Departments

The sites that help departments to make themselves known within the company and manage their communication.

What is Departments

SharePoint Company Departments are based on the idea of giving departments their own space on the SharePoint intranet by creating dedicated websites or pages. This helps you enhance internal communication and streamline the sharing of information and content among company departments on the SharePoint intranet.

Each department has its own space to introduce itself and highlight its news, services, and key contacts for colleagues. Moreover, you can use the Departments web part to introduce the manager of each department, showing their name, photo and contact details.

Explore the advantages of Intranet.ai Departments by clicking here to learn more.


Add the Departments web part to a SharePoint page

  • If your page is not already in edit mode, click Edit at the top right of the page.

  • Click on it and, in the web part search box, enter Department to quickly find and select the Departments web part, which is named IAI – Company Department.


Configuration

General settings

As mentioned above, Departments introduces a person in the company, e.g., the manager of a specific department. The web part includes buttons through which you can contact this person. Therefore, it's essential to include People directory details in this section, so that the application can retrieve the user’s contact information.

  • If you're not in edit mode already, click Edit at the top right of the page.

For example: https://intranetai.sharepoint.com/sites/Lists/IAIPeopleDirectory/All%20contacts.aspx

  • Favourite contacts list: insert the link of the People directory favorites list.

  • Title of the section: you can type the text you want to display as the title of the section.

For example: Head of Marketing

  • Select the People Directory data source, which can be either SharePoint or Graph. Since a SharePoint list can contain a maximum of 5,000 items, companies with more than 5,000 employees will be required to use Graph as the data source. For companies with fewer than 5,000 employees, the choice will be the SharePoint list of the people directory, which is synchronized daily with Azure AD contacts.

Card settings

In this section, you need to select the information that will be visible in the person’s card.

  • Choose title, subtitle and sub-subtitle: select the options you want to see in the person’s preview card, for example: Title (corresponding to Name and Surname of the contact), Department, Job Title.

  • Select the field where the image is saved: specify in which fields of Azure AD this information is stored; usually it is Title.

  • Select the field where the user principal name is saved: specify in which fields of Azure AD this information is stored; usually it is User Principal Name.

Optional settings

This field is seamlessly integrated with the People Directory or My Profile applications. It is synchronized with the People Directory, so the information will be visible on the People Directory, and for the user who clicks on the profile, the full profile opens and he can view it. In addition, it is based on Azure AD, so the contacts on Azure AD are read.

In this section, you can choose to show or hide specific buttons in the web part.

  • Do you want to show the favourite shortcut in profile section?: select if you want to show the favourite shortcut in the profile section or not. If the favourite flag (the star) is added, the user's profile will be added to the list of favourites in the People Directory, so it will be visible among the People Directory favourites.

  • Do you want to show the phone shortcut in profile section?: select if you want to show the phone shortcut in the profile section or not. In order to add the phone shortcut and make calls, you need a Voip System. Click here to go to the guide that explains this point.

  • Do you want to show the Teams shortcut in profile section?: select if you want to show the Teams shortcut in the profile section or not. By adding the Teams shortcut, it will be possible to contact the user directly on a Teams chat.

  • Do you want to show the mail shortcut in profile section?: select if you want to show the mail shortcut in the profile section or not. Adding the e-mail shortcut will make it possible to contact the user directly by e-mail.

Shortcut settings

In this section, you need to select the Azure AD fields where the user’s phone number and email address are stored. As explained above, in order to add the phone in the Shortcut settings, you need a Voip System. Click here to go to the guide that explains this point.

Fill in the fields with Azure AD fields where the required information is saved as follows:

  • Select the field where the phone number is saved: Business Phones / Mobile Phone.

  • Select the field where the e-mail is saved: Mail.

Person settings

Finally, you can choose the name of the person to insert on the web part, for example: Beth. After writing the person’s name, select the correct user from the search results.

Here’s an example of how it will appear:

We suggest configuring this web part in a narrow section; for example, you can create a wide section with the description of the Department, and next to it, you can create a narrower column with the presentation of the manager. This will allow users that visit the Department's page to immediately see who the manager of that Department is.

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