Managing reports with SharePoint: a sustainable perspective

The customer's problem: identifying and resolving internal inefficiencies quickly

Operating in the transport sector, our customer needed to implement a solution to receive internal reports and distribute them to relevant departments in the shortest possible time.

Through an analysis of current operating processes and procedures, together with the customer, we identified the main inefficiencies and critical points that slowed down the management of internal reports and that would have exposed the company to risks such as:

• Loss of reputation due to recurring disruptions
• Possible incidents not reported promptly
• Delays in resolving issues
• Dissatisfaction of operators and customers
• Possible legal consequences
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We realized that it was necessary to implement an intuitive and scalable solution, which would allow staff to quickly report any problems related to their activities and business services, and that was able to guarantee an efficient flow of information to the competent departments.

Our solution: centralizing reports on the SharePoint intranet, with an automated management flow

To optimize the management of internal reports by our client, we have designed a customized webpart for the corporate SharePoint intranet.

The idea was to enrich the functionality of an already known and everyday tool, for:

1. Give workers a single point where they can share their reports.
2. Give departments the opportunity to receive only relevant reports and to easily follow their progress.

In fact, the webpart deals with:

1. collect reports (even anonymous) in the dedicated Forms questionnaire;
2. send a notification to department managers for each new report.

But that's not all. Our solution is able to automatically transmit the data and attachments shared by intranet users in the questionnaire to a special SharePoint list. This list has been configured based on specific customer needs for:

1. centralize reports in a single archive, accessible to authorized users;
2. update and monitor the progress of individual reports;
3. organize reports based on the date of submission, type of problem, department of expertise and other personalized information.

Finally, the reports can be analyzed in depth, thanks to the close integration that unites the Microsoft 365 platforms. The company can then import the archived data directly into Excel to identify trends, recurring problems and potential areas for improvement.

Like all projects, even the development of the custom webpart and the SharePoint list was not without difficulties. The customer needed to provide an intuitive tool to employees, to make it accessible and usable from day 0 on the company intranet.

We therefore had to face two essential technical challenges:

1. Make the transmission of data from the webpart to the SharePoint list fluid, avoiding the risk of losing important information or attachments in the process.
2. Configure the SharePoint list to accommodate all reports according to a scalable and intuitive model for constant monitoring.

How did we solve them? With the use of SPFx and .NET, which allowed us respectively to create the custom webpart for the SharePoint intranet already in use in the company and configure the Azure Function.

The latter is nothing more than the functionality that deals with managing the data entered in our webpart and sending a personalized notification to the relevant departments for individual reports.

The results obtained

Since our custom webpart was made available on the company intranet (March 2022), more than 1,400 questionnaires have been filled out.

Together with the customer, we tracked the number of reports, to understand if the solution was really the right one to improve the employee experience. The answer? Let's see some facts together:

• In 2022, 372 reports were sent.
• In 2023, the number rose to 807.
• From January to March 2024, 276 reports arrived.
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From the start of production until today, the company has not yet received negative feedback from users.