Microsoft 365 & SharePoint
SharePoint Intranets & Microsoft 365 Platforms
Intranet portals and collaboration platforms on SharePoint Online for legal and property-management organizations: information architecture, permissions, governance and workflow automation, replacing older intranets or, in one case, no intranet at all.
A firm intranet has to be easy to find things on, safe with confidential material and manageable by the people who own it. The organizations I work with had older, hard-to-maintain intranets, or none, and wanted something their staff would actually use.
What it solves
- Information spread across file shares, email and out-of-date intranet pages.
- Permissions that depended on individual people rather than a design.
- Manual processes that could run as workflows inside Microsoft 365.
Technology stack
My role
I designed and deployed the portals: information architecture, permissions, governance and workflow automation.
Highlights
Sites, libraries, lists and permission groups designed around how each organization works and what each audience is allowed to see.
More than 100 site collections and several hundred pages serving about 400 users across the portals.
Power Automate and Power Apps handle routine requests and monitoring inside the platform, including the Supreme Court of Canada decision monitor built for JFK Law LLP.
I keep my own SharePoint workspace of PowerShell scripts, site designs, SPFx web part projects and a small utility that builds SPFx solution packages, so each new portal starts from parts I have already used.
Key decisions
Permissions, structure and ownership are decided and written down during delivery, so the organization can keep changing the platform afterward.
Where the standard tools do the job I use them, and I reserve custom web parts and formatting for the places they make a real difference.
Where it started
At Harper Grey I facilitated stakeholder workshops with partners and senior management and turned their requirements into technical specifications for a firm-wide intranet, working with an external vendor on timelines and budget. That experience shaped the platforms I have built since.
Outcomes
- Several organizations moved from legacy or non-existent intranets to maintained SharePoint Online platforms.
- Routine processes run as workflows inside the platform that staff already use.