Driving SharePoint User Adoption [Part 2]

We have looked at the challenges and few basic rules to enhance user adoption for SharePoint sites in the previous blog Driving SharePoint User Adoption [Part 1]  Now, let us look at methods to promote user adoption and how to get a few easy wins for adoption.

Promoting User Adoption

Below are a few tips on the methods to promote user adoption:

Launch a Great Campaign

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  • Start the launch campaign and create a healthy curiosity within the user community. There is a reason why movie trailers are created months or years in advance. They create the much needed hype and excitement!
  • Conduct some pre-launch sessions/open forums where the users get answers to questions they may have on the new launching site
  • Plan the application launch day and make it creative with posting the screenshots of the application across the floor with some interesting facts about the application

Promote Your Site Actively

Site Consulting

  • In the first week after launch, identify the team/department which uses the application the most and reward the team members
  • Send frequent remailers to end-users about the good statics of the application usage
  • Have the email id/phone number of the people/system administrators on each page for a few days, so that users know whom to contact in case of errors/issues

Eat Your Own Dog Food

SharePoint Documents

  • Use SharePoint for your own document sharing and collaboration
  • Lead by example – employees model the behavior of the leader
  • Top management should be active in internal blogs
  • Leaders should refuse to accept emails with too many attachments, large attachments or messages copied to several people

Make Your Home Page Interesting

SharePoint UsersSharePoint Consultants
AnnouncementsWeather
SharePoint ConsultingSharePoint Development Site
Employee DirectoryEmployee of the month
  • Make sure your Home Page is extremely attractive/user friendly and useful
  • Few sample widgets that you can have on the homepage are – announcements, current weather, tip of the day etc. The application should create interest in the users to make them want to check it at least once a day
  • Love-at-first-sight will have a long lasting impact

Provide Training

Training

  • Train SharePoint owners on their responsibilities and how to be webmasters of their respective sites
  • Get users involved early and explain how it will make their job easier
  • Train users!

Encourage and Incorporate User Feedback

SharePoint AdoptionSharePoint Survey
  • Collect formal and informal user feedback. It is always good to work towards improvement and have a regular release plan. Always show some progress to the users and win their confidence.
  • Post positive feedback’s regularly via bulletin boards/emails
  • You can use the SharePoint out of the box survey tool itself to capture user feedback.

Easy wins for SharePoint adoption

Below are few out-of-the-box features of SharePoint which can be exploited to win good user adoption.

Search Experience

SharePointSharePoint Adoption
  • Exploit search capabilities of SharePoint
  • Configure search with the right refiners
  • Optimize search speed
  • Maintain consistent search experience

Automation/Workflow

Automation WorkflowUser Adoption

Today’s world is leaning towards automation. We all know time is money and if we can gain time by automating a few processes, that will not only add to our business value, but will also result in better user adoption. SharePoint offers out-of-the-box workflows which are simple enough to be configured.

Below are few points to be considered around automation:

  • Automate simple processes
  • Leverage out-of-the-box workflows
  • Have notifications at various steps
  • Enable reporting around the process
  • Make approval process easy with mobile enablement

Mobile Enablement

Mobile EnablementAutomation
  • Have the application mobile enabled
  • Release Intranet apps
  • Notifications on mobile(Email/SMS)
  • One click approval

Conclusion

  • Adoption is not that difficult, provided it is part of the strategy right from the beginning of the project.
  • The right features of SharePoint should be leveraged based on business needs
  • An appealing application will always have a good user adoption.

Author

  • Manasa S

    A project management IT professional with expertise in planning, estimating, scheduling, and managing IT projects. Having worked on SharePoint for more than half a decade now, focusing primarily on Customer satisfaction, ensuring continued/repeated business and exploring new intra-customer business. Have been integral part of multiple SharePoint implementations right from requirement gathering until the deployment and end user trainings.