Attend this session to better understand how you can build your digital hub powered by SharePoint Online. We’ll dive into how Hub Sites, Communication and broader team sites can support with your digital workplace strategy. Along-side, learning practical tips on how to build your own digital workplace, Kanwal will also share lessons learned on content strategy, migration strategy, brand strategy as well as governance strategy for your SharePoint sites. The Microsoft 365 Collaboration Conference

1. 2021 In-Person Events: M365Conf.comSPRING: Orlando, FL June 8–10, 2021 FALL: Las Vegas, NV Dec 7–9, 2021
Powered by
MICROSOFT 365 COLLABORATION CONFERENCE VIRTUAL EVENT
PRACTICAL TIPS ON DESIGNING A DIGITAL HUB
Kanwal Khipple
CEO
@kkhipple / kanwal@2toLead.com

2. PLATINUM
GOLD
SILVER
THANK YOU TO ALL OUR GENEROUS SPONSORS

3. 2021 In-Person Events: M365Conf.comSPRING: Orlando, FL June 8–10, 2021 FALL: Las Vegas, NV Dec 7–9, 2021
SPEAKER | AUTHOR | SUPER GOOD LOOKING
KANWAL KHIPPLE, CEO
@kkhipple
bit.ly/linkedinkk
2014 2015
11x

4. WHAT IS A DIGITAL WORKPLACE?
Important to understand that a Digital Workplace is how people work today with technology
driven change

5. Rolling out #office365 does not mean you have a digital
workplace

6. THERE ARE FINANCIAL BENEFITS
Infrastructure cost savings, pay per user per month, price bundling, automatic scale and much
more…

7. NO MORE TECHNOLOGY UPGRADES…
It is more challenging to meet modern expectations on legacy technology. By leveraging cloud
technology you no longer need to upgrade.

8. INNOVATION BENEFITS ARE MORE INTERESTING…
Continually improving experiences, continuous rollout of new capabilities, continued integration
with more technologies, and much more. (https://roadmap.office.com)

9. WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE
Being able to work the way you want and making the transition between services seamless

10. VISION
ROADMAP
METRICS
EXPERIENCE
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
PROCESSES
CONTENT
TECHNOLOGY
What we are going to cover today

11. VISION
ROADMAP
METRICS
EXPERIENCE
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
PROCESSES
CONTENT
TECHNOLOGY
What we are going to cover today

12. OUR USERS, OUR EXPERIENCE
Understanding needs from our users perspective guides our priorities
Theodore,
Connector
Kyle,
Collaborator
Judy,
Consumer
Eva,
Contributor
John,
Communicator

13. PAIN POINTS
ADOPTION
Too many tools - Not sure what to use when
No formal training/support (only peer-to-peer support)
Lack of governance
SELF-SERVE – COMMUNICATION &
COLLABORATION
Self-management of workspaces is not available
Client/Project Knowledge not shared across
regions/teams
Lack of collaboration between teams
Lack of best practices for documents management
Frequency of the various pain points we’ve heard. Dominated by Culture, Adoption & Training
frustrations, followed by Workplace Communication & Collaboration.
Automate
Collaboration Digital Hub
Intelligent Search
Adoption
Self-Serve
(Communication &
Collaboration)
Technology
Enablement

14. DESCRIBE SUCCESS IN DIGITAL WORKPLACE
TIP ensure cross-functional
stakeholders are well represented
TIP ensure key champions have an
opportunity to provide insights
into what’s important to them
TIP define a vision that articulates
priorities
The vision describes the future state of the digital workplace and how it will benefit all
stakeholders.
LEADERS
EMPLOYEES
Connect
Contribute Learn
Trust
Empower Lead
Networks
Reward Innovate
ORG

15. ENGAGE AND INTERACT
TIP gather champions and run a workshop to
define personas
TIP understand their frustrations, key goals and
user needs
TIP capture current state and future state needs
TIP capture their interact touch points across the
digital hub
Understanding needs from our users perspective guides our priorities

16. Empower employees to be productive and engage
with their peers through an integrated employee digital
experience
OUR VISION

17. It would be great to find content easily over the Intranet
using search and be able to access work related
documents and materials while I am out of the office
GOALS
Create work related documents
efficiently with reference to existing
documents and templates.
EXPECTATIONS
Consolidate personalized
mechanism to find relevant
content. Personalized
communication/notifications.
FRUSTRATIONS
Difficult to sift through search
results / documents to find the
relevant documents, and lack of
communication relevance to his
work.
“
KEY CHARACTERISTICS
Age
Occupation
Education
Family
Location
41
Field Employee
Bachelor’s Degree
Married
Canada
FUTURE STATE
OUTLOOK
SHAREPOINT
ONEDRIVE
TEAMS
YAMMER
CURRENT STATE
OUTLOOK
SHAREPOINT
ONEDRIVE
TEAMS
YAMMER
Judy
Consumer Persona
Straight Focused independent
ATTRIBUTES
TECHNICAL PROWESS
TECH. AVOIDANCE
ONLINE EXPERIENCE
SOCIAL
DRIVE
TOUCH POINT CHANNELS
Phone Website
Speech Chat
Mobile App
Goal Oriented

18. VISION
ROADMAP
METRICS
EXPERIENCE
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
PROCESSES
CONTENT
TECHNOLOGY
What we are going to cover today

19. USER NEEDS
all requirements are important, but they are prioritized to deliver the greatest and most
immediate business benefits early
TIP split up champions per
personae
TIP what functionality do users
need
TIP understand their frustrations,
key goals and frustrations

20. USER STORIES
Capture user needs by personae. Answer the who, what and the why
As a who are you?
I want to… what is your need?
So that… why is it important to you?
John
Find all relevant documents
from a
unified search
I can quickly review the information
and determine what I can reuse or
reference in my work
flip

21. Workshops and discussions have helped us prioritize and plan out key activities for the next quarter
USER NEEDS
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
Adoption as a
Service
Digital Hub Intelligent Search Knowledge Sharing Team Cooperation

22. MoSCoW Encourage
participation &
prioritize user needs
M ust have
S hould have
C ould have
W on’t have

23. PRODUCT ROADMAP
As we unearth requests, we will align them based on priority and business value
CORE
COMPONENTS
CONTENTS
2021 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
R1 R2
MICROSOFT 365
BETA PILOT
TOP NAVIGATION
SOLUTION FRAMEWORK
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
OOTB BRANDING RESPONSIVE DESIGN
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
PAGE LAYOUTSHOME PAGE
TOP NAVIGATION
FOOTER
HERO SLIDER
EMPLOYEE SPOTLIGHT
STAFF DIRECTORY
RESPONSIVE DESIGN
SPOTLIGHT PAGES
SITE DESIGNS HUB SITES PAGE TEMPLATES? ???

24. Empower employees to be productive and engage with their peers through an integrated employee digital experience
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION ROADMAP
SELF SERVE DIGITAL HUB AUTOMATE
COLLAB
INTELLIGENT
SEARCH ADOPTION AS
A SERVICE
Empower
employees to
manage and
create teams
Measure and
improve
employee
success
Automate
repetitive tasks
Inform and
engage
employees
Deliver smart
results based
on how you
work

25. BUSINESS OBJECTIVES
TIP leverage mind mapping to broke down into
much more specific objectives through
stakeholder participation
Where is the business prioritizing their investments and teams
TIP understand how a solution or technology
benefits the organization and what business
objectives it helps to meet

26. DIGITAL WORKPLACE PLANNING…
Intranets
Extranets
Departmental Portals
Functional Areas
Project Group Sites
Team Group Sites
Enterprise Social Network
Document Management
Records Management
And much much more….
Intranet planning is a small part of your broader digital workplace planning.

27. VISION
ROADMAP
METRICS
EXPERIENCE
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
PROCESSES
CONTENT
TECHNOLOGY
What we are going to cover today

28. ANALYTICS…
The trend for surfacing more actionable analytics to teams, and users will continue.
TIP educate content owners on the metrics
they have available
TIP ensure metrics have clear actionable next
steps

29. ANALYTICS…
http://Office365Metrics.com contains guidance on ways to measure Office 365 & samples
of common business impacts it can drive.
TIP ensure everyone understand what metrics
that are available in Office 365 and Azure
TIP align metrics based on your business
impacts
TIP define baseline by capturing metrics prior
to your launch

30. ANALYTICS…
Far more is tracked today than ever before, and better reporting is continually being made
available to help make sense of all this data.
TIP take advantage of Power BI adoption
content pack for the initial launch of your
portal
TIP review 70+ activities that are tracked and
accessible via the Audit Log search
functionality

31. ANALYTICS…
Workplace Analytics is already making digital workplace KPI’s part of key executive decision
making to drive better results for many organizations.

32. ADD QUIZZES & POLLS WITHIN VIDEO
adding surveys for a recorded CEO town hall meeting, quizzes for flipped classroom videos or
assessments for employee training videos
Roadmap ID: 34240; learn more + help
article.

33. Give you guidance and recommendations to successfully measure & share
the business impact and value of Office 365 http://Office365Metrics.com
DOWNLOAD TO MEASURE
BUSINESS IMPACT & ROI OF
OFFICE 365 WHITEPAPER

34. VISION
ROADMAP
METRICS
EXPERIENCE
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
PROCESSES
CONTENT
TECHNOLOGY
What we are going to cover today

35. INCORPORATE THE SUITE BAR
Design to take full advantage of the platform. Don’t ignore the power and benefit that the
suite bar provides between notifications and quick navigation.
LARGE
MEDIUM
SMALL

36. NAVIGATING BETWEEN APPLICATIONS
While many Intranets build out quick access or app launchers this is in O365
already. Whatever we build should compliment this and not look to replace it.

37. OFFICE 365 SUITE BAR
TIP educate users that Office 365 and
SharePoint labels are there to
communicate what applications they
are using.
TIP configure Office 365 logo to
direct users to the intranet no matter
where they are
TIP leverage Settings menu to enable
configuration for your custom
applications instead of building
another settings menu
Global navigation that provides access to key applications, settings and user profile

38. OFFICE 365 APP LAUNCHER
• TIP leverage Office 365 App Launcher
rather than building your own
• TIP schedule and record training to
guide users how to personalize
applications
• TIP add organization approved
applications and make them available in
users app launcher
• TIP educate users that they can easily
access confidential documents that can
be confident
Enabling users to leverage Office 365-based, 3rd party and in-house applications

39. MODERN NAVIGATION…
Microsoft is provided top and bottom configurable area’s for you to implement consistent
navigation patterns
TIP ensure the experience benefits
multiple scenarios as they are consistent
across site collections
TIP ensure the experience benefits
organizations, teams and individuals as
well as provides a search based experience
TIP take into consideration OOTB and
custom navigation scenario (left hand, top
nav, hub site nav, app launcher)

40. SEARCH BASED NAVIGATION…
While structured and managed navigation is still valid in today’s world it is also important
to improve navigation with powerful capabilities like search.

41. SEARCH ENHANCEMENTS
TIP encourage users to leverage
predictive search results
TIP customize filters to enable users
to get specific search results
TIP encourage users to search for
content-related metadata
Providing the ability to define custom entities and customize their display

42. MICROSOFT SEARCH
unified experience everywhere you are-in the apps you’re already using including Office,
Outlook, SharePoint, OneDrive, Bing and Windows to name a few
Roadmap ID: 34273. Learn more.

43. NEW DESIGNS & TEMPLATES…
The ability to add custom themes, set a default site design, add additional site designs,
scope site designs to users, and more!

44. SHAREPOINT MOBILE APP
TIP unable to customize the brand
TIP extensibility is not yet availability
Take your intranet with you to stay connected and informed about important content,
news, sites and people while on the go – for those in-between moments.

45. BRANDING
TIP keep customizations minimal to
colors (CSS-driven)
TIP leverage Site Designs to apply font
color & background color
TIP no need to build a custom master
page
TIP works well for team sites
Bringing some character to your team sites

46. CREATIVE DESIGN
TIP leverage modern SharePoint UX
rather than build custom
TIP leverage Site Designs to apply font
color & background color
TIP limit custom fonts to Headings
TIP no need to build a custom master
page
TIP leverage for your intranet
Bringing your brand to life

47. VISION
ROADMAP
METRICS
EXPERIENCE
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
PROCESSES
CONTENT
TECHNOLOGY
What we are going to cover today

48. MICROSOFT TEAMS
TIP use General channel for onboarding
and guiding new members
TIP try to facilitate one Subject per
Conversation thread to keep everyone
focused
TIP create channels that for broader
team goals rather then a specific topic
TIP create tabs to connect and
streamline experience for users
Your productivity portal

49. YAMMER
TIP create groups based on specific
topics or use cases
TIP dedicate community managers
TIP encourage lessons learned are
shared with perspective teams
Bring your own drink to the water cooler 

50. PEOPLE RECOGNITION
Finding ways to recognize employees and their accomplishments

51. GO LIVE!
Upload and record videos from your mobile device straight into Microsoft Stream in Office 365
using the Stream mobile app.
Learn more + help article.

52. SHARED STORIES
Building champions in an organization starts by encouraging and sharing failures

53. YAMMER Q&A FEATURES
You can post questions in a Yammer group, and the question poster or any group admin can mark
the best answer to a question.
Roadmap ID: 34238. Read the
Yammer Q&A announcement blog, and
then learn more about how to use Q&A.

54. LEADERSHIP MESSAGING
Enabling your champions and leaders to connect with employees.

55. ADOPTION CAMPAIGN
TIP capture all user-drive adoption
requests
TIP create CoE to store all material
TIP dedicate one adoption lead per
2500 employees
TIP schedule frequent check-ins
TIP measure, test and repeat
Map out adoption needs in a clear plan
JUL 2018 AUG 2018 AUG 201

56. VISION
ROADMAP
METRICS
EXPERIENCE
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
PROCESSES
CONTENT
TECHNOLOGY
What we are going to cover today

57. ENGAGING SOLUTIONS…
As team and departmental news increases we want to ensure our digital hub is helping by giving a broader
view of that important information. You should be integrating team news on your homepage design ASAP.

58. MICROSOFT POWERAPPS
TIP leverage PowerApps for small
tasks
TIP replace InfoPath forms with
PowerApps
TIP keep PowerApps simple
Simplify business process requests

59. METADATA FOR MODERN PAGES
Ability to customize site and news page-related metadata

60. PAGE APPROVAL
Simply name your flow, add the person who will approve your page, save it as a draft, submit for approval.
Once approved, the page status gets updated to “published” and is visible to your intended readers.

61. FORMS & PROCESSES…
PowerApps Web Part can make it easy to add PowerApps to a page for many common form
scenarios throughout your Intranet, teams and sites.

62. MICROSOFT FLOW
TIP automate simple and complex
workflows
TIP leverage to integrate with
applications
Automate your life

63. DONATION MATCHING PROGRAM
Enabling citizen development empowers everyone to create small burst of innovation that
support them and their team

64. DONATION MATCHING PROGRAM
Enabling citizen development empowers everyone to create small burst of innovation that
support them and their team

65. 1-day hackathon
Establishing a culture of failure is important for individuals and teams to grow.

66. VISION
ROADMAP
METRICS
EXPERIENCE
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
PROCESSES
CONTENT
TECHNOLOGY
What we are going to cover today

67. CLASSIC INTRANET STRUCTURE
The intranet would be a site collection in SharePoint with a cascading series of sub-sites.

68. MODERN INTRANET STRUCTURE
TIP All sites are now created as
their own site collection.
TIP Some site collections act as
hubs for other related site
collections.
TIP Site collections are connected
to each other through
navigation.
TIP flat hierarchy directly
simplifies and impacts
governance
In SharePoint Online, the hierarchy is ‘flattened’, with each site being a unique site
collection.
IT
Hub
Help
Desk
Intranet
Home
HR
Hub
Benefits
Professional
Development
Recruiting
Facilities
Mail
Room
Knowledge
Management
Accounting
Operations
Hub
Finance
Hub
Payroll

69. CONTENT OVER TIME…
The modern digital workplace and Intranet has a continually increasing number
of digital spaces or ‘sites’ where content is stored and shared.

70. COMMUNICATION VS TEAM SITES
Communication Site
SharePoint provides 2 types of sites: Communication Sites and Team Sites.
Team Site
Publish dynamic, beautiful content to people in your
organization to keep them informed and engaged on
topics, events, or projects.
Share documents, have conversations with your team,
keep track of events, manage tasks, and more, with a
site connected to an Office 365 Group.

71. HOW DO THEY FIT TOGETHER?
The intranet is made up of Communication sites, for public consumption, while Team sites
act as ‘behind the scenes’ collaboration spaces for individual working groups.
HR
Benefits
Professional
Development
Recruiting
SharePoint
Benefits
Team
Recruiting
Team
PD
Team
Office 365
Teams
Intranet
Communication Sites Team Sites
Communication Sites
• All Staff can view content
• Members can add/edit content
Team Sites
• Only Members can view/add/edit
content

72. GOVERNANCE
Ensuring you have a governance model in place to guide users what sites they should
create
Company
+
Hub Site
Team site Communication siteTeam site
Division
Team
Home Site

73. HUB SITES
TIP use hub sites when team sites
are similar
TIP review team site ownership as
they can connect to any hub
TIP search, branding, navigation and
security (optional) are common
Bringing teams together

74. HOME SITES
Team sites and communication sites will roll up into hub sites. This allows modern rich sites
for all but the homepage and special situations.
TIP The site is configured as an official organizational
news site
TIP Search scope is set to tenant wide for the home site
TIP Enables one click access from the SharePoint
mobile app
TIP Automatically connected to the SharePoint start
page.

75. INTRANET PLANNING…
Over 100 pages of Intranet & O365 guidance at
http://Office365Intranets.com
MOBILE EXPERIENCE
Provides the Intranet to employees
anywhere at anytime, and on any device.
ENTERPRISE SOCIAL
Integrate and enhance from
commenting to interactive
polls.
VIDEO
Storage, conversion
and optimized
playback of video.
FORMS
Providing
rich forms.
ENGAGING SOLUTIONS
Foster engagement with
compelling solutions to business
challenges.
SHARED STORIES
Giving employees a voice
and way to share with the
organization.
NEWS & PAGES
Keeps employees informed
by targeted, easy to publish
articles.
LEADERSHIP MESSAGING
Amplifies reach and impact of leader
communications.
EVENTS
Shared calendar experiences to stay
up to date on corporate and
divisional events.
PEOPLE
RECOGNITION
Celebrating
talent/connecting people
within the organization.
PEOPLE SEARCH
Intuitive, intelligent and
modern people search
experiences.
CONTENT SEARCH
Powerful full text search available
across the entire Intranet and in
specific collections.
TOOLS & QUICK
ACCESS
Accessible and rapid access
with single sign on to key
tools/apps.
FLEXIBLE
NAVIGATION
Powered by metadata, site
structure or search.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
Foundational for the Intranet and ECM and includes site, file, and sensitive data
classification, planning and defining audiences, site templates, page templates, content
types and much more.
ACTIONABLE
ANALYTICS
Provide actionable
insights based on usage.

76. VISION
ROADMAP
METRICS
EXPERIENCE
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
PROCESSES
CONTENT
TECHNOLOGY
What we are going to cover today

77. SHAREPOINT SITE CREATION EXPERIENCE…
While this is a powerful new capability that works great for many smaller orgs,
but for governance and navigation you may need and want more structure.

78. MANAGE PROVISIONING…
By centralizing and governing the creation of ‘spaces’ or sites we can improve content
organization drastically with things like default metadata and templates.

79. Want to spark a conversation within Teams for every News
article? Just add the News connector!
1. Right-click any Microsoft Teams channel,
2. click Connectors, and then
3. add SharePoint News.
POST ALL YOUR TEAM NEWS INTO MICROSOFT
TEAMS AUTOMATICALLY
You can also post each news article to your team automatically, to drive visibility and
engagement. Each article generates a conversation within the selected Microsoft Teams channel.

80. MULTI GEO SUPPORT…
Multi-Geo search and services stores data locally in a region and ensures data remains in
that region if desired. Combine this with site level conditional access.

81. WEATHER COMPONENT
allow authors to configure showing the web part to show weather information provided by MSN
Weather for a given location.

82. ENABLING NEW VIDEO EXPERIENCES…
From inserting and offline viewing, to subtitles and captions, these Video experiences are always
undergoing constant innovation and greater integration.

83. MICROSOFT LEARNING PATHWAY
Ability to surface Microsoft Training content directly within SharePoint

84. AUDIENCE TARGETTING
you can better define what news articles and pages appear on the home experience of your site
by configuring what is visible to specific groups

85. NEW MICROSOFT PLANNER INTEGRATIONS
This is Planner for the team as a full-page app. Simply click New > Plan, and start
managing team tasks right inside the SharePoint user experience.

86. PLANNER AND TO-DO INTEGRATION
Within Microsoft To-Do, you should see the Assigned to Me connection. When this is on, you’ll see your
Planner tasks appear within the To-Do app (as shown within the Settings for Microsoft To-Do for Android).
Roadmap ID: 45523. Learn more.

87. NOTIFICATIONS ABOUT YOUR PLANNER TASK
ASSIGNMENTS IN MICROSOFT TEAMS
You can get a Microsoft Teams notification when a Planner task is assigned to you by
another person if your team has Planner installed and your plan has a tab in Teams.
Roadmap ID: 45878. Learn more.

88. Whether you are moving from a file share, legacy system, previous version of SharePoint,
or another Office 365 tenant – being successful requires a practical understanding of what
to do, and what not to do. http://SharePointMigrations.com
DOWNLAOD FOR GUIDANCE
AND RECOMMENDATIONS TO
SUCCESSFULLY PLAN AND
EXECUTE YOUR SHAREPOINT
MIGRATION

89. VISION
ROADMAP
METRICS
EXPERIENCE
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
PROCESSES
CONTENT
TECHNOLOGY
What we are going to cover today

90. WHY CULTURE
Iterative and just in time approach to adoption

91. COMMUNICATION
COLLABORATIONPRODUCTIVITY
Groups Teams
YOUR ROLE AS A PRODUCT MANAGER
• TIP follow the office 365 roadmap
(roadmap.office.com)
• TIP follow the techcommunity
(https://techcommunity.microsoft.com)
• TIP major release every 2 years
• TIP 4 minor releases every year
• TIP build a visual roadmap of product features
You managing a product not a set of projects

92. DIGITAL WORKPLACE PLANNING…
Intranets
Extranets
Departmental Portals
Functional Areas
Project Group Sites
Team Group Sites
Enterprise Social Network
Document Management
Records Management
And much much more….
Intranet planning is a small part of your broader digital workplace planning.

93. My twitter handle is @kkhipple and I work at
Thank You!
Organizers, Sponsors and You for making this possible.
75+ SharePoint Presentations @ Slideshare.Net/kkhipple
When to Use What Whitepaper @ WhentoUseWhat.com
Intranets w/ Office 365 Whitepaper @ Office365Intranets.com
External Sharing w/ Office 365 Whitepaper @ Office365Extranets.com
and more!
Message Me On LinkedIn or Email Kanwal@2toLead.com
SPEAKER | AUTHOR | SUPER GOOD LOOKING