Information Leadership’s Post

Many organisations are still doing much of their day-to-day work by email. Great work from the IL and NZ Film combined team, making it easier to manage the email deluge and ensure users have a single, authoritative, source of truth.

The decision between DAM and SharePoint is rarely about which tool is better. It is about what kind of content lifecycle your organisation is managing. If reuse, rights control and external collaboration are critical, a DAM provides structure that general collaboration tools were not designed to deliver. https://hubs.la/Q0447kXN0

If you work in Employee Comms and leveraging Microsoft then this is for you... The Strategic "Why" Verisure chose to partner with Staffbase. Verisure’s decision wasn't about replacing Microsoft, but about extending its reach. They viewed Microsoft 365 as their "Internal Engine" (for document storage and office collaboration) and Staffbase as their "Digital Front Door" (for frontline engagement and brand identity). 1. Bridging the "Frontline Gap" (Access & Cost) The Microsoft Gap: High licensing costs and complex login requirements (MFA/Intune) made it difficult to provide every field technician and security guard with a digital identity. The Staffbase Benefit: It provides a "license-light" environment. Verisure can reach 100% of their workforce on personal or shared devices without the administrative or financial burden of a full Microsoft 365 seat for every temporary or mobile worker. 2. A Branded "Single Front Door" Experience The Microsoft Gap: "Channel sprawl" across Teams, SharePoint, and Outlook often left employees confused about where to find authoritative news. The Staffbase Benefit: It acts as a unified, fully branded "Verisure App." This creates an emotional connection for remote staff and serves as a central hub that aggregates the most important links and tools from the Microsoft ecosystem into one simple mobile interface. 3. "Push" vs. "Pull" Communication The Microsoft Gap: SharePoint and Yammer are "pull" platforms, users must actively seek out information. Critical security updates can easily be missed in a busy inbox or feed. The Benefit: Staffbase allows Verisure to send targeted push notifications directly to employees' lock screens. This ensures that high-priority safety protocols or company announcements are seen instantly by specific roles or regions. 4. Overcoming Technical & Language Barriers The Microsoft Gap: Local managers often found SharePoint too technical to update quickly, and translating corporate news into Verisure’s 17+ operating languages was a slow, manual process. The Benefit: Staffbase offers a simplified "create once, publish everywhere" editor with integrated AI translation. This allows a Swedish manager to post an update that a Spanish technician can read instantly in their native language, bypassing the IT bottleneck. 5. Advanced Analytics & "Federated" Search The Microsoft Gap: It is notoriously difficult to track "Read Receipts" across a fragmented Microsoft environment to see if a specific group (e.g., "Night Shift Technicians") has seen an update. The Benefit: Staffbase provides a Mission Control dashboard with granular analytics. Combined with Federated Search, which pulls results from both Staffbase and SharePoint simultaneously, employees spend less time searching and leadership spends less time wondering if their message landed. Hear more from Darren Lumley and Kevin Hähnlein on the link https://lnkd.in/ejARjJNS

Your SharePoint intranet doesn't have to feel like a ghost town. Here's how to transform it into a hub that employees actually want to visit: 1️⃣ Make your homepage work harder Stop treating it like a notice board. Use dynamic content that changes based on who's viewing it - personalised news, quick links to tools they actually use, and announcements relevant to their department. 2️⃣ Fix your navigation structure If employees need more than three clicks to find what they're looking for, you've lost them. Create clear department landing pages and use consistent navigation patterns across all sites. 3️⃣ Give departments ownership tools The biggest intranet killer? Outdated content. Provide department heads with simple templates and publishing tools so they can keep their sections fresh without needing IT support every time. 4️⃣ Surface your intranet where people work Don't make employees hunt for information. Integrate intranet content directly into Teams, Outlook, and other daily tools so critical updates reach them in their workflow. 5️⃣ Brand it properly A generic SharePoint site screams 'boring corporate tool'. Custom branding that reflects your organisation's personality makes the intranet feel like it belongs to your culture, not Microsoft's. 6️⃣ Make search actually work Tag content properly, use consistent naming conventions, and implement search refiners so employees can filter results by department, document type, or date. Small changes, big impact on engagement. #SharePoint #InternalComms #Microsoft365 #Lightspeed365

One for internal comms and marketing teams. If you're a Microsoft house with SharePoint and Teams running through the business, your intranet could be doing a lot more than it is.

Managing business emails efficiently is critical for organisations using Microsoft 365. Our latest blog explores how SharePoint–Outlook integration helps teams in Germany save emails directly to SharePoint, improve collaboration, and strengthen compliance without changing how they work in Outlook. Discover how centralised email storage, better traceability, and structured document management can transform daily workflows. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gE__VFGK #Microsoft365 #SharePoint #Outlook #EmailManagement #Compliance #DigitalWorkplace

Familiar with the term “SharePoint graveyard”? If your intranet feels like the place where information goes to die, here are 3 practical steps to turn it from a cemetery into a thriving environment that truly serves your colleagues and your business. ⚙️🌱 1️⃣ Natural Alignment for Editors There must be a natural alignment between a content editor’s actual job and the area of SharePoint they own. This means splitting your intranet into clear areas of responsibility — and assigning each area to the right people. 💡 In the comments, you’ll find my article “Who Should Contribute to Your Intranet?” 2️⃣ Clear Visibility Whatever content a person manages should be easy to see, evaluate, and update. Think of a coffee shop ☕: Waiters can instantly spot tables that need clearing or chairs that need adjusting. In SharePoint, this means giving editors a single view of everything they own — operational announcements, SOPs, training resources, support contacts, etc. 💡 I’ve linked in the comments my article “What Intranet Managers Can Learn From a Coffee Shop.” 3️⃣ Connect With All Internal Customers Each topic owner may run their own “mini coffee shop,” but your role is to assemble them into a shopping mall of internal services 🛍️ — a place where topic owners and employees naturally meet. When your intranet is designed as a mall of internal services, content starts to stay fresh and relevant because: “Store owners” (topic editors) meet the real needs of “Customers” (employees). 💡 In the comments, you’ll find my take on seeing a digital workplace as a mall. THE RESULT 🚀 🎯 Instead of maintaining outdated content with little business impact, your role shifts to managing relationships, enabling collaboration, and helping internal services work better together. And honestly… It’s a lot more fun maintaining an internal service mall than a graveyard. 😄🛒

Someone on a call last week described their documentation system as "a lucky charms trail across drives nobody knew existed." I laughed. Then I realized every SI team I've talked to has their own version of this. Requirements in a SharePoint folder from 2019. Meeting notes in OneNote. Decisions buried in email threads. Process diagrams in someone's personal Visio license. The SOW in a folder only the sales lead had access to. Nobody planned this. It just... accumulated. Each project left artifacts in different places. Each team member had their own system. Each client engagement added another layer. And here's the thing nobody wants to admit: it's often faster to recreate a document from scratch than to find the one that already exists. I talked to a consultant who spent half a day searching for a requirements template his colleague built six months ago. He couldn't find it. So he spent another half day building a new one. Later that week, someone found the original. It was better. This is the real cost of doc sprawl. It's not the storage fees. It's not the mess. It's that people stop looking. They stop trusting that what they need exists somewhere accessible. So they reinvent. Every time. A thousand pages of documentation is worth nothing if nobody can find page three.

🚀 Boost Your Productivity with SharePoint Workflows! Tired of drowning in repetitive tasks? Discover how automated workflows in SharePoint can save you time, reduce errors, and supercharge efficiency! From document approvals to leave requests, automation is your secret weapon. 💡#SharePoint #WorkflowAutomation #ProductivityHacks #BusinessAutomation #TimeSavingTips #DigitalTransformation #Office365 #MicrosoftSharePoint #Efficiency #WorkSmarter #NoCodeAutomation #TechTips #BPM #ProcessImprovement

“Just send them a reminder every month.” That’s how the conversation with my manager started. Sounded simple… until I looked at what “simple” actually meant. 200+ service sites across the country. Different engineers. Different dates. Different locations. Every single month. What followed was exactly what you’d expect: – Wrong reminders going out – Some sites getting missed – Follow-ups slipping through the cracks And someone had to sit there and do this manually. Every. Month. So instead of fixing it every month, I fixed it once. I built a fully automated preventive maintenance notification system using Power Automate. Now it just runs. No chasing. No reminders. No stress. 🔧 Here’s what I actually built 👇 The flow (8 steps — fully automated): ⏰ Recurrence trigger Runs on the 1st of every month at 8:00 AM. I don’t touch it. 📊 Single source of truth An Excel file on SharePoint with all sites, engineers, and PM schedules. 🔍 Data handling Parsed the data, initialized variables, and started building the email layout dynamically. 🔄 Smart looping The flow reads the current month automatically using formatDateTime(utcNow(), 'MMM-yy') No hardcoding. Works next month. And the month after that. 📝 Email generation HTML table built row-by-row so each engineer only sees their sites. 📧 Send Email (V2) Clean, readable emails — no clutter, no confusion. A few small technical choices that made a big difference: → Alternating row colors for readability → Pill-style badges for Contract Type & PM Date → Dropped gradients because Outlook quietly breaks them → Used table-based HTML (because Outlook hates divs) → Dynamic month columns so I never update this flow again The outcome: ✅ 200+ sites covered ✅ No missed PMs ✅ No manual reminders ✅ No monthly cleanup ✅ One flow doing its job quietly in the background Built once. Running every month. Exactly how automation should be. If you’re managing maintenance schedules, field services, or recurring contracts and still doing reminders manually, you’re working harder than you need to. Happy to share how this can be adapted to your setup 👇 #PowerAutomate #Microsoft365 #LowCode #ProcessAutomation #FieldService #PreventiveMaintenance #SharePoint #WorkflowAutomation #DigitalTransformation