Five Ideal Features to Look for in SharePoint Intranet Templates

Intranet implementation could be a daunting task for you if you have never done this before. Even if you are not a newbie, it will take you a lot of energy to decide which customize features to ask for to make your intranet a success. Moreover, the market is full of self-claimed best templates to confuse you even more. If you don’t have enough time and energy, you will find yourself lost in the options. We know the pain. That’s why we did our research and have come up with five outstanding features that all ideal SharePoint Intranet Templates must have to make your office a modern digital workspace.

Five ideal features of any SharePoint template

Truly Mobile first

The recent pandemic has normalized work-from-home for the next few years. It’s no surprise that most employees won’t be sitting all day long in front of their computer, unlike in your office. In this regard, there is a high chance that they may miss any important communication plan that you might want to convey in urgent. That’s why go for an intranet system having a mobile application to make sure your employees never miss emergency alerts from the management. It must run in all iPhone and Android mobile applications to cater to all employees at once.

A complete search directory

More than just an intranet, it must act as an intra-Google to help you find anything from the directory. By anything, we mean useful information such as people, documents, links, apps, etc. Additionally, it must have extra filters to help you optimize your search results. For example, it’s so much better to search anything by keywords or departments. It will save your time going through the long list of search results to find what you are looking for in the first place.

A complete engagement platform

An intranet platform is not just for keeping employees informed about important management decisions. It could also be used as a platform to keep them engaged by adding options for personalization and social features. Ideal SharePoint intranet templates have social features that allow employees to share photos, videos, news, and even run polls, just like Facebook and Twitter. As it becomes more like corporate social media, they feel more comfortable engaging with their colleagues than Facebook. Plus, the intranet must allow them to create personalization features to receive targeted content and optional self-services with ease.

Design and Branding

When you’re investing so much into it, why can’t you make it an extension of your brand? Best intranet templates allow you to customize your design and add cool widgets to make it appear more like a homepage. You can add more dynamic functions to your heart’s content. This, in fact, could act as your major source of branding when your employees would go all gaga talking about their office intranet in front of employees of other companies. It may appear silly, but major companies have already started implementing these ideas into action.

Room for extra add-ons

Usually, most SharePoint intranet templates have prebuilt features and do not allow for extra add-ons. This could act as a major barrier to its scalability in the future. In this regard, it is better to go for a fully scalable template that can be integrated with external app solutions designed for absence management, time tracking, CRM, documents repository, contracts management, employee onboarding, risk management, etc. It may seem a lot to expect, but these applications are handy in saving your time micromanaging your employees for controlled output.

But here is the golden piece of advice-

Never buy the templates directly just because you can feel them be promising. It’s always better to ask for a demo. See how much compatible they are with your existing system. You can quickly get to know the flaws within two days of the demo. If the templates pass the test with flying colors, go for the entire subscription. But, never shy away from negotiations, especially if the service provider prefers it in the first place.

End Thoughts

Yes, it is indeed challenging to find a custom intranet solution that meets all these above-said ideal features. You have to spend lots of hours researching your way through search results to find the best service provider that can offer service without burning a hole in your pocket. But you can save your time with Hello-Intranet- a SharePoint intranet in-a-box solution provider with prebuilt SharePoint Intranet Templates to meet your demands with ease. Their pricing is affordable, yet they have a good name for their SharePoint Intranet Templates quality in the market. Give them a check today!