Category: Articles

An Intelligent Intranet is useful for organizations of all sizes! In the January 2023 blog post “What makes an Intranet Intelligent?” by Mike Homol, ThreeWill Principal Consultant, Mike says, In this post, I want to quickly reflect on some of the qualities of an intelligent intranet that can be the difference between thriving and stagnating. In an organization, the intranet is the natural home for a number of things, like announcements, knowledge articles, process documents, etc. One of my hobbies outside of working at ThreeWill is my volunteer work as founder and head coach of a youth running club (track

The heart of ThreeWill’s culture is based on our four core values. We use these core values to guide all aspects of our business, including whom we hire, how we reward and recognize our employees, whom we choose to partner with, and whom we serve as clients. We know complimentary values build strong and rewarding relationships. ThreeWill’s core values include: Better Together Extreme Ownership Choose Growth Humble Confidence The "Choose Growth" core value embodies the mindset of continuously seeking personal and professional development, embracing challenges, and learning from successes and failures. It is about actively pursuing growth opportunities and improving

[Note: this post was originally published in January 2022 and was most recently updated in August 2023. The original title was Handling Dynamic Properties in Power Automate Flow] Have you ever found yourself needing to add dynamic data to an object within a Power Automate Flow? Or need to update a child node inside a JSON object? I certainly have and spent way too much time trying to figure it all out! Here I lay out how to work with dynamic values as well as a little bonus material on how to update child objects (nodes) within a larger parent

Anyone who has paid attention to the press releases coming out of Microsoft recently will be aware that they have gone all-in on AI. Microsoft is branding its version of the ChatGPT-powered AI assistant “Copilot”, and it is being applied to nearly all Microsoft products. Low-code/no-code offerings, such as Power Automate, already promise to reduce the barrier of entry and empower a large cohort of “makers” to generate technical solutions for their various workloads to increase efficiency and reduce mistakes. Copilot takes this further by allowing a maker to generate solutions with plain text prompts. In this blog post, I

We love technology here at ThreeWill. We love it so much that it was one of the original three pillars behind the “Three” in ThreeWill – the other two pillars being process and, of course, people. These were the original passions, the things we wanted to be the best at when ThreeWill was starting. Thankfully, not too much has changed in these decades. So, naturally, artificial intelligence is something that is discussed quite often around the office. ChatGPT, of course, has been a big topic for the past few months. Lately, we’ve been really focused on how we can use

Back in 2017, Aurea acquired Jive Software. In the months and years that followed, it became apparent that Jive was no longer innovating. If you are still one of those companies that are holding onto Jive, you may have noticed (as many of our clients are telling us) that Jive is increasing the annual license cost dramatically. In addition, we are hearing that some (all?) renewals require a 3-year contract. That is no bueno! We have been helping clients migrate off Jive since 2014, so we know a thing or two about what it takes to do a migration from

The heart of ThreeWill’s culture is based on our four core values. We use these core values to guide all aspects of our business, including whom we hire, how we reward and recognize our employees, whom we choose to partner with, and whom we serve as clients. We know complimentary values build strong and rewarding relationships. ThreeWill’s core values include: Better Together Extreme Ownership Choose Growth Humble Confidence "Extreme Ownership" is a core value that emphasizes taking full responsibility for one's actions and outcomes. The concept is based on the idea that true leaders must accept complete ownership of their

Many organizations talk the talk when it comes to buzzwords like “transparency, accountability, and employee engagement.” But does your organization walk the walk? Oftentimes, organizations might associate transparency and openness with communication and that’s absolutely true. But another crucial way an organization can promote a culture of trust and transparency is through reporting – namely reporting available to all within your organization. In this article, I want to discuss the importance of transparency in keeping your employees engaged, the role that reporting plays in that, and how we have done this for customers at ThreeWill. The Role of Transparency in

The internet is full of recommendations for developing engaged/thriving employees. This blog provides a ThreeWill perspective on what strategy is vital to developing highly engaged employees and an essential tactic for practically promoting this strategy. If you've read ThreeWill blogs or seen our website, you know our focus is helping employees thrive. Why? Thriving employees are engaged, productive, and fulfilled by their work. They are motivated to do their best every day and see their success intertwined with the organization. In short, thriving employees critically impact our client's bottom line. The benefits to organizations with thriving employees are myriad: increased

The heart of ThreeWill’s culture is based on our four core values. We use these core values to guide all aspects of our business, including whom we hire, how we reward and recognize our employees, whom we choose to partner with, and whom we serve as clients. We know complimentary values build strong and rewarding relationships. ThreeWill’s core values include: Better Together Extreme Ownership Choose Growth Humble Confidence "Better Together" is a value that emphasizes the power of collaboration, teamwork, and synergy. It acknowledges that when individuals come together and work collectively towards a common goal, they can achieve greater

When you picture a software developer in your mind, do you picture an introverted guy with glasses sitting in a dark room illuminated only by the glow of his monitors? As a software developer, that’s a pretty good description of my normal setting. It’s my comfort zone but, here at ThreeWill, we like to push ourselves outside of that on occasion; to “Choose Growth” one might say. As a part of our mission to help one million employees thrive, we also challenge our clients to do the same and, in this blog post, I’m going to share an experience with

Integrating strategies for team building, culture, and praise are some of the top HR priorities to help employees thrive. Unfortunately, your great idea may be roadblocked or delayed by budget constraints. Here are some creative ways to bring high value at a low cost. Why trying to draw a picture of a quiche at work matters! Each quarter, ThreeWill gathers all employees for a “Quarterly All-Day” meeting. To refresh ourselves and reconnect in between meetings, a team-building exercise is built into the agenda. The cost savings can come from hosting the team building on-site instead of off-site. Sounds fun, right?!

Over our 20+ years of helping organizations deploy Intranets, we have found that successful intranet deployments highly depend on the commitment to adoption and change management. With an Intranet deployment, you are at a considerable risk of failure if you do not begin with the end in mind around how you will ensure users are ready and adopt the solution. To drive that adoption and to maintain healthy adoption, you need to have a plan and discipline to stay committed to the plan.  We find organizations can easily get distracted and drift away from the commitment to healthy adoption, and

Life is a delicate balancing act, where our personal and professional spheres intertwine to shape our overall well-being. As an employee, I'm incredibly fortunate to work for a company like ThreeWill that understands the importance of supporting its employees beyond the confines of the (mostly virtual) office. Recently, I had the opportunity to chaperone my daughter Lillian's second-grade field trip to the New Echota State Historic Site, and it was a delightful experience that reminded me of the importance of thriving both at work and at home. Discovering the Past Accompanied by Ranger Kevin, our enthusiastic and knowledgeable guide, we

It’s easy to talk about the Power Platform with words, but sometimes the abstract nature of words doesn’t really connect with people. Oftentimes, I am one of those people. Pictures make more sense to me. I’ve worked on several Power Platform applications lately, using Power Apps and Power Automate specifically, that are relatively simple, yet have a great benefit for the business. I’m excited about the benefits this technology can bring to an organization to make work both more efficient and even more enjoyable. However, it seems many decision makers and even the business don’t know what they are missing.

My coworker Will Holland recently wrote a blog on Three Benefits to Improving Employee Engagement. The key benefit areas he calls out are: Increased retention – engaged employees are more likely to stick around. Increased productivity – engaged employees perform better and are more productive. Increased customer satisfaction – engaged employees are more motivated to provide excellent customer service. But in order to achieve a high level of employee engagement, Will also notes in another blog – What is a “Digital Employee Experience” and How Do I Build One? – you need to provide a digital environment where people feel

Does your organization struggle with any of the following file share challenges? Finding the content you are looking for in your file shares is challenging. Colleagues can’t find the information they need to complete their work; and even worse, they know specific documentation is out there but they can’t find it in the file share folders. IT is responsible for the security of the file share content but they don’t have full access to and control over all the content stored in the file shares. Governance requirements are difficult to meet and maintain for the file share content. Tracking file

Microsoft’s Power Platform is a suite of powerful “low-code” tools that any licensed Microsoft 365 user can use to create apps, automated processes, data-driven reports, and more. It is considered a Software as a Service (or SaaS) solution, which means that much of the overhead related to maintaining the platform itself is handled by the provider; Microsoft, in this case. While that fact takes a lot of burden off of the organization’s shoulders, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t things that an enterprise organization could do to help improve the experience of its users. Step 1: Classify Your Microsoft Power