June 30 will mark the official end of the two-year-long project. The SharePoint team that spearheaded it will disband, with the Marketing Communications Office (MCO) to coordinate the migration of any remaining content from the university’s old RedDot site to the new platform.

What we’ve accomplished

Our secure employee website now contains a main hub and more than 80 communications sites, representing dozens of tasks, topics and university units. Nearly 200 staff have been trained as website editors and are creating robust, content-optimized pages for our broad university audience. In May 2022 alone, the UM Intranet hub received more than 68,000 visits.

The benefits are vast. Removing internal content from umanitoba.ca has streamlined our public-facing content and improved public search results. For employees, UM Intranet provides a focused, user-centred location for work and career information, which can be easily stored and shared securely.

UM Intranet is accessible to all university employees. To access, use your @umanitoba.ca email address. Learn more about accessing UM intranet in this UM Today story from May 2021.

A major project completed, thanks to comprehensive collaboration

Spanning two years and forging ahead through the challenges of COVID, the project brought together a wide range of subject matter experts with communications and core project teams, guided by a cross-campus project leadership team. Their cooperative efforts have produced an inviting and comprehensive employee resource that will continue to evolve and improve.

“The UM Intranet project has been a remarkable example of sustained, university-wide collaboration,” says Mark Torchia, Vice-Provost (Teaching and Learning) and co-chair of the project.

“UM Intranet is a new and exciting shared space that’s helping us to connect with each other and enhance our workplace culture,” adds Darlene Smith, Associate Vice-President (Administration), Human Resources, who was the project’s other co-chair.

“This digital workspace unifies our work processes on one easy, convenient and secure platform.”

Find the supports you need when you need them

If you aren’t best friends yet with UM Intranet, you can find a wide range of help on our support site. Remember to use your umanitoba.ca email address to access the supports below.

A platform overview describes the site’s task-based navigation and organization, and its design and capabilities, including its focus on accessibility. Visit Introduction to UM Intranet.

Orientation tours are live, online sessions that help you better understand and navigate specific communications sites on UM Intranet. Watch past sessions or find any upcoming live sessions. Check UM Intranet orientation tours.

Search tips help you optimize your search on the main hub and communication sites, including how to distinguish between the two. Visit How to search on UM Intranet.

How-to documentation and videos help site owners and editors plan their site and follow best practices for building pages and sections. Visit the UM Intranet support home page for comprehensive help.

For questions about the UM Intranet project, contact Heather Saxton.

 For questions related to how to evolve or structure your site, contact your Communications Officer in MCO.

For technical issues following your migration, please contact the service desk at 204-474-8600 or servicedesk [at] umanitoba [dot] ca

For more information about the RedDot retirement plan, please visit the RedDot retirement support page. You will be prompted to enter your umanitoba.ca email address and password. 

These orientation tours are designed to help you to better understand and navigate the individual communication sites on UM Intranet, and help you to easily find the materials and information you need to do your work.

Each orientation tour will focus on a specific faculty or campus unit, starting with Registrar’s Office on July 29, then faculties of Social Work and Health Sciences (joint tour) on Aug. 9, then and finally two separate sessions in August for the Human Resources site—one general and another for managers and administrators.

Tours are led by specific site owners and the UM Sharepoint Coordinator team, and there will be time for questions so you can get the specific help you need.

Find out more on the UM Intranet support site. All sessions will be recorded and will also be available there soon after the live dates.

Note: To access UM Intranet, you need to be logged in with your umanitoba.ca email address.

Read more about UM Intranet, and all the benefits of this new digital platform.

Upcoming UM Intranet orientation tours

July 29, 11 a.m. Registrar’s Office

Aug. 9, 11 a.m. Faculties of Social Work and Health Sciences (joint tour)

Aug. 18, 11 a.m. Human Resources (General)

Aug. 19, 11 a.m. Human Resources (Administrators/managers)

The schedule will be updated to include more units as additional UM Intranet content becomes available.

If you are in UM Intranet, you can add add the sessions directly to your calendar.

Note: ​​​​​​​Sessions are accessed through Microsoft Teams, so please be sure you’re logged in to your Teams application using your umanitoba.ca email address.

Read more about UM Intranet:

I am delighted to share that the University of Manitoba is launching UM Intranet to all faculty and staff on May 7. Intranet is an online network much like a regular website except dedicated to a particular audience. In this case, only UM faculty and staff can access its webpages. 

You’ll quickly and easily find information and resources needed for our work: from human resources forms to workplace policies; from respectful workplace to diversity and inclusion supports; from copyright information to protecting privacy—it’s there, in one space, especially for you.

Some Human Resources and Registrar’s Office materials have already moved to UM Intranet so you will begin encountering a transition page, where you will see the UM Intranet login. The transition page also provides additional information, including an overview of which sites have already been moved to UM Intranet.

You can access UM Intranet using an @umanitoba.ca email address. We have created many supports to help faculty and staff navigate this new platform. (Please note, you will need to be logged in to Microsoft 365 to access this support page on UM Intranet.) 

Enjoy exploring and engaging with this new online community space! We look forward to checking back to see how this is working for you and making improvements throughout the rollout, all to make it the most functional and useful space for you and our entire faculty and staff community.

Many thanks to the members of our community who have worked tirelessly in developing and launching UM Intranet, building on the work of our new website experience. Bravo to you and your teams!

Thank you,
John Kearsey, Vice-President (External)
Chair and project sponsor of the Next Generation Web Experience

For more on access, supports and how to find the info you need on the new platform, see these previous UM Today stories:

Mar. 3: UM Intranet launches this spring – Stay connected, while you do your work better, faster, and more securely

Apr. 27: Prepare for launch! UM Intranet coming soon – Learn more about access, supports, and how to find the info you need

To prepare, special preview and information sessions have been provided to highly impacted admin-user groups, including Human Resources staff, IST service desk, MedIT service desk, Registrar’s Office, communications officers and specialists, executive and some administrative assistants across UM. 

The first phase includes internal-audience content from: Human Resources; Registrar’s Office; Faculty of Arts, Social Work and Health Sciences. A roadmap is being developed for future releases in phases 2 and 3. 

Read on for more details about the overall project and supports for accessing and using the new platform.

Accessing UM Intranet  

Starting May 6, UM Intranet can be accessed by an authenticated login, with content accessible to all employees in the organization. This includes all full-time, contract, part-time or nil appointees and affiliated partner employees. 

To access UM Intranet, use your @umanitoba.ca email address; an @umanitoba.ca address is assigned to all employees. Think of it as your username and password. 

Email addresses that won’t work to access UM Intranet 

Any email address that is not @umanitoba.ca will be denied access to UM Intranet. Users in dual-role positions such as UM instructors, student-employees and shared health practitioners need to use their @umanitoba.ca email address to access the content, and will need to claim their UMNetId. 

Email addresses external to UM and student email addresses (@myumanitoba.ca) will be denied access to the intranet.  

Find the info you need quickly 

Much of our internal content, including employee resources, forms, processes—materials we need for our daily work—will now be found on the new UM Intranet. 

Similar to an external site, but tailored for employee needs, UM Intranet’s task-based navigation features one main hub site and several communications sites. Read about the task-based navigation in our previous UM Today story. 

So how do I find my information after launch? 

If you are a UM employee, nil appointee or affiliated partner with an active @umanitoba.ca email address, you can: 

• Access through Faculty and Staff webpage on umanitoba.ca. After launch, look here for the new UM intranet icon and information about the UM Intranet. The UM Intranet icon will direct you to log into M365 using your @umanitoba.ca email address and password; or you will be directed to the UM Intranet homepage if you are already signed into M365. 
• Access through your bookmarked content, which will redirect to a Transition Page, where you’ll find login instructions, support and project information, including a list of content that’s moved 
• Access links from intranet.umanitoba.ca or other umanitoba.ca webpages, which will redirect to the Transition Page. 
• Access from the SharePoint Online Dashboard if you are more familiar with the M365 SharePoint Online application. 
  • On the day of launch, information on the UM Intranet Support site can guide you step-by-step about how to access the SharePoint online dashboard and follow your favourite sites. 

You’re in! 

Once you are logged into M365 and are on the UM Intranet homepage, you can: 

• Navigate UM Intranet content using the top drop-down menus. 
• Search UM Intranet content with the Search function. 

Try the convenient search function 

Key features of UM Intranet’s search function include: 

• Search that’s either UM Intranet-wide or site-specific. 
  • If you are on the UM Intranet Homepage, you will search across all sites associated with the UM Intranet hub.  
  • If you are on a specific individual site within UM Intranet, you will search that site only. For example, if you are in “Compensation and job classifications,” your results will show content only from that site. 
• Search based on your tasks. You can search for pages, files and people to find answers to complete your task. The people search uses the same people information found in Outlook. 
• Search is personal. The results you see are different from what other users see;. It is based on your previous activity and trending content. 
• The Microsoft Search box is also used in other Microsoft 365 applications. You can broaden the scope of your search and look at Teams sites you have access to by clicking on the breadcrumb navigation, “Organization > UM Intranet” found above the search results.  

Post-launch support 

After UM Intranet is launched, you can access the UM Intranet Support Site for information on creating pages and navigating the site.  

After launch, the project team will continue to host webinars that will be recorded and posted to the UM intranet support site. These webinars are targeted to frequently-accessed specific content to help people learn to navigate the UM Intranet. 

For more on the improved performance and navigation you can expect from the new platform, see the previous UM Today story:

Mar. 3: UM Intranet launches this spring – Stay connected, while you do your work better, faster, and more securely

For questions about the UM Intranet project, contact project manager Marty Lepage at Marty.Lepage@umanitoba.ca. For technical issues following your migration, please contact the service desk at 204-474-8600 or servicedesk@umanitoba.ca

For more information about the RedDot retirement plan, please visit the RedDot retirement support page. You will be prompted to enter your umanitoba.ca email address and password. 

Welcome to the future of work! UM Intranet will launch in spring 2021. It will be accessed by an authenticated login, and content will be accessible to all employees in the organization.

A digital platform for internal-facing content, an intranet allows employees to store and share files and data, easily communicate with each other, and collaborate in a secure way.

As a shared place for our community, UM intranet will help strengthen internal engagement and connection and build positive workplace culture.

A digital employee tool with a great user experience

To align our internal communications with the exceptional user experience we’ve come to expect from our new website, an intranet will host internal-facing content, including employee resources, forms, processes—many of the materials we need for our daily work.

This also aligns with other post-secondary institutions, most of which have an intranet—a private, secure network for employees.

UM Intranet will be hosted on SharePoint Online (SPO). The SharePoint Online (SPO) mobile application allows users to access documents anytime, anywhere. SPO is also integrated with other Microsoft 365 tools.

Similar to an external site, but tailored for employee needs, UM Intranet’s task-based navigation features one main hub site and several communications sites.

Task-based navigation

The overall organization of information is task-based. With this intranet best-practice, you’ll find:

• Information is grouped according to how employees use it, rather than who creates and maintains it;
• Employees don’t need to understand our institutional organizational chart to find information;
• Navigation better withstands organizational changes​;
• Navigation facilitates user learning and discovery​;
• Navigation uses topic-based labels to identify the key piece of information of the task; and
• Sites are based on a single topic.

UM Intranet sites are grouped into the following:

• Employee resources​: Career and life information and resources that address the specific needs of each individual employee​
• Work supports​: Information that helps employees complete their work and applies to groups of employees from multiple units
• Campus: Campus life information
• Units​: Unit-specific information that may be shared with everyone.
• Apps and sites​: Quick access to work-related web applications and sites, as well as related support information.

What else can you look forward to from UM Intranet?

User-centred, search-friendly, responsive and mobile design

Our new Intranet will feature user-centered design with improved navigation and search functionality. Information is more easily searchable via a variety of filters. Responsive design is based on user behaviour and supports traffic from a diverse operating systems or platform, screen sizes and orientations, including an increasingly mobile user base.

Better performance, improved content management, with more flexibility and options

Content management for UM Intranet allows greater flexibility in representing, sharing and administering content, and includes many different webparts and capabilities to tailor your intranet site for the needs of your users. Improved performance management includes analytics/measurement capabilities.

The new intranet features improved web capabilities and cloud-based technology through a new supported and secure CMS and web servers. The technology allows for continual improvement, with functionality to collaborate with other Microsoft 365 tools.

Consistent look and feel

UM Intranet features a branded visual design along with a framework for a common look and feel across the site. The main hub site will display information applicable to all employees.

Accessible

The new intranet is a universally accessible experience, as required by provincial legislation as per the Accessibility for Manitobans Act. Sharepoint is a Microsoft365 product and has built-in accessibility standards.

Web accessibility ensures “design for all,” making the design accessible to people with a diverse range of hearing, movement, sight and cognitive ability.

Next steps

The initial launch this spring includes content from the existing intranet.umanitoba.ca site, as well as human resources and general employee information for Rady Faculty of Health Sciences. Current requirements are being gathered to determine a roadmap for future unit migrations in 2021.

Because our old platform, RedDot, is being discontinued, it will no longer be serviced by the provider. On April 5, 2021, any old UM RedDot pages will no longer be accessible for changes, though pages will still be viewable by audiences. For more information about the RedDot retirement plan, please visit the RedDot retirement support page. You will be prompted to enter your umanitoba.ca email address and password.

Watch for updates in the weeks ahead, with more information about our new UM Intranet, with further unit migrations and training support.

Update May 3: Prepare for launch! UM Intranet coming soon – Learn more about access and Intranet supports, and how to use the convenient search function to quickly find the info you need