SharePoint Intranet with 100+ Team Sites

Client

The Client is a US-based dental practice specializing in orthodontics.

Handy Intranet Is Wanted

The Client decided to create an intranet to keep its 200+ employees united and informed about the latest corporate events. The company bought SharePoint and was looking for competent SharePoint developers to structure, design, and launch the intranet. The Client’s main requirements were easy navigation and branded design.

Developing an Intranet and Solving Unexpected Integration Challenges

ScienceSoft started by discussing with the Client the required intranet functions and the employee experience the company wanted to create. We planned the scope of work based on the findings and got down to implementation.

Creating an intranet structure

The Client has a hierarchical organizational structure — there are several departments, and each department has several subordinate teams. We opted for a multi-site intranet to give each team its own space and still share the same home page to deliver corporate news. In total, we created over 100 sites — 10 hub departmental sites, each containing up to 15 team sites.

The intranet sitemap fully matched the company’s structure as of the intranet’s launch. However, the Client was planning to form new teams in the future, so we also created a reusable template to set up new sites without involving SharePoint developers.

Implementing custom web parts

Following the Client’s idea to make corporate announcements on the intranet’s home page, we implemented four custom web parts:

• Birthdays
• Newcomers
• Employee recognitions & awards
• Work anniversaries.

The web parts were to draw employee information from the Client’s HR system, built on UKG platform. However, the integration failed to return correct data results due to the faults in UKG’s API for SharePoint. As we couldn’t connect SharePoint and UKG directly, we offered a custom solution to set up the integration via an intermediary service. We implemented Azure WebJobs, which connects to UKG once a day and downloads employee data into a SharePoint list. The web parts take data from the list and show it on the home page. Later, we also set up a notification workflow in Power Automate that monitors the operation of Azure WebJobs and notifies the Client if the service hasn’t started during the day.

Designing branded UI

We created a custom SharePoint theme that reflected the Client’s brand colors.

Branded Intranet Driving Positive Employee Experience

Cooperation between the Client and ScienceSoft was very dynamic. We met once or twice a week to check the progress and plan ahead. In three months, the Client got the intranet that contributed to creating a positive employee experience:

• The Client’s teams have a space to collaborate and share knowledge.
• The intranet breaks down departmental silos by storing the information centrally.
• Employees celebrate significant milestones together and develop tighter personal bonds.
• The Client has a channel to share important corporate and industry news.

Technologies and Tools

SharePoint Online, Azure WebJobs.