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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.
Fresh perspectives again. Hi, David. Hi, Alex.
Hello.
Great to be here with you.
Welcome to another episode of Fresh Perspectives. We're joined. We have a special guest today, Alex peers.
We're gonna introduce you in a second. Who are you, Jarbas?
Jarbas Horst, senior product manager for Fresh intranet. And you?
I am still David Bowman, product director for Fresh intranet. Alex, who are you?
I'm Alex peers, the intranet content manager at DLA Piper.
Wonderful. Thanks for joining us today. We're gonna talk a bit about building a SharePoint intranet.
Now, tell us a little bit about, the company that you work for, DLA Piper, Alex. Who are they? What do they do? Give us a give us some background.
Sure.
DLA Piper are a global law firm.
They have around well, they actually spend two entities. They actually operate in the US as well, and they're a slightly different one. But the international firm has about seven thousand people.
That's a mixture of associates, partners, business service colleagues, secretaries.
And it's an incredibly interesting place to work.
I've never worked in professional services or a law firm before I joined DLA Piper.
The range of things that they cover, really fascinating.
And also how they position themselves in the lots of things that go on in the world really and how, you know, it impacts everyone else, is one of the things I find that never stops being fascinating. And, it's a it's a really innocent place to work. There's lots of great people.
I'd describe it as a, like, a a kind of bright organization. It's really Right.
Somewhere that you feel at home very quickly, but also is always pushing to be better. And, yeah, it's very, very interesting. Has its own challenges like most places do, of course, especially around communications. But, again, that adds to the kinda intrigue of it and the challenge of working somewhere like that.
Keeps the blood flowing. Hey. That's simple. Indeed.
Alright. So, bit of background then. So, in two thousand nineteen, we began our relationship with DLA Piper. You weren't at DLA Piper back in back in those days.
But I was at the, what was the content and code business at the time, and I was responsible, I think, for leading the bid, to win the work at DLA Piper. I will say that we won. So, you know, I must have done a good job there.
Good job, David.
And, you know, at the time, the reason that the, DLA were out in market looking for something else, is that you were looking to replace an on prem SharePoint that, you know, the kind of primary reason that this was happening was, I think, it was SharePoint. It was going out of support at the time.
They were looking for a cloud migration. They needed to have somewhere to move the intranet to. The SharePoint on prem intranet had had some customization, so they knew that out of the box SharePoint wasn't quite gonna give them what they needed.
And they were looking for something that was gonna align with their Microsoft three sixty five strategy, something that they could access on mobile devices.
And, you know, so it was a there was a kind of tech reason that, that they were that they were moving. And I I think in the time that we've got to know you guys, the fact that the intranet has become something else since they've become more than a sort of technology project has been a been a really nice journey that we've that we've been on.
So that's, you know, that's why we all started working together. Give us a quick overview as to where you are today. What does the intranet mean for DLA Piper these days?
We're doing it's called Pulse, and it's like the starting point for every task that every colleague needs to complete. It's a place where people can read news and keep up to date with what's happening within the organization.
We use it for storytelling around our journey in terms of our strategy, and the direction that we're going in.
But, really, it's it's supposed to be like the the central hub for the organization. And, you know, it should be a place where you can easily access the tools that you need to be able to do your job. And not all of those tools are on SharePoint, so I'm gonna link up into different tools in other places, but it's the it's the central hub for that.
You talked a bit about storytelling there.
Can you, elaborate a little bit on how you use it for storytelling? You know, we we heard some great anecdotes on this, when we were kind of talking in the prep for this.
Yeah. Sure. So, we story storytelling is it's relatively new. It's about eighteen months since we started, kind of taking a more direct approach with storytelling.
So, you know, when you work in a corporate organization, for some reason, you walk through the doors and the way that you communicate externally or the way that you consume stuff seems to just fall away and everyone just kind of falls in line with this corporate, very often quite dry way of, sharing, using information.
Our idea was to take the things that inspire us and that we're used to connecting with externally and apply them internally. And we know that, you know, human beings are storytellers. That's what we do. That's what we've done for millions of years.
And we wanted to apply that to how we communicate internally and how we share events, news, good news stories.
So we started to we started to kinda develop a more human, hero led approach to our stories.
It's been really successful. It's done really well.
So now when you visit our intranet, you know, you might come for the docent or the policy, but you you're safe for the content. And, that's really good. So in terms of, like, conversion rates, it's really helped certain people who might just peruse the intranet or go looking for a particular thing, taking them away and actually engaging them around the things that we're doing and what it means to them as people and what it means to us as an organization.
And we do that through lots of different techniques.
Sometimes we take elements from novel writing. So in the first, you know, we'll call it stand first or the intro, whatever you wanna call it. We really try and hook people in. So I think we did a story about one of our, one of our lawyers who was on the, the Swedish equivalent to Cast Away. Have you ever watched that?
Yeah. The survivor.
Survivor. Yeah.
And what he took from the experience and how he's been able to, improve the job that he does. And we use the, you know, the first sentence of that story as a description of what it was like to be on that beach, and then ten seconds later, have the organizer of the show tell you that you need to wrestle another person who's on the show for a bag of sand. And, yeah, it's a it's just a it's just a more creative and engaging way of playing with things that would often be coated in corporate jargon, maybe lack personality, and it's a way of bringing it to life. Because, you know, we're organization of people, very smart people, people who are motivated and to be able to deliver things in in the storytelling format really helps circular ideas and direction in a completely different way.
Yeah. And not needing to kind of ram, vision and values down people's throats, right? There's a kind of subtle introduction and a reinforcing of those ideas through the content that you're creating on the intranet.
Exactly. You know, demonstrate the vision of that. You don't just tell people about it. Give examples. We make those examples connect with people, and we do that through each other because that's what stories are about.
We joined with you like the, DLA, sorry, the step two award, with DLA Piper. And, there was one story that was also, like, very interesting, was about a German, partner who's also a referee in the, German Bundesliga, which is like a equivalent to the, Premier League. And but when I was reading that, like, that's really engaging. Right? So it's very interesting also, like, to discover more and, like, learn more about, the people and then also how that reflect in their work. So I think the approach you have is, really interesting. What how is the team how does the team look like?
So we have it's just you, like, working all of that, like, or do you have a team behind you supporting you with Yeah.
Good question. I'm certainly not alone. I work really closely with with the internal communications team. And, when we took this project on about eighteen months ago, we kind of, we did a bit of a vote really and see wanted to see if anybody wanted to be involved in working on stories a bit more.
So we created kinda like, like a storytelling team who, kind of work a bit like a news desk might, you know, in a news organization.
There's been a thing that comes across the desk that we think there's something to work with. We kinda get together and pick it up and then we help each other to create it. So, you know, I don't think one person can really take credit for any of the content that we publish. I think between the whole team, it's something that we've worked on together.
And you might get somebody who writes the story completely, and then it's handed over to somebody else who comes up with a brilliant headline. So for the example about the, the lawyer who's the Bundesliga, referee, we had the headline lit and ref instead of lit and reg, and that came from someone else in the team. So everyone you know, we like to be playful with these things, and everyone gets a chance to input. And it's worked really well.
I think the next step for us is really to kind of take it away from just being a collection of people who work on this stuff and get the rest of the team involved and make it just the only way that we do things.
Right. That makes that makes it very engaging and interesting, I think, for people to, like, to come to the intranet and, discover, like, what's the surprise today when I go there? Like, what's the topic to be covering?
How you know, DLA, pipe is a very large organization. We mentioned already a few locations here, like, Germany and Sweden, in the UK. So, how is the audience that you need like to address?
Yeah.
The audience is large, and you've gotta think that, you know, for each of the regions and the countries they operate in, they'll have their own their own leads or have their own country manager. Each one will do things slightly differently. So the intranet needs to it needs to be somewhere that people can access content on, like, a general international scale so they can get a view of that. But it also needs to have, like, a low local vibe, but they need to have, like, a local field as well. So one of the things we've done is we use, a lot of the web parts that you guys produce to kind of audience target content, and that allows different parts of the organization to see their content is relevant to them. But it also give us gives us the flexibility to say, look. This is important for everybody, so everyone needs to see it as well.
What that does allow those different offices or locations the ability to do is to is to make sections of Pulse personalized to them, and that's worked really successfully. So for example, in Germany, they've got their own, they've got their own site that they use, and they can populate all of their news content that's relevant to them right there. And that becomes the way for colleagues working in that area, but they're not disconnected from everything else that's going on as well. So you might bp into a new story or a, an updated policy that's relevant for you in your area, but, actually, we're not hiding away the stuff that's general that you might need as well.
So it's in in terms of connecting people, it seems to work really well. I mean, it's one of those things you have to work at. You can never leave it as it is. You've gotta always be looking to make it, better and improve it.
And you've always gotta be listening to what your audience is saying. And I think locally, that probably brings its own kind of complexity because the the audience in one place might want things slightly differently to the audience in another. But that's part of the challenge. And I think that's almost part of the fun, part of the, you know, enjoyment of the of the job that we do.
Yeah. And I and I think in in particular, having a system that is flexible enough that you can make changes quite quickly and respond to this kind of feedback because as you say, maintaining that balance of, you know, it's one organization. Right? But there is kind of local interest. You've gotta maintain the relevancy and the, and the and the context of people that are visiting the intranet to make sure that they're coming back. So there are so many things that you've gotta be able to balance to create something that works for everybody in such a large organization. So that you know, I I guess the the flexibility of the tools is really important for you.
It is as well. And, you know, one of the other things is that none of this stuff can just be a tell. You've gotta get people to to buy in and wanna own it. So you've got to allow them the freedom to do things in the way that they want a little bit and give them some guidance around that.
Right.
And part of the job is, I think, is creating a framework for them to work in.
Yeah.
And look, if somebody says something's not working for them, you've gotta be able to empower them to make a change so it works for their audience.
If you didn't and you had some lengthy process that, you know, involved review and then change and, you know, you would just never get anything done, and the person who's looking for something or wants to find that policy or docent would just give up.
Yeah. No.
You know what it was?
Find some other solution. Exactly.
Yeah. You've got it. Yeah.
Like in terms of you know, how do you keep, this feedback coming, to the team. Right? So, do you have a central place where people can go and share feedback, ideas for improvement, or are you working, with surveys?
Yeah.
We there's the function feedback. But I act I've actually found that that's been useful on a few occasions, but not loads. I think the biggest thing that makes difference is that for each of the sites or pages, that people have ownership of, we kinda use them as a funnel feedback. So I think a lot of it is to do this this is not about software, this is really about people.
And having a relation having a good relationship with the people who are responsible for their area and being able to be approachable and allow them to to know that you're there if they need advice or if they wanna make an improvement is essential. So, yeah, feedback forms and regular check ins and things like that, they're all really good. But actually, if someone can just ping you a Teams message and say there's something on their site that's not quite working, can we put thirty minutes in the diary to sort it through? It's far more successful.
And I think that that's been that's the key when you have a a large number of people and you have a lot of people who are responsible for different things. It's really about the important of that relationship.
Yeah.
And you also have a team, who is listening.
Right?
Like, to the feedback that people are applying and you have the tool that's flexible feedback.
Exactly. Exactly. And not every request is gonna be doable.
Yes. You know, people want things that sometimes don't even exist or are on a road map somewhere. But, you know, it's important to listen. Like most people, you know, you've got an idea.
The worst thing you can do is, you know, not listen to it. You've gotta find a way and an approach, and you might not find exactly what people are looking for. But if you can compromise and sometimes find a workaround or sometimes find something that does work or in some in some instance, find something that's better and, and, you know, reduces workload for someone or the owner of the site and they don't have to do so much or you could, you know, do something with power automate that takes the task away from them completely and, you know, it's automated, then that all helps. And you only get that from having a relationships with relationship with people.
You only get that from really listening and inviting two way, kind of feedback and conversation that's live and not just something that's on the form.
It's a it's a really good point.
I think that the temptation, I think particularly large organizations is to try to systemize and automate as much of this stuff as possible. You know, push people into forms, giving feedback rather than having conversations.
I think as you say, you can miss a lot of nuance when you're forcing someone to tap something out on the keyboard. Whereas being able to turn it into a conversation means that you're likely to get richer context from the discussion and they don't feel like they're being passed off to some systems to deal with.
So that I I like that that kind of encouraging that level of interaction.
Yeah. Yeah. It's been really important. And, you know, like you just said, the context is really important. Somebody might come up with an idea that actually could help the whole organization instead of just the road. And if you don't if you're just reading that form, you you're likely to miss it.
Yes. Yeah.
I think it was like the way you have, defined your intranet, reflects the culture of the other pipe, isn't it?
I'd hope so. Yeah.
It's the it's a it's a it's a welcoming place. It's a place that you feel like people are approachable regardless of the role that they're doing. And that's where you want the tools that we use to feel like when you're using them. You know?
That you might not understand something. You might know how to do something straight away, or there might be an area that you wanna learn and improve on. Mhmm. And being able to get that advice and help is really important.
And I think that kinda reflects the culture. You know?
Yeah. And I think particularly an organization where time literally is money. Exactly.
Yes.
You know, it becomes even more important that people can find things quickly, easily, get access to information. I've got somewhere to drop knowledge, encouraging people to share knowledge information that, you know, as a as a business, you know, those are all really important values to the organization.
And having an intranet that also reflects that feels very important as well.
Exactly. And that knowledge alone is worth, you know, is worth money. It adds a value to it, not just from a a factual point, but it literally has a monetary value, you know. And if you just speed that process up, that, you know, helps everybody, especially our clients who are on the other end of it.
Yeah. Let's, let's look at some, some sort of more specific intranet topics then.
Feels like probably compliance, governance are fairly good areas for you. How do you balance, you know, what can be a sort of very dry procedural thing like governance and compliance, with, you know, what you've been describing as sort of very relationship based people orientated culture? How do you how do you keep control of all of the stuff that's going on in the intranet?
It's, it's not easy. It can be challenging.
But, again, I don't know. So I can repeat it myself, but it is down to those relationships.
Mhmm. Centrally, we kind of you know, we have a a biweekly governance meeting where we'll look at, things like engagement stats, improvement suggestions, new tools that are available. If there's an an up, an upgrade that you guys have done and it's, it's in dev testing, we'll go through some of the key features and see how that could be used.
But, again, none of that can really happen unless you're listening all the time to the people who are using it and the audience and also the people we're working with it day to day.
And, you know, governance can be dry.
We do a couple of things to make it more interactive. So, we run, something called the content club, which brings all of the aspects of digital communication into one place. And we've run it kinda like a podcast kinda like we're talking now. And we'll talk about some of the key themes, and we'll give people tips to either improve on things like their writing or things like page layouts or what they can do around imagery and governance and making sure they're sticking to the tone of voice guidelines, or it can be around the more technical aspects.
And just by doing those kind of things of bringing it to life, it takes down I don't know. I think when you know, even when you say the word governance, it means you kinda go Born. Yeah. When you bring it to life and stop thinking about its governance and thinking it more about, you know, the passport that allows you access to be able to do your job completely.
Yes.
You know, I think that's the that's the right approach.
But there are some words that, you know, just turn people off as soon as they hear them. But if you can if you can make things more interactive and more interesting, then it'll be more that goes somewhere.
And, do you do you do things like, content deleting, archiving? You know, I I imagine that those things are gonna be more problematic in your organization as well.
Definitely. I mean, there hasn't been a place that I've worked yet where that hasn't been a problem.
And, you know, that like most people like most human beings, we like to create and maintain kinda comes secondary. Yeah.
But it's no different. But we've started to look at different tools and how we can make that easier. You know, we're working at the moment on, like, an automated flow system that identifies docents that haven't been touched after six months and then Right. To the person who owns that site. So all they need to do is go and click a button that says, yes, please.
Archive or delete these, and it will go ahead and do it for you. We're not too sure if it's actually deletion or put into a file. Yeah. Yeah. We're working on that because, you know, there's another side to this where if it goes wrong, it could be a bit problematic.
But it's those kind of things that can help people and reduce the intensity and the demands on their time that make all the difference. And, you know, automate automation is useful. I don't want it to, like, overtake the person using control of it. And then it gives it empowers the people who are using it.
It allows them more time to go back and review what they're doing. Instead of having a a three hour job where they need to go through every docent, that list is just given to them and they can review it and then go and take some action. So I think that kind of stuff will help around compliance. Like I said, we're not completely there yet.
But I think it will definitely make a difference.
Yeah. I mean, automation is very important. As you said, like, you know, the the more content you have, the harder it becomes like to, keep track on how content is changing, and like how old that is. So you need like to add automation to that. As you said, like, you know, to save time in the end, like, for the people who has like to maintain that.
Exactly. It's, you know, it's a success of the platform really.
Because if it wasn't very good and there's just ten docents you needed to look after Yeah.
It would be really easy.
I could probably do it myself in about three months. But, you know, the more people use something, the more it gets added to it, the harder it becomes, the risk of running into a docent that's out of date. Or you can imagine, you know, imagine turning up to a client meeting and you've got something that's two years older than it should be. You know, that's something we need to get right.
And also with the introduction of things like AI, using Copilot Copilot agents and the source material that that will go and review or they'll go and search. We've gotta make sure it's completely right. So this is kinda like the groundwork to allow us to, to go and implement those things as successfully as we can. And, yeah, it's not easy.
And I think if anybody else who is doing something similar in a similar role, I think, you know, give yourself enough time and enough space to really kind of work out what's gonna make things as smooth as possible. What small changes can you make that's really gonna help?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. You have a very active, intranet as you said. Right? So they also have, like, content that keeps that also, interesting. So how do you measure success, over time? Like, do you have tools in place that support with that? Or so how are you doing that?
It's a yeah. Really good question again.
It's funny. So my view on measurement changes, and it has done for the last, like, fifteen years or so.
We, we've got some really good technical guys in, in our organization, and they've been able to build a Power BI dashboard using Right.
An extract from, fresh data, which has been invaluable. I can't tell you how, you know, how useful it's been compared to the out of the box SharePoint stuff that's you know, I've never really been completely confident if it's accurate or not. And now I can really drill into numbers. So things like unique views, views, looking at how sites are performing, looking at pieces of content and how that's getting on.
That that's incredible. That's really, really helpful. But there is part of there is part of me that thinks, you know, how does how does some of this stuff make you feel? You know, maybe we should we shouldn't measure it so much on how much people are doing.
It's just how it's how fewer questions they're asking or how successful they're being. Now I don't really know exactly how that looks. It's kind of like a more of a thought in my head, more of a on a a thread. But I do think that at some point, you you've gotta start looking at how, first of all, how our content is adding to the cultural value of the organization.
And secondly, maybe not base everything from views and unique views and how many people are looking at something. Maybe it's about how quickly they got there, how useful it was for them. Were they able to go and do another job because of it?
That's good because that gives me something to to work for. And like I said, with all of this, this I feel like this is a job that's never really done.
Yeah.
It was just about refining and improving the whole time. And, you know, a week doesn't go by where I don't think about something else that's worth investigating. Do I get around to it? Often, no. But it's there, like, somewhere in the back of my mind.
It's, just having lots of different lenses to look at the intranet through, isn't it? You know? The data or the numbers is, you know, is one way of doing it.
Talking to people, hearing positive feedback, getting people to produce questions, enhancement requests. You know, they're all really positive indicators that people like this system and that they care enough that they're gonna make suggestions for changes.
You know, I think it in a lot of organizations, the you know, the real test often of an intranet is, when there's a problem, right, and people can't get access and the vole of complaints that come in about, you know, I can't access the intranet today. You know, they're sometimes they're often the first real test of how valuable people find this thing when suddenly they can't access it for some reason.
Exactly. Yeah. And it's like, you know, if you get a request for someone who's trying to gain access to a page because they need to edit it or need to replace a docent.
And, you know, I make a point of responding to those things as quickly as we can. Yeah. Because that's stopping somebody from doing what is a really small task as part of their job. You know, you don't wanna get somebody caught up in the fact that they can't go and make a change.
And think about the effect that has on their team, the wider organization, maybe a client relationship, you know, that hate for that to happen. So you've gotta be responsive. You've gotta be quick. You know?
You've got to help people as much as you can, and I think we do a good job with that.
And I hope that most people who you know, most of our colleagues would agree with that bit.
Whether it's right in the time, fair enough. But, I think when it comes to responding, I think I think we do that pretty well.
It sounds that you know, I think in in, in experience, the most successful intranets that we've seen are often backed by an individual or a team that have got high empathy for the people that are trying to use the system. Right? And exactly as you say, isn't it doesn't need to be, you know, massive things that people are doing, but responding quickly to things like, permission changes and page access and updating information.
And, you know, it's it's those kind of small things that actually save huge amount of time for people on a daily, weekly, monthly, iterative basis. These are these are time saving actions.
Exactly. When you think about your life outside of work, you know, if you need to go and ask a question for a utility bill, for example, when they put you in a queue.
Yeah.
Mhmm. Yes.
Why? So you've you've gotta look at all of these examples in the context that people are constantly having these battles Yes. Externally. And the last thing you wanna do is introduce one internally that you can kind of manage your way through and do as quickly as you can.
Yeah. It's a really interesting point to kind of linger on that.
What was it? The kind of broken windows policy from New York City where, you know, you have to focus on all the really small things to ensure that people kind of respect the bigger things. Right?
Yes.
Yeah.
I think there's something this again, I think there's something in there about this kind of positive cultural point that people in the organization care enough to take care of this more stuff.
Right?
Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.
On, kind of integrations, aware, you know, there may be some specific things that you can't or shouldn't talk about with us. Are there, any particular tech or integration points that you're, using, seeing good value in? I mean, even things like you know, you've talked a bit about Power BI and Power Automate. Are there areas there where you're seeing lots of benefits?
Yeah. There's lots of things going on, especially around, you know, the the introduction of things like AI tools as well. Yeah.
We've got links to things like ServiceNow. So when people search, they can search to kind of information repositories wanna share, when the ServiceNow, and then Right. Label that works really well for us. It's changing all the time is the thing I would say.
It's that we're constantly looking at new ways to integrate different tools that the, you know, the power apps and the automated flows and how they connect with different tools have been really interesting as well, taking information from one place and putting into another. That's helped with things around knowledge. We're in the process at the moment of, our knowledge team is kind of rebuilding their knowledge hub, and they're looking at search and how they can make it even quicker and even better for, for the lawyers you need to get there and contribute to the information that's in there.
So there there's lots going on. I can't give you a full rundown of everything we've got it. There's plenty to keep everyone busy. And the great thing about these is that I think for each example or each thing that you do, it creates almost like a case study for the next one.
Yeah.
You'll learn something, and you'll be able to improve on it the next time. And I think if we can maintain that kind of continuous learning, I think that makes a massive difference. And, you know, most of us at some point in our lives, we're gonna use it or use a a digital tool that will connect to tools that we're not even aware of.
Yeah.
And it wants no difference to us whatsoever.
We can care less as long as it's doing what we want. And I think that's the that's the direction we seem to be heading in, and I think a lot more integrations.
Yep. You know, I think one observation of all the conversations that that we've had, is how much value you're getting out of being part of Microsoft three six five for the intranet. Right? Because it's in SharePoint, content and data is in SharePoint, being able to leverage things like the Microsoft three six five connectors, integrating ServiceNow with search, using Power BI, building this in forms.
You know, I think there's a you I guess, I'm trying not to be too heavy handed in pointing it pointing it out about, you know, really just the benefits of having done this in SharePoint is so much bigger than just having a functional intranet. Right? Because you've got all of this other stuff that you can utilize and connect to. Do you do you agree with that statement?
Oh, yeah. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. I think the other thing that, I've you know, when I first started doing this kind of job, the idea that I could pick up a tool and create an automated flow was would never have crossed my mind.
But these things seem to be so accessible now.
Yeah. And now that you've got access to things like Copilot, and you can ask you a question, and you can get a step by step example. Or, for example, the license that I've got, you can go into Power Automate, and you can speak directly with Copilot about the thing that you're working with. It's completely changed.
You know? I don't have I have to log a ticket with, IT and get them to review something, which is probably gonna take them a while to look at Yeah. My requirements. I can just go and play.
And, you know, you can go and experiment, and you can go and try something, fail really quickly, and then you can try again. And I think that's made a massive difference. And when it comes to the things that, you know, that are available within Microsoft, you know, we've used things like, Viva connections, so we've got, the intranet in Teams, so it's more accessible for people.
We're looking at the different ways we can kind of, send push notifications out as well. We can take things that are posted in Teams and use Power Automate to highlight them on our Intranet on the home page. These are all things that really would have blown my mind a few years.
Yeah. Yeah.
Now I can do it myself.
And, like, for the for the same like, for the users, it's in most case, like, the same license.
Right? It's the same license to access SharePoint, the same license to access the content in your connections.
So it's a it's a big benefit that people get also, like, in in being in Microsoft.
It's a sign.
Exactly. Yeah. Sorry.
No. Go ahead. Go ahead.
I was gonna say it's like that. It kinda, you know, there's an ecosystem. Mhmm. You feel like something is behind a door that you can't open.
Suddenly, you can get in and you can bring in if it's the right tool. I mean, I've used that analogy quite a lot that not every tool is gonna be the right tool for the job and just because, you know, you don't have to get, you know, have to be an expert at everything. It's just about learning when to pick up the right tool to to to do the job you need and put it back down again when you don't and pick up the next one. And I think that's what it's starting to introduce.
That's great. Like, you mentioned, Copilot, and it's really nice to see, like, know how Copilot empower people to achieve more. Right? So I know you talked about power automate, and that that's an area where I'm not, like, an expert. But by using Copilot, you can kind of, you know, move forward with something you would maybe not have, you'd like to achieve. Isn't it?
Exactly. Exactly. We can all be experts.
We can all be experts. Yeah. We can have, like, I think because this this is a very good point. Right? So usually, you would reach out to IT and, like, you know, create a ticket and ask, like, for support.
And that's that might take, like, them some time because, you know, it's not just your request that they have. So now with AI, we can go directly to the application and we get a version that, you know, will help us understand if that's the direction we want to go. Right? And then maybe when we reach out to the IT department, they have, like, a okay. So this is what the the person wants, or we can just implement that. Or you have even, like, achieved what you wanted with AI.
Exactly. And for the person you log in the ticket with, you know, I'm really gonna log it now if I really can't work out myself. At least I've had a go, and that saves them time. So, you know, it's becoming more focused.
Yeah. Very exciting.
On, this topic, Alex, what's, what's next for Intranet? Are there any big sort of topics or themes that you're interested in starting to look at? You know, we've talked a bit about Copilot, AI is kind of on the agenda. What's next?
There's like so I'm work I'm trying to think as far ahead as I can, which is not easy because coffee will be fine. But, you know, I'm starting to think what it would look like in three years' time. You know, re completely reimagine it and then start building towards that. So things like Copilot agents. You know? Do I have to go and visit the intranet?
Yeah.
The intranet come to me?
You know, the idea that this was about visiting a web browser and taking me to a web page, I think I think that's gonna start disappearing soon. I think the way you interact with something is completely gonna change. And that excites me. You know? That the the idea that that can make people's lives easier Yeah. Something that I'm really interested in. And I think that anything that we start to think about now and anything we start to design needs to take that into consideration because I think it's gonna completely revolutionize how or what we think engaging with a digital tool is.
And I agree.
I think no matter what we do next, we've gotta make sure we've got that in our in our minds.
Yeah. I, you know, I think that, for organizations maintaining, agility, being able to pivot as technologies change, having your content be able to be flexibly delivered through whatever user interface, whether it's SharePoint, intranet in the browser, intranet on a mobile device, intranet in Teams, content through Copilot, you know, regardless of interface, making sure that your content is being structured and designed and maintained in a way that it can be delivered wherever people need to get access to it.
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And I think that once that I'm sure at some point, there'll be there'll be a moment and we'll all know when it happens.
Yeah.
The more you can plan for it now.
Yes. Yeah.
Yeah. And do but do you think that that some parts of the intranet will still be required in the future? Because, you know, like this consing content, you might do that, like, through a different interface, which could be at the agent or but maybe some parts might just, like, be required for, like, to do their work. How do you see that, like, work in the future?
Well, I think it's a really interesting point because I I actually think that while you might have the opportunity to interact with, an intranet for a different intranet, I think that the way that we decide that we want to do that is gonna be completely down to us. So I don't think you can, you know, you can swap one for the other. I think you need to have multiple Yeah. Options. And I think what's gonna you know, we look at when you go outside of work and you go into a streaming service and everything is personalized to you. I think that's gonna that's gonna be the victim. If I want to go onto the intranet via a browser and look in the twenty twenty five style, I can still do that.
But if I wanna look in the twenty twenty eight style and talk to an agent, I can I can do that as well?
Or I might want to, you know, browse or peruse in my own time because that's the way I like doing it. If I wanna get something quickly, I'll go through an agent straight away while I'm on the moon, I'm always at work. So when I get to work, it's already found all the docents I need so I can crack on and do my job. I think it's it's not cancelling anything out, and it's keeping all of the options open. I think that's what's gonna be different.
Yeah. Yeah.
Agree. Agree.
Agree. Hey.
If you were, if you were starting again, starting from scratch, on another cycle, at DLA Piper, you know, brand new intranet, blank sheet of paper, Is there anything that you'd do differently?
There's always things I do differently. I think that that goes without saying. But I think the one thing that I would definitely definitely do is remember to always be a student. You know? Right. Never feel like this job is done.
Keep on learning from the people who are trying to share information with you and never think that you're completely right. You might go in the right direct you know, going in the right direction and you might have some good ideas, but actually the people who use the platform will decide that for you and you've gotta keep learning from them and gotta keep listening.
Yeah. Yeah. Good advice for people, starting out on this journey.
Let's conclude this was a great conversation thoroughly enjoyed talking to you today, Alex, but before you go, do you have a favorite current app that you're using personal life at work, something that you find yourself using, more often than anything else?
It's a pretty good question that you completely call me on the hop. And it's not current, but I'm gonna give you the context. Okay? So I came back from holiday a couple of weeks ago, went to New York, which is lovely. And on arrival or check-in, the hotel asked me to download an app, and everything all the hotel services went through it.
Now the downside to that is you have to have your mobile phone on you on holiday, which, you know Yes. Keep you avoid it.
You probably have a nicer time. But the upside was when our room was ready after it been cleaned, you get notification.
If you needed something, you could go through the app from the beach. You know, you didn't have to go Right. Trip somewhere back somewhere. So, I thought that actually changed the holiday.
Yeah. Massively, you know, better. I didn't get money off or anything like that. It didn't say to me, oh, next time we come back, it'll be free.
But for a user experience and to make the bits of a holiday that, you know, could just be that simpler, definitely one. I won't give you the name. I don't Mhmm. Yep.
If they wanna pay me commission, they can.
Nice. Good.
I'm glad that I'm glad that's your first instinct there.
I agree. I think we were talking about, you know, small things making the difference. You know, what there's no better example than that. Right? Because just if, you know, there's kind of, retail in person, and online experiences coming together in a really positive way. The sense that you get is, here's an organization that cares about my experience and making sure that I'm having a good time while I'm here having spent a load of money with these people. What a a great example.
Thank you. Well, you know, I can't take the credit. They can. We made a difference.
Alright. Thank you so much for joining us today, Alex. Good talking to you.
You too. Thank you.
Cheers.
Cheers.