DRUPAL + SHAREPOINT 2013 = Best of both Worlds

In a recent project we suggested Drupal + Sharepoint 2013 integration to a client who was redesigning their current intranet. In this session we will discuss the oppurtunities we had, challenges we faced and out comes we had in Drupal + Sharepoint 2013 integration

Goal : 

Redesign current Intranet and deploy a social collaborative space that is representative of the dynamic work culture. The Social Intranet project was intended to deliver the following benefits:

1. Increased collaboration and employee engagement through the development of a strong people centric organizational brand.

2. Targeted and more effective communication by capturing and enhancing a knowledge sharing culture.

3. Increased productivity through improved content organization and search functionality, enabling staff to locate information quickly and easily.

OPPORTUNITY AND CHALLENGES: The existing intranet portal was built on sharepoint 2010 On-Premise and was being ported to Sharepoint Online 2013 parallelly during this project. The major challenges that employees had with their portal were

1. Inconsistency in the layout of various sites making it difficult to navigate.

2. Ineffective search.

3. Lack of social layer and interactions in intranet.

4. Too many legacy apps which lived in their own silos.

5. Dashboard could not be personalised. We carried out a detailed survey to prioritize the features that employees wanted in their new intranet portal.

Based on the feedback following conclusion were arrived at -

Sharepoint is best suited for

1. Knowledge Management

2. Support

Drupal along with Thirdy Party services is best suited for

1. Personalization

2. Social Interactions and collaboration

3. Employee Rewards and Recognitions

4. Employee Engagement and Feedback

A balancing act of cleaning up the existing sharepoint intranet and building a new social/personalization layer in Drupal was required. Drupal would serve as the unified front end with a social layer, sharepoint would serve as the backend for knowledge management.

TECHNICAL CHALLENGES:

1. Identity Management and Drupal SSO via OKTA SAML 2.0 Authentication.

2. O365(SPO 2013) Integration,

3. Legacy Application Integrations (Citrix NetScaler Integrations)

4. Granular Access Controls in the Drupal presentation layer using 0365 App Model