Susan Hanley

Author Archives: Susan Hanley

Knowledge management takes center stage at SharePoint Virtual Summit

In 2016, May 4 was all about SharePoint. In another “May moment” this year (May 16), Microsoft unveiled the latest innovations for SharePoint and OneDrive during the SharePoint Virtual Summit. If you missed the event, you still can watch the entire program online.There were lots of exciting announcements, and it’s worth watching the entire two-hour event, but it included several compelling announcements related to technology capabilities that can help organizations realize their knowledge management goals.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

10 tips to get started with Microsoft Teams

In November 2011, I wrote a blog post called SharePoint User Adoption Strategy: Team Member “Service Level Agreement.” In that post, I talked about how important it is to start off any project with a shared agreement about how the team is going to work together, including how to organize, tag, and name files in the SharePoint team site. With today’s exciting announcement of the general availability of Microsoft Teams, I offer some updates to that post to ensure that your organization gets the most value out of Microsoft Teams.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

End User Involvement, Governance, and Expert Help Drive Success in the 10 Best Intranets of 2017

January doesn’t just mean the start of a new year for me – it also means an opportunity to review the Nielsen Norman Group’s Intranet Design Annual. The 10 Best Intranets of 2017 were officially announced on January 7, 2017. Even though it’s a little weird to call these the best intranets of 2017 – especially because the submissions were completed in June of 2016 – the report has a lot of interesting and helpful information and design trends that intranet design teams should consider. A word of caution as you review the full report, just because a feature was used in an “award winning” intranet doesn’t mean it needs to show up on your intranet! Megamenus continue to be a popular method for intranet navigation – and about half of the award winners use megamenus for global navigation. But that doesn’t mean your intranet must have a megamenu! You do, on the other hand, need to make sure that your users can find what they need easily. But, that doesn’t mean you must choose a megamenu as your navigational approach. On the other hand, if you don’t have a plan for ongoing governance, you can pretty much be Continue reading

A New Year’s Resolution for your Intranet: Do an IA Health Check!

I spent a lot of time in 2016 working on more information architecture (IA) projects than usual – from designing comprehensive information architectures as part of intranet migrations or upgrades to small IA usability engagements and everything in between. Here are six key lessons that I learned that can form the basis of your new year’s resolution to give your intranet IA a health check.The Information Architecture for your intranet provides the strategy and plan for information access. It informs how users will navigate through the solution and how information managed by the solution will be organized. A good intranet information architecture is 100% focused on the people who need to process, find, and interact with the content. We mostly think of IA as supporting the “browse” experience. But, given the fact that search depends on metadata, which is part of your IA, a good IA is also supports search. If you get it right, your information architecture will help users find content in three critical content-finding scenarios:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Go Teams! – Microsoft introduces new way to connect people and conversations

October was a big month for Microsoft with lots of exciting updates to software and hardware, but today brings the official announcement of Microsoft Teams – the much anticipated group chat workspace for Office 365 users. Microsoft Teams is a new experience that brings together people, conversations, and content in Office 365. Microsoft Teams is (are?) Microsoft’s answer to Slack. The cool thing about Microsoft Teams, however, is that while Microsoft may be a little late to the group chat party, it’s got all the elements needed to deliver a best-in-class solution – and these tools are the ones we already use every day.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Atlanta Ignites with Continued SharePoint and OneDrive Innovation!

This past week, Atlanta was host to about 25,000 visitors for Microsoft Ignite. During the Day 1 keynote, Jeff Teper, Corporate Vice President for OneDrive and SharePoint, took the stage for 15 minutes to introduce the continued investments Microsoft has made in SharePoint that were previewed in San Francisco on May 4, 2016. The SharePoint announcements were only part of an incredible array of announcements across the Office 365 family, including some major infrastructure and security announcements and some awesome features for Office that I can’t wait to try!To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

It takes a village: Change management with Office 365

One of the key benefits of leveraging Office 365 for your SharePoint solutions is that you will be able to take advantage of all of the latest and greatest advances in the platform as they are launched. This means that you don’t have to worry about managing upgrades and fixes – and this should save time and resources associated with platform management. But, it also means that you have less control over when changes happen in your environment – and that means you need to stay on top of what Microsoft is planning. Successful change management is a lot about managing expectations. When people are fully informed and aware of changes to the software they use every day, the changes can be easier to accept – especially if you have evaluated the impact of these changes in advance. To ensure that your continuously evolving Office 365 environment is not disruptive to your users, you need to monitor what is happening with the platform with a multi-faceted “lens” – looking at upcoming changes from multiple perspectives. For that, it takes a village.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Wondering where common actions got moved in Modern Document Libraries? Use this handy guide!

One of the best things about SharePoint on Office 365 is that you are able to take advantage of all of the great new features that Microsoft is developing as part of the future of SharePoint as they become available. While some updates have only minimal impact on end user experiences, modern document libraries introduce some pretty significant differences that might make users uncomfortable for a little while. After all, all change is disruptive when it’s unfamiliar! To help both me and my clients quickly find where common document library actions have moved, I created a feature comparison table that I’m sharing in this post. This is my “dude, where’s my car?” or “where did my cheese go?” summary.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

For Your Reading List: Re-Imagining Productive Work with Office 365 by Michael Sampson

Michael Sampson’s latest book, Re-Imagining Productive Work with Office 365, is a “must read” if you are currently using or planning to use Office 365. Michael is a brilliant author and approaches his overview of Office 365 not from the perspective of the individual technology elements, but from the perspective of the activities that “information workers” do every day: Storing and sharing files Profiling employee expertise Co-authoring documents Managing meetings Holding discussions Running team projects Thinking productively The focus on business activities instead of specific technologies provides a very practical way of consuming the information in this very well researched book. It will help you understand which aspect of Office 365 to use in a variety of business use cases and how you can best engage your colleagues to be successful with this technology suite. Though the features and capabilities of Office 365 are updated almost too quickly to be incorporated into a book, Michael has found a way to make sure the book’s content stays relevant by indicating where future updates will improve or enhance the experiences he describes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Future of SharePoint is All About You

This morning (May 4, 2016), I had the pleasure of being in San Francisco for Microsoft’s “Future of SharePoint” event, which coincided with the general availability date for SharePoint 2016. This is the second time I’ve been in San Francisco for a major SharePoint event. The last time was in 2003, for the launch of SharePoint 2003. It’s amazing how far things have come in the past 13 years! The future of SharePoint is now – and the future is all about you and me – and making it easier to connect and collaborate and get work done in a way that brings the information we need to make key decisions to the places we need it, in the format we need it in, and on the device we are currently using. The future of SharePoint is all about people – and there should be no doubt that Microsoft is continuing to invest in providing great people experiences with SharePoint. While I am super focused on user experiences in SharePoint, and Microsoft has shown users a whole lotta love in the announcements today, developers are going to be pretty happy too – along with the folks focused on security and Continue reading

A SharePoint Conference and a South African Safari: Two great ideas to consider for June 2016

This is going to be a great week for SharePoint with the Future of SharePoint event coming on May 4. It’s not too late to register and even if you can’t watch the event live, you will be able to watch it later if you register. About 7 weeks later, from June 20-22, 2016, there is another opportunity worth considering: attending the Share Conference in South Africa.Share is a unique event sponsored by The Eventful Group. Each year, the conference producers conduct a series of focus groups to understand the critical issues and important topics for business users. Yes, that’s right – business users. Share is a business-centric conference for people who want to identify new and different ways to use SharePoint to solve business problems. This year’s hot topics include:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here