Peel Children’s Aid Society Corporate Intranet Redevelopment

The Client

Peel Children’s Aid Society (Peel CAS) is a not-for-profit organization with a mandate to provide child protection services as delineated in the Child, Youth & Family Services Act within the Region of Peel, Ontario. Peel CAS’s mission is to champion the safety and well-being of children and youth based on their unique needs while strengthening families. It puts the needs and interests of children and youth first, and together with community members and other agencies, seeks ways to support families and to ensure children and youth are safe, empowered and thriving. Peel CAS employs nearly 500 full and part-time staff with diverse backgrounds. The staff team includes social workers, child and youth workers, lawyers, infant nurses, support and administrative staff.

The Challenge

Peel CAS engaged Envision IT when they needed a refresh of their existing staff intranet. The current site was built on SharePoint 2013, which was approaching end of support. The intranet was outdated and cluttered, and staff found it difficult to find the information they needed. Posting news, alerts and blogs was complicated, and search did not work properly. They were looking for a modern, flexible, secure, responsive and user-friendly intranet design that would be easy to scale to meet their future needs. The new site needed to provide staff with easy access to tools, resources and up-to-date information on current events, news, and developments relevant to their work. Staff should be able to find the information needed within two to three clicks.

The Solution

Envision IT developed a modern intranet for Peel CAS, providing an essential resource where staff begin and end their day, whether they access the intranet from their PC, tablet or mobile device. This modern platform has become the central hub for all communications to staff. Although the initial plan was to use an intranet acceleration product, Peel CAS created an out-of-the-box Modern SharePoint Intranet. Building on SharePoint Online leveraged their initial investment in the technology and offered a familiar platform for administrative staff to support. This decision allowed for a quick design and build of an attractive, functional intranet with intuitive navigation, a home page and custom web parts that enable staff to gain access to the information they need when they need it.

We started the project with a staff survey and requirements-gathering sessions to define the information architecture for the new site. One of the critical points was determining what would increase user adoption and drive users to the home page. Representatives from various departments helped establish the most important and frequently accessed information and what should be rolled up on the home page. From there, we went on to organize and label shared information in preparation for grouping content most appropriately.

Keeping with a modern intranet scheme, the new site offers a simple, clear, uncluttered design built around a Communication Site and Hub Site.  The focus is on minimal customizations and out-of-the-box web parts. Incorporating built-in News functionality, the home page features a Communications curated carousel, department news, photo galleries and the ‘Peel Reel.’ A web part displaying milestones and achievements rolls up from a simple Microsoft Form that staff can submit to recognize fellow employees. A Power Automate workflow converts the form data into a web page and publishes it to the site. People Search allows users to find and connect with staff across the organization efficiently. Quick links draw from a SharePoint list and provide easy access to commonly used applications, forms, and areas within the intranet and across external sites.

The Results

This project was truly collaborative. Envision IT worked closely with Peel CAS to understand what the organization needed in an intranet and deliver an updated site that addresses employees’ requirements.

Testimonial

We had the pleasure of partnering with Envision IT to redevelop our agency’s intranet, and we were extremely happy with the results. Envision IT brought a blend of technical expertise and user-centred design that truly transformed our platform into a highly functional and intuitive resource. Their team took the time to understand our specific needs and delivered a solution that enhanced our internal communication and fostered better collaboration across departments. I would not hesitate to recommend Envision IT to any organization looking to modernize and optimize its digital infrastructure. Thank you, Envision IT, for your outstanding work and dedication to our project.