Rethinking the intranet

Delivering content to whatever application you work in

One of the reasons intranets are still around is because they continue to evolve and change so they stay relevant. Do you know the UK science-fiction character Doctor Who? Every few years the ‘Doctor’ regenerates and changes form, basically to accommodate a new actor taking over the role! I think we’re now at one of those points where the intranet as we know it is going to ‘regenerate’ so it is more suited to the way busy people actually work. 

Why does the intranet need to change?

In my last post I explored how employees use the intranet in these days of information and application overload, a cause of considerable stress at work. I argued that the intranet was not really designed with current working patterns in mind. In particular the intranet homepage – often packed full of content and not in the daily flow of work – was often perceived by users as yet another application to open with too much information to take in. This is heightened if the homepage is particularly busy or has an infinite scroll on it. 

I think it is a “big ask” to expect a time-stretched employee already burdened by too many applications and information to want to go to an intranet homepage a few times a day, each time requiring some additional cognitive effort and energy. Yet I think we are designing intranet homepages and packing them with useful features and updates with this assumption in mind.

The power of accessing intranet content through applications

In this article I want to explore some of the innovations we’ve been carrying out at Wizdom that reflect a different way that the intranet is accessed and how it is consumed. 

Fundamentally our observation is that employees spend most of their time in applications – that’s where work really happens. Some of these are core systems used by all of us, for example Outlook, Word and Excel, and increasingly Microsoft Teams or Slack. Other applications are more likely to be used by specific functions and roles, so an IT team may be spending much of their time in Jira or Service Now or a sales team will be in Salesforce a few hours a day. 

Our basic premise is simple. If intranets are there to help employees get things done and be more efficient, then why not allow intranet and its related content to be accessed from within the applications employees are already working in all day? This is clearly more helpful and efficient for the user than having to open up a new application.

Accessing the intranet within Teams

Our innovations have evolved over the past eighteen months or so into two main offerings – Wizdom for Teams and the Power Panel. We haven’t built these based on a hunch or rushed into development because of a cool idea we had in an internal brainstorming session. They have emerged from real customer feedback and requests, backed up by research, and then tested and reiterated with real user feedback. 

Wizdom for Teams allows users to access a personalized dashboard of all the content and tools they need across all systems, all from within MS Teams itself. It takes many of the excellent things that intranet homepages deliver – personalized content, updates, favorite links and key apps – and brings them into the Teams environment. We’ve found that our solution suddenly makes the intranet relevant again for those employees who are spending almost their entire working day in Teams.  

We’ve also built a strong site provisioning tool int Wizdom for Teams that puts process and approval (if necessary) into the creation of new Teams spaces, helping to reduce duplication, unused and irrelevant sites. Again, this is helping to reduce information and application overload for employees and driving more efficient use of MS Teams. 

A toolbar that follows you from application to application

The Power Panel is a personalized toolbar that can follow you anywhere and again allows you to view a dashboard, as well as content, links, and notifications from wherever you are, but also help you create items. If you’re all day in Salesforce, you can also catch up on the latest updates without leaving Salesforce. The same toolbar can also be accessed from different applications, so an employee will see exactly the same options whether in Salesforce or Service Now.

Increasingly intranets carry integrations and trigger workflows that allow users to complete simple transactions across the digital workplace. The Power Panel can also deliver this capability, but from within any application. For example, let’s say you’ve spotted an issue within Salesforce and you want to raise a ticket with the IT Heldpesk through Service Now. Using the Power Panel you can do this from within Salesforce, raising the ticket without having to open a different application. This is not only more efficient but also more helpful if you need to take screenshots of Salesforce, for example.  

Overall, we’ve designed the Power Panel to help unify the digital workplace. There is one place to receive all the different notifications you might get from across multiple applications in a more efficient way than email. There is one place to get updated because a unified stream of news will aggregate news articles from all relevant sources. And there is also one place to go and create items (content, tasks, spaces, IT help desk tickets etc), with the Panel acting as a “one-stop create hub” with transactions and workflow reflecting any governance framework that you have introduced, again helping to drive efficiency and reducing overload. 

What have we learned?

Because we have iterated the products based on real feedback, we’ve always been confident that both Wizdom for Teams and the Power Panel are designed around the way employees work and will resonate accordingly. Despite this, we’ve still been heartened by the popularity and the positive feedback we’ve been getting.

Here are some observations on why the tools, particularly the Power Panel, are popular and how they are being used: 

1. The tool is less disruptive for users and doesn’t break the flow of work of having to open another application, waiting it to load, and then trying to find the one item they need within a crowded homepage.

2. It removes the moment’s “hesitation” where a user asks themselves whether they really want to open the intranet page now or do it later, a hurdle which impacts intranet adoption.

3. It bypasses the stigma of the negative connotations of the word “intranet” – users are accessing the intranet without necessarily knowing it.

4. Users are more likely to view internal communications and messages that are far more easily accessible and less out of reach.

5. The consistency of a common toolbar across different applications means it becomes more familiar faster, again driving repeat use.

6. In some organizations where MS Teams are heavily used with integrations and notifications, employee perceptions and expectations of being able to access everything in one place are increasing, so this intranet evolution is regarded as a good thing.

7. Designing a personalized dashboard and a toolbar are formats that force intranet teams to define what the really essential things that users need are.

8. The branding of a tool like the Power Panel is critical for adoption and awareness. Companies can make sure they brand the Power Panel in their corporate colors and identity, showing that it is “official” and helping to drive adoption and enforce governance. 

Next time

So far, so good. But what does all this mean for the future of the intranet? Does it mean it’s going to be reduced to a toolbar or a tab in Teams? Well no, but I’ll be exploring that and some other thoughts on how intranets are evolving in my next post.