Blog posts

A knowledge base is a mine of useful information for your customers, but it can also be useful for your own team members? Here’s a way to enable your internal customers to self-serve and complete the tasks they need to, using Microsoft technology and software you already have.

• What is a knowledge base?
• Key benefits of having a knowledge base
• How do I build a knowledge base?
• Common knowledge base tools & software
• Microsoft SharePoint as a knowledge base
• How do I build an internal knowledge base
• Knowledge base best practices

What is a knowledge base?

A knowledge base is a library of information about your company, product or service and the questions or issues people might ask about it. A knowledge base allows people to find answers and solve problems on their own so it's an essential part of good customer service, whether your customers are members of the public or internal customers – i.e.; your colleagues.

The best knowledge bases typically include frequently asked questions (FAQs), a user forum, articles, whitepapers, how-to articles, video tutorials, case studies and glossaries.

A knowledge base allows you to create self-service content around recurring questions, issues and themes. It’s important to note that the point of a knowledge base is to help users complete a task or solve a problem. The knowledge in your knowledge base needs to be actionable.

An organisation with a call-center or a team of customer service representatives will undoubtedly use a knowledge base to ensure that each customer receives the same information and as an easily navigable database for a wide range of queries. The use case for a knowledge base within a company or B2B environment is perhaps less obvious, but extremely beneficial – and the focus of this blog.

Many businesses have to regularly respond to requests for proposals (RFPs) - after all, each RFP is a sales opportunity. But proposals require resources and good proposal management to be successful, and to realise that business growth potential. How well is your business equipped to produce efficient and effective proposals?

What is proposal management – and who is responsible for it?

Ever tried to find something on Teams and got nowhere? I think we can all relate.

Google or Bing 'Microsoft Teams search' and you'll see a long list with terms like 'Microsoft Teams search not working'.

The amazing thing about Microsoft Viva Topics is how well the AI engine is able to discover and group together lots of content from across your SharePoint Online estate. It is really quite phenomenal to see Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing in action like this and we're getting the same positive and excited reaction from our clients who are using Viva Topics.

Microsoft Loop is the new application punted to change how people collaborate with their colleagues and perform daily tasks.  

Looking for a new intranet and wondering whether to use SharePoint? If you’ve searched up ‘intranet sharepoint’ / 'sharepoint intranet' you’re not alone. With so many companies using Microsoft 365, and with SharePoint included in their M365 license, SharePoint is a logical choice for intranet software. SharePoint isn’t just a default however, it’s also a solid option; just ask the 200,000-plus organisations and 190 million people who use SharePoint for their intranets, team sites and content management.

And to add to SharePoint’s appeal, Microsoft has added SharePoint Connections to its offerings.

In this blog post, we'll examine SharePoint in more detail:

• Are all SharePoint intranets the same?
• Introduction to SharePoint modern intranet
• Introduction to Microsoft Viva Connections
• Developing your intranet with SharePoint. Product, framework or internal?
• What should your SharePoint intranet do?

It’s over 20 years since the creation of the first intranets. Technology has changed greatly in that time. The way people work from anywhere, at any time with any device has changed the world of work dramatically. Increasingly, the best intranets are business critical tools that people rely on to aid their work.

Digitizing case law documentation is one thing, but can you actually find anything in those millions of bytes of data? Here’s how custom metadata in Atlas saves time and quite possibly the legal professional’s sanity. 
 
Case Law – when previous legal cases constitute a binding precedent where the rationale, judgements, legal principles and interpretations of previous cases are documented so they can be applied to new cases – ensures the same practice and application of the law over time. A famous example from the United States is Roe v Wade, but each political jurisdiction, whether local, regional, or national will have hundreds, if not thousands, of cases lawyers are able to review.  

With remote working or work from home practices growing, filing cabinets are hardly fit for purpose when it comes to SharePoint document management. So how do legal firms create a SharePoint document management system where previous case law can be collated, stored, and easily accessed online?

Uploading digitized case law documentation is one thing, but without a powerful search and easy-to-use filtering configuration, that particular case you so urgently need becomes the proverbial ‘needle in a haystack’. An intuitive, user-friendly experience here could be essential to a lawyer finding the right case law document … and winning their case. 

Last updated 10/10/2022

When Microsoft announced at MS Ignite in November 2021 that Microsoft Teams Shared Channels would be made generally available in 2022, I realised it was a good time for us to shine the light on Atlas Extranet. 

In this fast-paced world, Atlas Extranet is a feature ClearPeople developed and launched in Q1 of 2021. It’s a bit like Cinderella, working reliably in the background, waiting for the grand ball. 

In this blog:

• What is Microsoft Teams Shared Channels? And why is it relevant to Atlas Extranet?
• How MS Teams Shared Channels transforms cross-organisational collaboration
• Availability of Microsoft Teams Shared Channels
• How to set up Microsoft Teams Shared Channels
• How to set up Atlas Extranet
• How Atlas Extranet differs from Microsoft Teams Shared Channels
• Can Microsoft Teams Shared Channels and Atlas Extranet work together?
• Microsoft Teams Shared Channels and Atlas Extranet pricing
• Microsoft Teams Shared Channels resources

Microsoft is constantly adapting the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) Program as organisations' business needs change. Recently, Microsoft announced the New Commerce Experience which applies to seat-based offers. (A seat-based offer is a subscription that's offered 'per seat' for one user for cloud services - so it doesn't matter how many devices that person uses.)

Microsoft’s New Commerce Experience (NCE) is part of a transformational journey that’s changing the way customers transact with Microsoft. It’s a multi-phase, long-term investment in the CSP programme aimed at helping partners accelerate business growth, simplify licensing, and better suit how customers prefer to purchase.

Microsoft initially added the New Commerce Experience for Microsoft Azure in 2019, and as of October 2021 included seat-based offers in CSP for Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Windows 365, and Power Platform.
 
NCE will change how you purchase Microsoft online services such as Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Power Platform and Windows 365. The goal is to reduce complexity and provide cost savings for longer term commitments, while introducing additional features to make CSP comparable to the legacy Enterprise Agreement (EA).

Preventing corporate memory loss in your business will contribute enormously to your people feeling like they’re part of a team and knowing what’s expected of them. In the ‘age of the employee’ it’s the secret ingredient to company success.