Lightspeed365: Distinctively ahead in the digital workplace

Posted on 26 January 20245 February 2024 by Dan Hawtrey

Lightspeed365 sets a new standard in user experience, offering an intuitive and engaging interface that significantly enhances employee interaction within the digital workspace.

ClearBox Intranet and Employee Experience Report 2024

The recently published ClearBox Intranet and Employee Experience Report 2024 shines a spotlight on Lightspeed365, revealing its standing as a leader in the digital workplace domain.

According to the report, Lightspeed365 sets itself apart in the digital workplace sector with its unique features. The platform’s user interface is lauded for its ease of use and intuitive design, fostering a positive user experience.

Its integration capabilities are a standout, allowing seamless interconnectivity with a wide range of external tools. Furthermore, Lightspeed365 excels in supporting robust internal communication and collaboration, key factors in enhancing employee engagement and productivity.

These distinct qualities underscore Lightspeed365’s leading position in the market, making it an ideal choice for modern organisations.

10 SharePoint Intranet Site Examples for 2024

Posted on 12 January 20243 April 2024 by John Scott

Intranets are highly flexible, scalable and valuable. They support a wide variety of use cases and processes and have multiple areas of value, including supporting communications, productivity, task completion, engagement and knowledge sharing. Inevitably different organisations will have different needs and priorities and the role of the intranet and its homepage often reflects this; an intranet for a global tax consultancy might look quite different to a small media company, for example. One size does not fit all.

The good news is that SharePoint intranets (and their homepages) are extremely flexible so organisations can invariably build an intranet that reflects their particular needs. One of the reasons for this is the sheer number of web parts that are available within SharePoint Online, straight out of the box.

Web parts are essentially building blocks with different functionality and features that can be combined together into multiple ways to build an intranet homepage. However, SharePoint does not have enough web parts to meet all modern intranet needs, which is why we built Lightspeed365, a set of additional web parts and features that enable you to build an even richer experience and wider variety of different homepages. You can achieve the intranet that your organisation needs, and that your users want.

We’re often asked about the kind of SharePoint intranet homepage experiences that be built using both SharePoint Online web parts and Lightspeed365. With so many different possibilities, there are a very wide variety of intranets to suit every need. In this post we’re going to show you ten real world examples of very different SharePoint homepages that we have built and have a particular function or focus. You can use this post to help you get thinking about what your perfect homepage might look like.

Here’s ten SharePoint intranet homepages that use both web parts and Lightspeed365 features.

1. The all-rounder intranet homepage

Intranets perform a variety of different functions and support multiple processes. An all-rounder intranet homepage provides a balance between multiple activities with a variety of different web parts and features – supporting internal communications, improving productivity, driving collaboration and helping employees complete tasks. Large, global and complex businesses tend to adopt an all-rounder homepage, supporting a highly diverse workforce.

In this example:

The news is displayed prominently to support internal communications, with an alert at the top for immediate operational or urgent messages.
The My Apps area provides a personalised launch pad to key apps and tools, to help employees complete their day-to-day work.
Personalised tasks are highlighted in the dashboard section to help employees get things done.
A middle panel presents key performance data to employees relating to company values, while also encouraging feedback.
A “My news” area presents personalised news relevant to the individual, which is important for intranet adoption and value in highly diverse workforces.
Collaboration, discussion and dialogue is supported by the “Engage” panel which highlights activity within Viva Engage groups.
Other information such as the latest share price is also presented.

Lightspeed365 Features in this example include: Alerts, Welcome bar, App launcher, Newsfeed, People search, Share price, Branding customiser.

2. The knowledge base intranet homepage

Intranets are often a key channel in supporting knowledge management and can act as an effective knowledge base for corporate or organisational knowledge, as well as encouraging knowledge sharing. Typically, this kind of approach might be adopted by a professional services, consulting or engineering firm. A knowledge base intranet homepage encourages findability through search and also uses personalisation to drive a valuable and relevant experience for users.

In this example:

A prominent search box allows and encourages users to search for documents and through knowledge collections, with the ability to filter items on areas such as project type and country, using metadata based on the company’s taxonomy.
A significant proportion of the homepage is dedicated to personalised access to knowledge, including favourite documents, documents owned by the user and also bookmarked collections of resources.
News is still part of the intranet but this is pared down with no imagery so it is less significant.

Lightspeed365 webparts in this example include: Newsfeed, Policy management, Card links, Branding customiser.

3. The dashboard intranet homepage

Intranets can act as a central point for employees to keep on top of all the things they need to know and do. A dashboard intranet can act as an excellent hub for real-time information and source of what employees need to do as a priority, with information even coming from multiple sources. A dashboard intranet is a dynamic channel that supports productivity and helps employees keep on top of their work.

In this example:

The homepage features high levels of personalisation, including a welcome bar that names the user so the experience feels more tailored to the individual.
Search is a strong component helping people find what they need, with searches for people and “How Do I” guidance.
There is also the ability to search for factory parts, a specific function of this organisation.
A milestones dashboard indicates the status of different organisational priorities.
A personalised task list also provides a highly convenient mini “to do” list for each individual employee, also presented with other relevant information.
However, more traditional features such as news and quick links are still included.

Lightspeed365 Features in this example include: Newsfeed, App launcher, People search, Card links, Welcome bar, Branding customiser.

4. The community hub intranet homepage

Some intranets are highly focused on supporting community and connection, helping employees to have conversations and to work out loud, and driving engagement and encouraging collaboration. A community hub homepage brings both internal and external conversations to the fore highlighting updates, discussions and events. Typically, this approach is used in businesses such as media and marketing companies, or where employee engagement is very high up the agenda.

In this example:

News is presented in an eye-catching and attractive way, allowing for the use of imagery to showcase the company’s brand and products, as well as key initiatives.
Internal conversations from Viva Engage, the company’s social collaboration platform of choice, are highlighted within the “Conversations” section.
Updates from the company’s external social channels are also relayed, providing information on how the organisation goes to market and interacts with customers.
Note that a share price widget is integrated into the news section so as not to constrain the overall look and feel.
Events are also prominently displayed, in this case using the standard SharePoint events feed feature, but using playful iconography and bright colour to draw attention.

Lightspeed365 Features in this example include: Section+, Newsfeed, Branding customiser, Social feeds.

5. The media hub intranet homepage

Intranets are not just about text-based content, but also house videos, podcasts and more. The media hub intranet tries to evoke a modern media experience more akin to a streaming platform like Netflix rather than what is usually associated with a more traditional intranet. It intelligently presents content that it thinks will be of interest based on your profile, role and preferences.

In this example:

Multimedia content is presented in attractive carousel area, with major items curated by the communications team, and linking through to text but also embedded video and audio.
Different content is then presented in tiles that is based on preferences, covering a range of different content formats and types.
A noticeboard feature aggregates updates rolling in from across the organisation.
“See more” buttons allow the user to view more content, ensuring the initial homepage experience remains focused and uncluttered.

Lightspeed365 Features in this example include: App launcher, Branding customiser, Subscriptions, Newsfeed.

6. The taskmaster intranet homepage

A key function of a good intranet is to help employees get things done efficiently and in the right way, supporting productivity and saving time. The taskmaster intranet homepage focuses on task completion, making the intranet the go-to place for getting things done.

In this example:

A welcome bar at the top includes a link to an intranet tour which automatically loads when an employee first visits the intranet, and walks users through the main intranet features and the information that can be found.
The homepage leverages the Viva Connections dashboard to deliver a common tasks panel to highlight common tasks such as logging an IT ticket, and to highlight key activity; integrations with common enterprise systems often means that employees don’t actually need to visit these applications if just needed to view data or perform simple transactions.
A searchable database of “How Do I” information provides succinct information on how to get things done across a wide variety of topics, helping to streamline and standardise processes and supporting productivity.
“How Do I” information is also targeted based on an employee’s profile, so for example a person sees the right process information based on their location.

Lightspeed365 Features in this example include: Welcome bar, Handbook, Viva integrations, People search, Share price, App launcher, Branding customiser.

7. The field worker intranet homepage

Some organisations have many frontline employees who are working out in the field. Retail, manufacturing, healthcare, logistics, engineering, hospitality & leisure, construction and transport are all examples of industries with a high proportion of field workers. In companies within these sectors, employees are often accessing the intranet on a tablet or smartphone. A “field worker” intranet makes it easier for employees to access all the content they need from any location, particularly when they do not have access to a desk during the working day.

In this example:

An icon-based app launcher dominates the homepage, making it easier for employees to reach all the apps they need; a search feature also means they can find the right tool or site quickly.
Apps represented by icons are targeted to employees by their role, helping drive value and relevance.
Employees are able to customise their experience and add their own personal links to the most commonly used apps, just as they are able to configure the screen of their mobile device.

Lightspeed365 Features in this example include: Navigation, App launcher, Branding customiser, Newsfeed, People search.

8. The newsroom intranet homepage

Supporting internal communications is a key function of most intranets. The newsroom intranet homepage keeps employees informed by providing news updates from right across the organisation. It’s often most relevant to large global businesses with multiple locations and diverse workforces.

In this example:

The header shows a weather and local time across all the key locations – the local time is particularly useful for anyone contacting colleagues across timezones.
The major news feed includes all news and events, avoiding key items being lost in a news carousel. Engagement data such as views, comments and reactions indicates the most popular items.
All content is tagged with the appropriate channel such as “People” or “Science & Innovation”, allowing users to click through to see more updates from that channel.

Quick operational announcements are also showed under the news.
More task-related content such as “How Do I” information is surfaced in the lower half of the page.

Lightspeed365 Features in this example include: Share price, Branding customiser.

9. The hyper-focused intranet

Sometimes an intranet is dedicated to a particular area of operations or activity. We’ve called this a “hyper-focused” intranet as it specifically focuses on a particular operational aspect. Sometimes it may actually be part of a wider intranet. In the example below, the intranet is focused on the theme of project delivery, but it could be another area of operations.

In this example:

A personalised notification feed delivers any outstanding tasks, key reminders and required actions, such as approving requests.
A minimalist “status dashboard” provides a good overview of the level of overall project activity which can be quickly digested.
Displaying recent project documents provides a convenient access point for employees to carry on working with key files relating to active projects.
News, policies and guidance can also be accessed, but only via the navigation, ensuring the page remains clear and focused on its purpose – avoiding clutter and reducing the risk of overwhelming the user.

Lightspeed365 Features in this example include: Branding customiser.

10. The noticeboard intranet homepage

The “noticeboard” intranet homepage also focuses on a particular facet of organisational life, this time acting as an aggregated place for multiple updates across different business functions, support functions, groups and work initiatives. Here the publishing model tends to be more decentralised, supporting peer-to-peer communication, and even the ability for any employee to be a publisher. However, it also ensures central communications are supported too.

In this example:

Updates from the central communications team are displayed in the carousel.
The rest of the homepage is dedicated to updates from multiple different groups and departments, with content presented via attractive cards in a social media style; items are given parity in how they are presented, however those with a higher engagement score are displayed higher in the page.
Other areas of content are reachable via the navigation, ensuring that the homepage does not get too cluttered.

Lightspeed365 Features in this example include: Floating search, Newsfeed, Branding customiser.

Building the right intranet homepage for you

We hope these examples have given you a bit of inspiration! The combination of SharePoint web parts available out of the box and additional Lightspeed365 web parts means that you can build the right homepage that meets your organisational needs and culture, and highlights the main functions of your intranet.

If you’d like to discuss your intranet project or how Lightspeed365 intranet could add value to your intranet, then get in touch!

How to use the SharePoint Lookbook

Posted on 17 November 202317 November 2023 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 28 July 202315 November 2023 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?

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 25 May 202317 January 2024 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.

How Lightspeed Modules adds most of the web parts you need

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!