This document discusses best practices for developing a successful SharePoint intranet, including establishing a clear strategy, governance framework, and publishing standards. It emphasizes that an intranet is more likely to be good or bad based on how it is implemented and managed, rather than just the SharePoint technology itself. Key recommendations include defining roles and responsibilities, aligning the intranet with business needs and culture, and balancing user experience with organizational requirements through governance.

1. The secret of a
SharePoint
intranet
Mark Morrell
Intranet Pioneer

2. Mark Morrell
 Intranet Pioneer since 2011
 Previously BT Intranet Manager
 SharePoint 2003–2013 experience
 Developed and implemented
strategies and governance
frameworks

3. Making intranets better

4. Is SharePoint 'good’ or ‘bad’?
 Other factors influence why
SharePoint is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ than
technology.
 More likely to be your approach
than SharePoint features.
 Depends on how you implement
and manage SharePoint.

5. A good SharePoint intranet
 Business requirements
 Strategy
 Governance principles
 Publishing models
 Roles, responsibilities and
permissions
 Publishing standards
 Build on the benefits

6. Why SharePoint?
 What are your business
requirements?
 What are your timescales?
 What are your priorities?
 What is your budget?

7. What is the right direction?
Your strategy needs to:
 Set purpose, scope and goals
 Align with culture and values
 Identify roles/responsibilities
 Have realistic plans and
timescales
 Meet business and legal
requirements
 Define content & apps covered

8. Governance is good! 
 The best intranets help people be
more productive & effective.
 A consistently good experience,
supported by governance,
achieves these benefits.
 Balance your business needs
with user experience
 Essential for SharePoint as the
deciding factor between a good
or bad experience

9. Governance key principles
 Intranets differ depending on your
organisation’s:
 Size
 Type
 Culture
 BUT some principles are common to
success.

10. Good governance principles
SharePoint
Governance
principles
Know
organisation
Define
scope
People first
Use
resources
Compare /
benchmark
Do what you
say you will
do
Keep it legal

11. Governance scope
 Accredited content: authoritative, reliable, up
to date, clear ownership, large audience
 Collaborative content: opinion or view that
may change quickly, owned by person or
community
 Applications: business process or tool, used
by anyone with right permission

12. Publishing model factors
 Is your organisation?
 Small
 Dynamic
 Large
 Complex
 Culture will help you choose right model
 How you manage your content and apps
 How governance framework operates
 How you improve publishing and user
experiences

13. Publishing models
•Flexible approach on
who is responsible for
publishing, updating
and managing content
•Third parties will
normally publish and
manage content on a
day-to-day basis
•Content owner or
editor responsible for
publishing, updating,
and managing content
•Central team
responsible for
publishing, updating,
and managing content
Centralised Decentralised
HybridOutsourced

14. SharePoint governance hierarchy
Owner, Champion or Steering Group
Intranet Manager or Team
Content Owners and Editors
Intranet Users

15. Owner
 This role is ultimately responsible for the
intranet.
 The person must be able to make key
decisions.
 The owner makes final decisions, based on
information and advice from stakeholders.

16. Champion
 This role’s primary purpose is to be the
senior advocate for your intranet.
 The owner has organisational authority – the
champion has personal influence and
authority.
 The champion is:
 An ambassador
 Shows purpose of your intranet
 Rallies stakeholders to support strategy
 Becomes a cheerleader.

17. Steering Group
 Stakeholders who act together in “steering”
development of your intranet.
 Brings together knowledge, experience and
understanding.
 Critical to making best decisions for your
intranet.
 Agree clear terms of reference for:
 Scope
 Membership
 Authority

18. Intranet manager
 Developing and implementing the strategy
 Researching user requirements
 Developing the intranet roles and
responsibilities
 Developing the publishing standards
 Building a publishing community
 Building relationships with stakeholders
 Undertaking external benchmarking and
research

19. Intranet team
 Coordinate activities connected with strategy
and plan.
 May be in same part or spread across
business areas and functions, or
outsourced.
 Whichever type of team you choose, there
has to be:
 A common purpose
 Clear priorities
 Agreed roles
For it to succeed.

20. Content owners and editors
 Make it clear:
 What they need to do
 Why they need to do it
 How they do it.
 Content owner is responsible for creating
and maintaining the content they own
throughout life cycle.
 Content editor will publish content on behalf
of the content owner.

21. Aligning Intranet and
SharePoint roles
Business role
 Intranet manager
 Content Owner
 Content Editor
SharePoint role
 Site Collection Administrator
 Site Administrator
 Contributor

22. Publishing standards:
Requirements
Understand your business needs before you
develop publishing standards. These cover:
 Information policies
 User needs
 Publishing needs
 Legal requirements

23. Publishing standards:
Benefits
 Improve consistency of user experience
 Make people more satisfied
 Increase frequency of usage
 Improve people’s productivity
 Enhance people’s quality of work

24. Publishing Standards:
Ownership Timeliness Security
Findability Usability Accessibility
Navigation Copyright Compliance

25. Ownership
 People need to be confident they know who
owns the information.
 People need to be able to contact the owner
if they need more information or to clarify
anything.

26. Timeliness
 People must be confident that they are using
up-to-date information.
 Content should show when it was last
updated or last reviewed.
 It must also require content to show when
the next review is due.

27. Security
 Information needs to be correctly
categorised.
 Only people with permission to view and use
it have access to it.
 It will be necessary to balance the different
needs:
 People need to be able to access
information easily and avoid unnecessary
logins or passwords
 Your organisation has to be confident that
sensitive information is not at risk.

28. Findability
 It is vital that all information is easy to find by
the people who need to use it for their work.
 There are two aspects to findability:
 The quality of the search engine used.
 How content is presented by owners.

29. Usability
 Information must be usable and valuable.
 Features and functionality need to make it
easier for people, not just implemented for
the sake of it.
 They should help people to:
 Share views
 Discover other people and their skills
 Find the right information
 Use it with minimum of effort and time

30. Accessibility
 Everyone, whether they have a disability or
not, needs an equivalent experience.
 Employees with a disability may use devices
to assist.
 Be compatible with these to avoid risking
breaking accessibility guidelines and
disability laws that apply in the country
where the person works.

31. Navigation
 Reduces need to use other ways to find
information.
 Good, logical, usable headings and menus
help people navigate quickly.
 When navigation is poor and people cannot
access the information easily, search
queries increase.
 Worse, users resort to phoning or emailing
other people to ask for help.

32. Copyright
 Intellectual property providing exclusive
publication, distribution and usage rights
 You cannot use or publish content without
author’s consent.
 Copyright owner who may want to be
acknowledged as the owner.
 Most countries automatically protect by law
original content published.

33. Compliance
 Enforce compliance so people are confident
with integrity of information they use
through:
 Educating and training
 Managing publishing templates
 Auditing and checking
 ALL your content owners and editors

34. Master page example 1

35. SharePoint Library

37. Why your SharePoint intranet
will succeed
 Strategy aligned with organisation goals
 Governance hierarchy supported by senior
managers
 Publishing standards support consistent
user experience
 Governance embedded in SharePoint
 People confident intranet is well-managed

38. Thank you. If you want
more…..
Roadmap for SharePoint
governance at 13:30
Learn how to roll out a successful
SharePoint intranet with good
governance.