City of South Perth

In April 2023, SharePoint 2013 lost support City of South Perth contacted Dapth for a fast solution. Dapth Followed Through on a Two Week Migration Goal... and succeeded!

Client's project aims

The City of South Perth is a picturesque inner-city local council that includes the areas of Como, Karawara, Kensington, Manning, Salter Point, Waterford, and South Perth. With its tagline 'A city of active places and beautiful spaces', it prides itself on boasting 189 heritage-listed places; and with over 200 council staff across various departments City of South Perth council has an extensive amount of intranet files and pages. 

When the City first approached the Dapth team, they were using an outdated version of SharePoint that was no longer able to be updated and had complicated administrative functionality. Therefore, updating to the latest SharePoint version was the best option. The council had previous issues with customisation and in favour of quick implementation, they chose deployment with standard features. The ‘Shift and Lift’ approach allowed for them to skip both design and department input.  

One of the major pain points mentioned by CoSP staff was poor access, for navigation and locating files/documents. Staff had limited training in SharePoint 2013. There was no clear site or area separation, files were often duplicated and outdated when attached to pages. These factors only exacerbated the issues.

It was difficult to teach new staff the old system, while departments were able to maintain their areas with reliance on certain staff to update files, the hierarchal layers of SharePoint 2013 made upkeep very difficult. Not all staff had access to all sites, and it was not clear where restrictions were in effect.

Key requirements of the new Intranet included:    

• Refined SharePoint information architecture (IA) for intuitive navigation 
• Ability to easily contribute to the intranet independently of the IT team
• Staff directory search 
• Working & Effective Document search 
• Easy posting/access to notices and announcements 

Using the ‘Lift and Shift’ migration approach, staff would transition from their current system into the new one without any major workflow changes. Dapth staff were on-site, working actively alongside CoSP staff, advising the current IT team of working systems information. For the safest and most secure outcome, the migration was performed on premises at the City of South Perth council offices. Although this work would have also been possible with remote login via a vpn, the hands on approach of being on premises for the migration made confirming queries regarding different documentation (including hundreds of forms) and liaising with IT much more efficient.  

Recommended strategy

While a remodel was considered, Dapth agreed that the fit for purpose strategy was to build a new system to match the old environment in a “Lift and Shift” move. New Modern widgets would be used in place of the old widgets, giving an easily updatable and much improved UX.  

Before deciding on the migration status of any document, all documents underwent a content audit. Due to the audit, some pages and files not touched in over five years that were no longer in use were left behind.  A top-level spreadsheet with folders and files was created throughout the audit to track the process. Dapth wrote & utilised custom scripts on site to speed up the migration where possible.

Process

A Dapth SharePoint Developer stayed on site for two weeks to implement the migration. 

As part of the migration Dapth reworked pages that used old or custom webparts to give a modern UX without sacrificing efficiency.

Dapth ensured distinguishable department navigation without deviating far from the SharePoint 2013 navigation mapping. For example a site map was included in the footer menu to enhance user experience and navigation.

Dapth was able to leave old processes behind while planning ahead for new systems with a robust information architecture.

The project was successfully completed using the following process:

• A Hub Site & Department Sites were initialised
• Files were migrated on mass to the relevant site Document Libraries
• SharePoint Online pages were designed to match existing designs
• SP Online Modern Webparts were configured in place of SP 2013 Webparts
• Information was Migrated to SharePoint Online pages
• News was implemented as News & CEO notices via Technical Configuration
• Lists were migrated where still in use
• Custom widget navigation tools were replaced with more efficient modern webparts
• Dapth updated site permissions as required and the permissions process was then handled by CoSP capable IT team

In summary

We successfully updated the City’s intranet to meet their stringent requirements, resulting in a more user-friendly design, boosting staff productivity. By enhancing intranet features to support daily internal communication, we aligned the City’s future digital goals; collaborating to successfully digitise and modernise CoSP’s internal communications functionality for staff.  

Following the migration, each section or department ‘site’ has become more intuitive to navigate. Having worked with many similar clients, we understood the crucial role that an intranet plays within a local council. We aimed to provide a long-term solution that met current needs, supported business growth and staff requirements.  

Being part of the Microsoft ecosystem offered various benefits such as:

• Unlocking staff efficiencies 
• Access to key Microsoft features and elements 
• Flexibility in records management by making all documents fully accessible remotely 
• Meeting required compliance requirements for document management 
• Ability to store all data in Microsoft 365 for centralised data security and compliance  
• Consistent and familiar user interface (UI) 
• Reduced software licence and maintenance costs 
• World-class Microsoft security  

Key achievements 

• In two weeks, Dapth produced 18 newly built departmental sites with migrated content. 
• Our changes resulted in total content ownership for staff - and empowerment for site editors.
• CoSP can easily manage permissions going forward with the robust information architecture.
• SharePoint Online is intuitive when compared with SharePoint 2013 and empowers staff with its easy to use out of the box design.
• On site training was provided for complex/high traffic areas to mitigated potential user issues before they arose.
• With the addition of other useful features such as the intranet homepage, staff are now using it as a launch pad for other internal applications/repositories for staff information and employee communications.  
• Each department now has its own landing page (with associated resources). 
• The Customer Service team was thrilled with the latest version, as it was much easier to use. Moreover, the pathing became much more user-friendly.
• City of South Perth continue to engage Dapth for training and support

We created an efficient digital hub for employees that enhanced the council’s day-to-day operation and staff productivity. The intranet proactively allows the organisation to support staff, regardless of their location and leverages all the powerful functionality gained from using Microsoft SharePoint Online. We tailored the architecture and implementation to match their local council requirements.  The City of South Perth can now feel confident that they have a solid framework for a flexible, sustainable intranet, with a streamlined design and intuitive navigation. They can now independently manage their intranet, meaning full control over their internal communications tool.