When you are proposing a Digital Workplace to your organisation you need to decide how to present this to your senior managers as well as what the benefits will be. Here are a few tips I have found have helped me and my clients to succeed.....

Source: intranet-pioneer.com Posted by markmorrell 176 days, 9 hours, 28 minutes ago

I believe despite the success of the previous years where most successful intranets have been managed by communications that it is time to think differently as digital workplaces expand that role and function.

The digital workplace is more than a news channel or document store. It can become the natural way of working so everyone is more productive and your organisation more efficient....

Source: intranet-pioneer.com Posted by markmorrell 191 days, 10 hours ago

I have admired for sometime the thinking of Carolyn Douglas and the writing by Intranet Connections. They have helped intranet managers with tools and ideas to build successful social intranets

Their latest eBook, Social Intranet Toolkit, provides you with over 25 ways to leverage the social and business tools available on your intranet. I’m honoured to have one of my blog posts included in the Social Intranet Toolkit.

Topics that are covered in the Social Intranet Toolkit:

How to leverage your social intranet
Business vs. social tools
How to handle objections
Social policies and governance
Designing your social intranet

Source: intranet-pioneer.com Posted by markmorrell 203 days, 23 hours, 25 minutes ago

In my last post I talked about the first of three approaches to rebuilding your content from your existing publishing tool in to SharePoint 2010.

For each approach it is the conflict between minimising the impact on performance of the business with the cost of extra contractors while retaining the knowledge and experience of using SharePoint 2010. There isn’t just one answer and it can be a difficult choice to get right.

My second approach combines the use of your content editors with external contractors

Source: intranet-pioneer.com Posted by markmorrell 219 days, 10 hours, 48 minutes ago

Have you decided what is the right approach to review and rebuild your content in SharePoint 2010?

I will post about the different approaches organisations can take towards who is best placed to rebuilding the existing content in SharePoint 2010 in my next few posts. This builds on my other SharePoint 2010 posts.

Firstly, I want to set out what content editors need training for. This usually happens when you are implementing SharePoint 2010. You may already be using an earlier version of SharePoint or different publishing tool. However it can be used as ‘business as usual’ when you have new content editors who replace existing publishers.

I’m not talking about the training content here. There are many good training courses – both online and face to face – that can help you with that need. I’m also leaving aside the ‘super users’ who have administrative rights for site collections, etc., and just focusing on the vast majority of people who need to publish content. I will post about...

Source: intranet-pioneer.com Posted by markmorrell 232 days, 6 hours, 45 minutes ago

It’s now one month since the London 2012 Olympics closing ceremony. Most people found it was a fantastic event and the London 2012 Paralympics has helped changed people’s perceptions about disabilities. But what is the legacy these events have left for how we work?

Source: intranet-pioneer.com Posted by markmorrell 253 days, 8 hours, 59 minutes ago

I have reviewed many intranets and have been amazed at the variety of publishing standards and how they are enforced. These vary from no publishing standards through to everything being locked down depending on the importance of complying with standards. More importantly it is the amount of time, effort, and money that is used to enforce people to comply with the standards when they publish information.

I sometimes think organisations lose the plot and forget to look at the costs being spent for the benefit being gained.

Your intranet needs standards to make sure your organisation complies with business, user, regulatory, and legal requirements in any country it operates in. The best approach is to have ‘smart’ standards that need the minimum time, effort, and cost which achieving the maximum effectiveness and benefits. How many of these questions can you answer “yes” to?

Source: intranet-pioneer.com Posted by markmorrell 274 days, 10 hours, 58 minutes ago

After a fantastic opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympics there is a real buzz with everyone across the UK! People are energised, excited, and upbeat about what will be happening here for the next two weeks.

And the really important thing is how they will be spending their time, especially their working time, during the next two weeks that will herald the digital workplace becoming more of a reality and less of a phrase that organisations quote.......

Source: intranet-pioneer.com Posted by markmorrell 296 days, 11 hours, 8 minutes ago

SharePoint 2010 gives you the opportunity to upgrade your technology to meet the current and future needs of its businesses. It also enables other changes to improve business effectiveness to be made at the same time. This helps to justify the cost to the business from investing in SharePoint 2010 and not just keep everything the same as before. There are many features that SharePoint 2010 offers which will help maximise the benefits.

Your business must aim to give users of your intranet a much improved experience from day 1 with continuing improvements made at regular stages afterwards as part of an ongoing intranet strategy. Here is part 1 of my tips to get your business ready to use SharePoint 2010:

Source: intranet-pioneer.com Posted by markmorrell 309 days, 10 hours, 24 minutes ago

In all the time I have been involved with SharePoint 2010 the one area which causes the most discussion and raising of concerns is SharePoint Designer. For those new to SharePoint 2010, SharePoint Designer is a fantastic/awful feature which helps/ruins the look and feel of pages and add/remove functionality.

As you can see by my use of language it can be a fantastic feature that can help people to innovate or can cause anger and frustration if used differently and causes problems with the user experience.

To quote Microsoft “Using SharePoint Designer, you can rapidly create SharePoint solutions in response to business needs. Compose no-code solutions that encompass a variety of common scenarios, from collaborative sites and web publishing to Line-Of-Business data integration, business intelligence solutions, and human workflows, all leveraging the building blocks available in SharePoint in an easy to use environment. Developers can use SharePoint Designer 2010 to get a quick start on SharePoint development projects.”

And that’s the challenge.....

Source: intranet-pioneer.com Posted by markmorrell 330 days, 7 hours, 5 minutes ago