coffee Browser
There is something about sipping a cup of coffee and flipping through the newspaper that can be incredibly relaxing. Likewise, many of your users will feel similarly about your intranet. They will take the opportunity to read the latest news and information over their morning cup of “joe”. For this group, the focus is on building a portal that provides a positive user experience.

For these users, it is important to have a continuous stream of fresh and interesting content to peruse. Make content engaging with the inclusion of photos and video media. This will create a compelling experience that will bring these users back for more.

2. Catch me if you can
There will be subsets of your user population that will resist every effort to lure them to the intranet, perhaps missing vital information in the process. For these users, it may be necessary to leverage a multi-channel communication approach. Engage this user base through email newsletters, push notifications, and even offline methods such as posters and elevator message boards.

To convert these users it is important that your additional communication channels validate the intranet as a source of reliable information. Over time, these users will become accustomed to seeking information directly from the source.

3. Social Butterfly
The social butterfly values the ability to participate in a conversation as an active participant over a one-sided content delivery system. These users provide comments and feedback and often share your message with others in their circles.

Engage these users by enabling them to leave comments and feedback, as well as inviting them to rate and share content. Every organization has social butterflies, if your technology is not enabling this set of users, you are likely missing valuable organizational insights.

4. Just the facts
These users have many demands on their time and attention. Rather than browsing and discovering new content, they wish to find answers to their specific questions. These users are more likely to use search over navigation to find the content they seek. They appreciate content that is organized logically and the power of a good summary. They will spend less time on the site, therefore the time they do spend should be productive.

To appeal to these users, you’ll want to spend time honing your site’s navigation and search experiences. The site navigation should be logical and easily understood by the majority of users. Task-based menu approaches are more effective than menus that follow strict organizational hierarchies. Focus on providing an excellent search experience and curation of search results for commonly used search terms.

Impossible to please everyone

In designing your modern intranet experience, it is impossible to please everyone. Focusing on your users and the trends of how your users and organization are changing will provide valuable insights on how to reach your audience effectively. The realization that there will be many types of users and a variety of engagement styles will allow you to focus on the strategies that work better within your organization.

Perficient, modern workplace partner

At Perficient, we are experts in the modern workplace, building intranet and digital workplace solutions that enable users to communicate and collaborate more effectively. Our modern intranet and portal solution, Rise is purpose-built to deliver engaging user experiences on the Office 365 platform. Our blend of enterprise software solutions along with expert consulting services allow our customers to achieve long-term success. If you are interested in learning more about how Perficient can help you modernize your intranet, reach out to us today.

Those of us in the business of building corporate intranets have long battled against people’s tendencies to work in isolation or “silos”. Our goal is to create intranet and collaboration sites where people work in an open and transparent manner, and information is accessible, enabling better decision-making and productivity. Many intranet and collaboration tools such as Wikis, Enterprise Social, and Blogs, support this working approach.

While I still support working transparently and breaking down barriers to communication, this style of working has also resulted in a huge increase in the amount of content that organizations are producing.

Not all data is equal

More data and content can be good, however not all data is created equal. The newly found ease of content creation has led to an enterprise-scale episode of the show “Hoarders”. Look beyond the pristine lobbies of most organizations, and you are likely to see piles of documents and data collecting digital cobwebs. All this content presents some unique challenges:

1. Data (or content) is duplicated in too many places, there is no single source of truth
2. Data (or content) is difficult to search or locate
3. It is difficult or impossible to determine if content is reliable

Do these sound familiar? Then your organization is likely not realizing the full value of your content and data. Here is the impact on your end users:

• Everyday user: more noise, it is harder to locate the correct content when needed
• Knowledge manager: more hay to dig through to find the needle in the haystack, in the form of best practices and insights
• System administrator: more infrastructure, management, and governance requirements

In order to realize the full potential of your content and data, we need to carefully analyze it, understand trends, extract best practices, and socialize organizational knowledge in a structured and logical way.

Protect your content with data silos

In the past, we’ve viewed silos negatively. They meant groups working apart, with little knowledge of what the other was doing. This led to wasted effort and, in some cases, toxic work cultures. But it is time to rethink how we view silos. A physical silo is a tool used to store and protect valuable goods in isolation. Think about the farmer who uses a silo to store his wheat crop. They spend hours separating the wheat from the chaff, discarding what has no value and storing the final product in a silo, until it can be used or brought to market.

Achieve balance with data silos

It is possible to achieve a balance between breaking down organizational silos while benefiting from creating data silos. By adopting what I have termed “SAFE” data habits, you can fully realize the value of open and transparent work styles and collaboration. SAFE stands for Store, Analyze, Frame and Expose. Here is the breakdown of this important acronym:

• Store – Provide tools and infrastructure that allow your users to store data and collaborate effectively. Platforms and data storage are becoming easier to deploy as a result of more companies moving to cloud based platforms such as Office 365. Store, classify, and properly govern data. Allow useless data to expire and elevate useful data. This Brings us to our next element:
• Analyze – Data for data’s sake is not a winning strategy, since data alone provides no insights. Systematically review data, extract valuable knowledge, formalize and share it with the rest of the organization. Do not assume that knowledge will spread organically throughout your company. Your employees are wasting time wading through data, attempting to make sense of the chaos. Once you have separated your digital wheat (knowledge) from the chaff (noise), it is time to move to the next step:
• Frame – Organize data in logical structures that provides business context through categorization and tagging. This elevates valuable data above the noise, proclaiming it officially sanctioned knowledge, best practice, and worth sharing. Now get the data to the people:
• Expose – Make the data accessible and easy to find for end users by delivering content through portal platforms such as SharePoint Online. Choose platforms that allow you to produce information hierarchies and enable user’s ability to effectively search. This official content is set apart (silo’d) and easily distinguishable from less relevant data.

Realize the potential of your intranet data

Organizations that adopt these practices can expect:

• Users to find the answers they seek
• A culture that recognizes and fosters expertise
• Communities with active and focused collaboration
• An increase in data-driven decision-making

At Perficient, we build solutions that work within your company culture to deliver measurable results. Our experts have a deep understanding of Office 365 and the digital workplace. We provide consulting services and products that enable your workforce to achieve more. Our award winning Microsoft practice is widely recognized as one of the top in the business. Our Rise intranet service delivers a modern experience for SharePoint Online out of the box. Get in touch with us today to find out how we can help your organization practice SAFE data habits.

You can learn more about portal best practices by downloading our recently published guide, “Trends in Intranet Modernization” by clicking here or by filling out the form below.

We are pleased to announce the release of Rise 2.4 for customer availability. Rise 2.4 provides numerous enhancements and features designed to enable customers to provide a modern intranet and portal experience for Office 365 and SharePoint. Here are some of the highlights.

Enterprise Speed and Reliability

With Rise 2.4, we are able to deliver the intranet at enterprise speed. Rise features such as Web Parts, Menus, Directories, and Applications have been updated to leverage a more modern front-end framework providing increased speed and advanced caching capabilities. These enhancements coupled with our enterprise-grade architecture and global reliability provide a intranet platform purpose built for the global enterprise and flexible enough for smaller organizations.

New and Improved Web Parts

Rise 2.4 introduces two new Web Parts and many upgrades to existing Web Parts.
Selected Applications Web Part
The Selected Applications enables the ability to display a subset of Applications. The Web Parts provides a great deal of flexibility to configure the number of rows and which applications to display. This Web Part is extremely useful wherever you want to highlight specific applications such as on the Home Page or Departmental Pages.
 
 
Pages Web Part
The Pages Web Part enables the ability to display links to content pages within a Pages Library. The user can control the list of pages easily through creation of Views. The Pages Web Part makes it much easier to manage links to important content since the data is presented dynamically you never have to worry about broken links or stale data again.
 
 
 
Web Part Enhancements

• Added the ability to specify icons for the web part header for all web parts.
• Added property grouping for web part properties to make web part editing more intuitive.
• Recent News Web Part – added a “new” indicator to indicate recent news
• Video Web Part – added support for Microsoft Stream video playback
• Call to Action Web Part – added new styling options
• Key Documents Web Part – added Search option and “See More” button
• Location Map Web Part – added search/filter abilities for the Location Map
• Article Slider Web Part – improved image rendering and UX
• Recent News Web Part – added new view options
• Application Directory Web Part – added new view options
• Related Articles Web Part – improved query logic
• Spotlight Web Part – added paging and UX enhancements
• Calendar Web Part – improved support for recurring items, new Calendar Item detail display, support for Add to Calendar

Directories Enhancements

With the release of Rise 2.4, we have continued to build upon the success of the Rise Directories, which provide curated search experiences for commonly requested information such as People, News, Documents, and Applications. With Rise 2.4 we have made it easier to configure these directories and also to build out custom directories based on your organizations specific needs. Customers have already taken advantage of this functionality to build out directories for FAQs, Conference Rooms, Policies & Procedures documents and more.

Rise Customers

If you are a Rise customer and would like more information or would like to schedule an upgrade to Rise 2.4, please contact Rise Support.

Not a Rise Customer

If you are not a Rise customer and would like to learn more about Rise or schedule a demo of Rise for your organization please get in touch with us.

Office 365 is an outstanding enterprise platform with multiple best-of-breed solutions such as Office, SharePoint Online, OneDrive, Exchange Online, Skype for Business, Yammer, Delve, Microsoft Teams, Flow, PowerApps and more. Office 365 is our go-to platform for the modern intranet due to the wide variety of tools and broad capabilities that it offers. There is no doubt that the Office 365 platform delivers tremendous value, but what it does not deliver out-of-the-box is a cohesive intranet experience.
Let’s address the elephant in the room: if Office 365 does not deliver an out-of-the box intranet experience then why is it the go-to platform for intranets?
For a number of reasons:

• Value: There is no other product set on the market that offers as much for the enterprise, Office 365 encompasses almost every aspect of the enterprise needs for collaboration, productivity, and messaging tools.
• Interconnectivity: Office 365 allows our enterprise tools to seamlessly communicate, because they share a common login and security model.
• Extensibility: Office 365 and particularly SharePoint Online provide a tremendous level of extensibility allowing us to create solutions that leverage the best of what Office 365 has to offer.

The key distinction is that Office 365 is a platform, not a solution. A platform provides the building blocks used to deliver a solution. Office 365 is a GREAT platform for delivering the a modern intranet solution. Our vision of the modern intranet leverages SharePoint to provide a modern intranet experience that puts your users at the center of the experience. The modern intranet solution surfaces the highest value features of Office 365, making them accessible from a unified intranet experience.
Our approach builds upon SharePoint, going beyond its native capabilities to provide solutions targeted for intranet functionality for corporate communications, departmental sites, enhanced content management, mobility, and much more. Learn more about our modern intranet approach by downloading our white paper.

Rise 2.3 Released

We are very excited to announce a new milestone in the evolution of Rise, Perficient’s solution for the modern intranet. Today we are able to announce the immediate availability of Rise 2.3 for our existing and new customers. Rise 2.3 delivers 5 new Directory experiences (Applications, People, Documents, News, and Media Assets), allowing advanced filtering, sorting, and deep linking. In addition Rise 2.3 introduces 3 brand new web parts along with dozens of enhancements and updates.

We Have a Directory for That

Rise 2.3 provides a new and improved Directory experience for Applications, People, Documents, News, and Media Assets. Built for speed the Directories allow you to find information quickly whether you are searching for experts in your organization or find the document you recently worked on.
The advanced sort and filter capabilities of the Rise allow you to churn through reams of data to get to the things that matter quickly by providing type-ahead suggestions and advanced metadata filtering.

Directories are supported for many common intranet scenarios:

• Applications– provides access to the applications people use everyday
• People – search user profiles to locate individuals and expertise
• Documents– locate and preview document content quickly and easily
• News – locate the most relevant news
• Assets – locate images and digital assets

Directory cards provide purpose built displays for each data type, highlighting the most important data and surfacing common actions such as Favorite, Share, Preview, and more.

New Web Parts

Rise 2.3 introduces 3 brand new web parts. Rise now ships with a total of 27 unique web parts that can be used to enable your intranet solutions.

Breadcrumb Web Part

Shows the path from the root of your site to the current page.

  World Clock

Shows time/date for specified locations around the world.

 Call to Action

Displays a call-to-action advertisement with an action link to a specified page.

More…

In addition to the above new features Rise 2.3 introduces numerous enhancements and updates:
Framework

• Improvements to the Theme/Branding abilities for individual web parts and menu.
• Improved provisioning process.
• Menu upgrade to allow widget rendering such as Weather.
• Performance enhancement for application page rendering.

Updates to existing Features

• Application Directory Web Part responsive behavior
• Modal event view on Calendar Web Part
• Lightbox support on Image Web Part
• Filter improvements on Menu
• Site navigation storage improvements.
• Added paging to Spotlight web parts
• Added image preview to key documents web parts
• Web part property grouping/optimization
• Added grid view for Recent Activity web part.
• Allowing maps to run on a Client ID or an API Key
• Added ability to blacklist accounts in the People Directory
• 27 Issues Resolved

Existing customers can contact their Rise Customer Success Manager to schedule your upgrade. If you are not a Rise customer, let us show you how Rise can accelerate your intranet success. Contact us for a demo today!

If your organization is running on SharePoint Server 2010, you may be operating at risk. With mainstream support of SharePoint Server 2010 unavailable and extended support from Microsoft only available through October of 2020, it is a perfect time to begin planning to migrate to SharePoint Online. The SharePoint Migration assessment tool (SMAT) is a tool published Microsoft that is designed to scan the contents of your SharePoint farm and help identify the impact of migrating your server to SharePoint Online. You can download the SMAT tool here.

Determine your cloud migration readiness for #SharePoint Server 2010 with the SharePoint Migration Assessment Tool https://t.co/uAmX1exvjR.

— Bill Baer (@williambaer) March 19, 2017

SMAT is designed to run without impacting your environment, because of this you may find that the tool requires one or two days to complete a scan depending on the size of your environment. During this time SMAT will record progress in the console window. Once the scans are completed, detailed output files will be available in the Logs directory. SMAT will provide a summary and more detailed insights on the scenarios that could be impacted by migration.
Perficient has helped to migrate more than 3.5 million users to the Microsoft cloud and are experts at migrating away from legacy versions of SharePoint. Should you require assistance assessing the readiness of your SharePoint implementation to migrate to SharePoint Online, our expert team is here. Our team leverages well established best practices to ensure a smooth transition of your content to SharePoint Online. Beyond content, our Rise intranet accelerator provides a framework for intranet success in Office 365. Rise enables you to accelerate solution adoption with native capabilities that support mobility, corporate communications, departmental sites, and finding people, documents, and much more. Contact us to find out more about our migration capabilities and Rise solution approach.

It is about time that we all face a hard truth: Many traditional intranet projects fail to achieve their stated business objectives. There, I said it, and I’m already starting to feel better. According to one recent Gartner report, “Since the emergence of the intranet in the mid-1990s, organizations have seen wave after wave of intranet failure, renewal, stagnancy and failure once again.” So not only has the intranet been a singular failure within many organizations, but it has been a repeated failure. From the same report Gartner states, “Enterprises that fail to adapt their intranet strategies will be swept into the next wave of intranet failure.” Wow, that sounds foreboding!
At the same time as many organizations have been launching their failing intranets, there has been a Renaissance of sorts in intranet technologies. We now have portal technologies such as SharePoint, Liferay, Jive, Yammer, and a host of others attempting to fulfill our intranet needs. With all of these technology solutions, we could assume that many of the intranet failures are “technology” related, but we would be wrong to make that assumption.
So what is the cause of failure? Why are intranets failing and continuing to fail? As you can imagine, there is no one cause of intranet failure but rather a “perfect storm” of a variety of contributing factors. Every organization is different but you may recognize a few of these traits in your own organization:

• Poor user experience – Many intranets have a poor user experience which leads to user frustration and abandonment. Today’s users have high expectations based on the commercial sites they use on a daily basis. Inability to drive great user experience across multiple devices formats sets the intranet up for failure.
• Inability to “find” content – The search capabilities of the intranet can be notoriously lacking. In many cases this is related to a lack of tagging and content categorization which enables the search to offer up better results.
• Ineffective content organization – A great intranet has great information architecture and navigation based on how users look for content and not on a rigid corporate structure.
• Outdated information – Too often the intranet is the corporate “junk drawer.” If content doesn’t change, users quickly lose interest and stop coming. Still need that travel policy from 1998? Probably not!
• Change is not communicated effectively – There is a perception that people are resistant to change. The reality is that people are resistant to change that has not been communicated effectively. Change without justification will meet resistance, while change that communicates the “Why?” and the personal benefits will garner adoption.
• Company culture is not taken into account – Intranet solutions which fail to incorporate the company culture fall flat. Understanding the culture and willingness to adopt intranet strategies is key. Pivoting a company with a culture of working in silos to one of open social collaboration does not happen overnight. Does your company culture readily embrace new ways of working, or does it require baby steps? Your intranet strategy can vary widely based on your answers.
• User voice is not heard – Communication on the intranet cannot flow one-way; allowing mechanisms for user expression and feedback are critical. Gathering feedback is important, but action upon feedback drives success.
• “Set it, and forget it” mentality – You can’t treat your intranet like your rotisserie chicken (remember those commercials?) – the initial launch of the intranet is just the first step in a journey. The intranet must evolve as organizational and user needs change over time.
• Multiple sources of the “truth” – Many organizations have multiple intranets (or portals) that often have conflicting information. Users become frustrated because they are unable to find a single accurate source of the “truth.”
• Lack of stakeholder buy-in – Often, the intranet is signed off by stakeholders, but stakeholders do not remain engaged. It is not enough for the leaders of the organization to tell the masses to adopt this technology; stakeholders must lead by example.
• No measurement of results – What is measured is improved. Too often intranet adoption and success are fuzzy concepts. Establishing criteria, measuring results, and incorporating strategies for improvement are critical to intranet success.

This is by no means an exhaustive list; you may see some of these scenarios play out in your own organizations (hopefully not all), or there may be others reasons that your intranet is not driving the levels of adoption that you desire.
How to Avoid Failure
Ok, we recognize that we have a problem. We also acknowledge that the intranet can be a critical tool for driving communication, collaboration, and productivity within our organizations. So, what do we do to reverse the trend of intranet failures to one of intranet successes?
Our first step is to acknowledge that we will not achieve our goals by simply “launching” an intranet. Intranet launch is NOT a destination. The launch of the intranet may culminate in some short-term progress towards your goals but without a cohesive long-term strategy for success in place, the intranet can quickly revert to the same old patterns that led to past intranet failures.
At Perficient, we have helped many organizations achieve intranet success. There are many commonalities that drive the most successful organization. Let’s take a look at the most important ones.
Organizations that were wildly successful with their intranet:

• Executed their intranet strategy based on a strategic roadmap – The most successful organizations based their intranet strategy on a strategic roadmap with clear definitions of business objectives and success, as well as a clear measurement strategy for when success is achieved.
• Listen to their users – These organizations know their users well and solicit feedback often. Users are engaged in the process and feel that their voice is heard.
• Put the “A-team” on the job – These companies leveraged a team of engaged stakeholders working together to drive organizational change. The intranet was seen as a tool for meeting larger organizational objectives, and the team stayed focused over the long term.
• Used an iterative approach based on measured results – These teams relied on an incremental approach to focused on delivering continuous improvements, rather than a “big bang” approach that overwhelmed users with change. The teams understood their objectives well and set in place a measurement strategy to gauge success. The teams adapted their strategies based on the measured results.
• Adapted well to change – These intranet teams had a clear understanding of company culture and adapted strategies for communicating change effectively to the organization. The intranet success was not predicated on technology solutions, but the teams adapted well to changes in the underlying platforms.
• Kept engaged with a trusted partner – Successful intranet teams remained engaged with a trusted partner and relied upon them to deliver expertise and augment the intranet team with additional skills, knowledge, and expertise.

While every organization is different, the companies that demonstrated the above traits delivered ROI to their organizations through their intranet success and continue to achieve new successes every day. As you begin your intranet journey, be sure to keep an eye out for the pitfalls that have contributed to the intranet failures of the past, and stay focused on adopting the traits that lead to intranet success.

In part one of our blog series, we discussed the evolution of the modern workforce and its impact on the modern intranet. In this second post, we’ll take a closer look at the elements of a modern intranet and the common scenarios that a modern intranet should support.
The definition of a modern intranet is a constantly evolving, so it is necessary to ground our expectations with some key focus areas. Based on our experience across hundreds of customer projects, the key focus areas for a modern intranet are: Content, Context, Connections, and Intelligence.

Focus Areas

We consider a focus area as a grounding principle that serves as a lens for examining requirements for the intranet. Focus areas change infrequently, but the requirements that support them will evolve over time. We consider the primary focus areas that shape the modern intranet as Content, Context, Connections, and Intelligence.

• Content – Content in the intranet should be relevant, beautiful, easy to create, manage and share.
• Context – All users have context; location, role, device. The intranet should facilitate contextual content and actions.
• Connections – The intranet is a tool to connect; with people, with content, with teams, and with your company.
• Intelligence – The intranet should be a productivity enabler through features that allow users to work more intelligently and get more done.

These are some key focus areas that have driven highly successful deployments of modern intranets across numerous customers. These focus areas can serve as a guide; you may choose to prioritize certain areas over other or even incorporate additional focus areas that tie into the strategic vision of your organization. In order for the focus areas to be useful, we must apply them to the core elements of a modern intranet.

Key Elements of a Modern Intranet

There are 3 main elements of an intranet that should be well supported to be considered a modern intranet: Communication, Collaboration, and Productivity.

• Communication – A modern intranet enables two-way communication, making the intranet a destination to find out the latest news and curated information, but also a feedback loop for employees to talk back to the organization and be heard.
• Collaboration – A modern intranet facilitates collaboration among users in an open format on a wide variety of topics such a Documents, Project Tasks, and Content.
• Productivity – A modern intranet facilitates productivity, enabling users access to common applications and facilitating everyday tasks.

The Anatomy of a Modern Intranet

We can now conceptualize a full picture of the modern intranet.
A modern intranet…
Facilitates Communication, Collaboration, and Productivity.
Is focused on the user as the center of the experience.
Allows the creation and delivery of relevant and interesting content.
Support contextual experiences based on user profile, preference, and behavior.
Connects people to each other and to their company.
Allows users to work more intelligently.

Your Modern Intranet Journey

If you are looking for your next steps in your modern intranet journey, consider partnering with Perficient. Perficient has developed a modern approach to the intranet, utilizing Rise to accelerate your roadmap and speed your way to a fully modern intranet. We built Rise with the vision to connect people to each other and to their company through outstanding intranet experiences. We’d love to show you how our vision applies to your organization.
To learn more about Rise or schedule a demonstration, visit www.riseintranet.com. You can also download our guide “The State of the Modern Intranet” to learn what our experts are predicting for the future of the modern intranet.

At Perficient, we are often engaged with clients to drive digital transformation efforts aimed at increasing internal user engagement and adoption. A primary strategy for achieving this is the implementation of a modern intranet. But what does it mean to have a modern intranet? At Perficient, we’ve been building the modern intranet for many years, and one thing is certain: The definition of what constitutes a modern intranet is constantly changing. Over the next two blog posts we’ll take a look at what it means to implement a modern intranet in 2017.
Before we can fully understand the modern intranet we must first understand the modern workforce. Today’s workforce is extremely diverse; by the year 2020, there will be five generations in the workplace with Millennials accounting for 1 in 3 adults. The three most populous generations in our workplace are the Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, and Millennials, with Millennials accounting for the fastest growing population in the modern workforce.
Across all of these groups there has been a significant adoption of new working habits and we’ve seen a transition from “work, work, work” to “work/life balance” and now “work/life integration,” as the boundaries of when and where we work become more and more blurred. As the generational makeup of our workforce changes, so do the scenarios that we need to support for a modern intranet to be successful.
Today’s workforce is:

• Distributed – We are as likely to work with someone across the country or around the world as someone down the hall.
• Flexible – Workers require the flexibility to work from the office or at home without losing productivity.
• Mobile – Workers are more often on the go whether in the office or on the road, work is wherever they are and on whatever device they are using.
• Connected – Our workforce is more connected than ever leveraging social media and embracing new ways of working.

Focus on Users
It is normal for project teams to give careful consideration of Business Objectives and Technical Requirements, but many projects are unsuccessful because they fail to take into account User Needs. User Centered Design is the process that brings user’s needs into consideration from the beginning of the project.  It is only when we take into account the Business Objectives, Technical Requirements, AND User Needs that we can be truly successful.
Be Agile
By adopting Agile work patterns, it is possible to move forward more quickly. In Agile, it is more important to iterate quickly and adapt to change than it is to get it 100% right the first time. In our experience, no matter how good the requirements, no team gets it 100% right the first time through. Think of 4-6 week cycles where we Define, Develop, Release, and Evaluate. Initial cycles will be focused on the MVP or Minimal Viable Product, based on a prioritized product backlog. As you iterate have a measurement strategy in place, analytics are key. You can’t measure usage, growth, and adoption without data. When it comes to the modern intranet, think “Evolution NOT Revolution” if you wait a year to launch the requirements have already changed.
A Modern Approach to the Intranet
There are many common factors to the modern intranet that are relevant to companies of all sizes. Following the 80/20 principle, as much as 80% of the functional requirements for an intranet are the same from organization to organization. The remaining 20% constitute the unique requirements that have the greatest impact on your business. At Perficient, we have developed a modern approach to the implementing the modern intranet. Leveraging Rise as an intranet acceleration framework, we are able to deliver upon the 80% of common intranet functionality quickly, allowing us to focus on your complete Business Objectives, Technical Requirements, AND User Needs. Rise enables our teams to proceed with agility, showing value quickly while allowing use to evolve the intranet over time.
To learn more about Rise or schedule a demonstration, visit www.riseintranet.com. You can also download our guide “The State of the Modern Intranet” to learn what our experts are predicting for the future of the modern intranet.

Think back to your childhood, we all had that parent, teacher, aunt, or uncle who’s answer was always NO! Until recently this was the answer of most IT organizations when it came to bringing your own device to the table. Can I get my email on my phone? No! Can I access the intranet from my iPad? No! With the prevalence of tablets and mobile phones these answers are no longer good enough and companies are being forced to address the issue of BYOD. I think of Dana Carvey’s Grumpy Old Man character from Saturday Night Live, organizations are being forced to adapt and leave behind their Grumpy Old Man ways.

In my day we accessed the intranet on IE6, from the office, and we couldn’t find anything we needed, and we LIKED IT!
– Grumpy old intranet user

BYOD, or Bring Your Own Device is a growing trend in many organizations. Intended to empower users by allowing them to work on the device of their choosing. BYOD has spawned from the proliferation of tablet and mobile devices over the last 10 years, those same devices that people use in their daily lives have found their way into the office as many people saw these devices as more productive and even fun to use. While many organizations have struggled with the security implications of these connected devices others have embraced BYOD and sought to incorporate BYOD into their corporate IT policies. BYOD has numerous ramifications for the corporate IT department as it relates to the Intranet, let’s explore a few of those.
Accessibility
This may seem obvious but if BYOD is to enable access to the intranet then the intranet must be accessible anywhere. Organizations must reexamine their policies as it relates to firewalls and open access to traditionally internal only resources. Opening up access comes with a host of security concerns, leading to the proliferation of mobile device management offerings such as Microsoft Intune. Many organizations have to strike a healthy balance between allowing access beyond the firewall and properly securing internal resources.
Data Security
One of the biggest risks associated with BYOD is the control of sensitive corporate information and the ability to audit how and where that information is used. Over the last few years Microsoft has made tremendous strides in data security with advance tracking and audit capabilities built into the Office 365 spanning the Office Suite, Exchange, and SharePoint. For these reasons SharePoint Online and Office 365 are becoming the defacto choice for delivering the corporate intranet.
Mobile Design
Until recently the mobile experience for the intranet was often an after thought. With the proliferation of devices and design movements such as “mobile first” the tide has shifted. In any intranet design initiative undertaken today a mobile responsive design would be considered “table stakes”. Many corporate intranets are based on the SharePoint platform, which does not provide responsive behavior natively (though it is moving in that direction), requiring many hours of design, customization, and testing to implement responsive design. In other cases organizations have embraced the Software as a Service movement and opted to leverage solutions like Perficient’s Rise, and Intranet-as-a-Service product that provide mobile responsive design as an out of the box  feature. Based on SharePoint Rise provides numerous templates and intranet features which are designed with a “mobile first” approach.
Innovation
Too often the intranet has been the seen as lacking innovation. With the adoption of BYOD users have grown accustomed to a consumer grade user experience and expect the same from their corporate intranet. In our experience we’ve seen that most organizations revamp their intranet every 3-5 years and very few have a continuous investment year over year in their intranet technologies. In order to deliver the innovative features that users expect, IT organizations must shift their thinking away from delivering platforms and toward delivering solutions. Perficient has built Rise to enable this type of innovation for the SharePoint intranet. Out of the Box Rise provides all of the common functionality needed to deliver an innovative and feature rich intranet, but it goes beyond that. As an Intranet-as-a-Service Rise continues to deliver value with rolling releases of new features and functionality. With Rise handling the innovation on the intranet, IT departments are free to focus on other core areas of innovation within the business.
Like it or not, and most users Love it, BYOD is here to stay. What kind of organization do you want to be, the grumpy old man or the cool uncle?
If you are stuck in your intranet journey or struggling with how to enable BYOD for your users, Perficient can help, get in touch with us to find out how.
To learn more Rise Intranet-as-a-Service download our latest guide: Accelerate Your SharePoint Intranet with Rise.