The Town has a new intranet available called Sahuarita Link for our staff both here at work and while working from home. The intranet is on a platform called Microsoft SharePoint and is still a ‘work in progress’ as departments move information from our ‘P’ drive to the intranet site. You’ve, most likely, used SharePoint by now and might not even know it. If you’ve used Microsoft Teams to collaborate on or share a document, then you’ve used SharePoint. Using and keeping this intranet up to date will improve communication and collaboration as we will no longer be tied to our desk to accomplish much of what we need. This is what ‘moving to the cloud’ means: migrating our digital assets, services and resources to the Internet (or intranet in this case) so they are more accessible. The Town has long been a proponent of cloud-based technology as we were an early adopter of Microsoft Exchange Online (now Microsoft Office 365) back in 2013. This effort advances our move.
You will need to login to your Town account at Microsoft Office 365 to access it. That is what differentiates an intranet from the Internet: intranets are internal (only accessible to staff) while the Internet is external (available to all). Once you’ve logged in, you’ll have access to the main site and those of all our departments. Each department is responsible for their own site development and content. For example, HR’s site currently has most (if not all) the forms available on ESS. There are also links to commonly requested websites such as ASRS (the Arizona State Retirement System) and files are posted such as police and manuals. There’s a News feed where HR can announce items such as our recent health fair and open enrollment. They’ve even posted a video. We’ve assigned a member of each department as a ‘content manager’, responsible for updating the site and ensuring content is relevant. We expect the ‘P’ drive to be archived by the time the holidays come upon us this year as all the information should be moved by then.
There is a lot we can do, as departments and as a Town, with an intranet:
• Communicate efficiently – Email lists can only go so far and mailing the entire Town has its limits. Important information gets lost due to the inundation of useless updates and unsolicited vendors harassing our inbox. The intranet allows us to take back control of as we can pin any headline news to the top of our page.
• Collaborate effectively – Working together on shared drives and with email attachments can be challenging as we’ve all, most likely, experienced the pain of updating a document only to find out we’re working on the wrong version. The intranet allows us to work on the same file, discuss changes, see comments and agree on what needs to happen.
• Make information easy to find – The search functionality with SharePoint is better than searching through file shares as SharePoint has a database behind the scenes storing and linking our files. Our intranet can be the new home for our trusted information. We can now make sure everyone has access to the latest policies, procedures and forms.
• Risk management – Using SharePoint versus Dropbox or any other consumer grade product for file sharing has the advantage of leaving us in control of giving and removing access to information. Doing our own thing and using our own neat tools for work poses a challenge, from a security perspective, to the Town. What if people leave our staff and still have access to that information and discussion? What if we forget we gave access to that on Dropbox? With SharePoint the access is closed when the staff members account is disabled.
• Reduce overhead – How much time do we spend searching for information? How many emails do we send asking someone to update a record? Our intranet gives us an easy way to post information online, centralize it and make it accessible for everyone.
• Training – Please take advantage of the training we have available on the front page of our site. Topics include Microsoft 365 Training, Working Remotely and Getting Started with Microsoft Teams.