Global Law Firm
Designing a Custom Intranet for a Global Law Firm
Knox Design Strategy was engaged by a global law firm to design a custom intranet, with a focus on social features to allow users to stay up-to-date on the latest conversations happening within the firm. We worked closely with the firm’s Knowledge Management team, key stakeholders and the development team to design the new fully responsive intranet using SharePoint Online.
We carefully designed each custom web part from the ground up to give the intranet powerful features not available with a typical out-of-the-box SharePoint experience. For example, the Resource Groups used on practice, department and office pages give users quick access to the content in each site by categorizing resources into meaningful, task-based groups.
Unlike many traditional intranets, the firm encourages users to engage with practices, departments, offices and other colleagues by adding content to each page in the form of posts. Users can post updates on the latest happenings in their practice group, ask questions, provide useful resources and information about their work and, most importantly, connect with their colleagues.
This custom web part on the intranet’s home page gives users a quick view into important alerts that require their attention or a specific action. Alerts are categorized into For Your Information, Action Required and Overdue.
Additionally, alerts can be integrated into other tools used within the firm to give users quick access to the tool they need, in order to complete the action that’s required.
Perhaps the most unique feature of the firm’s new intranet is the custom Posts web part. Each page within the intranet (Practice, Department, Office and Profile) has a Feed with the page’s latest post activity.
Posts can range from firm-wide announcements, work-specific topics as well as posts that are automatically generated by the intranet to highlight employee milestones like work anniversaries, birthdays and new arrivals.
