Powering your digital workplace with Sitecore

Employee work environments have evolved. The personalized, digital workplace is re-imagining the way we can now work using Sitecore.

We all know that the Coronavirus pandemic forced businesses to invest in technologies that helped employees to continue working from anywhere they could. We had to keep adapting, there was no choice, or the business would fail. So personalized applications, services and collaboration tools were introduced to enable this transition, to working on any device, from anywhere at any time. This became known as the Digital Workplace.

Microsoft™ define this as:

“The digital workplace includes all the technologies people use to get work done in today’s workplace…It ranged from your HR applications and core business applications to email, instant messaging and enterprise social media tools and virtual meeting tools

Many businesses decided to turn to their intranets as a source for continuing production and keep the business wheels turning. But did they deliver what employees needed and was it possible to use this time to evolve?

 

We know the standard intranet didn’t pay enough attention to:

• Increasing productivity and efficiency
• Employee preferences
• Providing personalised experiences
• Engaging experiences
• Focusing on collaboration between employees­

 

Take a look at how traditional intranets compare to the digital workplace:

 

But how are businesses creating personalized workplaces?   And what are the most important things to ensure a productive workplace?

At Omnia, we have developed digital workplaces for our clients using Sitecore™.  We have created a series of best practices to overcome any challenges faced which allow us to innovate, design and transform workplace environments for our clients.

 

Talk to a Sitecore specialist contact us now:

Digital workplaces should allow employees to sign-in to their application with their own identity using Single Sign-On (SSO).

One of the challenges for digital workplaces, is enabling employees access to their company’s application using SSO.

Each organization have their own login mechanism, we have managed to integrate Sitecore with multiple identity providers such is:​

• Active Directory.
• Multiple Active Directory nodes with no-trust.
• Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS).
• Azure Active Directory.

 Single Sign-On with Active Directory

Below is the flow we have implemented to enable Single Sign-On with Active Directory

Single Sign-On with multiple Active Directory nodes with no-trust

Below is the flow we have implemented to enable Single Sign-On with Active Directory
Single Sign-On with Active Directory Federation Services

Below is the flow we have implemented to enable Single Sign-On with Active Directory Federation Services.

Single Sign-On with Azure Active Directory

Below is the flow we have implemented to enable Single Sign-On with Azure Active Directory.

Analytics and Tracking Scalabiity within Sitecore xDB.

Scaling Sitecore xDB for the modern employee workspace is essential when you have thousands of employees. For example on one application recently built, there are over 150 million visits registered.

With over 15 million emails being sent a year and 1.75 billion interactions on one application, scaling is a primary need now that employees are using these systems for their digital workplace, remote working and global communications.

xDB Scalability Best Practices

• Deploy xDB Processing as a standalone roles.
• Configure Multiple xDB Processing instances can process tasks in parallel from the Processing Pool and Processing Tasks databases.
• Load balancing is required for xDB Processing on Horizontal scaling for load distribution.
• Deploy Mongo DB as Replica set with 3 servers minimum one primary and 2 secondary.
• If you are MSSQL – increase number of shards
• If you are MSSQL – Use DB Cluster with multiple nodes with always on.
• Increase the session timeout.

EXM Scalability Best Practices

• Deploy Multiple EXM Dispatch rolesto speed up the message generation and sending process.
• The EXM Dispatch role should be dedicated to dispatching emails, however it must be combined with the Content Management role.
• Set on primary CM role and configure the reset of the EXM Dispatch roles to be Secondary CM .
• Use the EXM Performance Measurement Tool to measure the Dispatch execution.
• Increase the number of thread workers on the dispatch servers.

 

So if you’re looking to power your digital workplace with Sitecore, drop us a line, or WhatsApp us and we can share how we can help transform your current set up.

Talk to a Sitecore specialist contact us now: