Using Microsoft Teams And Intranet Together For Modern Employee Experience

Using Microsoft Teams and Intranet Together For Modern Employee Experience

The COVID-19 pandemic shifted a majority of the employees to a remote working setup and led to mass and accelerated adoption of virtual collaboration platforms for seamless communication and employee engagement.

Among such platforms, Microsoft Teams has emerged as the go-to choice for enterprises globally with 145 million daily active users, up from 75 million last year.

Over 500,000 organizations use Microsoft Teams as their default messaging platform to host meetings, talk to colleagues, and send and receive project updates. Moreover, companies have started deploying modern intranets as a cohesive space for people to access all the tools and information they need daily.

Companies have realized that it’s vital to meet their employees where they are. Consequently, Microsoft customers have found that with the growing adoption of Teams, integrating it with the intranet and getting the two platforms together brings out the best of both and leads to a seamless end-user experience.

But is it time to bid goodbye to your intranet? This blog discusses why Microsoft Teams can’t replace your company’s intranet and how integrating the two makes for a modern employee experience.

How can organizations use Microsoft Teams and intranet together? What are the benefits of marrying up the two?

In a Microsoft webinar conducted recently, “Living in Microsoft Teams? Now, so does your intranet,” the Microsoft 365 team stated, “When we speak to M365 users, we consistently hear that they’re spending a majority of their time in Microsoft Teams. Staying within a single hub helps them to focus and maintain their flow without getting distracted by multiple apps or browser tabs.”

In February 2021, Microsoft launched VIVA, an employee experience platform that brings together knowledge, communications, learning, and insights across four modules, namely VIVA Connections, VIVA Learning, VIVA Insights, and VIVA Topics.

VIVA Connections makes conversations, news, and other relevant content from your organization’s intranet available right within Teams, so employees don’t have to constantly switch apps to access the required information. In short, VIVA Connections brings your modern intranet experience to Microsoft Teams.

A unified digital gateway to your company’s intranet, the VIVA Connections in Microsoft Teams, allows employees to access the intranet’s most essential resources and portals without having to leave Teams.

Today, many Microsoft customers set up a SharePoint intranet portal as a third-party app, implementing a sub-par experience with multiple headers, competing navigation elements, and lack of support for key features, including mega menus and search.

VIVA Connections overcomes the above issues and offers a comprehensive and consistent intranet experience that allows employees to carry out the following tasks –

  • Use the company-branded VIVA Connections icon to navigate to the intranet landing page and view a quick snapshot of company news, recommended videos, and other content tailored according to a user’s location, role, department, interests, language, and more, grouped in one place.
  • Access a complete set of way-finding capabilities via mega menus and the hub’s navigation.
  • Leverage the intranet’s search functionality to quickly access personalized information, such as documents, policies, and reports.
  • Open SharePoint pages and articles in the file preview mode without losing context.
  • Quickly share links to content with your colleagues on MS Teams conversations.
  • Switch between Microsoft Teams and your intranet with a single click.
  • Experience the richness of SharePoint within Teams with functionalities that connect the two and allow employees –
    • Full fidelity access to their document libraries within Teams, including options for filtering, sorting, grouping, etc.
    • The option to add pages and lists as tabs and enable your teams to start discussions on them.
    • The power to create new teams and add existing content from SharePoint directly into them.

Why can’t Microsoft Teams replace your organization’s intranet?

Let’s get back to whether it’s possible to bid goodbye to your organization’s intranet. Despite sharing some of the core functionalities of an intranet, the former can’t replace the latter. 

A recently conducted survey that interviewed 500 HR leaders found that 92% confirmed employee experience as a top priority in 2021.

While MS Teams boosts engagement and increases communication among groups, that is not enough to ensure a compelling employee experience. Employees still need access to centralized resources and targeted content, a branded platform customized to the organization’s unique logo, colors, fonts, etc., and a successful governance structure to ensure the content pages stay relevant and updated. That is where your intranet comes into the picture.

As Jeff Teper, Corporate Vice President – Microsoft 365 Collaboration with Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, has said, “The future of work isn’t going to be solely remote or in the office, but a continuum of both. As more work becomes hybrid, customers need the simplicity of having all their tools working harmoniously.”

Mesh 3.0 is now on VIVA Connections!

As a Microsoft Gold Partner, Acuvate helps clients experience the best of both Microsoft Teams and modern SharePoint intranet with our autonomous SharePoint intranet solution, Mesh 3.0.

By implementing VIVA Connections for our clients, we support the availability of Mesh within Microsoft Teams, and help organizations meet users where they are, unlock maximum engagement and the full potential of the intranet, and deliver a modern employee experience.

We have 14+ years of experience in deploying SharePoint intranet for companies from various industries. Our intranet solutions are recognized by leading industry analysts, including Gartner, Forrester, and ClearBox Consulting.

To know more about Mesh 3.0 and its integration with Microsoft Teams and VIVA Connections, please feel free to schedule a personalized consultation with our experts.