P2P

40 P E E R T O P E E R : I L T A ' S Q U A R T E R L Y M A G A Z I N E | F A L L 2 0 2 2 that server count, and if you have any redundancy built in, it only goes up from there. So yes, you will save money by retiring hardware in your on-prem environment and moving to SharePoint Online. However, the more compelling reason to move to SharePoint Online revolves around capabilities. SharePoint Server (on prem) is literally years behind SharePoint Online in updates to the SharePoint Framework (SPFx). Writing customizations using SPFx is the right way to do things in Microsoft's SharePoint development model. Investing in the development of an intranet platform with SPFx that is 10+ versions behind will only create more technical debt that will have to be repaid down the road. SharePoint Server also has limited access to key resources like the Microsoft Graph, which is the gateway to data and intelligence in Microsoft 365. The Microsoft Graph is a critical asset needed to build experiences that provide access to rich, people-centric data and insights, and it's not available if everything is on premises. The capabilities available in Microsoft 365 are extensive, and your intranet needs to leverage and integrate with these resources to provide the best user experience possible. If you're running SharePoint on prem, you are at a significant disadvantage from the outset. #3 – Users see mostly the same content Optimizing a user interface involves presenting relevant information to the end user. When a litigation attorney from the New York office opens the front page of your intranet, that person should be seeing very different content than a paralegal supporting an intellectual property attorney in Atlanta. Giving the litigation attorney in NYC an announcement about Atlanta office maintenance and breaking news about the intellectual property practice usually doesn't make sense. Content management platforms like SharePoint have had basic audience-targeting capabilities for years. The challenge is that managing audience definitions and tagging content can be time-consuming with out-of-the- box solutions. For example, using Active Directory groups to define audiences in SharePoint can create unnecessary clutter and necessitate the involvement of IT. Active Directory is one of the most important pieces of security infrastructure in your firm and must be carefully managed by IT. Your IT department has better things to do than add/edit/delete audience definitions on behalf of content managers. These definitions will likely change frequently, and time is of the essence when updates do occur. The good news, however, is there are third-party products that make persona-targeting processes much more effective and manageable. #4 – Utilization isn't good or isn't being measured The biggest driver of ROI for an intranet project is utilization. It doesn't matter how compelling your intranet is if your users aren't engaged. As such, an intranet's utilization must be measured and managed. Content managers need that data to make the user experience as relevant as possible. Utilization metrics tell your intranet team where to invest more resources and, more importantly, where to invest less. To close the feedback loop you must be able to answer questions like: • What percentage of our target user base visits the intranet at least once a week? • Which pages on the intranet get the most visits? • How relevant are the results our enterprise search platform provides? F E A T U R E S

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