Blog posts

In late 2020, Microsoft released SharePoint Syntex. A Microsoft 365 content service, SharePoint Syntex adds Artificial Intelligence content service capabilities to SharePoint document libraries, creating content understanding models that automatically classify the many and various documents in those libraries. Essentially SharePoint Syntex enables businesses to efficiently use the information stored in its documents.

Right now, as a global tightening of the belt takes place, anything that optimises your organisation’s ability to make the most of its hard-earned collective intelligence and to improve productivity, is going to be attracting greater attention.

(Ha. Who would have thought that SharePoint document libraries would become a sexy tech topic – again?)

In this blog:

What are best practices when it comes to SharePoint document libraries? And why is it so important to get it right? 

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?

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.

One of the most powerful features of SharePoint is the Search Rest API. It allows us to obtain, filter and personalize information that’s useful to a user and allows us to create pages of content of interest for them.  

Have you ever deleted managed metadata term sets in SharePoint? Do you know the consequence of deleting managed metadata terms sets?

Would it not be cool to engage your Modern Workplace users with content appearing like in your favourite social network? In my latest community sample, I built an SPFx webpart to do so. Here is how I did it, but first, this is how it looks:

In 2020, ClearPeople was announced as one of just 17 Microsoft global launch partners and recognised with Preferred Partner status for Project Cortex (now called Microsoft Viva Topics), Microsoft’s initiative to make AI capabilities available within Microsoft 365.