SharePoint Intranet has developed exceptionally well from what it was two decades ago. Indeed, the need for an intranet in this constantly evolving business landscape is evident. However, what modern businesses are looking forward to is customization. The level of customization offered shows how well your intranet aligns with your organizational goals and the needs of your employees.
If you are already a SharePoint intranet user or planning to build one for your organization, this blog is for you. Today’s blog does convey some real information about the fundamental building blocks of your intranet environment, i.e., SharePoint web parts. We will begin by discussing what SharePoint web parts are, followed by a list of key SharePoint web parts, their functionalities, and how they can personalize your intranet experience.
What are SharePoint Web Parts?
Web parts in SharePoint are customizable, utility-driven components or small applications that users can add to their SharePoint pages to create interactive sites within their intranet. SharePoint web parts not only add different functionalities but also enhance navigation and information accessibility within the intranet environment.
Let’s understand this with an example. Consider that you are building your ideal workspace. The layout must be well-planned, utility-driven, and serve a specific purpose. There must be a conference room for meetings and discussions, a break room to facilitate social interaction among employees, a storage room for organizing documents, a bulletin board from where employees can access key updates, and more. Similarly, an intranet resembles a digital workplace, and web parts act as rooms or spaces to serve different functionalities.
- News and announcement web part: To convey critical organizational updates, project announcements, key achievements, etc.
- Document library web part: For employees to store, organize, and access information in various formats
- Teams web part: To foster internal communication through 1:1 chat and group discussions
Certainly, web parts in SharePoint are like Lego bricks, which can be used to create an infinite structure and unleash your creativity.
Benefits of Using Web Parts in SharePoint
1. Customization and Flexibility
Web parts in SharePoint allow users to fully customize their sites based on the end-user experience. You can create a communication site to facilitate internal communication within the organization or the home page of your intranet that displays your unique work culture. Furthermore, the easy-to-understand interface empowers users to use them accordingly without coding knowledge, eliminating the need to maintain a dedicated IT team. Certainly, you can customize the fields of the web part to match desirable layouts or play with their theme and style to bring something unique to enhance user engagement.
2. Modularity and Reusability
Evidently, SharePoint web parts can be easily modified and rearranged and used as an independent element in different sections of your intranet. However, their most significant advantage is their reusability. For instance, a quick links web part on your intranet’s home page can have links to some fundamental policies and guidelines that are accessible to employees across the organization. Again, the same quick links web part can be added to the SharePoint site, with links restricted to departmental staff only.
3. Integration
Consider an organization trying to collect feedback from employees. Instead of emailing feedback forms to each employee on their email and manually segregating responses, leveraging a dedicated web part that uses pre-built form templates can be more productive. Also, you can integrate it with PowerApps to create custom forms and directly store responses in your SharePoint database. Certainly, SharePoint web parts seamlessly integrate with lists, libraries, external databases, and Microsoft 365 applications, improving user navigability and information accessibility.
What are “Custom” SharePoint Web Parts?
Certainly, SharePoint web parts are like the apps installed on your smartphone, bringing in a lot of features that make your phone smart. What if you can customize those applications according to your own preferences? It would offer you a more personalized experience, right?
However, with BizPortals, you can leverage the flexibility to express your requirements. In addition to the web parts, you get in the out-of-the-box SharePoint solution, we can help you create custom web parts with various functionalities to match your operational preferences and personalize your overall intranet experience.
BizPortals has developed dedicated packages of custom SharePoint web parts, each acting as a specialized component to extend the functionality of your intranet sites. It primarily aims to strengthen internal communication and operational efficiency of your organization. Let us explore the features offered by the custom SharePoint web parts in the list given below:
10 Key “Custom” SharePoint Web Parts
1. Bookmarks
Creating a dedicated space for users to access frequently used documents or key resources not only improves the navigation but also encourages users to access more resources. You can leverage this space to add key company policies and compliance documents or add links to standard HR forms and internal reporting tools.
BizPortals bookmarks, apart from the basic features of the out-of-the-box SharePoint web part, offer a range of customization options to enhance its functionality.
- You can create an entirely new SharePoint page or simply add links to existing content.
- Add URLs from internal or external sources or add comments to offer more information on the topic.
- It allows users to create personal links with restricted access, ensuring faster and more secure access to frequently used resources or forms.
- Organizations can simply leverage automated email notifications and prebuilt email templates to notify employees whenever a new link is added or updated in the bookmark section.
In terms of the look and feel, organizations can choose one of the many layouts and add a catchy web part title and description to offer a quick overview of the web part.
2. News
Offering key company news and updates regularly to employees helps organizations to promote a culture of openness and inclusivity. Certainly, the News web part can play a crucial role in highlighting this aspect of your company culture. While the healthcare industry can publish updated safety protocols or changes in patient visiting hours, the retail sector can add store promotions or announce a new product launch.
With a dedicated space to display customizable content in media rich formats, it helps your employees stay updated with the recent happenings within the organization. Apart from the web part’s layout options, you can create new lists, set the number of records to be shown in the pane, or add a date range within which the news item will be available for the staff.
3. Directory
The employee directory web part is yet another contact management tool that has been built for the modern workforce. It empowers your employees to quickly find their co-workers and connect with them, irrespective of your company size.
It offers complete details of team members including their email, phone, department, job profile, and location, which is completely customizable based on your specific requirements. Along with the various design and web part customization options, you can select between the card or tile view or enable group selection (by allowing users to select which Azure AD group needs to be displayed on the web part pane) for a personalized user experience.
By allowing users to apply filters based on their coworkers’ initials, department, and job titles, it contributes to improved internal communication and collaboration within the organization.
4. Spotlight
With the Spotlight web part, organizations can highlight important events, upcoming or recent activities, and achievements that need special attention, enhancing overall engagement and content visibility within the SharePoint environment. Certainly, if your non-profit is planning a charity event and needs volunteers and support from the community, then it’s a great way to get the attention of your employees.
You have flexibility to add, delete or modify a story whenever you like, including setting start and end dates, adding a summary, a detailed description, and an image to help employees grasp the context.
5. Calendar
The word calendar in corporate often signifies planning resources, deadlines, project milestones, and networking opportunities. Proving this true, the BizPortals calendar web part serves as a robust tool for employees to display and manage their corporate events, appointments, meetings, training sessions, and workshops, all from a single interface.
Its Outlook integration helps consolidate each event’s information in a centralized location, allowing teams to collaborate and plan effectively and reduce scheduling conflicts.
However, what makes the BizPortals calendar web part different from the standard solutions is that it allows users to add multiple calendars, import event lists from different sites and sub sites, and show upcoming and past events for up to 60 days before and after their scheduled dates.
6. Headliner
What title would you choose for a web part that allows you to display alerts, notices, articles, and events in a unified window— ‘Corporate Alerts’ or ‘Corporate Bulletins’? You must start finding one, as BizPortals headliner allows business owners to create a space where they can display:
- Alerts: Emergency alerts, system outages, policy changes, compliance reminders
- Notices: Meetings, deadline reminders, policy announcements, staffing updates
- Articles: Industry insights, best practices, training resources
- Events: Corporate and networking events, training sessions, webinars, community engagement
Along with the range of headliner types given in the web part, users can insert messages, add attachments, select start and end dates, and notify employees through email whenever a new alert is added or updated.
7. Ask-a-Guru
Creating a specialized channel for your employees to get direct access to accurate information and guidance from subject matter experts can enhance collaboration, efficiency, and engagement within the organization. Indeed, implementing the ask-a-guru web part in your SharePoint environment can facilitate knowledge sharing within the organization.
It enables users to easily designate experts for different topics, oversee topic items, and access detailed records of questions asked over time. Similarly, employees can submit queries and follow the progress of their question tickets.
8. Location
Could accessing the geographic coordinates of your warehouses help optimize delivery routes, reducing travel distance and operational costs? If yes, then the BizPortals location web part can help you mark all your important locations in one place and access them without leaving your SharePoint environment.
The location web part enables organizations to display different locations on a map within a web part by simply adding locations to a SharePoint list.
Together with easy zoom-in and zoom-out options, it can display up to 50 locations in a single window, enriching the overall user experience. You can modify the web part title and description and choose the sites and subsites where it will be displayed.
9. Weather
The weather web part serves as a crucial tool for industries relying heavily on weather conditions. Indeed, if we consider a construction company, various outdoor operations like excavation, concrete pouring, delivery of critical material, and heavy equipment operations are affected by the local weather conditions. However, knowing the weather of a specific location beforehand can help stakeholders make informed decisions, ensure safety, and schedule operations accordingly.
Leveraging the weather web part to access real-time weather details of different locations can make a significant difference. You can simply use the coordinates of the location, API key, or URL (in case of using an external or third-party service) to display the web part for the city.
The weather web part enables users to switch between the temperature measurement units, set the number of days to display the forecast, and add multiple cities to the location list.
10. Counter
Lastly, the counter web part is worth mentioning as it aids organizations in visualizing and tracking numerical data in real-time. It offers quick access to key metrics, eventually improving visibility and impacting overall decision-making.
You can create a SharePoint list to follow project deadlines, track monthly targets, monitor page visits, or set a countdown timer for a corporate event. While offering multiple interactive layouts, the counter web part also allows users to select sites and subsites where the web part needs to be displayed, set the number of counter items, and more for a personalized user experience.
BizPortals Web Part Package: Empowering Your SharePoint Environment
BizPortals web part packages are steadily transforming into an essential asset for organizations striving to meet the changing needs of the modern business environment. The carefully planned packages of web parts built on SPFx allow users to simply download the package and integrate it with their existing SharePoint environment.
BizPortals Communication Suite
BizPortals communication suite is a robust package of ten customizable and user-friendly web parts to strengthen internal communication and collaboration within the organization. Packed with powerful features like bookmarking, news, employee showcase, chat, spotlight, ask-a-guru, headliner, calendar, and even more, it is ready to add some real value to your current SharePoint environment.
BizPortals Essential Suite
BizPortals essential suite, a pack of four selected web parts, including locations, weather, file dropbox, and counter, can significantly contribute to your workplace productivity and efficiency. Empower your teams to gain insights into different geographical locations, prioritize events according to the weather, upload multiple files, and gain clear visibility into key data sets all from one place.
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