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]:
Hi, David. There we go again. The first episode. So we have had like an intro episode just kind of to introduce who we are. What Fresh Perspectives is about; It's the name of our podcast. It's Fresh, isn't it?
David Bowman [00:00:27]:
It's Fresh.
Jarbas Horst [00:00:28]:
It's Fresh.
David Bowman [00:00:28]:
And you're still Jarbas.
Jarbas Horst [00:00:30]:
I'm still Jarbas Horst, Senior Product Manager at Fresh, working at Advania with David.
David Bowman [00:00:36]:
David Bowman, Product Director, working at Advania on Fresh Intranet.
Jarbas Horst [00:00:41]:
That's good. And we are here to talk about challenges in SharePoint. SharePoint challenges, yeah.
David Bowman [00:00:46]:
And I guess we could probably fill a day of things that people tell us that they don't like about SharePoint. But what we thought, well, look, I think we'll get there in the next 30 minutes or so, but I think what we're going to focus on for today is kind of what we see as being root causes of some of those challenges and what root causes of what creates some of the perceptions of difficult SharePoint projects or how complicated it can be or how much people can't find information that, you know, we thought in, with the benefit of our many, many, many years of experience working in SharePoint, and all of my grey hairs above my neck are probably caused by numerous SharePoint projects, we thought we'd do a kind of, you know, what are our top five challenges in SharePoint intranets? And then as we walk through the rest of the episodes to the kind of close of this season, we're going to do a kind of review of benefits of SharePoint intranets. You know, why we think SharePoint intranets are a good thing, why we spend so long talking about why SharePoint is a great platform.
Jarbas Horst [00:01:52]:
When you say, like, you know, many, many years, I felt old now, but yeah, it's okay. Right. So, exactly. So talking about the challenges, some feedback we get, and acknowledging that it's not perfect, which is, you know, I think, who can say that, you know “I have a solution that's perfect”?!
David Bowman [00:02:09]:
Yes, yes. And, you know, I think let's start with the one. I think that's a topic that we get involved in conversations quite a lot of the fact that in and of itself, out of the shrink wrap, once you've installed it on the floppy disks or on the CD, out of the box SharePoint Online is not an intranet; when it's fresh in its rawest form. It is not something that's comparable to many of the other intranet products that are available on the market.
Jarbas Horst [00:02:42]:
By default Right. As you mentioned. So. And we are in this space of a tenant now where things cloud based. So the notice maybe when you mentioned flop disk, maybe the young people listening to this here, they might not get that. But yeah. So cloud based SharePoint online and by default it is a space. SharePoint is a place for document management.
Jarbas Horst [00:03:03]:
Maybe if you look like now many of the Microsoft Trans 5 services are integrating with SharePoint. A lot of that is storing information. Like if you look at Microsoft Teams, so it's saving a file there, which means saving the file actually in SharePoint. If you look at Viva Connections, for example, when you're looking at the resources or the announcements. So all of the data is also stored in SharePoint. So it's a bit of this information management space, Content management space.
David Bowman [00:03:35]:
Yeah. And you know, it's confusing as well though, isn't it, because there is a fairly significant chunk of functionality in SharePoint for intranets. Right. News, other web parts, pages, global navigation, there's kind of mobile apps and interfaces in there. So I think it's easy to kind of confuse it with the fact that, you know, am I comparing SharePoint against a third party intranet product? Well, in some ways you can, but you've got to put it together first.
Jarbas Horst [00:04:05]:
Yeah. And unfortunately it's not just like a magical thing where you push a button and suddenly you have your Intranet configured. It requires some, well, as you mentioned, some configuration, some setup thinking about information architecture, how you bring all of the things together.
David Bowman [00:04:21]:
You need a vision, a plan, certain activities. You know, there's some work, you know, in fact the same work that you would need to put into any intranet project about, you know, thinking about where's this going? What are we launching, who's going to use it, where does my content live, what are my requirements? All of those things still need to be considered on any intranet project. SharePoint's no different.
Jarbas Horst [00:04:44]:
It's no different. Exactly. And it provides you the baseline for building then the Intranet, as you mentioned. So the part of content creation, content authoring is all there and it keeps improving also over time.
David Bowman [00:04:56]:
And I think one of the challenges that's articulated to me when I'm talking to people that are kind of frustrated with the experiences that they've been having in SharePoint as an intranet platform is that, you know, often you're sat in front of a number of stakeholders in your organization and one of those tends to be some guy in it. And you know, I don't want to sound like I'm turning this into an IT bashing exercise, but you know, Their preference often is that you're going to use SharePoint. And what they will say in response to, you know, we need an intranet is well, we've got an intranet, you know, we use SharePoint. You can do anything that you want to with it.
Jarbas Horst [00:05:31]:
And I mean like from I think the point of view of it, there are maybe different aspects to consider when they say that. First of all, and it's not kind of that SharePoint is free. Right. So which solution is free actually? Right. So there is always some business involved.
David Bowman [00:05:45]:
There, even if it's internal resource. People have salaries, jobs, things that they're supposed to be doing. There are costs that are attached to turning SharePoint into an intranet.
Jarbas Horst [00:05:54]:
Yes. And so like from the point of view of it. So you have to consider also that it has probably invested a lot of time making Microsoft 365 a secure space.
David Bowman [00:06:05]:
Yeah. You're seeing the tip of the iceberg in the pages that you're looking at.
Jarbas Horst [00:06:08]:
Yes, exactly. So in the back end a lot of configuration has happened, making sure that people can authenticate properly and securely. So all of that has happened. So that's one reason to use something that you already have that has all of these security aspects in place. And another aspect is, I think from a financial point of view, if you are using Microsoft 365, you have SharePoint as part of your license.
David Bowman [00:06:32]:
Yeah.
Jarbas Horst [00:06:33]:
And that means it's not free, but you're already paying for it. And that's definitely something that you should consider when you are maybe looking for new Intranet or. Yeah. Introduce an Intranet in your company.
David Bowman [00:06:45]:
Yeah. And you know, so that kind of position that in theory you could do anything that you wanted to with SharePoint does require that you've got some experience, some expertise that you know, you have some resource and people around you to kind of help turn what's available in SharePoint into an intranet that's going to meet your short and long term demand, that you've also got ongoing support available to you because you know, really the hard work on intranets often starts off the launch. Right. Keeping it going, making sure that people are using it, ensuring that your homepage doesn't turn into a collection of everybody's wants and desires in the organization. There is some ongoing management and maintenance there and successful SharePoint intranet projects are going to grow. Right. You know, more content, more information that is all going to need some level of ongoing management. So I think it can be frustrating to hear from your IT department.
David Bowman [00:07:42]:
You know, you can do anything that you want to. We don't need to buy an intranet. Well that is true, but there is some effort that's going to need to be put into A, setting it up and then B managing it over a.
Jarbas Horst [00:07:54]:
Long term so alone, like by yourself, it will be maybe a challenging task. So if you need like to plan all of these things that you mentioned, plus there is also the aspect of configuration and bringing all of the different components together so you can then have the intranet in SharePoint the way you want. It's maybe easier said than like really done. If we look like from that angle.
David Bowman [00:08:16]:
Yeah. And then, you know, nice segue. Then maybe onto the kind of number two challenge as we see them is that often the kind of next step on from that can be that there's going to be kind of an IT hobby project. Right. That you know, any amount of pushback on. Well, SharePoint in and of itself isn't an intranet. I'm going to need help to set it up that the IT department say, well, we'll help you. And again, you know, not don't mean this to sound like I'm being mean and disrespectful to IT departments because you know, some organizations may have SharePoint expertise and consultants that are working in house.
David Bowman [00:08:51]:
That's great. And you know, there'll be a much more successful implementation where that is the case. But the idea that somebody in your IT department is going to kind of do this to one side of their desk and get it set up for you, that can create quite a challenging outcome. Because if enough planning hasn't been put into where are we going? What's the vision? What's the strategy? Who are our audience? What do they want? And that you've been given a kind of empty shell that's been set up for you by the IT department. I think you're going to have a less optimal experience with something like that.
Jarbas Horst [00:09:23]:
And as you mentioned, so they think of the hobby project and it's also in terms of capacity. Right. So does it have like the capacity to work on this, let's say project and then for how long? So it might start with enthusiasm and people like Will you have defined kind of the primary goals and people will work on that. But what about the future of these initiatives? So can they be maintained and extended as you mentioned, so any threat grow, especially if it's successful, if people are using that. So how can that be maintained over time?
David Bowman [00:09:56]:
Yeah, we had a really nice example a few years ago where we were asked to bid for an intranet project. And one of the people that we were bidding against was the organization's internal IT department.
Jarbas Horst [00:10:08]:
Right.
David Bowman [00:10:09]:
And you know, I really like that idea of comparing the internal IT department's offer with an external provider. Right. Where as an external provider you're often asked, you know, for references, they want to see evidence that you're able to kind of plan a project. You know, these are all good things to be asking vendors to provide information on. Right. So you can make educated choice about how you get the best outcome for your organization. That evaluating your own IT department on that basis. That's quite a nice idea.
Jarbas Horst [00:10:37]:
Yeah, sounds good. So then if we continue then here, like talking about these challenges, then I think the next one that we can take now is growth, isn't it?
David Bowman [00:10:47]:
Yeah.
Jarbas Horst [00:10:47]:
Which is connected kind of to the topic we have here now, as you mentioned. So when we are having an Intranet that's successful, we enter then the aspect of growth becoming a challenge. Usually it can start quickly. That's a benefit of SharePoint. It has all of the aspects of content creation, as you mentioned before. So creating content, also different types of content, news posts, also content pages. The aspect of content authoring has really improved like in the past few months here now. So we have many options for content creators now if you need like a vision from the beginning, ideally in the direction that it's going.
Jarbas Horst [00:11:25]:
So it's easy like to put something in place and start showing content and getting people to use that. But the more it gets used, the more chance you have. So where is the content stored? For example, do you have an overview of the different type of content you're providing? If we look at the content pages, for example. So how can you bring that? Especially also when you get scenarios where you have different departments creating content and you have like content in different areas in SharePoint. How can the employees access all of that?
David Bowman [00:11:56]:
Well, and you know, you end up in a, you know, again, Microsoft 365 SharePoint, very versatile platform, very broad, lots of capabilities. You know, if your intranet in SharePoint was kind of, you know, workload number one that was launched in the organization, there's then a document management system that grows alongside it, perhaps some knowledge management platform, teams collaboration, some social communities growing and engage. All of that content, if unplanned is going to start bleeding into elements of your intranet, right. It's going to be found in some of your web parts, it will turn up in search and you know, success and growth can make the end user experience start to deteriorate. Right. As this thing gets bigger, finding information can become more challenging if you don't have a good governance and management process in place alongside it.
Jarbas Horst [00:12:48]:
And it's like when we are in the era of AI.
David Bowman [00:12:52]:
Yeah.
Jarbas Horst [00:12:53]:
If we look of Copilot, for example. And so again here, so you might have started like your intranet, everything working fine and you have the data in the place where they are supposed to be and maybe a small amount of data, people are maintaining that content. So then when you bring AI, if you have all of that in place and it's working well, then you get good results. Which is also the same for search. Right. So if you have the data in your Intranet well maintained and you use search, you get the results you're looking for as it grows, you might maybe have different versions of documents of content. And then it becomes a challenge with search with Copilot. Now if we look at Microsoft 365, so all of that becomes also a challenge and becomes more visible with search with AI.
David Bowman [00:13:38]:
Yeah. And you know, I guess where we've seen organizations add to this challenge is a frustrating experience in SharePoint because of potentially unmanaged growth or, you know, it hobby project. You know, maybe the parameters of this thing weren't, weren't considered enough from the outset that the option is decided. Right. We need a new intranet. Right. Buying a, you know, a point solution, something that's going to sit alongside the organization, we're going to move some content over to that thing and you know, you get an opportunity then to kind of clean up and migrate some of the content. And you know, good news, you've got a kind of a shiny new intranet that appears that you, you know, having a nicer experience with.
David Bowman [00:14:18]:
The challenge there then is getting back to some of that other organizational data.
Jarbas Horst [00:14:23]:
Right. So ideally when you put an Intranet in place, you also think of the governance of the data.
David Bowman [00:14:28]:
Yeah.
Jarbas Horst [00:14:29]:
Which is very important. Like especially so you mentioned here, so you are adding a new intranet and everything from that moment on is. So you have done kind of the maintenance of the data, the cleanup, and that's something that needs to happen constantly. So it's not just kind of clean the house once, you need like to keep cleaning it all the time, making sure if you're looking at documents, for example, which is part of an Intranet in SharePoint. So SharePoint is not just about creating news posts and the content pages we talked about a bit before. So that you can also have data or like documents coming maybe from Microsoft Teams or depending the tools that you are using connected to it that also require the maintenance or the adjacency of the scenarios to have with an Intranet and that it's also be considered when you look at the governance of the Intranet. So your pages, your documents, making sure that all of that is maintained over time.
David Bowman [00:15:20]:
Yeah. And that again, I think, you know, important sort of relationships between the team managing the intranet, the team that are running internal comms, the team that are managing hr, the team that are managing IT business operations and processes, you know, getting a reasonable handle alignment between those groups means that ultimately employees are having a better digital experience.
Jarbas Horst [00:15:41]:
That's right. All right, so if we continue kind of the points we have for challenges.
David Bowman [00:15:48]:
Yeah. So challenge number four then. So you know, you've got this maintained SharePoint intranet, it's successful, you've got some governance and management processes in place. You know, I guess one of the other challenges is articulated to us by a number of customers that having even those having a really positive experience, a Pretty big mature SharePoint intranet is making changes or getting beyond out of the box solutions can start to feel a bit like a high risk minefield. What are the options here? You're getting requirements, demand from end users and people that you want to be able to respond with. Where do you go next?
Jarbas Horst [00:16:25]:
Exactly. So when we look at SharePoint, so it's a platform that's maintained by Microsoft, it's a Microsoft product. Well, if, let's say if you're not satisfied with the functionality and you would like to see that enhancing, you can go to Microsoft, bring your feedback. There are different ways how you can do that. Now the challenge I think or like the probability that Microsoft will address that or include that as a feature in the product is low.
David Bowman [00:16:52]:
So yeah, and that's, let's caveat that with that's not because they don't like their customers or they don't want to listen to feedback. Right. You know, yes. Microsoft is an enormous organization and when you think about the potential engineering challenges of running Microsoft 365 as a service, this is a pretty complicated engineering challenge for them as an organization. And being able to drop down to very specific requirements and requests from individual organizations, that becomes a very difficult thing for them to manage overall.
Jarbas Horst [00:17:24]:
That's a very good point. That's a very good point. And let's think of something small. So maybe you want to have a different display view on the news web part. So I want to display the news post, appear there in a different way and then you bring that feedback to Microsoft, as you mentioned. So it's a big organization. So like there is a very large amount of Microsoft customers using SharePoint. I think we discussed that at some point.
David Bowman [00:17:46]:
Yeah.
Jarbas Horst [00:17:46]:
And I don't have the numbers in mind.
David Bowman [00:17:48]:
And we said at the time, Jarbas, that we should find the number for this conversation and then neither of us have done it.
Jarbas Horst [00:17:53]:
I think it's something that appears as a node in the podcast.
David Bowman [00:17:56]:
Right.
Jarbas Horst [00:17:57]:
So that's an exercise for us.
David Bowman [00:17:59]:
Yes, yes, we'll find the number. But we're in the millions of organizations.
Jarbas Horst [00:18:02]:
Definitely. And that's of course a challenge to manage all of the feedback that you get from clients. Right. Which is then an opportunity for clients to build a customization which Microsoft supports very well.
David Bowman [00:18:16]:
Yes, I think we're going to get to this in the Benefits episode. But SharePoint is one of the most extensible products ranging from building things like SharePoint, lists, forms, applications, you know, these are things that power users can do. You don't need code to do the stuff anymore. More advanced features can be built as new SharePoint web parts as they're called if you have kind of developers with those skill sets. So you know an array of options available to you to build your own functionality. But even that comes with some trade offs, right?
Jarbas Horst [00:18:49]:
Definitely. So when we're looking at customization, as you mentioned, so there are a lot of options that I can do that. So let's say if we continue here with the idea of the different display mode and maybe you have also other wishes that you would like to see on a news web part, you could go there and build your own web part solution. Now you can do that with your own IT capabilities. So maybe you have a developer in your organization who can build that, so when they will create it, you can start using it. There are a lot of different aspects that you need to consider when you build something documentation, making sure that it evolves over time. You might also have the further requirements.
David Bowman [00:19:27]:
But also things like if you're, you should be building accessible features for your intranet. So making sure that your components are accessible and meeting the required standards for your organization and that you know you're creating inclusive software for your intranet, that you're building functionality that's going to work across a range of devices, browsers, screen readers. You know, there are kind of increasing layers of complexity on just building a simple web part. Right.
Jarbas Horst [00:19:56]:
Also like as Microsoft adds new capabilities, will your custom developed solution support those new functionalities?
David Bowman [00:20:04]:
Yeah.
Jarbas Horst [00:20:04]:
One example is custom fonts that Microsoft has just Introduced and shared point viewer connections. So would your custom developed web part support that and do you have then the capacity like to the capabilities like to keep maintain it over time? Right. So in development is a thing that happens now and like you then you take that into production and can you keep maintain that over time? And that can become a challenge when you're looking at like making changes.
David Bowman [00:20:30]:
Yeah. So you've got options of building something yourself, going to third parties to create something for you. There are then ongoing risks to be concerned with. Right. You know, are you building something that's accessible, is going to meet the demands of your various browsers and devices that you're using in your, in your organization? But what is the shelf life of the component that you're creating? Do you have an ongoing roadmap? Do you have the skills in your organization to be able to open that thing back up again, make some changes and adjust if and when you need to? So you know again that kind of short term I've created something versus kind of long term success of the intranet.
Jarbas Horst [00:21:11]:
And then we can end the challenge number five which is then about battling misinformation.
David Bowman [00:21:18]:
Yeah. And we thought we'd include some things in here that we, you know, again based on our experiences in kind of deeply involved in the Microsoft and SharePoint world. You know, we hear a lot of things that we don't. We don't necessarily agree with.
Jarbas Horst [00:21:31]:
Agree. Yeah.
David Bowman [00:21:32]:
And that can have an impact on value and perception of SharePoint as an intranet product and platform. And I think probably the kind of most frequent and recent one I guess that we've talked about a lot is accessing frontline workers.
Jarbas Horst [00:21:49]:
Right. If we look at the maybe mobile readiness.
David Bowman [00:21:53]:
Yeah.
Jarbas Horst [00:21:53]:
Like bringing content from the Intranet in SharePoint that usually you create on a browser then like bring that content to frontline workers. Yes. Like it's, it is definitely something we hear a lot about. We also see clients coming to us and saying that okay, so I want an Intranet but I also want like to be able to reach of frontline workers. And do you have a mobile app that they can use for that? So if we look at Microsoft 365 again the options are there. I definitely believe that. And if we look a bit deeper, so then Microsoft Teams Viva Connections is usually like the gateway that you can then use like to bring the content from the Intranet and SharePoint to the frontline workers.
David Bowman [00:22:33]:
Yeah. And you know, I think one of the sort of, I guess one of the weirdest things that I find about this conversation is that, you know, people say, well, it's expensive to license Microsoft 365 for our frontline workforce. Well, there are no free alternatives. Right?
Jarbas Horst [00:22:49]:
That's a very good point.
David Bowman [00:22:50]:
Any piece of software that is going to be accessed by frontline workers is going to come with some cost. I don't think that there are many organizations out there that are kind of doing this from a perspective of altruism for organizations, frontline workers. So there is always going to be some form of licensing cost to be able to access those employees. And you know, I think again, the licensing for Microsoft on this, you know, you don't need to buy the kind of full fat Microsoft365 licenses for these employees.
Jarbas Horst [00:23:19]:
You need a Microsoft license that will give you access to Microsoft Teams. And if you look at Microsoft licenses, you have the front F1, F3 licenses. So the F1 is kind of the basic Microsoft license which is available for front end workers. And the packages we've accessed Microsoft Teams come with the connections which will then give you access as a frontline worker to content from the Intranet. And if I have that correctly in mind at this point here, we're talking about £1.85 per user per month.
David Bowman [00:23:53]:
Consult your licensing provider for confirmed pricing. I think that's my kind of BBC style disclaimer on that one.
Jarbas Horst [00:24:00]:
That's of course like the right way to do that and maybe like this is also kind of the least price and things might change as we enter kind of the big negotiation. But there is a cost involved and.
David Bowman [00:24:10]:
There'S effort involved as well. Right. You know, we hear people say it's very complicated to access frontline workers with SharePoint. Microsoft365 well, it is a complicated topic anyway. There are a huge amount of considerations. There's a lot of planning, there's some work on adoption for, you know, how you're fitting this into people's routine, what's in it for them? What's bringing them to these technologies? How are they accessing it? Are we expecting people to use their personal data? Are we providing WI fi in the locations? You know, these are, these are considerations that are going to apply to a lot of employee app type projects. There's no difference. That's being introduced here in Microsoft 365.
Jarbas Horst [00:24:46]:
So it's not just because it's Microsoft that you need like to plan all of that. So those considerations, they apply to any type of solution you decide to go with.
David Bowman [00:24:55]:
And you know, one of the other topics that we hear a lot about is that SharePoint isn't an intranet. And it seems like a strange thing to say in light of where we started this conversation where you and I were saying that, you know, in and of itself SharePoint isn't an intranet. And that is true when it's kind of raw and out of the box. But that isn't to say that you can't build a successful intranet front door intranet in Microsoft 365. No.
Jarbas Horst [00:25:19]:
We have many clients using SharePoint as an Intranet with our solution on top. And as we talked at the beginning, so if you just look as it is so it's a content management system that can be used for different use cases. So we have the document management system, knowledge management system and as we also discussed previously, it has all of the components that you can use then to turn SharePoint into an intranet maybe with some limitations and that's the shameless plug. So solution like Fresh can help done that in the proper Intranet solution. But the options are there and it serves definitely as a baseline. Yeah, it's again here the discussion about the frontline workers or SharePoint as an Intranet. I think one thing that you should consider anyway. So if you have the licenses then take a bit of time to take a look at SharePoint at Viva Connections and see if that solves like your requirements.
David Bowman [00:26:12]:
Yes. Yeah. So you know, not an intranet when it's out of the wrapper, but it can become a very successful intranet. And I think, you know what I'm what the sense that you start to get from kind of reading statements from people on LinkedIn in response to you know, maybe more negative posts about SharePoint is that people are having a good experience with it as a platform and a product.
Jarbas Horst [00:26:31]:
Probably also like because solutions like ours help evolve it. But also the platform has been evolving like in the past years with more options for frontline workers. Microsoft I think also more sensitive about the need that organizations have like to not just reach like the desk users but also like the frontline workers. And there are definitely like more also More services within Microsoft 365 if you look at Microsoft vivo with Viv, Amplify, Viva, Engage, Vivo Connections, all of that then combined with SharePoint and helps you increase the reach of your message across kind of your audience.
David Bowman [00:27:08]:
And then our final one on item number five here, you know again something that is we hear a lot and something that I see in conversations a lot is that SharePoint is too complicated. And you know, I think this is. It's something that's really Cheap and easy to say when you're coming from a position of fairly low knowledge about the product and platform. Right. Because again, you know, I think there's a legacy perception that's out there about SharePoint and I think that that is something that was fairly aimed at the kind of SharePoint 2013, 2016 or on premises versions. SharePoint. You know, one of my favorite points actually in demos when I'm showing Fresh customers is we get to the point of showing them how to create a piece of content. And you know, what you get is a sort of slightly puzzled look on their faces and that's well, is this SharePoint or is this Fresh? No, no, this is SharePoint.
David Bowman [00:27:54]:
You know, the kind of the native experience for creating and managing content, of being able to drag and drop things around on the page. It's a easy to use interface. You know, copying and pasting content from word preserves all the formatting. You know, there's people are confused when they see how kind of modern and easy SharePoint is to use from a content management perspective.
Jarbas Horst [00:28:14]:
Yeah, like if your last experience of SharePoint was, let's say as you mentioned, SharePoint 2010 or 2013, then I think at that time it used to be complicated. Now, as we have been saying here, so it has improved a lot, like the content authoring experience also with the many options. Again, he also, like, if we look at the new steps that Microsoft has introduced, the ui, the user interface, the user experience has improved and it's much simpler to use with more configuration options that you can do directly as a content creator without having to involve it to help you configure, let's say, like the different components that SharePoint has.
David Bowman [00:28:54]:
Yeah, you know, I think in scenarios where people say to me, you know, look, our SharePoint is confusing, it's difficult to use. I don't know how to get new news stories on the homepage when they show you, right, and you actually see a demo of them kind of performing this process. In SharePoint there is always some weird, not well understood modification that's been made by somebody many years ago that's preventing people from actually using it properly. And you know, when you say, okay, look, let me show you how we would achieve that in kind of, you know, either out of the box SharePoint or SharePoint with Fresh installed on top. You know, their reaction is, well, why can't I do that? And you know, again, back to that point of kind of not well planned or not well executed solutions in any technology are going to be confusing and weird for people to use.
Jarbas Horst [00:29:39]:
I think maybe like one challenge would also be that Microsoft continues they are so fast in improving the platform that it's sometimes really hard like to stay on top of like the latest improvements. And maybe that that can become also a challenge.
David Bowman [00:29:54]:
I would say it can be. You know, I think for people like us that are, you know, standing in front of the innovation fire hose from Microsoft, it's a bit easier for us to navigate. But you know, if you have a full time job and one of the roles of that is going to be managing your SharePoint intranet, the level of change that you have to keep up with can certainly feel a bit overwhelming.
Jarbas Horst [00:30:14]:
I think there's a benefit also of this podcast that we can address also some of the functionalities that Microsoft has. Not talking about like how to configure but like maybe talking about the latest additions from Microsoft to SharePoint and covering that like again here from the value benefits point of view.
David Bowman [00:30:32]:
Sounds like a great suggestion for a follow up episode there, Jarbas.
Jarbas Horst [00:30:36]:
Well then maybe let's leave this one here and go to the next.
David Bowman [00:30:40]:
Enjoy. Good to talk to you today.
Jarbas Horst [00:30:41]:
Likewise. Cheers.
David Bowman [00:30:42]:
Cheers.