The Modern Intranet – Part 2: The role of SharePoint

< Part 1 – Unleashing Collaboration and Productivity

Introduction

The role of SharePoint in Microsoft 365 has evolved compared to its previous role in the “on-premises era.” In the past, SharePoint on-premises served as a comprehensive platform for content management, intranet portals, application development, search centres, collaboration, and community management.

Teams and Viva taking the lead

Nowadays, Microsoft Teams has taken over as the primary collaboration platform, while SharePoint has transitioned into a Content Storage provider role. A SharePoint team created within a Microsoft Teams team can be used as-is without modifying its structure or making customisations. Documents stored in SharePoint can be accessed from Microsoft Teams, eliminating the need to access SharePoint directly in most cases.

Microsoft Viva Engage has assumed the role of the community management platform. It seamlessly integrates with Microsoft Teams, requiring minimal interaction with SharePoint.

The Power Platform has become the go-to solution for rapidly developing line-of-business applications in the Modern Workplace. It integrates various data sources, not limited to SharePoint. For more complex scenarios, developers can leverage the Teams Toolkit, where SharePoint Framework (SPFx) is just one of the available options.

The Search System is now integrated across all Microsoft 365 systems, extending beyond SharePoint.

So, what is the actual role of SharePoint in Microsoft 365?

​ Well, SharePoint in Microsoft 365 still fulfils two fundamental roles:​

• Collaboration: SharePoint Online offers capabilities for document management, authoring and co-authoring, and sharing documents among organisational and external users.​
• Publishing: SharePoint Online serves as the primary building block for creating a publishing portal that delivers content, news, policies and procedures, search functionality, user profiles, links, and other relevant information to a broader audience, ideally encompassing the entire organisation or specific departments. ​

Furthermore, SharePoint Online serves as a foundational layer for enhancing the capabilities of Microsoft Teams:​

• Providing content storage and document management capabilities within Microsoft Teams.​
• Allowing for the integration of the Modern Intranet within Microsoft Teams through Microsoft Viva.

​Coming up next

The next blog post in the series will focus on SharePoint Online as the foundation for creating a publishing portal.

Part 3 – The Publishing Portal >