Intro 

Most intranet projects starts with excitement: a redesigned homepage, fresh visuals, new web parts. We celebrate the go-live, publish a news post or two, or upload a ton of old ones in a new format cause “content”. Maybe even run a pilot.
And then, a few months later, the familiar complaints emerge. 

“I can’t find anything”. “Is this still up to date?” “Why is Copilot returning this old gunk?” or “The search bar gives me weird results”. 

These aren’t feature problems. These are focus problems. Focus problems I keep encountering in many an organisation.  

And so yeah, as I love building me some SharePoint intranets and love seeing others create great stuff as well, I’d decided to go into (for me) uncharted territory and turn one of my Speaker Sessions into a blog series.
A blog series that will look at SharePoint intranet design as a journey, not a feature list. I’m not gonna dive into any technical parts, there’s plenty to find about that on the internet. I really mean to help out on the parts that, in my opinion, aren’t covered well enough yet and follow the thread of my speaker sesion. 

Welcome to: SharePoints of Interest: A Guide on your Intranet Journey! 

I intent to write a conceptual-practical blog series, not a manual. More a “how to think about your intranet” than a “How to configure setting X”. I write about that stuff in other blogs 😊Along the road we’ll take a look at all the elements of strategic intranet thinking. Your goals, your processes, your ROI’s and of course, your PEOPLE. Let’s gawk at the decisions that make up good IA, metadata and permissions, let’s wonder at managing user experiences and adoption, let’s look ahead an start preparing for Copilot or AI-readiness.

I’ll help you start planning your trip, choosing your SharePoints of Interest, the recommended key landmarks and highlights, I’ll give tips to pack for your trip and make it last.
And yes of course, I’m gonna be practical, opinionated and dropping metaphors that make complex concept (hopefully) understandable.
So Intranet Owners, M365 Consultants, Product Owners, Digital Workplace Leads, Adoption & Change managers and any Architects who interface with business users.
 

Pack your brains & let’s walk this journey together! 

Part 1: Start planning your trip – About Goals, Processes and ROI

1. Setting Goals 

Before you book your excursions, you plan your trip. Your SharePoint intranet is no different. Whether your building an intranet from scratch up, or revamping your existing intranet doesn’t matter. I also would like to clarify that, even though I do mention SharePoint, you can apply this line of thought to any type of intranet, maybe even beyond that.
The first thing I want to say is: don’t start with features. Start with intent and then translate that intent into the digitally-physical things that make your intranet alive and kicking.
Without clear goals, strong grasp of its processes and a realistic view on it’s ROI, even the most beautiful SharePoint intranets will loose it’s way. And yes, Copilot will only amplify every mistake along that road.
So let’s start this journey by planning our trip and start by asking yourself and your organisation these questions first:  

1. Why are you (re)building your intranet? 
2. How will your intranet live, grow and stay relevant? 
3. How do you justify and sustain your intranet? 

The answers to these three questions will determine three important topics to which to build your intranet on:  

1. Goals 
2. Processes 
3. ROI 

Starting off, let’s take a look at the Goals first. Cause really, why you are (re)building your intranet? And to make this question easier to answer in a “ready-to-pack-and-take-along a-management-board-meeting-format”, I’m gonna break it down in five sub-topics that can help fit your Goals neatly into your backpack. Cause, you know, it’s always easier travelling when everything fits and is easy reachable and…presentable on a slide 😊 

First up, a little overview of these things that determine your Goals:  

1. Business goals versus platform goals 
2. Audience clarity 
3. Social & Engagement goals 
4. AI-readiness as a goal 
5. Success definition 

 And as we need to start somewhere, let’s go with the first two: “Business goals versus platform goals” and “Audience clarity”.  

 

1.1 Business goals versus platform goals 

Before you make any decisions about pages, navigation, design or features, take a step back and ask the most important question: What is your intranet actually meant to do? Not for IT, not for SharePoint as a product, but for the people who rely on it every day. An intranet can serve many purposes: informing employees about what matters, connecting teams across departments and locations, supporting daily taks with clear guidance and tools, driving engagement or culture, and enabling people to do their best work with minimal friction.  

These are not platform goals, they are business goals. Your business goals. And these two must be aligned. SharePoint’s capabilities should only be a vehicle for achieving what your organisation needs, not the staring point for your design. 

Yes features are great. New features are always upcoming, features make things possible. They feel satisfying and tangible. A new template, an extra hero tile, a nicer component. I would know, I even write about them haha.  

 

But features without intentional structure are just noise. A punch that won’t hit, let alone make impact.  

 

When you anchor you’re your intranet to clear business objectives, you suddenly gain clarity about the needed structure, connect and the experience you must create. For instance: if your goals is to speed up onboaring of new employees, that shapes very different information architecture than a goal of improving frontline communication.  

And this right here is a nice little bridge that ties in the next part: Audience clarity. 

1.2 Audience clarity  

One of the biggest misconceptions in intranet projects I noticed along the year, is the idea that you’re building one intranet for everyone. Technically, that’s true… You have one platform, one tenant, one set of pages. But experientially, it couldn’t be further from reality.
To me, it’s quite simple. 

 

One Intranet ≠ One Experience 

 

Different people come to the intranet with different questions, goals, pressures, and mental models. A frontline worker looking for a shift schedule, a new colleague searching for onboarding material, and a manager hunting for KPIs do not experience the same intranet, even if they click the same homepage. And when you treat “everyone” as a single audience, you end up designing an intranet for no one. 

That’s where the real risks appear: 

• Content becomes generic because you’re trying to speak to “everyone.” 

• Navigation becomes overloaded because every team wants their piece on the homepage. 

• Everyone gets everything, which increases noise and reduces relevance. 

• AI (Copilot) gets confused, because it doesn’t understand what content is meant for which audience. 

 

This might not necessarily be a problem with smaller companies. But with more employees, more departments, more projects and more information and news, knowing your audience helps build a better intranet.
When you define your audience clearly and truly understand who they are, what they need, when they need it, and how they wor, you instantly increase the quality of your intranet. Not only does it shape better structure and navigation, but it also ensures your content stays meaningful, purposeful, and trustworthy. And here’s the part many organizations underestimate: 

• Copilot relies heavily on WHO consumes WHAT KIND of content. 

Without audience clarity, AI struggles to produce relevant, context-aware answers. If your intranet doesn’t distinguish audiences, Copilot won’t either. 

You’ll see things like: Frontline staff getting policy drafts meant for leadership, general staff receiving project documentation from IT teams, or Copilot surfacing outdated content because it doesn’t know what’s authoritative for whom. 

 Audience clarity isn’t just good UX, it is AI readiness in case you wish your organisation to be AI ready.  

So while your organization absolutely has one intranet, it should never deliver one experience. A well-designed intranet intentionally supports diverse user groups with tailored navigation, targeted content, and different entry points that reflect their reality, not the org chart. And this makes audience clarity part of your goals, because it makes up the “for whom” part of the “what”. Knowing your audience shapes: 

• Structure: hubs, sites, navigation grouped by tasks and roles 

• Content: tone, depth, relevance, format 

• AI behaviour: what Copilot can safely surface, summarize, or recommend 

 

So yeah, knowing for whom you wanna do what helps create a foundation for a usable intranet, and the prerequisite for a Copilot-ready one. Without it, your intranet becomes cluttered. With it, your intranet becomes a workplace compass. And I guess, if you wanna throw AI in the mix, knowing your audience becomes non-negotiable. 

But does having an audience automatically make your intranet “Social”? 
Let’s explore that together in my next blog: Setting Goals part 2 “Social – AI – Succes”