Intranet vs Teams

Intranet vs Teams

Shannon Donovan Training

Does Teams replace the intranet? We’ve been working with lots of clients lately who are currently thinking about this.  Which of these scenarios do you fit into?

 

You’re using Teams but the org-wide Team isn’t quite hitting the mark that an Intranet would
You’ve got an Intranet but now most people are using Teams it’s a bit of a pain to have to go to SharePoint to get to it
You’ve got an Intranet already and people are quite happy accessing it from SharePoint

 

Good news!  No matter which one of these statements fits your organisation, there’s something coming that will be of interest.

The first change coming – and most impactful – is the Home site app for Teams.  Pretty soon you’ll be able to pin your Intranet to the side navigation panel in Microsoft Teams with a branded entry point!  Now, I know you can already add your Intranet in as a tab in your Team – and that’s what we’ve all probably been doing up until today.  But – and it is quite a big but – you lose all navigation elements when doing this (no global nav / current nav from the site comes through on the tab).

The new Home site app not only brings through your current navigation bar – but there is a special new pop-out global navigation panel, which also surfaces your recent files and followed sites.  As if that wasn’t a sweet enough experience, what makes it even better is that when you’re in the Home site app it’s full screen so you can appreciate the rich Intranet content with more real estate than the default view of a Teams tab.

Now, if you fall into that third category I mentioned – ie SharePoint only users – you’re now thinking “what’s in it for me?”.  OK, so the Home site app isn’t going to mean much for you – but the design elements that are changing for sites should excite you. 

  • You can also take advantage of that cool new pop-out global navigation panel for your Intranet (Home sites only)
  • The options for your site banner – so many cool options to tailor it both in size, colour, and display wording
  • Additional footer design options
  • You can apply the newly released site designs retrospectively to existing sites
  • You can create site designs yourself using a special web-based design-writing wizard and upload it via Powershell

Now that I’ve made you so excited… some of the things you need to consider are:

  • The integration with Teams only applies to Home sites
  • Home sites MUST be communication sites
  • It’s a good idea for your Home site to be your root site
  • You can only have one Home site
  • Audience targeting you’ve set up on navigation links is respected within the Home site Teams app
  • There are multiple places to put logos – it’s good to plan out what is going to go where, rather than put the same one in multiple places

I can’t wait to chew on this new Intranet candy!  Available on targeted release by the end of 2020 (and general availability early 2021). In the meantime, if you want to learn more about building a great Home site, please see the resources list below.

One last point to make, some organisations are choosing not to have an Intranet at all and that using an org-wide Team gives them everything they need for centralised communications and information.  If you fall into that category, that’s all good.  There’s other great Teams improvements coming that you’ll like… But you’ll have to wait for the next blog post for those!

RESOURCES: