Office 365€¦ · Business productivity: specialist applications designed to solve a diverse range...
Transcript of Office 365€¦ · Business productivity: specialist applications designed to solve a diverse range...
Interact for Office 365
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Interact for Office 365
As Microsoft’s flagship offering for businesses worldwide,
Office 365 provides an ever-increasing suite of cloud-based
applications designed to make organizations more productive
and efficient.
From well-known and core business
applications such as Word, Excel,
PowerPoint, SharePoint, and Skype
for Business, to more niche offerings
such as PowerBI and Staff Hub, Office
365 has established its value in the
workplace, becoming the default
choice for organizations worldwide
with over 100 million monthly
active users.
As a Microsoft Gold Partner, Interact
has worked closely with Microsoft
technologies for many years.
We believe the intranet should be
the centrepiece of any organization’s
digital workplace, working seamlessly
with Office 365 and other applications
to provide a frictionless experience for
employees.
This guide is designed to support
businesses in understanding how
these different technologies can
support and work intuitively with one
another. Whether you already have
Office 365 deployed, are currently
undertaking an Office 365 project, or
you’re considering implementation
in the future, this guide can help
you make an educated decision on
the right intranet solution for your
organization.
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Contents
The Digital Workplace 6
Office 365: an overview 10
What is an intranet, and where does it fit? 12
Interact for Office 365 14
The role of SharePoint Online 18
Interact and SharePoint - an in-depth look 22
Interact beyond Office 365 24
Interact for Office 365: for a centralized digital workplace 40
Interact and SharePoint 15
Is SharePoint Online an intranet? 18
Corporate communications 24
Hub Sites 19
One-to-many communications 26
Limitations of Hub Sites 20
Communication Sites 21
Many-to-many communications 29
Search 30
Seamless integrations 31
Engagement tools 33
Productivity tools 35
Keeping your organization compliant 36
A streamlined and branded mobile experience 38
Azure Active Directory, Skype 16
Microsoft Teams, Yammer, PowerBI, Calendar 17
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The digital workplace
Before exploring the role and functionality of both Office 365 and Interact
in more detail, it’s worth considering the bigger picture of what constitutes
‘the digital workplace’.
In a digitized world, technology and
applications are at the heart of how
we work. In order to perform essential
tasks and connect with the people
and information required to do their
jobs effectively, ‘line of business’
departments and employees are
sourcing an array of applications to
support their day-to-day roles.
Cloud-based tools and the growth of
software-as-a-service (SaaS) models
for enterprise applications have
increased flexibility and choice.
Factor in a growing BYOD and BYOA
culture, as well as the sharp rise in
mobile working, and it will come as no
surprise that enterprise organizations
have seen the average number of
applications rise to over 500 in recent
years. (Source: Ben Kepes, Forbes)
These applications each serve a
single, defined purpose. They’re
best of breed products, designed to
solve a particular problem. Together,
they create the digital workplace
landscape.
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Broadly, the common digital landscape can be categorized into the following:
In order to drive productivity, efficiency, and a positive user experience
for employees, each of these distinct types must work intuitively and
seamlessly with one another.
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Personal file storage: for the cloud-based storage of day-to-day
files that don’t need to be centrally or collectively available to the
business as a whole
Document Management System: enterprise-wide document
storage for shared and centralized access to information, often with
additional features to facilitate collaborative working, file sharing,
and version control
Private, small group communications and ESNs: used
to facilitate teams to collaborate or work on projects quickly and
intuitively, with functionality such as real-time messaging and file
sharing
Intranet platforms, such as Interact: employee-focused
applications designed to facilitate corporate communication,
improve the employee experience, and complement the digital
workplace by connecting with other tools
Business productivity: specialist applications designed to
solve a diverse range of business productivity challenges, ranging
from customer service and human capital management to project
management and more
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Office 365: an overview
A core foundation of the digital workplace for many, Microsoft Office 365
is a suite of typically over 20 applications for the common S3 licensing
subscription, made available on a cloud-based model to organizations.
In the digital workplace landscape, these offerings are dispersed across the
different categories within the suite including the most popular applications
such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and SharePoint Online, but also lower
adoption applications such as Planner, Sway, or Delve.
For the majority of employees,
whether Office applications are cloud
hosted has little impact on their day-
to-day roles. Work is still performed in
the popular native applications, such
as producing documents in Word or
calculations in Excel on their laptop
or PC. For front-line employees, such
as store workers, delivery drivers, or
production line staff, the Microsoft
Office suite may not feature in their
daily roles at all.
At a strategic level from the IT
perspective, it’s a different story. A
marked shift away from traditional
on-premise and self-managed
solutions is now commonplace
in many forward-thinking
organizations; for most industries,
a move to the cloud is a long-term
strategic decision. As a cloud-first
solution with everything handled
‘as a service’, including hosting and
back-up of products like Exchange
and SharePoint, Office 365 provides an
answer that aligns with
this long-term vision.
When considering
the expansion and
future-proofing of the
corporate technology
stack, therefore, it’s
imperative that any
future purchases or
projects will align,
complement, and/or integrate
with Office 365. IT departments
are increasingly using this as a
benchmark to drive decision-making.
Furthermore, the need to avoid future
complexity, increase efficiency, and
provide a seamless user experience is
a constant focus for today’s CTO/CIO.
Alongside this, there is a continual
and critical need to avoid risk and
maintain security of data. In an ever-
growing digital workplace, this is no
small task.
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What is an intranet and where doesit fit?
The purpose of the modern intranet is to support
organizations in connecting and informing each and
every employee.“
Like any business tool or application, an intranet has a defined purpose and
role in an organization. Understanding where the intranet fits in the bigger
picture of the digital workplace is vital to its long-term success and value to
an organization.
Historically, intranets have been regarded as serving a multitude of
purposes; from a content management system to a team collaboration
or productivity tool. At Interact, we believe the role of the intranet has
evolved:
Contrary to previous definitions,
an intranet is not designed for
team collaboration; purpose-built
applications such as Microsoft Teams
or Slack are ideal for this purpose.
Nor is an intranet a document
management system; solutions such
as Microsoft’s SharePoint are designed
to meet this specific need.
This isn’t to say that an intranet can’t
support these goals; however, this isn’t
its core purpose. Where an intranet
delivers true value for a business
is in the process of connecting and
informing employees.
Dispersed or globalized organizations
in particular face a constant challenge
in this regard, with employees based
in multiple offices, on the front-line,
on the production line, constantly
transient, or home-based. Distributing
information and connecting those
individuals to the organization and its
goals, vision, and direction is an acute
painpoint with potentially damaging
and long-term implications for those
organizations who fail to get it right.
This purpose, therefore, is crucial.
The more this purpose can be aligned
with broader business objectives
and needs, the easier it is to get the
resources and budget needed.
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Interact for Office 365
Interact is designed to support your business and its users in maximizing
their Office 365 experience and getting the most from your investment
and licences. Our out-the-box intranet solution can be quickly and easily
configured to work alongside a number of your Office 365 applications,
creating an intuitive and seamless digital workplace experience.
Interact offers out-the-box deep-
level integration with SharePoint
Online allowing you to bypass the
issue of having to create multiple
sites and folders to ensure you only
make relevant information available.
Selectively choose and index the sites
and/or specific folders you want users
to search and surface through your
intranet, empowering staff to access
vital, up-to-date information from a
single and centralized point.
Users can have unhindered access to
the latest versions of your Office 365
documents, without ever needing to
leave your intranet. And once located,
they can use Interact’s popular
features to add value and context to
your content.
Interact and SharePoint
Search in Interact includes indexed
SharePoint files, and simple @
mentioning of documents hosted in
your SharePoint DMS, for a seamless
and user-focused experience.
We explore the role of SharePoint
and how Interact can maximize and
enhance its value in your workplace
more fully later in this guide.
Calendar
PowerBi
SharePoint
YammerTeamsSkype forBusiness
Azure ActiveDirectory
Outlook Tasks
Stream
Stay compliant by maintaining an audit trail of who has read key documentation
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Add a quiz to your content to assess how well employees have understood content
Search SharePoint files via Interact, then view documents inline within the intranet
Allow users to comment on documents, @mentioningco-workers or other content
Tag content for more accurate search results
Allow users to be notified when key content is updated6
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Present your shared Office 365 calendars inside Interact, giving
employees quick access to what’s happening in your organization.
From meeting room availability to corporate events, employees can
quickly view what’s happening on any device, in any location.
Calendar
Reduce the number of apps that are used
day-to-day by providing your employees
with real-time access to emails from
within their intranet. Unread new emails
are shown on your intranet homepage for
speed, ease and convenience.
Outlook
Help your employees keep in control
of their productivity by presenting
their personal Office 365 Tasks
directly through your intranet. Mark
tasks as complete or edit as required.
Tasks
If Skype plays a crucial role in your business communications, launch
those conversations directly from your intranet. Interact and Skype
for Business enable your employees find colleagues quickly and
initiate chat sessions, conduct online meetings, and launch video
and audio calls quickly and easily.
Skype for Business
Interact can be automatically synchronized with Azure Active
Directory, allowing any updates to central profiles to be seamlessly
reflected within your intranet People Directory. Creation and de-
provisioning of users is easy and efficient, reducing the IT burden and
ensuring users are viewing profile data that is current and correct.
Azure Active Directory
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Add your Yammer feed into Interact using Yammer Embed and bring all
your enterprise social networking conversations together in one place.
Yammer
From your CEO’s latest presentation to your bestselling products, easily
embed your Microsoft Stream videos inside your content. Receive
instant feedback with likes, shares, and comments.
Stream
Get easy visibility of your critical dashboards and analytics from within
your intranet, embedding them onto your homepages, team pages, or
department areas.
Power BI
Interact is continually developing
how it integrates with the Office 365
suite, understanding not only the
purpose and value of the different
applications available, but also their
limitations – and where an intranet
can complement or support these.
Looking back at that digital workplace
landscape, we will now explore more
fully the defined purpose of these
different categories and in particular,
how Interact works with, and
improves the employee experience of,
SharePoint Online as part of Office 365.
Find and organize all Office 365 files and documents that are of
most interest to the user – and present them in your intranet. Add
favourites, create boards and see what colleagues are working on to
create an area that is customized and closely aligned to the individual
without compromising permissions or security.
Delve
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The role of SharePoint Online
Document Management Systems (DMS) such as SharePoint Online (as
part of Office 365) offer organizations enterprise-wide document storage,
alongside additional features such as collaborative working (for example,
enabling multiple users to work simultaneously in Word or Excel) or version
control and secure access.
Microsoft SharePoint is a recognized
leader in this market, as the core DMS
product offered by Microsoft since its
inception in 2001. SharePoint Online
is the latest iteration, delivered as
part of the Office 365 suite. Its core
purpose is enterprise file storage
and management for electronic
documents and records, including
functionality such as storage,
archiving, searching and retrieval.
In addition, SharePoint Online offers
further benefits aligned to the Office
365 ecosystem, such as integration
with Yammer and Office 365 Groups,
and native integration with Active
Directory for encrypted/information
rights managed synchronization. It
is generally used as a replacement for
the traditional on-premise corporate
file server, offering a futureproof
solution that is scalable, accessible,
backed-up, and managed.
The answer to this question lies in
looking at its core purpose. A DMS
is primarily used to store files; it’s
around this foundational purpose that
Microsoft SharePoint is designed. By
nature, any document management
system will grow and evolve to
house thousands of files over time,
particularly in enterprise-level
organizations.
For this reason, many historic
SharePoint on-premise deployments
that have been customized and
positioned as an ‘intranet’ have
quickly ceased to viable.
Organizations with existing
SharePoint products, such as v.2007 or
v.2010, are realizing their redundancy;
due to the sheer volume of content,
they are unfit for purpose as an
intranet.
However, seeking a resolution by
looking at another DMS product –
even a cloud-based version - also fails
to address the core purpose of an
intranet: to connect and inform each
and every employee.
Is SharePoint Online an intranet?
Since the advent of Office 365 with
SharePoint Online, a number of
vendors have sought to offer solutions
‘built’ on Office 365: however, the
underlying issue of merging these
two purposes still resides. Products
designed to move SharePoint from
its core purpose as a DMS into a
communication tool with bolt-on
applications will still retain that
vast volume of information stored
in the DMS. There’s no point having
a fantastic looking intranet if an
employee still can’t find what they’re
looking for.
There’s no point having a fantastic looking intranet if
an employee still can’t find what they’re looking for. “
SharePoint’s architecture is based
on the principle of ‘sites’, which has
been a long-standing pain point
for internal communicators and
IT alike. The curse of ‘site creep’ is
common, and in larger organizations,
this can result in hundreds of sites
with unique permission settings,
containing thousands of documents.
It’s a spider web that quickly becomes
unmanageable.
In addition, sites are self-contained.
This reinforces siloes of information,
as there is no easy mechanism to
surface and display information to
end-users from multiple sites to one
homepage.
But what about SharePoint Hub Sites and Communication Sites?
As a proposed resolution, SharePoint
introduced Hub Sites. These aggregate
news or content from all the sites
connected to it, curating information
for a collective experience of those
sites.
However, Hub Sites have their
limitations. To function correctly, they
ideally require a ‘shared responsibility
model’ between the site owners and
IT; it’s highly likely considerable
technical effort will be required to
effectively create a Hub Site that
can serve as a corporate intranet
homepage.
Hub Sites
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Limitations of Hub Sites
Hub Sites don’t work as a corporate homepage: Using a Hub Site
as a home page will not provide the required functionality. The usual
requirements, such as communication controls, targeting, personalization,
and user experience flexibility are missing for communication professionals.
Lack of content control: Communication professionals want control of
content on a homepage including where headlines are positioned and how
long they’ll remain in place. For smaller organizations this may suffice but
larger organizations will not accept this missing functionality.
Heavy Administrative Burden: whether it’s governance of groups and
permissions, communications controls or targeting and personalization, to
get SharePoint to work as a true enterprise intranet requires a great deal of
technical effort.
Launched in 2017, Communication
sites were introduced in Office 365 as a
means to improve the user experience
of a site. Communication Sites allow
those with permissions to create a
responsive and visually appealing
front-end to a site, using web parts
and a building-block approach.
These are best-suited to visual content
and offer some of the experience
of an intranet in terms of look and
feel; however, the functionality is
otherwise limited. Again, these
present silo-ed content from a single
site, rather than a curation from
multiple sites; volume of documents
and information remains an issue.
A lack of governance or workflow
around publishing means control over
information pushed out is limited; for
internal communicators looking to
push corporate news out, for example,
there is no way of assigning priority
or anchoring a story to the homepage
of either a Communication Site or a
Hub Site. Any new story will displace
the older ones. Communication Sites
can soon look stale if content is not
refreshed regularly.
In addition, a Communication Site
cannot be retrospectively applied to
an existing SharePoint Site. To utilize
this functionality, all documents
within an existing Site – for example,
your HR Site, which hosts important
information and documents for
employees – would need to be
transferred to a new Communication
Site. Multiply this over many sites,
and you have a time-consuming and
IT intensive task.
It’s been noted by many in the industry that Hub Sites will likely struggle to
deliver standard requirements for internal communication professionals.
These include:
Sam Marshall - Clearbox Consulting Communication Sites
Hub Sites have their limitations. To function correctly,
they require a ‘shared responsibility model’ between
the site owners and IT; considerable technical effort is
required to effectively create a Hub Site that can serve as a
corporate intranet.
“As ever when you invest in SharePoint, you end up
working the way Microsoft thinks is best.“
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Within this site will be essential
policies, onboarding information, vital
forms and information employees
need and want to access regularly
– for example, your travel expenses
form, or your work from home policy.
There will also be previous drafts or
versions; an outdated data protection
policy maybe, or the unfinished draft
of your confidentiality policy.
Most HR departments will also house
confidential employee records and
personnel files; perhaps recorded
grievances or complaints; alongside
contracts, salary information, or
performance reviews. These are all
strictly private and if a SharePoint site
needs to be accessed by employees,
couldn’t be housed here. This means
using multiple sites or sub-sites –
leading to site creep, or the need for
IT to manage complex and often
untrustworthy permissions, making
privileged information vulnerable -
or information stored on individual
PCs or internal servers, undermining
the strategic goal of cloud-based
hosting and management of company
information.
Interact offers out-the-box
connectivity with SharePoint Online
(alongside v2013 and v 2016) with
the ability to selectively choose and
index which sites and/or specific
folder(s) your communications team
wishes to surface for employees.
This is simple, quick, and easy to set
up and manage, offering real-time
connection with your SharePoint DMS
to ensure staff are accessing the latest
versions of important documents and
information.
In the case of the HR site, the
department could confidently and
securely store all their information
within one site. Single or multiple
folders within that HR department
site, which are approved for
employees to access and have the
most up-to-date content in, would
be indexed and pulled into Interact.
Users and the HR team alike can be
confident staff are accessing the right
information quickly and efficiently,
with no compromise of privileged
information or data.
To put this in context, let’s imagine a SharePoint site owned by the HR department.
Interact and SharePoint - anin-depth look
With the understanding that the core purpose of a successful intranet is
to inform and connect employees, Interact has approached the challenges
presented by SharePoint by understanding its role and limitations as a
corporate file storage system.
Vital policies and information may
be stored in SharePoint, which are
critical for company-wide employees
to access. However, SharePoint can
also become the dedicated ‘document
dumping ground’ in an organization.
A useful intranet pushes relevant,
timely, current information to
employees: not, as a SharePoint site
would, every historic version or draft
saved previously.
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Interact beyond Office 365
While Interact is designed to work intuitively with a broad range of Office
365 tools, its unique position and purpose within the digital workplace
landscape means it can answer some of those critical gaps not fulfilled by
the Microsoft suite or other technoligies. By complementing and supporting
the other elements of the technology stack, the intranet has a valuable role
to play in bringing it all together for an outstanding employee experience.
One of the primary drivers for
employee engagement and
experience of the workplace lies
in how connected and informed
your staff feel to the business and
its strategic direction, demanding
company-wide communications that
connect each and every employee:
not just those who happen to be in
head office, or who are easy-to-reach.
This includes remote workers, front-
line employees dealing with your
customers, offline staff who help
create and deliver your product, or
simply those without regular access to
technology.
Corporate communications
The business cost for failing to
communicate effectively with
employees is extensive, causing
everything from low morale and
high staff turnover to poor customer
service, decreased productivity levels,
and an impact on company brand and
reputation. Lack of engagement often
only comes to light during employee
feedback mechanisms such as annual
or pulse surveys, at which point
C-suite sponsorship of new initiatives
to address the issue come to light.
At Interact, our primary purpose
and mission is to support
organizations by facilitating corporate
communications and helping them
to inform and connect their greatest
asset: their employees. Our intranet
software and services are designed to
empower communicators to deliver
one-to-many, and many-to-many
communications.
85% of non-desk employees say the communication they
receive on the job is not enough.“
Connecting staff to critical business information without an Office 365 licence
In many organizations, there will be a proportion of the workforce
who are either non-desk based or don’t have access to technology as a
day-to-day part of their role; for example, front-line workers, those on
the production line, or perhaps those delivering goods on the road. As
a result, they won’t have a corporate Office 365 account: making the
proposal of using SharePoint as an intranet problematic, unless heavy
investments are in additional licenses. Interact offers an ideal solution
for connecting and informing offline or hard-to-reach employees
without the unnecessary additional cost of Office 365 licences for each
individual employee. Despite out-the-box integration with SharePoint,
Interact has no underlying reliance on either SharePoint or Office 365
in terms of functionality; furthermore, an intuitive and easy-to-use
content management system (CMS) as part of Interact ensures valuable
and relevant content can be displayed to staff without demanding a
corporate account.
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One-to-many communications are
the foundation of any successful
intranet. The ability for a centralized
communications team to easily push
out relevant and timely content in a
top-down format to defined audience
groups is essential to keep staff
informed about their organization.
From more formal communication
around policies or compliance to
latest news and events, informal blogs,
or broadcasting critical information
during a crisis situation, Interact
offers a suite of tailored features
designed to facilitate one-to-many
communications for any situation or
requirement. These include:
One-to-many communications
Broadcasts for when you need to communicate important information,
quickly; for example in times of crisis or emergency
Content areas and pages; for example, for the publication of company news
and updates
The ability to upload or pull SharePoint documents into defined content
areas; for example, your HR or IT policies
Blogs for more informal content
Calendars and eventsWhat about hard-to-reach employees?
On average, up to 75% of employees in any given organization are non-desk-based. While this figure includes individuals who will have access to a computer – for example, remote workers and telecommuters, or sales staff on the road – there are also a proportion of employees who won’t have easy access to technology at all.
However, 95% of American and UK citizens own a cellphone of some kind. Interact offers a mobile-first responsive intranet experience, alongside native apps for iOS and Android: enabling organizations to reach each and every employee.
For those times when it’s vital to get the message out, our Broadcasts feature empowers communicators to get critical or timely information to all employees regardless of their device or location – all from within your intranet. Display a banner on the intranet; send an SMS message or e-mail; or block users from visiting any areas on the intranet until they have read and acknowledged the message.
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With Interact, communicators can
reach users regardless of device,
department, or location. The Interact
Personas feature allows for flexible
segmentation according to a diverse
range of criteria, while flexible and
engaging homepages push relevant
information to users as soon as they
login. Homepages can also be tailored
to ensure users are viewing relevant
communication; for example, by
creating an onboarding homepage
for new starters, or a management
homepage to display business KPI
boards to those at senior level.
Many-to-many communications
Forums
Lack of engagement amongst
employees not only arises from a lack
of effective top-down communication,
but from the feeling that they aren’t
heard or are disconnected from the
organization.
Empowering staff with a voice and
facilitating two-way conversations
through the use of ‘many-to-many’
communication tools not only
provides opportunity for employees
to feedback and be involved with their
organization; it also provides a self-
service approach to resolve common
questions or challenges. When staff
can connect with one another and
crowdsource for input, ideas, or
experiences, true collaboration and
innovation can flourish.
Interact facilitates this enterprise-
wide need with collaboration
features designed for many-t0-many
communications. These include:
For corporate communication
teams looking to gain input from
across their organization or tap into
employee knowledge and expertise,
Forums offer an ideal solution. Using
discussions, questions, and ideas,
forums can be utilized to encourage a
culture of knowledge sharing. Forums
offer an enterprise-wide space for
users to get involved, no matter where
they’re based.
Answers or solutions are centrally
hosted and searchable, saving time
lost to repeat requests; for example,
rather than multiple individuals
calling a HR representative to ask
about the flexible working policy,
hosting this on the intranet can
significantly reduce the number
of calls, saving time and money
internally. In one customer example
at Interact, an intranet project was
launched with a primary objective to
cut calls to central operations by up
to 90%, reducing not only resource
requirements and time spent, but also
associated overtime costs.
Ideation can also be facilitated
through an intranet, enabling
organizations to tap into the diverse
range of skills, expertise, and interests
amongst their staff. Topics such as
environment concerns (e.g., ‘How can
we be greener?’), employee benefits
(e.g., ‘would gym membership or a
cycle to work program be beneficial
to our staff?) and operational
improvements (e.g., ‘the Customer
Team could really benefit from
faster access to information’) can be
identified and rolled out across the
business, encouraging all employees
to have their say.
In one customer example at Interact, an intranet project
was launched with a primary objective to cut calls to
central operations by up to 90%, reducing not only
resource requirements and time spent, but also associated
overtime costs.
“
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Employees who are empowered
to feedback, contribute, and
have their voices heard show
higher levels of engagement and
brand advocacy towards their
organization.
Social technology has given
millions of users worldwide
a voice; it can serve the
same purpose in an intranet,
facilitating enterprise-wide
collaboration and input. Features
such as being able to comment,
@mention, share, upload shared
galleries, add events to calendars,
engage with polls or surveys, or
simply add a reaction to a post or
piece of information, are all powerful
yet subtle ways to tap into a company-
wide collaborative way of working.
An intranet’s purpose is to connect
and inform employees; providing
information that is timely, relevant,
and trusted. Powerful search
functionality is the number one
feature requested by communication
professionals when seeking an
intranet solution; particularly as the
digital workplace continues to expand
across multiple applications, with
vital information often residing across
a variety of different locations.
Research suggests knowledge workers
spend up to 19% of their working
week searching for and gathering
information; significant productivity
and efficiency gains can be made
from making this more seamless and
intuitive for staff. Enabling relevant
information to be sourced in a single
application, rather than having to
search many, is key to achieving the
operational efficiency aspirations
of communication professionals.
Interact’s Enterprise Search includes
out of the box integration with
SharePoint Online, SharePoint
2013 / 2016 on-premise, alongside
alternative storage providers (i.e.
Google Drive, Box) using our powerful
Enterprise Search API.
CMS functionality as part of Interact,
including #tagging and keywords,
‘Best Bets’ (which enable intranet
managers to prioritize particular
content for certain search terms,
ensuring it appears top of the list) and
‘Failure to find’ search analytics make
for an intelligent and intuitive search
experience that supports users to find
the right information, quickly.
Social features
Search
Seamless integrations
Alongside deep-level integration
with Office 365, Interact facilitates
a more efficient and productive
way of working through the use
of integration functionality and
enterprise search, providing users
with a natural and centralized access
point to an organization’s toolset and
information.
There is now a plethora of enterprise
applications available, designed to
solve a diverse range of business
productivity challenges. From
Zendesk for customer service
and Workday for human capital
management, to Asana for project
management and Salesforce for
customer relationship management:
the enterprise application
marketplace has expanded
exponentially in recent years. Now,
there is a business productivity tool to
solve every niche need or challenge.
Naturally, the challenge with this
diverse ecosystem is how to provide
a frictionless and intuitive user
experience for employees, without
creating the inevitable technology
fatigue of ‘yet another application’. In
addition, the constant hopping from
application to application, alongside
multiple logins and the inevitable
duplication of information or effort
across different platforms, has a direct
impact on employee productivity
levels.
At enterprise level, the average organization has over 500
applications as part of its technology stack. “
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34 35
Interact partners identity
management providers such as
OKTA, OneLogin and G Suite, as well
as native support for ADFS for Office
365; providing peace of mind for IT
decision makers when considering
integration. To find out more, visit the
Interact Authentications page.
Interact supports a seamless
experience for employees using
out-the-box single sign-on (SSO)
functionality; offering secure and
simplified integration not only with
Office 365, but a vast range of business
productivity tools to give quick and
easy access to the applications they
need to perform their roles.
Single sign-on
Authentications
Employee engagement has risen on
the management agenda in recent
years, and for good reason. Engaged
employees bring a vast range of
benefits to their organization, driving
improvements in everything from
customer service to the bottom-line.
Engage and enable your employees and here’s how you could benefit
Increase employee
performance by
40%
Increase customer
satisfaction rate by
18%
Multiply your
x4 1/2
Decrease employee
turnover by
14%
Engagement tools
Source: Hay Group
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36 37
Interact offers a variety of tools to not only support an engaged workforce,
but to help benchmark and measure engagement within your organization.
These include:
Polls to obtain and gauge the engagement level of staff
A comprehensive analytics suite, to understand how your employees are
engaging with and using your intranet; covering everything from frequency
of use to the most popular or engaged-with pages and content
Endorsements to supplement employee profiles on your intranet with
endorsed skills, recognizing their strengths and value to the business
Rewards and Recognition Badges to cultivate a strong culture of
recognition that will motivate and engage staff
The demand to improve productivity
and drive efficiency in business
continues to be at the top of the
C-suite priority list; particularly in an
age of digital noise and distractions.
An intranet can streamline many
processes and improve efficiency in a
variety of ways:
Productivity tools
Enterprise search: as we’ve already explored, empowering staff to find
reliable and relevant information quickly is critical to efficient working.
A centralized search that pulls information from a variety of sources and
can recommend the ‘Best Bet’ can save significant time and effort, helping
employees be more productive.
A homepage to the workplace: using ‘quick links’ and Single Sign-On
(SSO) to connect with other vital business tools and applications from a
single point can reduce time spent logging into different tools
Self-service: hosting answers to commonly asked questions and vital
business policies in an intuitive and easy-to-find way empowers staff to self-
serve, reducing internal tickets or strain on operations staff
People Directory: Interact’s rich people profiles go beyond name, email,
department. Adding skills and expertise alongside interests onto individual
profiles can help employees connect with colleagues who can help more
quickly; for example, searching for an Italian speaker to help with a
customer, or someone with CSS knowledge to fix an issue.
Workflow and forms: bringing commonplace operational workflows
and processes into your intranet can create significant time savings and
efficiencies. By making paper-based forms electronic and accessible via
your intranet you can save valuable employee time, as well as improve the
accuracy of information.
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38 39
Ensuring employees adhere to best
practice and abide by compliance
requirements or standard operating
procedures is vital not only for legal
purposes, but to reduce risk, safeguard
both staff and customers, meet
health and safety requirements, and
reduce accidents or incidents in the
workplace.
With a growing focus on data
protection and the introduction
of GDPR in Europe, alongside
political turbulence leading to
changes in regulatory requirements,
international trade agreements,
tariffs and more, keeping employees
compliant is more vital than ever
before. However, with up to 75%
of employees classed as non-desk-
based, potentially without access to
technology as part of their day-to-
day roles, keeping those individuals
informed and acting in accordance
with best practice is a significant
challenge.
These hard-to-reach staff are,
however, typically those on the
frontline who are the most essential
to keep informed, as well as be able to
gauge whether they have indeed read
communications that have been
sent out.
Keeping your organization compliantMandatory Read: Interact’s Mandatory Read functionality within
an easy-to-manage CMS enables communicators to quickly and easily
create essential documents and push them out to defined employee
user groups. Asking users to confirm they have read and understood the
communication ensures you have an audit trail for compliance purposes.
Broadcasts: Send and track important information across multiple
channels from within your intranet, and monitor receipt and
acknowledgments with visibility into messages delivered and read, and
how many have yet to be seen.
Quizzes: these can be used to test user understanding and knowledge,
while analytics allow your communications team to track who’s read and
responded, sending reminders via email or push notifications to those
who have yet to confirm.
Interact has a number of tools to help with this:
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40 41
Microsoft offers a range of mobile
apps aligned to its Office 365 offering,
with an individual app created for
each application; from Microsoft
Word and Microsoft Excel to Yammer,
SharePoint, PowerBI and more. The
result is an often overwhelming and
confusing experience for employees,
who may be faced with the reality
of requiring five, 10, even 15 apps to
fully utilize the mobile Office 365
experience.
On a company-owned device with
Mobile Device Management (MDM),
these apps can be installed as a
mandatory requirement; however,
the sheer volume will be a barrier to
adoption. In organizations operating
a ‘Bring Your Own Device’ (BYOD)
model, in which employees use their
personal cellphone to connect with
the business, it is unrealistic to expect
individuals to install this number of
applications.
Interact offers a single, business-
personalized mobile experience that
offers an ideal solution. Employees
can download a single native app
for iOS or Android that will serve
as the access point to vital business
communications, as well as providing
integration with the major Office
365 applications. This streamlined
experience removes the burden of
multiple apps, making it easier and
more intuitive for employees to adopt
and use.
In addition, the Interact mobile app
offers white labelling functionality,
meaning it can be completely
personalized and aligned to your
organization’s internal brand. This
tailored experience delivers higher
levels of engagement, helping to
get those hard-to-reach employees
downloading – and using – your
business’s intranet.
Personalize your Interact app to
align to your organization’s brand.
Instrumental in encouraging
employees to download and
access your intranet from any
place at any time.
A streamlined and branded mobile experience
Encouraging hard-to-reach employees to adopt mobile business
applications can be a common barrier for internal communications. This is
particularly true of the Office 365 suite.
Your app here
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42 43
The demand for individuals to come together as teams to collaborate
or work on projects has always existed. In today’s modern workplace,
however, those individuals may be working from a variety of
locations, making that process more challenging than ever. In order
to connect employees effectively and empower them to achieve their
goals, organizations need powerful tools to bring together people,
conversations, and content.
Interact for Office 365: for a centralized digital workplace
The Office 365 suite will continue to
be a staple for global businesses and
each individual piece of software has a
distinct role to play. An intranet plays
a critical role in facilitating corporate
communications as its primary
purpose; it can also offer a broad
spectrum of other benefits through
integration with other vital business
tools, including Office 365, alongside
out-the-box features designed to bring
that digital workplace together.
The partnership between Interact
and Office 365, therefore, is
complementary. The two serve
distinct purposes within an
organization, each offering a variety
of benefits; however, when the two are
unified and work together intuitively,
organizations can realize the true
value and potential of the digital
workplace.
Contact Us: New York: +1 (646) 564 5775
Manchester: +44 (0)161 927 3222
www.interactsoftware.com
About Interact
Interact is a global enterprise software company that serves intranet software
to over one million users across more than 850 organizations. We specialize in
solving internal communication and collaboration challenges by combining
our sophisticated intranet software with outstanding professional services,
focusing on developing long-term strategic partnerships with our customers.
Interact has offices in Manchester and New York, and operates across the whole of the US and Canada, EMEA and Australia.
Interact for Office 365
44
Station House,
Stamford New Road, Altrincham,
Cheshire WA14 1EP, UK
+44 (0) 161 927 3222
21 W. 46th St. 16th FL,
New York
NY 10036
+1 (646) 564 5775
www.interactsoftware.com