Book a demo

Author: Hannah Barltrop

How to use the SharePoint Lookbook

Posted on by Hannah Barltrop

How to use the SharePoint Lookbook

Modern SharePoint is an extremely flexible tool that can meet multiple use cases to support communication and collaboration inside an organisation. This means intranet teams and site owners have a lot of choice in how they structure and design individual sites and pages. Recognising this, Microsoft has created the SharePoint Lookbook, a collection of site templates and designs that can be viewed and then actually deployed on to your SharePoint tenant. The Lookbook is an extremely useful resource that both provides inspiration and a way to give teams a head start in setting up a site. In this post we’re going to explore what the SharePoint Lookbook is, why it is useful, the kind of templates it contains, and what to consider when using it.

The flexibility of SharePoint

One of the strengths of SharePoint is its flexibility and versatility to support multiple use cases, usually as part of a wider intranet. A strategy page for leadership communications, a departmental site for the sales function, a site for onboarding employees, a place for your volunteering community to come together. All these and more can be achieved using modern SharePoint. One of the reasons for this flexibility is the ability to add, arrange and configure multiple web parts – the basic “building blocks” of SharePoint – on any given site and page. This means you can have multiple combinations on a page to create different experiences that meet various needs. It also gives intranet teams and individual site owners a lot of choice in how they design and structure individual sites, which are either standalone or sit within a wider intranet structure. Of course, design flexibility has limits unless a site is customised, retaining some of the standard look and feel of modern SharePoint. While this means it’s not always possible to meet all design and branding needs, in our view this is generally not a problem, as modern SharePoint has an attractive, intuitive and consistent interface. This flexibility can leave some teams wondering what the best structure and design is for their site. This is where the SharePoint Lookbook can act as a useful resource for both reference and deployment.

What is the SharePoint LookBook?

The SharePoint LookBook is a publicly available site provided by Microsoft that can be reached at https://lookbook.microsoft.com/.  As Microsoft itself describes it, it provides an opportunity to “discover the modern experiences you can build with SharePoint in Microsoft 365” and to “get inspired with these designs or add them to your tenant to start building your next stunning site with them.” Within the Lookbook there is a gallery of SharePoint templates divided into different categories. You can explore the themes and view each template in more detail. As well as the showing the design on the page, the Lookbook contains template-specific information on site features, web parts used and content included. There is then a call to action for administrators to deploy a Lookbook template to their tenant, an automated process which takes minutes, as long as an administrator has the necessary rights and your tenant meets the minimum system requirements.

What type of templates are available in the SharePoint Lookbook?

The Lookbook is divided into a number of different browsable categories that explore a wide range of useful use cases. However, the differences between some of the categories are pretty narrow, so it’s worth taking a look through the entire library of templates. Current categories are:
  • Organisation: covering key organisation-wide types of communication site including initiatives for leadership communications, crisis comms, a news centre, Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) and more.
  • Department: examples of department-specific sites or hub covering areas such as sales, HR, training, marketing and even a key conference.
  • Team: this covers team-specific sites for four different use cases covering a project, a collaboration need, a product team and general team communication.
  • Community: this covers two examples of a community site, one being a brand and resources site, and another relating to a charity or CST initiative.
  • Solutions: templates for a range of useful business scenarios including providing Microsoft learning resources, employee onboarding, pre-boarding for new hires, workplace transformation, dealing with a freelance community and more.
  • Schools: templates for schools and colleges.
  • SharePoint Syntex: two templates covering key Syntex user cases including contracts management and promoting the use of Syntex inside your organisation.

What are the benefits of using a SharePoint Lookbook template?

There are a number of benefits in using templates from the SharePoint Lookbook.

Providing inspiration

As already noted, SharePoint is highly flexible and sometimes it is hard to know where to start when designing a site. The Lookbook is an excellent place to start because it provides tangible and achievable examples of site designs across multiple use cases and scenarios. If you need a place to simulate ideas and provide inspiration, then the SharePoint Lookbook is a great starting point.

Increasing speed to market

Using a Lookbook template gives any site owners a huge head start in providing a template that can be deployed in minutes and then modified to suit your needs. It can significantly reduce the “speed to market” if you need to get a site up and running quickly.

Supporting new and busy site owners

Site owners for many areas of an intranet (or for specific intranet sites) can lack confidence in using SharePoint or can be very time-stretched. They are unlikely to be trained communicators. The head start given by a Lookbook can support confidence and resourcing.

Encouraging good use cases and adoption

Lookbook templates reflect good practices and showcase the best of what SharePoint has to offer. They demonstrate the art of the possible and also highlight the range of different web parts that can be deployed. Using templates can help encourage using SharePoint for some use cases that might not have been considered, and generally support adoption from potential site owners across an organisation.

No costs involved

The use of the SharePoint Lookbook is completely free so does not come at any additional cost on top of your normal Microsoft 365 subscription.

Things to consider when using the SharePoint Lookbook

However, there are some considerations in using the SharePoint Lookbook and its templates.

A template is not a finished site

A Lookbook template is not going to be complete. It will likely need more work on it to truly optimise it to meet a particular business need within your organisation. For example, it might be missing a particular web part. However, site owners might consider a site “complete” because it is a Microsoft template and therefore reflecting best practices. It is likely that content owners still need additional guidance and support from the central intranet or communications team to complete a site.

Still needs to fit in with your Information Architecture and security

A deployed template site also needs to fit into your existing Information Architecture and align with your security policies, so any site generated from the Lookbook will need further configuration.

Might bypass governance processes

Many intranet, communication and digital workplace teams want to establish governance about the use of SharePoint sites to deliver business value, minimise duplication, ensure adherence to standards and support alignment with a content strategy. This often means having some kind of approval workflow on site provisioning to stop site proliferation. Automatically deploying a template on your tenant could bypass provisioning and other governance processes, particularly if your IT function carries out SharePoint administration duties but has a different view on site creation to the intranet team. For example, it can encourage the creation of a lot of standalone sites that can start to get out of control leading to problems with findability.

Not aligning with custom branding

Some organisations want to establish specific designs for their digital workplace or intranet so choose to deploy custom branding or use an “in a box” product that extends the design options of SharePoint. A Lookbook template will not align with that branding.

Getting the best out of the SharePoint Lookbook

In our view the SharePoint Lookbook is an excellent resource that used properly can help save time, and encourage the best use of SharePoint. However, to get the best out of the templates in SharePoint Lookbook there are other things you need to consider. We regularly help intranet and digital workplace teams in certain areas.

1. Strategy

Defining a digital workplace and intranet strategy, or a related content strategy, that can help define the use cases (and therefore templates) you’ll need in your SharePoint tenant.

2. Design

Helping establish the best design for sites, that can potentially leverage the site and page templates contained in the Lookbook.

3. Additional web parts

Providing the additional web parts that you need to add to Lookbook templates in order to drive business value. Sometimes these are completely custom, or are provided as part of our Lightspeed Modules package, a collection of high value web parts that fill many of the gaps in SharePoint.

4. Information architecture

We can help you design your information architecture to ensure sites created by Lookbook templates are truly findable.

Need help? Get in touch!

If you’d like help in using the SharePoint Lookbook and design, or want to discuss other aspects of your Microsoft 365 powered digital workplace, then get in touch!

Designing an intranet homepage: seven must-have web parts

Posted on by Hannah Barltrop

Intranet teams often ask us questions about how to design an intranet homepage and which web parts (widgets) or features they should include on it. Of course, there is no right or wrong answer; no two intranet home pages are the same, and depending on the needs of your users, the web parts to include will vary from organisation to organisation.  However, it’s also safe to say that there are some web parts that are extremely common to find on a homepage, with some appearing on the majority of intranets.

In this post we’re going to look at seven must-have web parts or features that appear on multiple homepages. To help illustrate these, we’ve included a screenshot (with dummy content) of a global intranet based on SharePoint Online.  Let’s explore seven of the key web parts or features that are featured on the intranet, and are likely to feature on your homepage too.

1.Personalised greeting

Many intranets now choose to display a personalised greeting at the top of the page. For example, in this screenshot “Good morning, Kelly” is displayed. This personal greeting has three main functions; firstly, it helps to make the intranet feel less formal and corporate, with a friendly greeting. Secondly, it confirms to the user that they are authenticated into the intranet and it recognises who they are, critical if a user is expecting some level of personalisation. Thirdly, it can also be a place for some hyper-local content that perhaps sits less well elsewhere – a link to the local weather forecast, for example.

 

2. Hero area

Virtually every intranet homepage has a hero area which will display major news or campaign items – this should be a much sought after spot to promote and spotlight important content. This intranet contains four items, but other intranets can display five or six. In some intranets this has been displayed as a news carousel in the past.

Using attractive images in the hero area helps to draw attention to these pieces, but also gives some balance to the overall intranet design. In many organistions, the news or content presented in the hero area is relevant for all employees, although it can also be personalised to ensure relevance.

 

3.Personalised news feed

Personalisation is key to the success of an intranet in a global, large and complex organisation. A news feed for personalised news (“My news”) should aggregate items that are the result of content targeting based on user profile, but also include additional items subscribed to by a user. Subscriptions might be extra additional targeted content that a user wants to see – for example for another division or location – as well as topic-related items that are of interest. In the screenshot, labels on each story show their intended audience. Other metadata to consider displaying here can relate to engagement including the numbers of views, likes and comments of each news item.

 

4.Other communication feeds

Sometimes you’ll also want to display other kinds of news on your homepage that you want to distinguish from the more general items. In this example there is a “People focus” area with items that are more focused on highlighting the specific work of different teams. But in your organisation this may be product news, something relating to your values, more blogs and user-generated content, customer success stories or perhaps something else entirely.

 

5.Links to apps and sites

A major use case for your intranet is as a convenient gateway to all the apps and sites that people need to access during the week to complete tasks and carry out their role. When intranet teams ask a user what they rely on their intranet for, this feature is always near the top of the list.

Including useful links is a must-have for any homepage. In this example there are links to “My tools” and also “My sites”. Ideally, users should be able to configure their own list of links, with the aid of a central directory of apps to choose from to help them, and existing default links to get people started, ideally personalised to different sections of the organisation to ensure relevance.

 

6.Content spotlights and promotions

Intranets are there to guide people to the most important content, so content spotlights and promotions that reflect priorities and campaigns are a common part of any homepage. These might be an organisational priority (COVID-19 updates) or be important because they are timely (Black Friday deals for employees).

 

7.Yammer / Viva Engage feed

Many intranet teams choose to include a feed from their social collaboration platform on their homepage. This could be a general personalised feed for users, or from a specific community, although the latter will usually be company-wide if appearing on a homepage.

Including a social feed helps to encourage adoption of the social platform, supports the role of the intranet as the “front door” to the wider digital workplace and also brings the employee voice into the homepage to balance more “top-down” internal communications messaging.  With a SharePoint intranet including a feed from Yammer (now being rebranded as Viva Engage) is super easy with web parts that are available out of the box.

Need help with your homepage or looking for web parts to help you build your intranet?

lightspeed modules
Read more about Lightspeed365 Features

How Lightspeed Modules adds most of the web parts you need

Content Formula’s Lightspeed Modules is a product from Content Formula that adds many of the custom web parts that you need for your intranet, effectively extending the value of SharePoint, and filling many of the gaps in functionality.  Lightspeed’s web parts are based on the work we’ve done across hundreds of projects over the years. These are easily added to your tenant and can then be added by your content editors just like all the other standard SharePoint web parts

Because intranet and internal communication teams now have a more complete set of web parts to support a SharePoint Online intranet, it can prove to be highly cost effective, because it reduces the need to purchase a more expensive “in-a-box”  intranet solution.

Examples of some of the most popular Lightspeed web parts include:

  • A page tour, highlighting key intranet features for new staff.
  • Branding customiser, extending branding and theming options for SharePoint.
  • Share price, allowing teams to embed a stock price on the homepage.
  • App launcher, allowing users to personalise their own links to apps.
  • Tabs, allowing multiple web parts to be displayed in a tabbing format to save page real-estate.
  • Table of content to appear at the top of a page to support findability for long-read content.
  • Site provisioning, to embed the provisioning process for different Microsoft collaboration sites including Teams.
  • External social feeds from different sources.
  • Floating search, providing the ability to add a contextual search anywhere on a page.
  • Feedback, allowing structured feedback on the intranet and its content from any page.
  • Welcome bar, for personalised welcome messages to users to create a more engaging experience.
  • Noticeboard, for employee classified adverts and notices.
  • And more!

Want to know more about web parts? Get in touch!

Web parts are one of the elements that make SharePoint such a valuable and flexible platform. If you want to know more about using web parts, or want more information on our Lightspeed Modules offering, then get in touch!

What are SharePoint web parts and how do I use them?

Posted on by Hannah Barltrop

Web parts are one of the core elements of SharePoint and therefore of any intranet built on SharePoint. They are the basic building blocks that make up the different sites within SharePoint; every page can be broken down into a series of different web parts. If you are creating an intranet based on SharePoint or even just contributing content to it, it really helps to have an understanding of what web parts are and the kind of web parts that you can deploy to deliver your overall content and experience.

In this article we’re going to take a deep dive into SharePoint web parts. We’re going to cover what they are, the different kinds of web parts there are, what a custom web part is and the kind of value that custom web parts can bring to a SharePoint Internet.

What are web parts in SharePoint?

Web parts can be defined as the basic components of SharePoint. Microsoft themselves describe them as “the building blocks of your page” with the ability to “add text, images, files, video, dynamic content and more.”  

Web parts are a significant part of the editing experience in SharePoint. Web parts can be arranged in different ways on a page. Content editors in SharePoint modern can also add new web parts, selecting from a number of web parts that come as standard with the platform.

Web parts can display SharePoint content but can also integrate feeds from other Microsoft 365 tools including Viva Engage / Yammer and Viva Connections.  Each web part also has extensive configuration options around elements such as what to display or link to, how items are sorted or filtered, and how they are displayed.  The combination of the sheer number of web parts and configuration options is one of the factors which enables SharePoint to be a highly flexible tool that can be used across multiple use cases.

What kind of SharePoint web parts are there?

There are currently around fifty SharePoint web parts that are available out of the box. These include everything from the ability to format calls to action or featuring a Power BI report to embedding a video or even a world clock. There isn’t enough space here to go into all the web parts that are available, but some of the most popular include:

  • Connectors: provides options to bring in different feeds from external services based on the connectors available.
  • Document library: displays a SharePoint document library.
  • Events: displays upcoming events with the ability to click through for more information for each event.
  • File viewer: the ability to embed a file such as a Word or PDF document to read within a page.
  • Hero: displays up to five items at the top of a page, usually on a home or landing page.
  • Highlighted content: a flexible web part that displays a dynamically generated list of content based on its type such as documents, videos or images, and other salient criteria.
  • List: displays a SharePoint list, again another very flexible way to display and manage information.
  • Microsoft Forms: embeds a Microsoft Form, and can be used for forms, polls and surveys.
  • News: displays news items with different formatting options.
  • People: displays details of a selected group of people, such as a team or key contacts, with links to individual profiles.
  • Quick links: the ability to display quick links to other pages, apps, external sites and more.
  • Yammer (Viva Engage): embed a personalised Viva Engage / Yammer feed on a page, for example to support a community.

Standard web parts and gaps in functionality

Despite the high number of web parts and the ability to configure them, in practice there are still some gaps in functionality and features that can be particularly frustrating for intranet teams and internal communicators who want to deploy a high value SharePoint intranet or site with strong adoption.

Sometimes these “gaps” relate to branding and design options around the look and feel of a web part being limited or not quite right. At other times, it might be that there simply isn’t a web part available out of the box that delivers particular functionality. For example, a popular intranet feature that is not available in SharePoint out of the box is the ability for users to add their own personal links to frequently used apps that can then be displayed on an intranet home page.

Sometimes there also might be no web part available that delivers content from a different external system or application, where there might need to be an integration, and there is no current connector.

What are custom web parts?

When there is gap in functionality, organisations have the option to deploy a custom web part. A custom web part is one that has either been custom developed from scratch or has been modified from a standard SharePoint web part. A custom web part therefore can be considered to be any web part that is not supplied by Microsoft as standard and has involved some degree of additional coding. Custom web parts are often designed to give you functionality and features that is very specifically suited to delivering a great intranet experience.

Custom web parts tend to fall into two types:

  • Those developed specifically for the needs of an individual organisation.
  • Those provided more generically by intranet software vendors that fil the gaps in SharePoint.

Here at Content Formula, we produce both types, regularly creating specific custom web parts as part of an intranet build, but also now delivering a standard set of custom web parts as part of our Lightspeed Modules service.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of custom web parts?

Custom web parts both have advantages and disadvantages. On the upside, they complement SharePoint and complete the gaps, adding value by:

  • Enabling “classic” intranet features that have been overlooked by Microsoft in SharePoint when its used straight out of the box.
  • Supporting richer options for internal communicators.
  • Delivering more engaging and flexible design options.
  • Supporting additional integrations not supported by out-of-the-box connectors that drive a more connected digital workplace experience.
  • Supporting specific business processes and automation, helping raise productivity and efficiency

The disadvantages of custom web parts include the additional cost involved. If you choose to develop your own individual custom web parts then this will involve development resources and effort; however, if you choose to purchase customised web parts that have already been developed by a vendor, they will be considerably cheaper than developing your own, following the usual rules around “buy vs build”.

The other disadvantage comes with customisation in general. Most IT functions want to limit custom development as much as possible because they create technical debt, makes upgrades harder and can require ongoing management. However, buying additional custom web parts from a vendor that are completely managed removes this issue.

lightspeed modules
Read more about Lightspeed365 Features

How Lightspeed Modules adds most of the web parts you need

Content Formula’s Lightspeed Modules is a product from Content Formula that adds many of the custom web parts that you need for your intranet, effectively extending the value of SharePoint, and filling many of the gaps in functionality.  Lightspeed’s web parts are based on the work we’ve done across hundreds of projects over the years. These are easily added to your tenant and can then be added by your content editors just like all the other standard SharePoint web parts

Because intranet and internal communication teams now have a more complete set of web parts to support a SharePoint Online intranet, it can prove to be highly cost effective, because it reduces the need to purchase a more expensive “in-a-box”  intranet solution.

Examples of some of the most popular Lightspeed web parts include:

  • A page tour, highlighting key intranet features for new staff.
  • Branding customiser, extending branding and theming options for SharePoint.
  • Share price, allowing teams to embed a stock price on the homepage.
  • App launcher, allowing users to personalise their own links to apps.
  • Tabs, allowing multiple web parts to be displayed in a tabbing format to save page real-estate.
  • Table of content to appear at the top of a page to support findability for long-read content.
  • Site provisioning, to embed the provisioning process for different Microsoft collaboration sites including Teams.
  • External social feeds from different sources.
  • Floating search, providing the ability to add a contextual search anywhere on a page.
  • Feedback, allowing structured feedback on the intranet and its content from any page.
  • Welcome bar, for personalised welcome messages to users to create a more engaging experience.
  • Noticeboard, for employee classified adverts and notices.
  • And more!

Want to know more about web parts? Get in touch!

Web parts are one of the elements that make SharePoint such a valuable and flexible platform. If you want to know more about using web parts, or want more information on our Lightspeed Modules offering, then get in touch!

We use cookies to give you the best experience on our site. By continuing to use our website, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. To find more about the cookies, please see our cookie notice. You can also read our privacy policy.
GOT IT