WEBVTT 1 00:00:06.280 --> 00:00:07.520 Thanks so much for having me. 2 00:00:07.620 --> 00:00:08.280 My name's Sian. 3 00:00:08.460 --> 00:00:10.800 I am the Internal Communications Manager 4 00:00:10.800 --> 00:00:12.800 at Essential Energy, 5 00:00:12.860 --> 00:00:14.960 and I'm gonna talk about some learnings and improvements 6 00:00:14.960 --> 00:00:16.800 that we've made to our intranet, 7 00:00:16.880 --> 00:00:18.140 which is called EssentialNet. 8 00:00:19.860 --> 00:00:23.240 Here's just kind of an overview slide about us, 9 00:00:23.540 --> 00:00:27.660 but I think for me, the key takeaway from this slide 10 00:00:27.660 --> 00:00:30.920 is about how dispersed our organisation is, 11 00:00:30.920 --> 00:00:34.240 like in geographical terms, also in terms of age, 12 00:00:34.800 --> 00:00:37.320 and then in terms of technology as well. 13 00:00:37.580 --> 00:00:41.700 So we really do have to be mobile first 14 00:00:42.220 --> 00:00:43.400 with all of our solutions 15 00:00:43.400 --> 00:00:45.320 and just make things as easy as possible 16 00:00:45.320 --> 00:00:47.580 because our people don't have a lot of time. 17 00:00:48.080 --> 00:00:51.460 We are also an exceptionally teeny tiny team. 18 00:00:51.540 --> 00:00:53.680 So there's only three of us doing internal comms 19 00:00:54.260 --> 00:00:56.660 and only one person in my team, Michelle, 20 00:00:56.820 --> 00:00:58.000 who's on the call as well, 21 00:00:58.180 --> 00:01:00.100 is solely focused on the intranet. 22 00:01:00.720 --> 00:01:03.360 So we really have a lot of work to do 23 00:01:03.360 --> 00:01:05.420 with not a lot of people and not a lot of budget. 24 00:01:07.800 --> 00:01:10.900 So basically our vision for our intranet 25 00:01:11.660 --> 00:01:14.080 is that it's a healthy single source of truth 26 00:01:14.080 --> 00:01:17.080 filled with relevant up-to-date content, 27 00:01:17.360 --> 00:01:20.300 good metadata that has good hygiene, 28 00:01:21.120 --> 00:01:23.020 it's easy to use and well-governed. 29 00:01:24.720 --> 00:01:27.780 We're not there yet, we're getting there, 30 00:01:27.900 --> 00:01:32.240 but a lot of what we use to help us make decisions 31 00:01:32.240 --> 00:01:35.140 around this is our SWOOP Analytics dashboard. 32 00:01:35.380 --> 00:01:39.740 So in particular, we pay attention to the top content. 33 00:01:40.040 --> 00:01:42.640 So what pages are people clicking on? 34 00:01:42.680 --> 00:01:43.840 What news is resonating? 35 00:01:44.320 --> 00:01:46.020 What are the hotspots on our intranet, 36 00:01:46.100 --> 00:01:48.160 the pieces of content that are really popular? 37 00:01:49.360 --> 00:01:52.580 What people are trying to find but can't, 38 00:01:52.860 --> 00:01:54.820 and this is a really important piece for us 39 00:01:55.300 --> 00:01:58.580 that we look at regularly so we can kind of 40 00:01:58.580 --> 00:02:01.820 evolve the intranet and make tweaks. 41 00:02:02.180 --> 00:02:04.260 We also look at our content health signals 42 00:02:04.260 --> 00:02:06.420 such as our health score, 43 00:02:06.600 --> 00:02:09.180 and we look at the behaviour panels. 44 00:02:09.460 --> 00:02:11.960 So we have a lot of glances in our intranet, 45 00:02:12.040 --> 00:02:15.500 which means we don't have their attention for very long. 46 00:02:15.600 --> 00:02:17.800 So every second on there really has to count. 47 00:02:19.060 --> 00:02:21.600 So now I'll just go through some of the improvements 48 00:02:21.600 --> 00:02:22.580 that we've made. 49 00:02:23.180 --> 00:02:24.140 Excuse me. 50 00:02:25.820 --> 00:02:26.220 Sorry. 51 00:02:26.640 --> 00:02:29.960 For each, I'll talk about what the problem was 52 00:02:29.960 --> 00:02:31.300 that we were trying to solve, 53 00:02:31.440 --> 00:02:34.880 how we solved it, and what the result has been. 54 00:02:36.060 --> 00:02:38.280 So the first problem that we had, 55 00:02:38.440 --> 00:02:39.660 which might be common to people 56 00:02:39.660 --> 00:02:41.260 who have SharePoint intranets, 57 00:02:41.380 --> 00:02:45.300 is that our search function actually pulled up content 58 00:02:45.300 --> 00:02:47.720 from the entire SharePoint ecosystem. 59 00:02:48.540 --> 00:02:52.720 So it wasn't just limited to what was on the scoped sites 60 00:02:52.720 --> 00:02:54.060 that make up our intranet. 61 00:02:54.060 --> 00:02:56.440 So that was one of our biggest complaints. 62 00:02:56.660 --> 00:02:58.820 Like I'm trying to find something that's on the intranet, 63 00:02:58.840 --> 00:03:01.280 and I'm also getting stuff from drives 64 00:03:01.280 --> 00:03:03.220 that I have access to that I don't really need. 65 00:03:04.240 --> 00:03:07.800 We had tried a couple of times to refine our search, 66 00:03:08.020 --> 00:03:11.860 but because our intranet architecture was quite, 67 00:03:12.500 --> 00:03:14.480 so it was spread out over nine hubs, 68 00:03:14.620 --> 00:03:17.660 we actually couldn't implement scoped search. 69 00:03:17.880 --> 00:03:20.500 So we shifted our intranet architecture. 70 00:03:21.020 --> 00:03:23.660 We changed to a single hub and spoke model, 71 00:03:23.660 --> 00:03:26.500 and then we were able to sort of re-scope search 72 00:03:26.500 --> 00:03:29.780 to focus only on content that truly lives 73 00:03:29.780 --> 00:03:30.680 on a central net. 74 00:03:31.520 --> 00:03:35.320 And this has led to a reduction in complaints, importantly, 75 00:03:36.420 --> 00:03:40.060 but also we have less need to rely 76 00:03:40.060 --> 00:03:42.140 on kind of IT intervention. 77 00:03:42.420 --> 00:03:44.320 So what we used to have them do was say, 78 00:03:44.440 --> 00:03:46.040 okay, if someone types in this keyword, 79 00:03:47.120 --> 00:03:50.480 can you kind of artificially pin this page as a result? 80 00:03:51.080 --> 00:03:52.860 And it was a way that we kind of worked 81 00:03:52.860 --> 00:03:57.780 around some legacy architecture and also the search issue. 82 00:03:58.100 --> 00:04:00.180 So that's been a huge improvement, 83 00:04:00.440 --> 00:04:01.740 didn't cost anything to do, 84 00:04:02.080 --> 00:04:03.460 did need a bit of rejigging, 85 00:04:03.640 --> 00:04:06.140 but has been really successful and had good results. 86 00:04:08.930 --> 00:04:10.970 Next to that, and at the same time, 87 00:04:11.030 --> 00:04:13.250 we also refreshed our structure 88 00:04:13.250 --> 00:04:15.250 and our navigation importantly. 89 00:04:15.570 --> 00:04:16.670 So here's a hot tip, 90 00:04:17.010 --> 00:04:19.910 never structure your intranet around your organisation 91 00:04:19.910 --> 00:04:21.250 or your corporate structure, 92 00:04:21.470 --> 00:04:24.850 because it inevitably moves on through restructures, 93 00:04:25.110 --> 00:04:27.050 through team changes, shifts, et cetera. 94 00:04:27.710 --> 00:04:30.050 And it's much harder to move an intranet 95 00:04:30.050 --> 00:04:31.470 that's been set up that way. 96 00:04:32.690 --> 00:04:34.150 So at the top, 97 00:04:34.230 --> 00:04:37.570 you can see how our intranet navigation used to run. 98 00:04:37.750 --> 00:04:40.530 So there was, you really had to basically know 99 00:04:40.530 --> 00:04:42.390 what you were looking for to be able to find it. 100 00:04:42.430 --> 00:04:44.270 There was a lot of assumed knowledge, 101 00:04:44.430 --> 00:04:46.810 like does that team sit under health and safety? 102 00:04:46.950 --> 00:04:47.830 Is it part of ops? 103 00:04:47.830 --> 00:04:49.910 Is it in assets or is it in engineering? 104 00:04:51.190 --> 00:04:52.950 And people really couldn't find things, 105 00:04:52.990 --> 00:04:54.230 they relied on bookmarks. 106 00:04:54.870 --> 00:04:58.210 And between that and the bad search experience, 107 00:04:58.330 --> 00:05:02.330 we had a lot of helpful feedback about our intranet. 108 00:05:02.550 --> 00:05:05.650 So what we did was put together 109 00:05:05.650 --> 00:05:08.070 a really killer business case for a little bit of budget 110 00:05:08.070 --> 00:05:09.830 to work with an external agency 111 00:05:09.830 --> 00:05:12.510 who sat down and did a lot of qualitative 112 00:05:13.130 --> 00:05:14.470 and quantitative research 113 00:05:14.470 --> 00:05:16.770 with a broad cross section of our staff. 114 00:05:17.770 --> 00:05:19.990 We also used SWOOP to look at 115 00:05:19.990 --> 00:05:21.630 what the most popular content was, 116 00:05:21.710 --> 00:05:23.670 because we knew we had to make that accessible 117 00:05:24.490 --> 00:05:26.450 right away in the new navigation. 118 00:05:27.190 --> 00:05:29.750 And we also really tried to break this idea 119 00:05:29.750 --> 00:05:33.850 that because the team that looks after this 120 00:05:33.850 --> 00:05:34.830 sits in this team, 121 00:05:34.950 --> 00:05:38.330 it shouldn't go where someone might intuitively look for it. 122 00:05:39.110 --> 00:05:42.130 So you can see in that kind of second snippet, 123 00:05:42.290 --> 00:05:43.350 what we changed it to. 124 00:05:43.350 --> 00:05:46.370 So we reduced it from nine to six. 125 00:05:47.990 --> 00:05:50.450 And it also, it makes things a lot easier. 126 00:05:50.690 --> 00:05:52.570 We once again, get fewer complaints. 127 00:05:52.790 --> 00:05:55.470 We also changed it so that it goes three levels deep. 128 00:05:55.870 --> 00:05:58.970 So really, people can find a lot of stuff 129 00:05:58.970 --> 00:06:01.230 very, very quickly without any need 130 00:06:01.230 --> 00:06:03.830 to know how our business is structured. 131 00:06:04.090 --> 00:06:05.530 They just go to intuitively 132 00:06:05.530 --> 00:06:07.390 where they would look for that piece of content 133 00:06:07.390 --> 00:06:08.630 and they can find it. 134 00:06:10.660 --> 00:06:11.980 The next one. 135 00:06:13.080 --> 00:06:18.340 So we had an area that was kind of on fire for us, 136 00:06:18.380 --> 00:06:20.220 which was our news. 137 00:06:20.720 --> 00:06:24.220 So a lot of projects are happening 138 00:06:24.220 --> 00:06:26.080 at any one time within our business. 139 00:06:26.220 --> 00:06:29.700 And we'll often have people who are with the business 140 00:06:29.700 --> 00:06:31.080 for a short amount of time 141 00:06:31.080 --> 00:06:33.280 to communicate about a specific project. 142 00:06:33.740 --> 00:06:36.400 They might be tasked with communicating about it, 143 00:06:36.440 --> 00:06:38.540 but it's not necessarily a skillset that they have 144 00:06:38.540 --> 00:06:40.020 or an area where they feel comfortable. 145 00:06:40.540 --> 00:06:44.380 So we ended up with a lot of very long news 146 00:06:44.380 --> 00:06:46.560 that kind of didn't spell out to people 147 00:06:46.560 --> 00:06:48.520 why it was important that they understand 148 00:06:49.700 --> 00:06:50.840 what the news was, 149 00:06:50.880 --> 00:06:53.140 or like it didn't spell out the what's in it for me 150 00:06:53.140 --> 00:06:53.800 for our people. 151 00:06:55.200 --> 00:06:59.980 So we have co-pilot enabled at Essential Energy. 152 00:07:00.520 --> 00:07:05.180 We trained an agent and we gave it every piece of content 153 00:07:05.180 --> 00:07:07.640 that we were previously kind of throwing 154 00:07:07.640 --> 00:07:10.620 at our publishers and editors and expecting them to digest. 155 00:07:11.400 --> 00:07:13.660 And instead we made it the job of the AI agent 156 00:07:13.660 --> 00:07:14.820 to digest all of that. 157 00:07:14.940 --> 00:07:17.540 So our style guide, our corporate narrative, 158 00:07:18.780 --> 00:07:20.560 all of our news best practices. 159 00:07:20.780 --> 00:07:22.640 So what's the ideal word length, 160 00:07:24.220 --> 00:07:26.700 everything like that, all of the advice that we have. 161 00:07:27.160 --> 00:07:29.420 And we've just got three simple prompts there 162 00:07:29.420 --> 00:07:30.320 that you can see. 163 00:07:30.760 --> 00:07:34.160 So we just get them to paste in their rough and ready notes. 164 00:07:34.660 --> 00:07:37.520 And what this does is spit back out 165 00:07:37.520 --> 00:07:39.040 a really good first draft. 166 00:07:39.140 --> 00:07:40.860 So obviously it needs human intervention, 167 00:07:41.540 --> 00:07:45.200 but it will make sure that there's a catchy headline 168 00:07:45.200 --> 00:07:46.320 that's only a few words. 169 00:07:46.380 --> 00:07:48.260 It will make sure that there's a crisp summary 170 00:07:48.260 --> 00:07:50.220 so that people can understand at a glance 171 00:07:50.840 --> 00:07:52.220 what the news is about. 172 00:07:52.320 --> 00:07:54.360 It won't go longer than 250 words 173 00:07:54.360 --> 00:07:57.060 and it will really go hard on why this is important 174 00:07:57.060 --> 00:07:57.820 to our people. 175 00:07:58.960 --> 00:08:02.320 So that's made a huge change for us, 176 00:08:02.960 --> 00:08:04.940 a big improvement in our news. 177 00:08:05.780 --> 00:08:10.680 And at the same time, we also introduced a news template. 178 00:08:11.360 --> 00:08:15.180 So this was another thing that was free to do. 179 00:08:15.400 --> 00:08:17.540 So we developed these templates 180 00:08:17.540 --> 00:08:20.760 and one of the biggest changes that we added 181 00:08:20.760 --> 00:08:22.420 was of course we knew from SWOOP 182 00:08:22.420 --> 00:08:25.660 that we got a shockingly small amount of people's time 183 00:08:25.660 --> 00:08:27.080 when they were looking at our news. 184 00:08:27.960 --> 00:08:31.700 So we kind of hard coded into the template 185 00:08:31.700 --> 00:08:35.880 the need for a summary and it is a true summary. 186 00:08:36.080 --> 00:08:37.480 So it's not just an intro. 187 00:08:38.220 --> 00:08:41.039 It is supposed to be that if you read these 40 words or less, 188 00:08:41.220 --> 00:08:43.440 you completely understand what this news item is about 189 00:08:43.440 --> 00:08:44.920 and why it relates to you. 190 00:08:45.380 --> 00:08:46.780 And then you can read further, 191 00:08:47.120 --> 00:08:49.000 if you have more time or if it's a topic 192 00:08:49.000 --> 00:08:50.200 that you're interested in. 193 00:08:51.180 --> 00:08:54.920 It also helped us create a bit of a visual distinction 194 00:08:54.920 --> 00:08:57.000 between news and other content 195 00:08:57.000 --> 00:09:00.380 because we had nothing that visually defined news 196 00:09:00.380 --> 00:09:03.360 or differentiated it from our pages of content. 197 00:09:04.080 --> 00:09:06.420 It was hard for people to know at a glance previously 198 00:09:06.420 --> 00:09:08.360 if they were looking at news or a bit of content. 199 00:09:08.840 --> 00:09:11.080 So this also helped with that. 200 00:09:11.160 --> 00:09:13.660 There's also compulsory fields around who to contact, 201 00:09:14.020 --> 00:09:16.480 how long it takes to read this news item 202 00:09:17.280 --> 00:09:18.720 and when it was published. 203 00:09:19.140 --> 00:09:21.920 So that's been a huge improvement for us. 204 00:09:22.000 --> 00:09:24.200 It's also saved our team a lot of time 205 00:09:24.980 --> 00:09:27.100 along with the AI news agents. 206 00:09:27.200 --> 00:09:29.700 So we really have to spend a lot less of our time 207 00:09:29.700 --> 00:09:31.180 helping people with news 208 00:09:31.180 --> 00:09:34.420 when that was previously a massive drain on our resources. 209 00:09:37.840 --> 00:09:43.020 We also have, so EssentialNet is made up of 63 sites. 210 00:09:43.480 --> 00:09:45.060 This is how we inherited it. 211 00:09:45.120 --> 00:09:47.620 And every day we try to shut down a few more sites, 212 00:09:48.100 --> 00:09:49.220 consolidate content. 213 00:09:50.400 --> 00:09:55.200 But there was no approval for a flow 214 00:09:55.200 --> 00:09:58.380 on any of our pages or any of our sites. 215 00:09:58.480 --> 00:10:00.000 So people were free to build 216 00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:01.880 whatever they wanted in there. 217 00:10:02.500 --> 00:10:04.840 And obviously, people have different skillsets 218 00:10:04.840 --> 00:10:06.120 and sometimes the skillset 219 00:10:06.120 --> 00:10:07.540 of the people building these pages 220 00:10:07.540 --> 00:10:11.680 was not necessarily usability, user experience, 221 00:10:12.820 --> 00:10:14.300 making things concise. 222 00:10:14.800 --> 00:10:17.700 So it had really become like a Wild West 223 00:10:17.700 --> 00:10:21.920 with mega cities of content across various sites. 224 00:10:23.760 --> 00:10:26.480 There were poor quality content, 225 00:10:26.700 --> 00:10:28.360 information spread across many pages 226 00:10:28.360 --> 00:10:30.000 when it could have been one, et cetera. 227 00:10:30.780 --> 00:10:35.260 So this was, once again, another free thing for us to set up. 228 00:10:35.780 --> 00:10:37.600 And it's just really good governance. 229 00:10:37.880 --> 00:10:40.900 So we use Power Automate to set an approvals flow 230 00:10:40.900 --> 00:10:42.620 on every single one of our sites. 231 00:10:43.820 --> 00:10:45.440 And between our little team, 232 00:10:45.540 --> 00:10:49.000 we set up a rotating roster of approvals. 233 00:10:49.320 --> 00:10:52.980 So every single time that someone updates content, 234 00:10:53.360 --> 00:10:55.680 adds news, publishes news, publishes a page, 235 00:10:55.720 --> 00:10:57.100 it goes straight to us. 236 00:10:57.100 --> 00:10:59.120 And then we decided among ourselves, 237 00:10:59.280 --> 00:11:02.640 what's the criteria which makes a parcel fail? 238 00:11:04.280 --> 00:11:06.720 And we have that kind of visibility 239 00:11:06.720 --> 00:11:08.520 and that governance over everything. 240 00:11:08.700 --> 00:11:10.880 And that also means that every piece of content 241 00:11:10.880 --> 00:11:14.160 on our intranet has been through at least two sets of eyes. 242 00:11:14.840 --> 00:11:17.240 And then Michelle has also, 243 00:11:17.380 --> 00:11:19.380 she runs a monthly meeting for all of our publishers. 244 00:11:20.060 --> 00:11:23.880 She'll keep track of what's been some of the common errors 245 00:11:23.880 --> 00:11:26.320 that we've seen come through the approvals flow. 246 00:11:26.320 --> 00:11:29.200 And she'll deliver a tailored set of training 247 00:11:29.980 --> 00:11:32.200 based around common rejections for that month 248 00:11:32.200 --> 00:11:35.860 so that we continuously improve that cohort as well. 249 00:11:38.700 --> 00:11:41.600 We also had an issue on EssentialNet 250 00:11:41.600 --> 00:11:43.720 that you could publish a news item 251 00:11:43.720 --> 00:11:46.900 and it lived rent-free forever on our intranet. 252 00:11:46.980 --> 00:11:48.380 So it was never ever archived. 253 00:11:48.520 --> 00:11:49.740 So it caused a lot of confusion 254 00:11:49.740 --> 00:11:51.560 because it would pop up in search results. 255 00:11:51.700 --> 00:11:54.240 People wouldn't be sure, is that initiative still running? 256 00:11:54.240 --> 00:11:56.160 Is that safety advice still current? 257 00:11:56.960 --> 00:11:59.720 There was just kind of no way to sort out 258 00:11:59.720 --> 00:12:02.640 what was current and relevant to what was a legacy. 259 00:12:03.240 --> 00:12:05.800 So we set up an archive flow. 260 00:12:06.020 --> 00:12:08.680 So once news is older than 18 months, 261 00:12:08.880 --> 00:12:11.500 it gets swept into a little folder 262 00:12:11.500 --> 00:12:13.780 and then pushed completely off EssentialNet. 263 00:12:14.080 --> 00:12:17.260 So it's there and accessible to editors and publishers 264 00:12:17.260 --> 00:12:19.120 if we have to meet any, 265 00:12:19.560 --> 00:12:21.180 for instance, regulatory requirements 266 00:12:21.180 --> 00:12:23.540 or we have legal obligations to keep the content. 267 00:12:23.540 --> 00:12:26.880 So it's still accessible, just not to our users. 268 00:12:27.600 --> 00:12:29.800 It doesn't pop up in search results. 269 00:12:30.000 --> 00:12:32.360 It doesn't kind of muddy the waters 270 00:12:32.360 --> 00:12:35.240 and it makes sure that our content and our news 271 00:12:35.240 --> 00:12:37.220 are just what is most recent. 272 00:12:39.100 --> 00:12:42.800 And our SWOOP dashboard came in very handy there as well 273 00:12:42.800 --> 00:12:45.100 because we could point to the fact 274 00:12:45.100 --> 00:12:48.400 that legacy news was being accessed 275 00:12:48.400 --> 00:12:50.540 and that it was confusing for our people. 276 00:12:50.540 --> 00:12:55.040 So we got IT support to kind of help set up that flow 277 00:12:55.580 --> 00:12:58.920 and push everything off the intranet that was legacy. 278 00:13:01.680 --> 00:13:10.820 We also used AI for what for us was a really novel use. 279 00:13:11.140 --> 00:13:15.180 So we have a lot of content being published frequently 280 00:13:15.180 --> 00:13:18.780 on our intranet by a lot of people across all of those sites. 281 00:13:18.780 --> 00:13:20.840 So those 63 sites I mentioned earlier, 282 00:13:21.060 --> 00:13:23.300 they're all sites that can be published from. 283 00:13:24.480 --> 00:13:27.320 And we had the problem that news was rolling through 284 00:13:27.320 --> 00:13:29.120 on our homepage really quickly, 285 00:13:29.280 --> 00:13:31.220 sometimes not even spending a day on there. 286 00:13:31.920 --> 00:13:34.780 And we had, as probably a lot of you have, 287 00:13:35.080 --> 00:13:38.360 our homepage set up with the Hero web part. 288 00:13:38.480 --> 00:13:41.560 So we had just kind of five images and five links. 289 00:13:42.460 --> 00:13:45.060 What we decided to do was trim that down 290 00:13:45.060 --> 00:13:48.480 and use editorial cards instead of the Hero web part. 291 00:13:48.480 --> 00:13:52.260 At any one time, we're only showing three top news 292 00:13:52.260 --> 00:13:54.520 and we can also give a little bit of context 293 00:13:54.520 --> 00:13:56.220 and framing to that news 294 00:13:56.220 --> 00:13:57.820 instead of just a picture and a headline. 295 00:13:58.960 --> 00:14:03.420 So we used this where we built the editorial guide 296 00:14:03.920 --> 00:14:07.780 after literally a full day conversation with Copilot, 297 00:14:08.040 --> 00:14:11.580 talking to it about our challenges, goals, company strategy, 298 00:14:11.800 --> 00:14:13.440 key projects, values, et cetera. 299 00:14:13.640 --> 00:14:15.900 We popped all that knowledge into an agent 300 00:14:15.900 --> 00:14:17.860 and now we say, hey, here's the headline 301 00:14:17.860 --> 00:14:18.780 and here's the summary. 302 00:14:20.020 --> 00:14:22.060 Where should we surface this content? 303 00:14:22.220 --> 00:14:23.060 Is it tier one? 304 00:14:23.120 --> 00:14:24.180 Does everyone need to know it? 305 00:14:24.260 --> 00:14:25.020 Is it tier two? 306 00:14:25.160 --> 00:14:26.860 Is it just sort of nice to know? 307 00:14:27.300 --> 00:14:28.420 And is it tier three? 308 00:14:28.580 --> 00:14:30.180 Maybe that's something that's relevant 309 00:14:30.180 --> 00:14:32.940 just to a particular project or a particular team. 310 00:14:33.340 --> 00:14:35.220 And that really helps remove our biases 311 00:14:35.220 --> 00:14:37.520 because of course we all have topics 312 00:14:37.520 --> 00:14:38.780 that are really dear to us 313 00:14:38.780 --> 00:14:42.000 or stakeholders that we have strong relationships with. 314 00:14:43.040 --> 00:14:46.080 This helps us kind of, we make the final decision 315 00:14:46.080 --> 00:14:48.740 but it really does give us some solid grounding 316 00:14:48.740 --> 00:14:49.680 for those decisions. 317 00:14:50.220 --> 00:14:51.720 And it's not just for EssentialNet, 318 00:14:51.800 --> 00:14:53.780 it's also for our Viva Connections dashboard, 319 00:14:55.160 --> 00:14:57.900 our Roundup newsletter that we send out once a week. 320 00:14:57.980 --> 00:14:59.940 So anywhere where we have to make decisions, 321 00:15:00.120 --> 00:15:02.880 tough decisions about what content gets priority, 322 00:15:03.400 --> 00:15:05.100 we use this AI agent. 323 00:15:07.960 --> 00:15:10.080 So there's some of the things that we've done 324 00:15:10.080 --> 00:15:12.880 on like the sniff of an oily rag 325 00:15:12.880 --> 00:15:16.640 with very few people are really like skeleton staff 326 00:15:17.060 --> 00:15:20.560 to make some huge improvements to our intranet. 327 00:15:21.560 --> 00:15:24.500 Of course, everything didn't go smoothly right away. 328 00:15:25.120 --> 00:15:26.740 So for the approval flow, 329 00:15:27.540 --> 00:15:30.820 it did elevate the content quality across the intranet 330 00:15:31.640 --> 00:15:33.480 and really helped improve that. 331 00:15:33.880 --> 00:15:37.080 But as our stakeholders got used to it 332 00:15:37.080 --> 00:15:40.480 and as we ourselves as a team of three got used to it, 333 00:15:40.480 --> 00:15:42.580 it did slow things down. 334 00:15:43.120 --> 00:15:46.600 What I might just wave through somebody else in the team 335 00:15:46.600 --> 00:15:47.780 might say, no, no, hang on, 336 00:15:47.880 --> 00:15:50.580 I think we need to pull that up 337 00:15:50.580 --> 00:15:52.080 and make some adjustments to it. 338 00:15:52.180 --> 00:15:54.720 So we've kind of worked among ourselves 339 00:15:54.720 --> 00:15:58.180 to get a pattern and a rhythm to what goes through 340 00:15:58.180 --> 00:15:58.940 and what doesn't, 341 00:15:58.980 --> 00:16:01.280 and we don't let perfect be the enemy of good, 342 00:16:01.420 --> 00:16:04.480 but we have still managed to raise the quality 343 00:16:04.480 --> 00:16:07.200 and also have oversight of what's being built 344 00:16:07.200 --> 00:16:08.200 on our intranet. 345 00:16:09.340 --> 00:16:12.600 The news template, this was a little bit hard at first 346 00:16:12.600 --> 00:16:14.580 because what our publishers would often do 347 00:16:14.580 --> 00:16:17.340 is just go to an old news item and then copy it. 348 00:16:17.860 --> 00:16:19.820 So it was very hard to get them in the beginning 349 00:16:19.820 --> 00:16:23.080 to get used to using the news template. 350 00:16:24.060 --> 00:16:28.120 We supported that rollout by making it, 351 00:16:28.260 --> 00:16:31.320 so it's pinned as the first thing. 352 00:16:31.400 --> 00:16:33.100 So if you go create a new news item, 353 00:16:33.100 --> 00:16:35.280 the first thing that comes up is the news template. 354 00:16:35.280 --> 00:16:38.740 And we also rolled out a folder of assets 355 00:16:38.740 --> 00:16:40.780 to every single site on EssentialNet 356 00:16:40.780 --> 00:16:43.520 that had common logos, icons, and imagery. 357 00:16:43.960 --> 00:16:46.200 So we really supported the uptake of that. 358 00:16:47.120 --> 00:16:49.560 And the template itself kind of prompts 359 00:16:49.560 --> 00:16:51.100 for all the bits and pieces that you need 360 00:16:51.100 --> 00:16:51.940 for a good news item. 361 00:16:52.060 --> 00:16:53.520 So it's got instructions within it. 362 00:16:54.560 --> 00:16:57.780 The new navigation removed a lot of reliance 363 00:16:57.780 --> 00:16:59.460 on kind of assumed knowledge, 364 00:17:01.100 --> 00:17:02.700 but we've got a lot of people 365 00:17:02.700 --> 00:17:04.599 who've been with Essential Energy for a long time 366 00:17:04.599 --> 00:17:07.079 and they'd gotten used to things being in a certain place. 367 00:17:07.160 --> 00:17:08.540 So there was a little bit of confusion 368 00:17:08.540 --> 00:17:11.460 when some of that changed, oh, I beg your pardon. 369 00:17:13.599 --> 00:17:16.720 But we, and we did actually over-communicate, 370 00:17:16.839 --> 00:17:17.960 I would say, the new navigation, 371 00:17:18.180 --> 00:17:20.000 but still there's always teething issues. 372 00:17:21.319 --> 00:17:24.319 The globalised search worked really well, 373 00:17:25.800 --> 00:17:27.920 but it, and when I say globalised, 374 00:17:28.040 --> 00:17:29.860 so actually re-scoped probably 375 00:17:29.860 --> 00:17:31.180 is a better way to phrase that. 376 00:17:31.880 --> 00:17:34.440 It also highlighted the fact that 377 00:17:34.440 --> 00:17:36.700 now that they were only surfacing content on EssentialNet, 378 00:17:37.100 --> 00:17:40.420 it was bringing up a lot of subpar content on EssentialNet. 379 00:17:40.840 --> 00:17:44.120 So that's kind of where our next focus area is. 380 00:17:45.160 --> 00:17:48.080 But it's definitely reduced the number of complaints 381 00:17:48.080 --> 00:17:48.800 that we've gotten, 382 00:17:49.060 --> 00:17:51.480 and it works much more smoothly for our people. 383 00:17:52.460 --> 00:17:54.380 And the AI writing guide, 384 00:17:54.800 --> 00:17:58.020 it's made things so much smoother and easier for us 385 00:17:58.020 --> 00:17:59.580 and also for our stakeholders. 386 00:18:00.640 --> 00:18:03.180 But it did, in the beginning, hallucinate. 387 00:18:03.320 --> 00:18:06.560 It wrote essays, it missed nuance, 388 00:18:07.420 --> 00:18:11.800 it went off the rails a couple of times, 389 00:18:11.820 --> 00:18:14.080 but every time we just kind of went under the hood, 390 00:18:14.300 --> 00:18:17.280 tweaked the instructions to make them a little bit tighter. 391 00:18:17.840 --> 00:18:22.320 And over time, it's really become kind of a go-to tool. 392 00:18:22.540 --> 00:18:24.220 It's never gonna be perfect. 393 00:18:24.500 --> 00:18:26.980 It's a co-pilot, not autopilot, as we always say, 394 00:18:27.440 --> 00:18:31.060 but it has really helped our people 395 00:18:31.060 --> 00:18:32.860 not be staring at a blank page 396 00:18:32.860 --> 00:18:36.140 or have to spend a lot of time thinking 397 00:18:36.140 --> 00:18:38.540 how they could write something. 398 00:18:38.920 --> 00:18:41.180 So they were our learnings, 399 00:18:41.200 --> 00:18:43.780 and we can see that our health score is elevating, 400 00:18:44.100 --> 00:18:46.320 we can see that engagement is increasing. 401 00:18:47.200 --> 00:18:49.220 We still do have a long way to go 402 00:18:49.220 --> 00:18:50.740 and we've got a lot of what's next, 403 00:18:51.080 --> 00:18:53.880 but I'll just stop there and answer any questions 404 00:18:53.880 --> 00:18:56.060 because I think I'm getting pretty close to time. 405 00:18:56.460 --> 00:18:58.460 So that's it. 406 00:18:58.640 --> 00:18:58.740 Stop sharing. 407 00:18:58.740 --> 00:18:59.760 No, that's perfect. 408 00:18:59.940 --> 00:19:01.060 You're spot on, Sian. 409 00:19:02.360 --> 00:19:07.240 I think, oh, Fran, did you have a question you wanted to- 410 00:19:07.240 --> 00:19:08.600 Sorry, I was just very happy 411 00:19:08.600 --> 00:19:09.460 and I wanted to do a reaction 412 00:19:09.460 --> 00:19:10.540 and I just put my hand up there, 413 00:19:10.640 --> 00:19:11.960 but I'm thrilled with the concession 414 00:19:11.960 --> 00:19:12.420 that I've been granted. 415 00:19:12.420 --> 00:19:16.660 On that note, thank you, Sian. 416 00:19:16.880 --> 00:19:19.100 Thank you so much for sharing such practical insights. 417 00:19:19.180 --> 00:19:22.080 I can see everyone in the chat are just so stoked 418 00:19:22.080 --> 00:19:23.340 to have all of this information. 419 00:19:23.340 --> 00:19:25.520 So we really appreciate you bringing it all together. 420 00:19:25.680 --> 00:19:26.600 At the same time, 421 00:19:27.040 --> 00:19:29.640 we have some really great questions that are coming through. 422 00:19:29.780 --> 00:19:32.840 So I might just start with a really simple, practical one, 423 00:19:32.900 --> 00:19:34.740 just so that we're all on the same page. 424 00:19:35.420 --> 00:19:37.700 Great feedback on the news writer, of course. 425 00:19:38.200 --> 00:19:42.380 Did you need to pitch for co-pilot licensing costs 426 00:19:42.380 --> 00:19:44.600 or did you already have co-pilot licenses? 427 00:19:45.600 --> 00:19:49.560 So Essential Energy rolled out co-pilot last year 428 00:19:49.560 --> 00:19:51.580 and there was a big push for uptake. 429 00:19:51.580 --> 00:19:53.620 It was only two particular segments of the business, 430 00:19:54.080 --> 00:19:56.500 but our area was one of the places 431 00:19:56.500 --> 00:19:59.880 that picked it up really quickly and ran with it. 432 00:19:59.980 --> 00:20:02.420 So no, it was something that digital services 433 00:20:02.420 --> 00:20:04.340 had already made the decision to roll out, 434 00:20:04.440 --> 00:20:05.660 which was very lucky for us. 435 00:20:06.480 --> 00:20:06.920 Perfect, got it. 436 00:20:07.060 --> 00:20:11.140 And just a question as well around the approval processes. 437 00:20:11.700 --> 00:20:14.560 So for your approval process for every time, 438 00:20:14.840 --> 00:20:16.460 oh, sorry, is your approval process 439 00:20:16.460 --> 00:20:18.220 for every time a page is published, 440 00:20:18.420 --> 00:20:20.300 how do you deal with repeated submissions 441 00:20:20.720 --> 00:20:23.900 or small changes, for example, fixing a link or a typo? 442 00:20:24.500 --> 00:20:26.080 We just wave them straight through, 443 00:20:26.300 --> 00:20:27.760 but yes, it is for everything. 444 00:20:27.980 --> 00:20:31.560 So the limitation of setting up approval flows 445 00:20:31.560 --> 00:20:34.220 in SharePoint is that it's either everything or nothing. 446 00:20:35.100 --> 00:20:37.200 So we kind of weighed up those costs 447 00:20:37.200 --> 00:20:39.480 and decided we would rather see everything. 448 00:20:39.940 --> 00:20:42.340 So there is actually a comment submission box. 449 00:20:42.420 --> 00:20:44.240 So when people submit it for approval, 450 00:20:44.660 --> 00:20:46.580 they can type in the little comments box, 451 00:20:46.580 --> 00:20:49.600 like just added a link or updated something. 452 00:20:50.680 --> 00:20:53.340 And we've kind of mandated that they tell us 453 00:20:53.340 --> 00:20:55.820 what this change is about or what this page is about. 454 00:20:56.000 --> 00:20:59.060 So that makes it a lot easier to just hit accept. 455 00:21:01.810 --> 00:21:02.530 Fantastic, thanks, Sian. 456 00:21:02.630 --> 00:21:05.250 And then I guess just in terms of some of the things 457 00:21:05.250 --> 00:21:06.910 that you mentioned earlier and in the presentation 458 00:21:06.910 --> 00:21:10.610 about moving away from the org structure navigation 459 00:21:10.610 --> 00:21:13.850 towards more of the topic-based user-centric navigation, 460 00:21:14.630 --> 00:21:16.450 what were your strongest pieces of evidence 461 00:21:16.450 --> 00:21:18.250 from your research that helped you kind of 462 00:21:18.250 --> 00:21:21.370 win that internal argument about making that change? 463 00:21:22.910 --> 00:21:26.650 So I'm pretty sure our executive leadership team 464 00:21:26.650 --> 00:21:28.530 had tried to use the intranet themselves 465 00:21:28.530 --> 00:21:30.250 and had also been frustrated. 466 00:21:31.070 --> 00:21:33.710 We also had a lot of comments that we'd collected 467 00:21:34.710 --> 00:21:37.570 and we had received a lot of anecdotal feedback 468 00:21:37.570 --> 00:21:38.470 from our people. 469 00:21:38.670 --> 00:21:42.250 So the business case was pretty rapidly approved. 470 00:21:42.770 --> 00:21:46.350 And the hard part actually was then sitting down 471 00:21:46.350 --> 00:21:47.890 with our stakeholders and saying, 472 00:21:48.010 --> 00:21:51.690 particularly the ones who had a top-line navigation item, 473 00:21:52.050 --> 00:21:53.670 saying, hey, you're not gonna have that anymore. 474 00:21:53.830 --> 00:21:56.310 Your topics might actually be split over two or three. 475 00:21:56.790 --> 00:21:58.370 That was actually the hardest part. 476 00:21:58.450 --> 00:22:01.150 So we did a lot of, we started from the very top 477 00:22:01.150 --> 00:22:02.570 and got buy-in from our executive. 478 00:22:03.190 --> 00:22:05.670 And then we kind of used that weight 479 00:22:05.670 --> 00:22:07.670 to push the changes through. 480 00:22:08.050 --> 00:22:09.350 There was a little bit of resistance, 481 00:22:09.350 --> 00:22:12.490 but I think once we presented what it was going to look like 482 00:22:12.490 --> 00:22:14.450 and everyone could see that their topics 483 00:22:14.450 --> 00:22:16.110 were all mapped to different places, 484 00:22:16.110 --> 00:22:17.910 they actually weren't losing real estate. 485 00:22:18.070 --> 00:22:21.110 They were just probably going to gain more clicks 486 00:22:21.110 --> 00:22:22.510 and more prominence for their content. 487 00:22:22.830 --> 00:22:24.070 That made it a lot easier. 488 00:22:25.610 --> 00:22:26.770 Fantastic, great insight. 489 00:22:27.050 --> 00:22:28.510 And then just for a lot of the work 490 00:22:28.510 --> 00:22:30.370 that you've done there around agents, 491 00:22:30.650 --> 00:22:32.570 like do you have a, I don't know, 492 00:22:32.650 --> 00:22:36.730 one particular learning to call out around creating agents? 493 00:22:37.070 --> 00:22:39.010 Like anything else to add? 494 00:22:39.650 --> 00:22:41.910 Yeah, I would say it's never one and done. 495 00:22:42.350 --> 00:22:45.410 So you think you've captured everything 496 00:22:45.410 --> 00:22:47.750 in the backend, you've given it every piece of grounding 497 00:22:47.750 --> 00:22:50.270 that you can, you've made your instructions really explicit. 498 00:22:51.570 --> 00:22:53.270 I actually had the words in there, 499 00:22:53.330 --> 00:22:56.790 do not exceed 250 words per news article, 500 00:22:56.970 --> 00:22:59.230 and it was still spitting out thousand word essays. 501 00:22:59.630 --> 00:23:02.210 So you just have to constantly go back and tinker with it. 502 00:23:02.290 --> 00:23:03.150 So I think that's the thing, 503 00:23:03.230 --> 00:23:04.890 just getting a lot of beta feedback, 504 00:23:05.530 --> 00:23:07.610 getting people to really put it through its paces, 505 00:23:07.850 --> 00:23:10.570 ask it questions that aren't in your designated prompts 506 00:23:11.130 --> 00:23:12.750 and just road testing it 507 00:23:12.750 --> 00:23:14.490 and then seeing how you can tweak. 508 00:23:15.310 --> 00:23:17.490 It will actually, you can also use Copilot 509 00:23:17.490 --> 00:23:19.810 to give it the instructions of your agent 510 00:23:19.810 --> 00:23:21.690 and say, hey, how could we refine this? 511 00:23:21.750 --> 00:23:23.570 Cause this is a behaviour that we're seeing. 512 00:23:24.490 --> 00:23:26.690 So it can kind of self heal a bit as well. 513 00:23:27.350 --> 00:23:29.530 Got it, and I've got a question here from Dasha. 514 00:23:29.630 --> 00:23:32.310 I love how Dasha's kind of given a bit of a disclaimer 515 00:23:32.310 --> 00:23:35.830 about this one being an annoying techie SharePoint question. 516 00:23:36.270 --> 00:23:37.810 So let's see how we go. 517 00:23:37.810 --> 00:23:39.210 I might not be able to answer it, yeah. 518 00:23:39.990 --> 00:23:40.750 We'll see how we go. 519 00:23:40.750 --> 00:23:43.510 So the moving to another site 520 00:23:44.090 --> 00:23:46.150 is the solution that they're looking for as well. 521 00:23:46.330 --> 00:23:48.410 Is this essentially deleting the original 522 00:23:48.410 --> 00:23:50.330 and the flow moves to a copy, 523 00:23:50.590 --> 00:23:52.210 moves a copy to the archive site? 524 00:23:52.330 --> 00:23:54.390 Is that maybe related, might be related to the news? 525 00:23:54.690 --> 00:23:56.430 Michelle, would you like to come off mute? 526 00:23:56.790 --> 00:24:00.010 So it does actually, I think it's a straight move. 527 00:24:00.070 --> 00:24:01.170 I don't think it's a deletion 528 00:24:01.170 --> 00:24:02.590 cause we do preserve the metadata. 529 00:24:02.930 --> 00:24:04.190 That was something that was really important 530 00:24:04.190 --> 00:24:06.190 cause there's a lot of tags and a lot of stuff, 531 00:24:06.310 --> 00:24:09.270 particularly with our safety libraries or safety news. 532 00:24:09.270 --> 00:24:11.990 And so we needed to preserve that metadata. 533 00:24:12.350 --> 00:24:15.230 My understanding is the flow is actually a move, 534 00:24:15.710 --> 00:24:17.910 but I just, Michelle, if you want to come on back. 535 00:24:18.270 --> 00:24:19.190 Okay, yeah, there we go. 536 00:24:20.010 --> 00:24:21.190 Initially we put them, 537 00:24:21.470 --> 00:24:23.950 moved them into folders within the sites 538 00:24:23.950 --> 00:24:27.650 in the pages library, but that didn't help our stats. 539 00:24:27.790 --> 00:24:30.170 And we really did want to make our stats look better. 540 00:24:30.310 --> 00:24:33.110 So we've moved them into a Teams SharePoint site, 541 00:24:33.330 --> 00:24:35.330 but people still have the same access. 542 00:24:35.730 --> 00:24:37.370 The publishers can still find them 543 00:24:37.370 --> 00:24:38.510 if they want to refer to them. 544 00:24:38.510 --> 00:24:39.730 So it's just a move.