The Modern Intranet – Part 3: The Publishing Portal

< Part 2 – The role of SharePoint

Introduction

In this article, I will describe the information architecture and design phases of a SharePoint Online publishing portal. I will adopt an agile approach and provide simple and realistic guidelines based on my real-world experience as a Microsoft technologies consultant. For those interested in delving into the theoretical aspects, I recommend referring to the official documentation available on the Microsoft website.

Information Architecture

Information Architecture in SharePoint Online involves the deliberate organisation of sites, navigation, and content to ensure that users can easily find, access, and interact with information. It aims to create a logical and intuitive structure that aligns with the organisation’s goals and user needs. Let’s take a concise look at how to structure the high-level architecture and explore the best practices for the following aspects:

• the portal’s site structure
• the navigation
• the content

The Sites Structure

One of the main differences between SharePoint Online and its on-premise predecessors is the fact that now the subsites have been pretty much deprecated. Rather than having a hierarchy of sites and subsites, in SharePoint Online it’s prereable to have a flat site structure.

There are several reasons why Microsoft has pushed for a flat site structure in SharePoint Online. Firstly, it promotes simplicity and ease of use by minimising complexity and reducing the number of clicks required to access information. Secondly, it enhances content discoverability and searchability.

On the other hand, the administration is somewhat affected when using a flat structure, as each site would have its own set of permissions, and the concept of permissions inheritance is no longer applicable. However, this is not necessarily a disadvantage.

The Home Site

The Home Site acts as the main gateway to the publishing portal, offering employees a personalized and captivating experience for accessing news, resources, and crucial information. Its structure can be seen in the diagram provided below at a very high level:

_{In one of the upcoming articles in this series, we will explore how to enhance and reinforce the concept of intranet’s home, using Microsoft Viva. However, for now, let’s keep it simple and let’s just assume that our entry point is the SharePoint Online Home Site.}

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The Hub Sites

A hub site serves as a tool for organising and connecting related sites, bringing together content, navigation, and search. By creating a hub site, we can establish a unified experience, share common resources, and promote collaboration among teams or departments.

The simplest scenario is an organisation having only one hub consisting of the Home Site plus a few departmental sites. More complex scenarios may involve multiple hubs (e.g., one per department) and/or hubs for publishing content based on areas, topics, or teams.

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The Navigation

Navigation plays a crucial role in guiding users to relevant content and navigating the site structure ensuring a seamless user experience. From an information architecture perspective, a SharePoint Online intranet employs three key navigation elements: Global navigation, Hub navigation, and Local navigation.

Global navigation

Global navigation serves as the primary navigation mechanism across the entire Intranet. It helps users quickly navigate to important areas, such as the organisation’s Home site, team sites, or specific departments. It ensures consistent access to critical resources and delivers a sense of unity throughout the platform.

Hub navigation

Hub navigation serves as a secondary navigation layer specific to the hub. It facilitates navigation within the hub and provides contextually relevant links to associated sites, enabling users to seamlessly navigate between different sites within the hub’s ecosystem.

Local navigation

Local navigation focuses on providing navigation elements within individual sites. It helps users explore the content and structure of a specific site, allowing users to navigate between different sections, libraries, lists, or pages within the site. Local navigation enhances discoverability and enables users to find and access content within the context of their current location.

The Content Architecture

When designing the content architecture, several considerations can ensure an organised and efficient structure. Firstly, it is important to grasp the content requirements and the intended purpose of the intranet area that is going to host it. This understanding will guide the creation of a logical and intuitive structure. Begin by identifying the major content categories or topics and create top-level hubs or sites accordingly. Within each hub or site, further break down the content into sites, document libraries, lists, and pages based on their specific characteristics or usage patterns.

To enhance discoverability and navigation, implement metadata to tag and classify the content. This allows users to filter, sort, and search for information more effectively. Take advantage of content types to enforce consistency and standardisation across similar types of content, ensuring that the appropriate metadata fields are associated with each content type.

Consider implementing a content approval flow to govern the publishing process and ensure content quality and accuracy. This flow can involve multiple stakeholders and include various stages such as creation, review, approval, and publishing. Additionally, leverage version control to track changes and enable easy rollbacks if needed.

Last but not least, regularly assess the content structure to ensure it aligns with evolving business needs.

Roles in Content Architecture

Content creators – Content creators are responsible for keeping content updated and publishing news.

Content consumers – Content consumers are not represented in the counts as anyone who is using and viewing content throughout the three levels of navigation.

Owners – Intranet owners, departmental business owners, hub owners, and site owners should regularly engage with content consumer to ensure the right content is findable and usable. Content creators partner with site owners during the implementation and management stages.

Design

After defining the information architecture, attention turns to design. This encompasses the following elements:

• Visual design: selecting appropriate themes, colour schemes, and layouts that align with the organisation’s branding and create a cohesive user interface.
• Functionality and features: during the Design phase, it is important to gain an understanding of the available off-the-shelf building blocks (site templates, site designs, themes, web parts, page templates) to determine if and what level of customisation will be required.

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Site Templates and Site Designs

Sometimes, people tend to confuse the two terms. Therefore, let’s provide their definitions:

• Site Template: in its most basic form, site templates are the key to the different types of sites you can create in SharePoint Online. Excluding the old backward compatible site templates (a.k.a. “Classic” site templates), there are only two site templates in SharePoint Online: “Team Sites” and “Communication Sites”. At a high level, the Communication Site is the preferred site template for publishing portals, while the Team Site template is more suitable for collaboration scenarios.
• Site Design: a predefined set of actions that can be used to create new sites in SharePoint Online. A Site Design runs on top of an existing Site Template to create a new site or re-design an existing site.

Designing the Home Site

Microsoft have provided the SharePoint Lookbook which is an amazing resource with a variety of site designs to choose from. These include:

• Organization
• Department
• Team
• Community
• Solutions
• Schools

My advice here is always to go for an off-the-shelf solution. Therefore, simply choose one of the “Organization” site designs as a starting point for the intranet’s homepage.

The second step is to customize the site design to change the site logo and align the theme’s colors according to the company’s branding.

Next, implement the content architecture amending the home page’s layout and creating any other necessary pages, libraries and lists. Then, define the site’s Local Navigation.