Guest Blog from Siller AG's Thomas Walz: 6 Steps to Motivate SharePoint End Users

One of the key objectives with every SharePoint portal is to motivate and get the users to work with it.  To achieve this goal at Siller AG, as a result of brainstorming within our team, we have created a quick concept with the following main points:

1. Creation of a user-defined list with "Tips of the day" which displays random basic tips such as, "How to export a list to Excel"
2. Weekly Newsletter describing all changes in the SharePoint Portal, using Bamboo's Alert Plus Web Part (configured with a nice layout)
3. A "What's new" Web Part, to present a quick overview of all news within the portal
4. Short screencasts demonstrating the main benefits of the SharePoint portal for users (such as offline synchronizing with Outlook)
5. Providing a better structure with sitemap and a custom navigation control
6. Providing more options for users to participate inside the portal:
   • Moderated forum
   • Poll Web Part from Bamboo is used to provide users with the ability to give feedback about, for example, their wishes concerning the structure
   • Ability to "rank" the content (documents, list items)
   • Ability to provide feedback on the content

With these six steps in place, we have found that the number of users who are actively working in the portal has increased up to 50%.

To see a quick overview of our solutions and SharePoint projects, please visit us at http://www.sharepoint.siller.de/.

[Editor's note: For additional information on Siller AG, please see their Bamboo Partner Profile.]