{"id":8455,"date":"2025-02-10T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-10T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/insidetrack\/blog\/?p=8455"},"modified":"2025-02-14T09:41:00","modified_gmt":"2025-02-14T17:41:00","slug":"microsofts-hr-portal-gets-personal-thanks-to-the-modern-experience-in-sharepoint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/insidetrack\/blog\/microsofts-hr-portal-gets-personal-thanks-to-the-modern-experience-in-sharepoint\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft\u2019s HR portal gets personal, thanks to the modern experience in SharePoint"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Editor\u2019s note: This content was first published in 2022. Although this particular event or moment in time has passed, we\u2019re republishing it here so you can see what our thinking and experience was like at the time.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking to find your benefits, adjust withholdings, or find a specific policy? Microsoft employees can get this information and more through HRWeb: our internal human resources site that serves as a central hub for a variety of important employment information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As part of a company-wide push to improve the employee experience and meet employee needs around the globe, HRWeb is now supported by the modern experience in SharePoint. Along with being integrated into Microsoft 365, SharePoint has been optimized for a better user experience, including mobility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThrough this migration, we improved the performance, accessibility, and reliability of our HRWeb platform while also reducing the cost to maintain it,\u201d says Sam Crewdson, a principal program manager with Microsoft Digital, the company\u2019s IT organization. \u201cThe platform, the way it\u2019s built, it\u2019s more what-you-see-is-what-you-get. It\u2019s no longer complex.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And this transformation is critical to empowering self-service at Microsoft. There\u2019s no need to file a help desk ticket or to go looking for someone to help you when you can find what you need with a quick search.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cHRWeb is a critical asset for HR from a standpoint of supporting employees,\u201d says Corinne Dubedat, HR director for Employee Support Experiences within HR Services. \u201cWe try to make sure employees are connected to resources in the best way possible so that they can spend their time focusing on their customers, effectively empowering the people who empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

With the modern platform in place, the company\u2019s more than 220,000 employees can find the information they need in a snap, but it\u2019s also easier for HR to manage content at scale. All of this translates into the kind of experience employees expect from Microsoft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Save the best for last<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Corinne Dubedat (left), Jodi Kogan, and their team in Human Resources used the move to the modern experience in SharePoint as an opportunity to audit and refresh the company\u2019s internal HR portal.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Since 2016, Microsoft Digital has been migrating major functions across the company from classic to the modern experience in SharePoint. This Herculean effort has focused on moving over high-traffic portals\u2014including corporate communications, IT, legal, and the corporate library\u2014all without disturbing users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHRWeb has some unique needs that made us put it at the end of the list,\u201d Crewdson says. \u201cWe needed it to be able to target by specific role, geography, and company code, otherwise users wouldn\u2019t be able to easily find the right information.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because Microsoft has a presence in so many different countries and regions (it has subsidiaries in more than 120 countries and regions), it needs policies that reflect these different regulatory environments. Users on HRWeb should only see content that\u2019s appropriate for their circumstances, which means a policy search should return information relevant to a specific user.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same could be said of different roles, like what information a manager might have access to that an employee might not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you factor this across Microsoft\u2019s large number of teams, vast global presence, and specific roles, the personalization requirements only compound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there was a vision for meeting HRWeb\u2019s personalization needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting the fit just right<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

While most of the out-of-the-box functions within SharePoint would be an upgrade for HRWeb, including user targeting, Microsoft\u2019s complicated global footprint would require some custom code.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fortunately, the product was built for that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe SharePoint Framework empowers anyone to build for this platform,\u201d Crewdson says. \u201cA web developer can be a SharePoint developer as well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This meant that Microsoft Digital could work closely with the Employee Support Experiences team and product groups to get the solution exactly right for HRWeb\u2019s needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWe saw the modern experience in SharePoint as the perfect landing place for us going forward from a user standpoint,\u201d says Andy Hopkins, a software engineer with Microsoft Digital, who helped ready HRWeb for the move. \u201cSo when we went from classic to modern, we revamped how the content was tagged. It enabled us to be able to take information and make it available in more relevant locations for the users.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This move opened up the ability to access content on HRWeb in a personalized and scalable way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The shift was also an important part of Microsoft\u2019s commitment to accessibility, with the modern SharePoint giving users everything they need to use and navigate the platform by default.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Employee Support Experiences saw this migration as more than just a system upgrade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An opportunity to hit the refresh button<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t just the backend that was changing for HRWeb. The transformation was extending to the content that employees would engage with as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe move gave us an opportunity to align a few things while also getting the latest and greatest,\u201d says Jodi Kogan, a senior manager of HR content and knowledge on the Employee Support Experiences team, who led the team responsible for the audit and the business requirements for the site redesign and migration. \u201cWe didn\u2019t want to just do a lift and shift; we wanted to improve the experience for employees.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Migrating to the modern experience in SharePoint meant the Employee Support Experiences team could perform an internal audit across all the content, develop new style guides, and simplify HRWeb, making it easier to navigate and search.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This meant getting rid of what didn\u2019t make sense and ensuring content was going to the relevant persona.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe features in the modern experience for SharePoint make it easier to do this. We\u2019re able to personalize content better,\u201d Kogan says. \u201cWe can also reuse content and tag things so that it shows up in the right places. This way we can surface content in a way that isn\u2019t manual.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Using Microsoft Entra ID to define groups and then tags to define content, the Employee Support Experiences team can ensure the right content showed up in the right country or region for the right role. And since content is centralized in SharePoint, it is easy to edit and then disseminate to appropriate users without oversharing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A foundational experience to power the future of Microsoft<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re spending a lot of time looking for something simple, that\u2019s wasted time,\u201d Dubedat says. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to make people hunt through content. Eventually, we want to envision a world where we remove the need to even go to HRWeb, because the information can be found from anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Integration with Microsoft Search, made possible by the move to the modern experience in SharePoint, is one of the initial efforts to seamlessly connect employees to HRWeb\u2019s content. The content audit and migration are also empowering advisors and a virtual assistant, enabling stakeholders to find the right information faster.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of that is due to the new tags and personalization features, but it\u2019s also due to improved performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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To make life easier for Microsoft employees and the teams who support them, Sam Crewdson, a principal program manager in Microsoft Digital, helped move the company\u2019s internal HR portal to the modern experience in SharePoint.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cWe reduced the number of server calls by around two-thirds,\u201d Crewdson says. \u201cWe think we can get it down even more, which makes HRWeb faster, less expensive, and perform better. End users get a faster and better HRWeb, and we have something that\u2019s more reliable and scalable.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Now that a new backend platform is in place, the Employee Support Experiences team is working on introducing further improvements to the content that lives on HRWeb. This includes even more personalization for employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEverything has a new look and feel, and the feedback has been favorable,\u201d Kogan says. \u201cWe want to do even more to improve the UX and reduce the number of touchpoints.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And these new features? They\u2019re possible because HRWeb is now on the modern experience in SharePoint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat started out as being just a lift and shift ultimately ended up adding some new interesting features,\u201d Hopkins says. \u201cThe SharePoint Framework really exposes the ability to create components with some basic standard web development tools. That\u2019s a huge benefit to the end user and administrator.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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