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Need to use a SharePoint intranet due to internal policies, company transitions, or legacy systems? When all the available information is overly technical or negative, where do you turn? Enter Fresh Perspectives: Living in the reality of SharePoint intranets. We provide useful, jargon-free insights and real-world examples to help you maximize the benefits of SharePoint intranets and tackle its challenges. Pro-SharePoint but realistic, we debunk misconceptions and share product management insights from Fresh Intranet.
Jarbas Horst [00:00:14]:
Fresh Perspectives again, David.
David Bowman [00:00:15]:
Nice.
Jarbas Horst [00:00:16]:
I don't have my clapper board with me this time.
David Bowman [00:00:18]:
It's a small, portable replacement.
Jarbas Horst [00:00:21]:
Yes. That's all what I got. Which is the reason, actually, is because I am in London once again for very good reasons. And. Yes. So that's. That's the setup I have. And very nice view.
David Bowman [00:00:34]:
Yes.
Jarbas Horst [00:00:34]:
It's raining here, which is. It's kind of. It's. I think it's good. You know, it belongs to the experience of visiting London. Yeah. Yeah. All of that happening.
David Bowman [00:00:42]:
How are you? I'm good, I'm good. I'm not in London. I am some miles south of London. And, you know, we were saying earlier that it's, you know, when we, I think the first bit of planning that we were doing about doing this podcast series. I was in Nuremberg with you and here we are last episode and you're in London.
Jarbas Horst [00:01:00]:
Yes. It's a bit of a change, but. Well, it's still the same people. The topic is still intranet and SharePoint haven’t changed, which is great.
David Bowman [00:01:09]:
Yes.
Jarbas Horst [00:01:10]:
And it's a special episode this time, isn't it?
David Bowman [00:01:13]:
Yes. Our final episode of season one. I feel like I'm in Buffy the Vampire Slayer or something.
Jarbas Horst [00:01:19]:
Yeah, it feels, but it's not coming to an end. Right. We have more to come. We'll talk more about that at the end of this episode.
David Bowman [00:01:28]:
Yes. So I'm Dave Bowman, Product Director for Fresh Intranet.
Jarbas Horst [00:01:31]:
I'm Jarbas Horst, the Senior Product Manager for Fresh.
David Bowman [00:01:34]:
All right, so we're going to do a just a bit of a summary as to how we've got on over the last. Is it 12 episodes?
Jarbas Horst [00:01:41]:
12 episodes.
David Bowman [00:01:42]:
Wonderful. What was your favorite?
Jarbas Horst [00:01:44]:
My favorite one, you know, we had at the beginning of this year the recording on the trends and predictions for 2025 where we talked about Viva Engage kind of increasing its visibility across Microsoft 365 and improving SharePoint going web publishing, email.
David Bowman [00:02:03]:
Beautiful. SharePoint.
Jarbas Horst [00:02:04]:
Beautiful. SharePoint and email kind of not disappearing. You know, there's a lot more discussions about emails and that kind of not changing. So emails can still present as part of comms.
David Bowman [00:02:15]:
Yeah.
Jarbas Horst [00:02:16]:
And AI. I think the AI part was really nice. And I always have the. This one thing in mind that you mentioned there. Right. So AI kind of being transformational, but like not with all letters capitalized. Right. And I.
Jarbas Horst [00:02:29]:
I always keep that in mind. And I think when I see something that's AI related, that comes kind of back. Is that kind of align still. So that was my. My favorite one. What was your favorite one.
David Bowman [00:02:38]:
Yeah. I think similarly I. It sounds sort of big headed to say. Right. I do end up listening to the episodes but I've done a lot of traveling. Sometimes the episodes come on, on the, you know, kind of next episode on the podcast. It sounds weird to say I enjoyed listening back to that trends and predictions episode. I think we were having a great time that day.
David Bowman [00:02:57]:
We'd. We'd got our act together finally on the episode.
Jarbas Horst [00:03:01]:
Well, I think the nice. What like what I like about that episode. Right. So this is where kind of talks to discuss there. But it was a dialogue. Right? It was a nice dialogue. Both kind of contributing which was definitely nice. We had a lot of preparation.
Jarbas Horst [00:03:15]:
Yeah. Thinking like of course kind of analyzing the market but also like thinking and like trying to draw on conclusions based on information we get.
David Bowman [00:03:24]:
Yeah. And any others that was kind of stand out for you that than the trends predictions.
Jarbas Horst [00:03:29]:
Yes. We had this one about search which was a similar. I think was a similar experience than the one about the trends and predictions research before the episode. Very good dialogue, very good flow which makes it fun. And I think a lot of these episodes actually that we have is a lot of, you know, it's like if we would be sitting in a meeting and having a chat.
David Bowman [00:03:49]:
Yeah.
Jarbas Horst [00:03:49]:
Which is always kind of very enjoyable. And what about you? Right. So do you have like a second favorite one?
David Bowman [00:03:55]:
Yeah, probably joined second. You know, I did enjoy the benefits of SharePoint 1. You know, I think there was some good, some good items that we talked about and uncovered in that episode. I think there's probably other content that we should look into creating from the episode because there was, you know, there was some good stuff in there. You know, I also really enjoy talking to Kai from Swoop Analytics. Yes, I always enjoy my conversations with Kai. So it was, you know, it's really nice to be able to get him on and talk to him about. He's a very passionate person in terms of analytics and communications generally.
David Bowman [00:04:26]:
So you know, he's a really cool guy to talk about on this topic. Anything that you learned while we've been doing these episodes?
Jarbas Horst [00:04:34]:
Well, yes. You know that I have like my own blog where I'm always like writing blog posts and writing has been like a very common format for me, like to share my knowledge to learn also. Right. It's. It's kind of always the same aspect. We are doing some research. We've been writing that down and sharing that and experiencing the podcast format was a bit of a challenge for me initially. So kind of going out of the comfort zone and, well, speaking, which, like English is not my native language, as people might have noticed.
Jarbas Horst [00:05:07]:
And like, of course, like the video. Right. So kind of seeing your face more often than we are maybe used to. So I think that was. This learning aspect was great. And then of course, all of the research that we do before an episode, there's a bit of work that happens there that people don't see. But like, that help us deepen our knowledge in the subject and I think that's valuable as well.
David Bowman [00:05:30]:
Yeah.
Jarbas Horst [00:05:30]:
So what's about you?
David Bowman [00:05:32]:
I feel like probably the episode that I learned the most or personally found the most useful was the conversation that we had with Manish Mystery, talking about copilot. You know, I'd spent a lot of time reading about copilot. I'd spent a lot of time listening to people talking about Copilot. But, you know, I hadn't really at the time moved beyond any of the basics. Right. You know, I was, you know, teams meeting summaries and kind of coming back for a holiday, catching up on emails, those sort of real, sort of super basic use cases. But what I really liked about the episode from Manish, the takeaway for me was kind of listening to him talking about it was completely different from how I was experiencing it. So it was really useful to be able to kind of reflect on that conversation with him and the kind of prep work that we did with him in advance.
Jarbas Horst [00:06:12]:
Right.
David Bowman [00:06:12]:
And just kind of really reflect on that and start to think about having conversations with Copilot rather than sort of one shot prompts, which I think I was doing a lot of the time, you know, that I think that episode was the sort of turning point for me in really using AI a lot more.
Jarbas Horst [00:06:27]:
I think it brings a different perspective on how to interact with Copilot, which helps you really get more outcome out of Copilot, which, yeah, is really helpful.
David Bowman [00:06:38]:
Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I think the summary on a number of these things is actually talking to people that are really passionate about their subject and just kind of listening to the way they talk about it, you know, really helping to reframe some of the things that, you know, probably already in people's heads, but just kind of helping you to advance your own knowledge on these topics.
Jarbas Horst [00:06:54]:
Now then, was there something you didn't like? Well, in the podcast, two things. Right.
David Bowman [00:07:01]:
Discovering how much I say the words. You know, that's been troubling, particularly listening to any of these episodes back. And I've been unable to do anything about this either probably, you know, and, and maybe that happens a lot more than even I noticed listening to these episodes back because the agency that we work with do a great job of kind of editing these things down into kind of consumable chunks. I've also found sitting still really difficult. They're kind of constantly being nagged about, you know, you're moving around too much, you're leaning over the microphone, is making work for other people by not being able to sit still.
Jarbas Horst [00:07:33]:
You have a lot of energy. Right. So then.
David Bowman [00:07:35]:
Yeah, it's a challenge. Yes. Well, hence switching to tea before the, before recording these things. What about you?
Jarbas Horst [00:07:43]:
Well, I think one aspect that's quite special about this format. Right. So mentioning again here. So we like, you know, we usually doing more at the blog post but then like, you know, the video format means you will start seeing your face more. Yeah. On social media. And I'm not the person like who shares a lot of pictures or selfies. So that's a difference of course.
Jarbas Horst [00:08:03]:
Like this, these video clips that come with the blog post or with the episode also kind of increase that visibility even further. And listen to the sound of my voice. I think that's also something, something you need to get used to. And at the beginning was a bit. Yeah, it was strange, to be honest. Was that like similar for you like, or was that like.
David Bowman [00:08:23]:
Well, I think I'm, I'm inclined to be a bit of a show off so it's not been as difficult for me.
Jarbas Horst [00:08:29]:
It's. Yeah. Good to hear something fun.
David Bowman [00:08:32]:
Yeah, yeah, it's been good in the last 12 episodes and admittedly I'm looking forward to having a little bit of a break and then, you know, back and we're going to talk in a little bit about what we were coming back with in the next season. So you know, look, I think in the last tour episodes, I mean September was when we kicked off planning these things. There's been a lot happening in our industry. Let's just do a quick summary on some of those things. So you know, Microsoft obviously being a big part of what we do at work, I spend probably a disproportionate amount of my personal life thinking about Microsoft as well and boring my family senseless on Microsoft related stuff. I think there's probably a few things in here. You know we mentioned this already. A kind of beautiful SharePoint.
David Bowman [00:09:11]:
Beautiful SharePoint versus kind of the impression that people have about SharePoint in their minds is kind of, you know, SharePoint is a web publishing platform, a bit like WordPress lots of new flexibility and options. And you know, I think that's great. That's something that people have been asking for a long time. But there's an element of it for me of, you know, be careful what you wish for. Right. Because you've now got the potential in SharePoint to create something that's beautiful but it needs people that can do design work. Design work people, people with those creative skills, those often know much about how SharePoint works. You've got these kind of two worlds coming together now which is going to have good and bad outcomes and consequences.
David Bowman [00:09:49]:
How have you found using this functionality in SharePoint?
Jarbas Horst [00:09:52]:
Well, great. But I cannot take the most out of it. I mentioned that the other episode. Right. So I try like to create something impressive with flexible AI and that didn't work. Right. So it's, it's not, I'm not used like to create good looking designs and of course like this, this, this flexible AI, they give you that flexibility and that options.
David Bowman [00:10:15]:
Yeah.
Jarbas Horst [00:10:15]:
But I think it's something that you need like to practice more. I was talking like to actually a client just before actually like this episode here and she's like training 30 new content creators on the Intranet. And then they were of course covering like all of the options now that you have for creating pages, create News posts in SharePoint and like, you know, she was referring like the challenge that is there now of at some point people will maybe unintentionally or maybe intentionally give that a try.
David Bowman [00:10:44]:
Yeah.
Jarbas Horst [00:10:44]:
And it can come like with maybe side effects.
David Bowman [00:10:46]:
Yeah. Yes. And you know, I think the, the, the best guidance of people is to work out how they use this functionality in their intranet. Because you know, there is a danger that you could overdo this on the homepage. Right. And all the kind of core pages in the intranet and set yourself up for a position where every single page that you create on the Intranet is now going to take you a day and it's going to need creative input and imagery and finding a kind of sparing use for this functionality is probably the right way to go. You know, I think the beauty of SharePoint is that it allows you to create content really quickly.
Jarbas Horst [00:11:18]:
Yes.
David Bowman [00:11:18]:
And this could introduce something that actually makes it really difficult to create content.
Jarbas Horst [00:11:21]:
Yeah. Well, in any case, like, so there, there has been a lot of new functionalities for the SharePoint pages. Yeah. And it is easier general positive for the content creators out there.
David Bowman [00:11:31]:
Yes. As I say, it's something that people have been asking for for a long time. And one sort of reflection, observation for me from the M365 community conference that I went to is that a lot of the content that was on show at that, at that event for internal communications people was really all about Viva Engage. And I felt that maybe for the first time that Microsoft have this Viva Engage platform. Lots of renewed interest as we've talked about a number of times from the workplace shutdown and you know, general improvements in the product, that there's a, you know, maybe a Viva Engage versus SharePoint for internal comms.
Jarbas Horst [00:12:05]:
Right.
David Bowman [00:12:05]:
And I think it's great that again, you know, you've got loads of options, lots of things to do, but you know, I think people will need to be very clear on how they're using one or either of those applications in their organization.
Jarbas Horst [00:12:15]:
I get the point. Right. At least the way I see that and the way I see also our clients using it is like it's a complementary way of working.
David Bowman [00:12:24]:
Yeah.
Jarbas Horst [00:12:25]:
So you have kind of enterprise social network and you've engaged two way communication happening there, but you have the Intranet with your homepage with the Intranet goes beyond, when we talk about SharePoint goes beyond just kind of communication. You have all of the aspect of resource management, document management that happens there as well, plus employee recognition. So all of those things you can have in SharePoint.
David Bowman [00:12:47]:
Right, yeah.
Jarbas Horst [00:12:48]:
So it can work together and we see clients doing that, which I think is great.
David Bowman [00:12:53]:
Absolutely. Yes, yes. I think finding its role, finding a sweet spot in the organization needs consideration before just kind of deciding, well, Viva Engage is going to be our intranet. Let's, you know, let's crack on. People may have a disappointing experience there.
Jarbas Horst [00:13:07]:
Right.
David Bowman [00:13:08]:
It's hard to leave this part of the conversation on Microsoft and kind of big things that have happened without talking about agents.
Jarbas Horst [00:13:16]:
Yes, that's true.
David Bowman [00:13:17]:
This has really landed since we've been recording these episodes, isn't it?
Jarbas Horst [00:13:21]:
Yes, yes. Well, at the beginning it was more AI and product discussion around that. But it has evolved. Like technology has evolved and in the space of Microsoft Copilot, the focus now is on agents and Microsoft's of course doing a great job improving the way how we can create agents programmatically or like using Copilot Studio, new capabilities also like emerging. And I think this is, this is, I think a fascinating discussion. Right. So well, how will that change the way how we experience work? Like is that really becoming the interface for the way how we interact with the business applications, the intranet or are we going to see the scenario where we have then, well, AI which is kind of already the case or agents kind of embedded or infused as you like to say, actually in the business application itself.
David Bowman [00:14:10]:
Yeah, yeah. You know, there's a kind of, I've heard, you know, Satya Nadella's talked about this, I've heard Gartner talking about this, that, you know, SaaS applications are dead. These things are all going to be headless and agents are going to be doing all the work behind the scenes to move information around, to execute workflows, to update systems and that people will only be interacting with these kind of prompt or text based interfaces. It feels dramatic, but you know, the more that you understand about the power of the technologies, the more that you use these things, the more that you set them yourself, the more that you realize actually this is a pretty good way to get stuff done, isn't is?
Jarbas Horst [00:14:46]:
I'm looking, I'm looking forward, like to see how this evolves. Right. But I don't think right now that will change completely, like to start working with agents and kind of forget the applications as we have right now. I think it will be a step-by-step thing where it starts with kind of the agents being embedded in the, your workload and then at some point we might have this shift, the platform shift where the inter becomes like the agent. Yeah, but I don't think this is kind of happening this year or next year. That's my opinion.
David Bowman [00:15:17]:
No. You know, there is a big user adoption challenge, I think for this largely unexplored. You know, I had a private workshop that I was running with a, with a small group of people. I was saying to them, you know, like the beginning of the presentation, hands up who's using AI? I was talking about Microsoft Frontier Firm. Hands up who's kind of casually using AI. Everyone's kind of, you know, looking around the room and nodding in the break. When you talk to people and say, give me some examples, you know, how are you using it? What you understand pretty quickly is not everybody is using AI.
Jarbas Horst [00:15:47]:
Yes.
David Bowman [00:15:48]:
Not everybody is exploring these technologies and in fact there is a small number of people in the room that are actually going beyond the basics of, you know, one shot prompting these interfaces, if that. And the gap between people that are using this stuff to become more efficient to get stuff done, to create agents, to manage a team of agents. This is a pretty small number of very technically minded people still. And I think there's quite a long journey to go on before this hits mass adoption or any kind of critical mass of this technology.
Jarbas Horst [00:16:17]:
I think it's a Real point that you are making here. This is the reality that I'm also experiencing when I'm talking to people in general about AI, about agents, then also observing that you think that very often people have the same level of understanding that you have and you need to be a bit careful, like really trying to understand, like, what is the. How far are they. Because it's a personal development that you do, like with AI in general for ChatGPT Copilot and try and experience like the different possibilities. And not everyone's at the same level.
David Bowman [00:16:49]:
No.
Jarbas Horst [00:16:49]:
Keeping that in mind. I think it's important.
David Bowman [00:16:51]:
Yeah. And that I think this kind of corporate adoption challenge for organizations is something that people are going to need to get on top of.
Jarbas Horst [00:16:58]:
I think really spending more time, like with individuals and helping the people in the organization. Right. Understand the possibilities. More training is important. The aspect of adoption. We talked about that the other day.
David Bowman [00:17:10]:
Yes.
Jarbas Horst [00:17:10]:
And I really do believe that the spending the time with the people, teaching them how to use the technology is fundamental.
David Bowman [00:17:17]:
Yeah. I think the other kind of trend that I'm noticing, and, you know, maybe this is very specific to LinkedIn in particular, but increasing people being snarky about AI kind of creating this position that, you know, if you're pro AI, you're a nerd, or you're using it because you're incompetent or, you know, you don't have. You don't have enough, you know, good skills to be. To be useful. So you've got to get AI to do your work for you. You know, that's one group and then the other group that kind of being snarky about AI are kind of, you know, they're the competent, authentic people. And I just, you know, I hate this idea that we're losing nuance in this, in this debate. People have been creating bad content for years.
David Bowman [00:17:54]:
AI isn't introducing bad content. This is a concept that's been around for a long time. And we're an important moment where people should be being encouraged to explore what this technology can do for people. And I think deriding them because EM dashes are appearing in their content or there are kind of telltale signs that people are using AI. I think this is a bad place for us to be.
Jarbas Horst [00:18:13]:
Yeah. In today's environment. And there's also like a very common way of how AI starts content. But I think we are in a discovery phase of the technology and it's a technology that's evolving quite significantly. And this technology that has a big impact in our life. So I think people should be encouraged to give that a try and experiment and. Well, you know, experiment that. Put your content out there or use that the way how you can.
David Bowman [00:18:40]:
Yes. And encourage other people to do the same. Right. You know, I think people should be lifting each other up on this, on this technology as we explore how this can help us all as, you know, people as organizations, I think everyone needs to be kind of finding their role in this new brave new world of technology and then kind of on intranets themselves. You know, probably one of the. Sounds strange to say kind of, you know, a pretty big event in our calendar is the launch of the ClearBox Report. By the way, we won an award.
Jarbas Horst [00:19:08]:
Just to mention that. Right? Yeah, that's so true.
David Bowman [00:19:10]:
Throwing that in there, you know, it.
Jarbas Horst [00:19:12]:
Feels good like to emphasizing it.
David Bowman [00:19:14]:
Yeah, let's get that out of the way. You know, but I guess having had a chance to kind of run through that report in some level of detail now, there was no huge surprises. Right. There was no like iPhone moment in the report.
Jarbas Horst [00:19:25]:
I like that.
David Bowman [00:19:25]:
Yeah, right. There's no kind of major vendor that sort of slipped in under the radar that's kind of, you know, taking over or revamping the industry and it feels like an industry that could be ready for that kind of thing.
Jarbas Horst [00:19:38]:
Well, the way, how. I mean I haven't read all the reports. A comprehensive document that ClearBox creates.
David Bowman [00:19:45]:
It's a. I cheated a bit. I did. There was a lot of co-piloting that went on in that report, which.
Jarbas Horst [00:19:50]:
Is a valid use case for the usage. Right. But I think like what I have observed, the transformational part here is like that's this multi. Again is we have AI kind of embedded now in the workflow.
David Bowman [00:20:01]:
Right.
Jarbas Horst [00:20:02]:
So in the use case of people, but we don't have kind of a. I don't know, I don't know what is kind of this iPhone moment exactly, but is that kind of a AI-led Intranet where everything's kind of driven by AI. So in any case, like that moment hasn't happened yet. Let's see what the next deal will bring. Yeah, there is potential for that.
David Bowman [00:20:20]:
Well, you know, I think the AI integrations are sort of table stakes for these kind of products now. You know, I think you start to stand out if you don't have something. You know, I think what's more interesting to hear about is the problems that people are solving with this. Right. How are scenarios being made more efficient? How are we helping people to get stuff done? Answering those kind of, you know, time and Budget challenges that people are genuinely dealing with at the moment. But you know, it's. How are vendors exploring those scenarios is the, you know, I think that's where the interest will be. What's missing for me though still is, you know, some kind of hugely impactful wow moment in this industry.
David Bowman [00:20:55]:
You know, I feel like maybe we'll see that in the next couple of years.
Jarbas Horst [00:20:58]:
Maybe. I think the focus has been maybe like now the technology.
David Bowman [00:21:02]:
Yeah.
Jarbas Horst [00:21:03]:
And the one thing that we shouldn't forget is that challenge that people have in the past, they're still there. Right. So the challenges before AI, they still remain.
David Bowman [00:21:12]:
Yes. And yeah. And if anything becoming more pronounced, the more pressure on being able to fix those challenges. Because people are exploring copilot, they are exploring other generative AI tools that are integrating with their work content and where you've got permissions and oversharing or your data sucks. You know, people will be getting, you know, be having a less optimal experience in using those tools. And I think people are starting to understand that actually there's a, there's a good chunk of work that's still needed to make these tools as effective as possible.
Jarbas Horst [00:21:43]:
Yeah. And again also like the current trends that people have, they are not just disappearing because we have AI now.
David Bowman [00:21:49]:
Yeah. Yes.
Jarbas Horst [00:21:50]:
They may even become like more visible.
David Bowman [00:21:51]:
Yeah, Sad, sad face. AI isn't magic and SharePoint is not an Intranet. Yes. We're going back to predictions again. You know, I think something else that we're obviously we're involved in a lot of conversations with a lot of different customers that you know, time and budgets are under pressure more than ever now. And organizations that have got dedicated teams managing intranets or managing internal comms in some instances still feels like a very rare thing.
Jarbas Horst [00:22:18]:
It does. Like I was talking to, Well, I have been talking to many clients in the mid sized market. My observation is that usually there is one person in the organization, usually marketing or someone in a different role and that gets kind of this hat of Intranet manager and that's a subset of the work that that person has like to perform in general. And they're kind of coming back from the trends that people have. So the more efficient you can make the Intranet people that person the better is in general the most successful the person will be then like with the work.
David Bowman [00:22:49]:
Yes, absolutely. All right, so let's, let's wrap up this episode there. We're going to be back for season two. We're planning some more interviews, more special guests. We're going to be talking about building intranets in financial services. In legal, we're going to be talking about the increasing use of video employee happiness. We've got a range of topics that we're going to be covering and a.
Jarbas Horst [00:23:12]:
Live episode as well.
David Bowman [00:23:14]:
Yes. Fresh Perspectives Live. We're going to be trialling that in the coming season as well.
Jarbas Horst [00:23:19]:
So if people who are listening would like to join us live, that would be a pleasure. Would be something new. I'm looking forward to that as well.
David Bowman [00:23:26]:
Yes. Well, let's leave it there then. Jarbas, thanks for joining me today and for season one.
Jarbas Horst [00:23:32]:
Thank you very much, David, as well. Have a great time.
David Bowman [00:23:35]:
Cheers.
Jarbas Horst [00:23:36]:
Cheers.