Tile sets

The most basic implementation of the Internal Communications Solution would include a single tile set for the entire organization, and would contain a single Internal Communications tile configured. While this is all that is needed from a technical perspective, it is highly recommended that organizations consider providing, at a minimum, 3-4 other default tiles.

To get the biggest benefit, you may consider assigning relevant tiles to employees based on their role, geography, or department for example. Because every user can only have a single tile set assigned, it can become an exercise in change management to make significant changes to how your tile sets are configured and rolled out after the fact.

The most common ways to roll out tile sets is either by department, geography, or role. Any other dimensions are entirely possible, the key configuration to consider is having the appropriate SharePoint audiences to drive the assignment of tiles. Additionally, you may want to ensure that the approach taken does not have employees falling into more than one audience as every user can only have one tile set at a given time.

Because the tile set assigned to a user replaces what default tiles they get, there are some basic tiles that should be assigned in addition to the Internal Communications tile. NewsGator recommends the following tiles:

• Profile Setup
• Recommendations (if the landing page does not have this already)
• Communities – if rolling out one tile set to the org, communities chosen should be wide in scope and purpose (that is, the user base should be something applicable to everyone in an organization. If rolling out to more specific groups, like by department or role, the communities chosen can be more specific to those groups. This makes for a great on-boarding story for new employees.
• Person Tile – this can be used to highlight posts from leadership (CEO, departmental managers, etc.)