We take the Microsoft 365 Platform and turn it into a Solution

SP Marketplace Products are built on top of the powerful Microsoft 365 Platform.  Out-of-the-box, Office 365 can be an overwhelming box of cool functions, requiring you to design them into a usable solution for your organization.  But what if someone already did that for you and in fact has done it over 1000 times?  That is what we are solely focused on - turning Office 365 into a Digital Workplace for you.

It's more than creating a SharePoint Home page, or turning on MS Teams.  Its combining best practices, workplace design and deep knowledge of Office 365 features and functions to create an out-of-the-box software solution. Rather than coding, we leverage the no-code capabilities of SharePoint, MS Teams, Power Automate, Power BI and Connectors using best practice design to deliver robust and intuitive business applications that enhance function, accelerate adoption and drive new levels of ROI from Office 365.

​What exactly is a "solution"?

The best way to describe our products is that they are full featured best practice SharePoint Solutions that can be accessed through SharePoint UI or MS Teams.   But not in the sense of the old definition of a Classic SharePoint Template (WSP), but rather a set of SharePoint resources (lists, libraries, site pages), Power Automate Flows, PowerApps and Power BI templates that we have packaged in to a solution that is provisioned over basic SharePoint sites such as Communication Sites, and Group/Team Sites.  Much in the same way your internal team or a consultant would develop a SharePoint site using Microsoft Power Platform, we have done the same except with the experience of over 1000 implementations.  Like a traditional ERP, Accounting or other business system which are often built (using coding) on a database, we have done the same thing except using a no-code approach on top of Office 365 and SharePoint.  The benefits of going with this approach are many:

• You get a best practice design proven out in over 1000 implementations
• It is supported going forward - with our subscription we guarantee it will work with future changes to the Office 365 made by Microsoft
• The solution is a fully packaged software design, with functional consistency across all modules and easy to use Admin Dashboards
• All products are 100% customizable by business power users

Simply put you get all the benefits of a packaged software solution and the flexibility of a custom developed application.

Our Development Guidelines:

1. Leverage the "native" Office 365 platform functionality, do not create redundant functionality

Unlike some vendors who think they can do better than Microsoft, we choose to leverage Office 365 functionality every where we can.  An example is the Employee Directory.  Office 365 offers the People Search page that allows you to search for employees see where they fit into the organization, and the latest collaboration you have had with them.  You can also contact them directly using chat, email or call them right from the user interface.  Microsoft is constantly adding more services to this experience.   We link directly to this page from our Company Links as part of the eDiscovery features provided in our Self-Service Intranet product.

Other vendors chose to replace the People Search in Office 365 with their own version of it, because at the time theirs looked better!  However, now theirs only shows nice employee cards, and does not have the collaborative features built into standard Office 365.  Our philosophy is to use the standard feature, because Microsoft probably has plans to enhance it!   In this case we make it easier to find an employee (rather than the overwhelming app launcher) by including a link in our company links section that we add to the Intranet.
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The exciting part of this approach is that we benefit every time new functionality is added by Microsoft, and we don't lock ourselves out by building redundant function.

We use existing Office 365 features, giving them
​context in our solutions

Sometimes we use a Microsoft Office feature, but also improve upon it.  Take Org News in Communication Sites, and Team Sites, for examples.  It is a great easy to use function, but there is little to no governance on who can create news, and no scheduling or audience targeting.  Our Self-Service Hub addition to Communication Sites adds content governance with News approvals, and audience targeting.  We also add an Announcements features that includes a new web part and list with roll-up from departments - a feature missing from the standard Communication and Group/Team site. ​

2. Build products "natively" using a no-code approach

This is not just a guideline but a mandated law laid down by our founders.  Since the start of the company, our belief is that it is much better to develop products using off-the-shelf, no-code tools than to write 1000's of lines of complex code.  Additionally, if our customers have access to those tools, then the products become 100% customizable!  Also, they are easier to support.   We assemble our Solutions using SharePoint and no-code Power Platform tools in Office 365 (Flow, Powerapps, Power BI, and Connectors).

But the most important reason to go no-code is that it limits the likelihood that the products will break when Microsoft changes something the next month.  By developing at a higher level in the architecture, rather than coding at lower levels, we greatly reduce the risk of product service interruption for our customers.  Finally, we have also found that when new capabilities (for example MS Teams) become available, we can quickly integrate them into our solutions without rebuilding the code.  

We assemble solutions, rather than coding them,  using Microsoft Power Platform

A no code approach is great on many levels.  It means faster development, ability to customize, ability to leverage new services, and protection from the impact of platform change.   Think about that the next time you shop for a traditional application!

3. Develop products to be a full solution, including processes, notifications, approvals, role-based security, and administration

Unlike other vendors who deliver you pieces, parts and tools so you can build the solution, we deliver a fully built solution out-of-the-box.  We figure if you wanted to build applications yourself, you would have a development team.  But most small to medium organizations don't have the budget, time or expertise to build out an Intranet structure.  A digital workplace, like an accounting system, can be delivered in full solution application form.  Instead of parts and pieces you assemble, we deliver solutions fully developed, using best practice design including role-based security, approvals and notifications, reporting, and more.  Like that Accounting system, we even create application admin or content admin dashboards for managing the application.  Why should you have go into internal SharePoint to manage things like navigation, permissions etc.

Our business process application provide features that line up well against the standalone competitors.  For instance, our Help Desk includes notifications, approvals and integrated email correspondence in tickets.  Best of all we leverage Office 365 to integrate our process applications with the collaborative features of Office 365, because it is part of it!  And it is 100% customizable so if you want to make tweaks you can.

No Assembly Required

4. Design products to deliver consistency across the modules using best practices

After thousand plus implementations, we have found that the secret to user adoption is "consistency" of design integrated with Office 365.  For any industry dealing with customers, this is best practice #1.  Make it easy for your customers to find products and get services from you no matter what branch they are in!  This best practice design is used by McDonalds, for example. Whether the MAcDonalds is located in Paris, Chicago or Sydney, it's using a consistent store design.  So if you think of your employees as customers, doesn't this make sense for them to?  That is why we spend so much time making sure our design is consistent across products.  Look at the consistency in the screen shots across our products. See how they function consistently in our product videos.

Consistency Drives Adoption

Consistent design is not just in the UI, but as part of how portals and applications function, and how the pages are laid out.  If an employee visits the MyHR portal, then the MyMarketing portal, it will be intuitive to find what they need if the portals are consistent.   This ease of use extends to news, document organization, and even help desks.  Making your portals consistent will drive higher adoption!

5. Products should be able to be administered and customized by business power uses, and not require SharePoint experts

Many of our customers are small to medium sized businesses who don't have SharePoint experts on staff.  So we design our products with easy to use Application Admin and Content Manager dashboards.  When you need to add a user, change navigation or manage organization News items, its easy.  You should never have to go into the scary Site Settings or Site Contents of SharePoint.  

Also, for IT this means that departments can manage their own sites without calling you!  Every module has an Application Admin and Content Manager menu item which leads to their dashboard.  From there they just click on the appropriate icon to complete the task they need to do.

Additionally home pages, service portal pages and role-based workspaces have links to video tutorials, at-a-glance reference cards, and more.  Its all about empowering users and administrators to use the products without IT assistance!

Easy to use Dashboards vs. Internal SharePoint

6. ​Architect products to Microsoft Guidelines to ensure they will not break when the latest platform change is made by Microsoft - that is why we guarantee platform support with the subscription

We developed our products on SharePoint Online from the beginning, in 2012.  Microsoft gave us guidance that if we wanted to be shielded from the monthly changes/improvements they make to Office 365, we needed to follow the rules.  Obviously with the advance of technology, more rules were added.   Additionally, over the years they have made it clear that they are moving toward a common UI across Office 365.   These rules were:

1. Avoid using code as much as possible
2. Make use of out-of-the-box no-code development tools from Microsoft
3. Use Microsoft Connectors for delivering packaged integration with third party applications
4. Do not change the Master Page or do any fancy coding for branding.  CSS was ok (all this applied to Classic UI pages)
5. If we have to use third party tools or develop web parts, make sure they are built using the app model and now Web parts with the SharePoint Framework (SPfx)

7.  Products should be configured to support any organization structure;  each product should be modular to run on its own or to plug into an integrated portal structure

We recognize that every organization structure is different, or that you may have already built out your Intranet and want to plug our products into that structure.  While we design the products to integrate together into a best practice Operational Portal Structure, they can be provisioned individually to deliver a fully functional solution.   This approach not only allows them to be plugged into an existing structure, but also allows our customers to implement in phases.

Deployment Approach - Provision solutions into Customer's Office 365 Tenant

SP Workplace Solutions are installed and run on the customer's Office 365 Tenant.   We use PnP Provisioning which allows us the flexibility of installing our product components on a new SharePoint site (Communication or Group/Teams site) or enhance an existing site.  As part of our Quick Start process, we work with the customer to determine where the provisioning should be done.  

Additionally, we have the flexibility to install/provision our products as a traditional SharePoint sub-site or at the Site Collection level in a Communication or Team/Group site.  Additionally the product supports the SharePoint Hub/Spoke architecture.

Finally, we also use PnP provisioning to upgrade customers to new versions of our products.  This allows us to update specific lists, libraries pages and web parts without impacting customer customization's.

How a Basic SharePoint Communications Site become a Self-Service Intranet