When you’re searching for the right solution for your company’s intranet needs, you might have heard about a new option on the horizon. NextGen Portals, were announced at Microsoft’s Ignite conference. But what exactly are NextGen Portals, and why would you want to switch to them from your current implementation? Keep reading for the answers.
What Are NextGen Portals?
NextGen (“next-generation”) Portals are Microsoft’s answer to the complex process of setting up portals for common use cases in Office 365. Beginning in April 2015 and continuing for the next 18 months, the company will release portals that implement common patterns and use cases for enterprise intranet systems. The portals are social by design, encouraging collaboration between team members, and are implemented with mobile devices in mind.
Microsoft has already launched two NextGen Portals: Office 365 Video for viewing and sharing video files, and Delve, a “people portal” that curates relevant information about your work and your colleagues. Among the planned future releases is the “Infopedia” portal with knowledge-management tools. The portals are ready to go, leveraging the existing capabilities of SharePoint and the Office 365 platform. Since the NextGen Portals cover common enterprise intranet functionalities, they might reduce or eliminate the need to build a custom solution for your business.
Pros and Cons of NextGen Portals
As a ready-to-go intranet solution, NextGen Portals have a lot of appealing features. They can be prototyped quickly if you need to get something up and running fast. Microsoft also hopes to offer an improved user experience over SharePoint Online, whose user experience was somewhat of a challenge.
NextGen Portals are also built to be responsive and easily usable on a variety of devices. Finally, since NextGen Portals are a turnkey solution, the overall cost to maintain them will be lower than with a custom-built intranet.
Unfortunately, NextGen Portals do have their drawbacks. Since the portals are being released piece by piece, using them individually could be a confusing and disjointed experience, as they might not be optimized to communicate well with each other. Other ready-to-go intranets like Portal Solutions’ OneWindow Workplace solve this issue by integrating the Office 365 components into a single digital window.
Also, each portal comes with its own look and feel, offering little or no customization options. Although it’s unclear if branding will be allowed, it’s probably not likely. Your organization needs to decide for itself if the rigidity of the NextGen Portals’ user experience aligns with your business trajectory. The good news is that NextGen Portals’ technology is going to be open sourced – a really new approach for Microsoft. This means that custom portals leveraging the NextGen Portals user experience and capabilities will be another viable option.
Final Thoughts
To answer the question posed in the title: what NextGen Portals mean for your business is entirely up to you. If you’re drawn to the convenience, speed and improved user experience that NextGen Portals can offer, then they might be the perfect solution for your organization. However, you might have to wait for the portal with your desired functionality to be released. On the other hand, if you have plenty of time and money to spare and you need a more customizable and coherent solution, then you might wish to stick with a custom-built intranet. Ultimately, you need to decide what’s best for your business and its end users.
