Tailor Security to Business Needs

When your company has implemented a new intranet, the last thing you want your IT department to tell you is no one’s using it.

It’s not easy getting lean, but it’s vital for manufacturers that are seeking a competitive advantage.

According to the Lean Enterprise Research Centre, 60 percent of manufacturing operations are considered waste, which means they add no value to customers.

If you’ve decided on implementing a SharePoint intranet for your company, you’ll soon face a dizzying array of options for communicating with co-workers. 

Between Microsoft Flow, PowerApps, and the ever-expanding suite of Office 365 products, the possibilities for customization are nearly limitless. This can be a blessing and a curse when it’s time to divvy up the real estate on the most precious of resources -- the SharePoint homepage.

You’ve heard the cliché: “A picture says a thousand words.”

I’ve got a better one: “Video says it all.”

Whether you are launching a product, offering training, or announcing an upcoming event – there’s no better way to deliver the news to your people than with video. Years ago, corporate video was the sole province of enterprises with the deepest of pockets. Now, it’s so simple your kids are editing them on your iPhone. Crazy times. 

Even better, you can post and share videos with your colleagues on SharePoint using Office 365, and more improvements are on the way.

You are sitting in your office, going through revenue projections, when the phone rings.

It’s your Sales Manager, calling to share some good news. Jill, one of the company’s senior account executives, just closed a major new account, crushing her quarterly goal and sending the company into fourth quarter in style.

It’s high time Jill received a well deserved shout out in front of the whole organization. Why not do it on the intranet homepage?

One of our manufacturing clients asked us this very question.

It’s any consultant’s job to build or recommend solutions that are extensible and compatible with future releases and evolving technology. While it’s not always black and white, some of the publicized information regarding SharePoint 2016 has me more confident than ever that the intranet of the future is already here. If you Google SharePoint 2016 you’ll find at least one article with the word ‘Hybrid’ in the title. Microsoft appears (rightfully so) to be pushing to make hybrid deployments easier and 2016 will provide an improved experience. I won’t go into the details since there are a million articles available already, but this does help shed some light on the intranet of the future.

I know this is old news, but I’ve recently rediscovered how much end users dislike Microsoft. I spend a lot of time at client’s offices and there is always a contrarian who suggests that Google Docs is a much better approach than SharePoint. Or Mac guy speaks up to make sure you aren’t swapping out his iPad for a stupid Surface!

If it were high school Apple would be Slater, Google would be Zack, and Microsoft would be Screech. Apple is so cool and Google is so easy to get along with but when you get stuck on your homework who do you call?

If you've read any of my blogs you know I've been focusing a lot of attention on search-based intranets, content search web parts, and display templates. You can read Dan Sonneborn's blog, Why SharePoint 2013 Search Based Intranets Aren't What you Think, for more information about search-based intranets or my blog, Content Search Web Part: Custom Display Templates, for more information on CSWPs. Today I want to focus on MetroJs and how you can integrate it into CSWPs to make your links much more attractive and fun.

The Scenario

I’ve been working on a SharePoint hosted app that requires a daily workflow to run to count the number of vacant and occupied homes in each building and create a list item for each day. From there we can use this data to create occupancy charts and graphs with chartJS or Power BI but first thing’s first, I needed to write a workflow that will get me this data in a list called Occupancy Data.