Overview
The University of Idaho provides internally facing department web sites named "Inside U of I" hosted in SharePoint Online. These sites can be accessed through the main Inside U of I "Hub" site at https://vandalsuidaho.sharepoint.com/sites/InsideUI.
- FERPA, HIPAA and other confidential information should ONLY be used on these sites if University of Idaho authorized authentication is used.
- Accessibility is a requirement. Please see FSH 6400 for more information.
- See attached PDF document titled Accessibility Tips for best practices on how to ensure your Inside U of I site is accessible.
- Add captions to your images for screen readers.
- Users don’t read - they scan.
- Users follow their intuition.
- Users appreciate quality & credibility.
- Users are looking for clear and direct information.
- To avoid confusion, it is recommended that each content area reference their contact information for any questions related to their area.
- When linking to Inside U of I from systems with an external audience, provide context that a U of I account is required to access intranet pages.
All Inside U of I sites are named "https://vandalsuidaho.sharepoint.com/sites/InsideUI-[SiteName]". The SiteName is typically the department title or initials and cannot include spaces or special characters. It is also limited to 45 characters in length.
Example Inside U of I Site Names:
- https://vandalsuidaho.sharepoint.com/sites/InsideUI-Engineering
- https://vandalsuidaho.sharepoint.com/sites/InsideUI-OIT
- https://vandalsuidaho.sharepoint.com/sites/InsideUI-UCM
To request an Inside U of I site please submit this form to University Communications and Marketing (UCM) for approval.
Once your site is approved you will get an email inviting you to the group to manage permissions for the site. Once you have accepted the invitation in the email you must log out and then back in before it will take effect.
Note: When a new Inside U of I site is created you will need to sign-out and back in to be able to edit the site. There may also be some provisioning delays to be able to fully edit. If there are issues, we recommend waiting up to four hours, closing your browser and trying again.
Training for anyone on how to maintain your Intranet site is available through Bridge. Enroll in the course to gain access to the training, which is broken down in smaller sections to help you get access to specific content.
Each Inside U of I site has a security group created to manage the site "Members". All site members have the ability to edit the site content. The Inside U of I site owner has the ability to add/remove members of the security group.
The Inside U of I site members group is named "InsideUI-[Site]-Members" and can be found in the https://mygroups.microsoft.com/ web application. The site owner can add and remove group members on the MyGroups page. A direct link to the site group is in the site creation email received by the owner.
To transfer ownership of a site: add to the site group the individuals whom you want to manage the site, then remove yourself from the group.
An example Inside U of I site is available at https://vandalsuidaho.sharepoint.com/sites/InsideUI-Example. It showcases a few design and web part options available when creating your own department site.
This image shows the different web parts for the example page and the two sections.
All Inside U of I sites are associated with a central Hub site. The top horizontal navigation, referred to as the "Hub Site Navigation", is controlled from this central hub site and menu changes must be submitted to University Communications and Marketing (UCM). New Inside U of I sites are not automatically added to the navigation menu - when the site is complete and published, let UCM know so they can add a link to the site in the global header.
There are several "web parts" that you will be able to add to your new intranet site. Here you can learn more about all of the web parts available and how to add them to a page.
Sitecore feature equivalents
Comments are enabled by default on the template pages delivered by initial site creation. To disable comments on an Inside U of I page, click "Edit" in the top right corner. Scroll to the bottom of the page and change the Comments setting toggle to "Off". See the screenshot below for reference.
There is no built-in way to disable Likes and Views on pages.
All Inside U of I site content is automatically shared to all University of Idaho employees and students. This is controlled through an "InsideUI-Visitors" security group. Site members with Edit access do not have access to change sharing settings.
Why are users seeing "Sorry, you don't have access." when accessing a new page?
Although all users have visitor access, they cannot see "unpublished", or Draft, content. When creating a new page, the final step is to "Publish" the page. Once the page is published it will be visible to visitors. If a page is already published, it will have a "Republish" button.
Note: if you would like to limit sharing for a file or document, we recommend requesting a dedicated SharePoint Storage Folder through your local support team. Once this folder is created, you can control access and link to it from your InsideUI site.
Site owners can view and manage the components of their Inside U of I site, though some components are not usually accessible via the site's left sidebar navigation menu. This includes the Documents repository, the list of all Site Pages, and the Recycle Bin of deleted items.
When viewing the site you are an owner of, access these components by clicking on the gear icon at the top right of the page. Then click on Site Content.
On the Site Contents page, you will see links to the Documents, Site Pages, and Recycle Bin.
Site themes are applied from the centrally managed Inside U of I hub site. A single theme is applied across all sites and cannot be changed per site. The currently applied theme is "Idaho Prairie". For assistance regarding site themes, please contact UCM. Note that the tertiary brand color (Clearwater) should only be used against a white background, as the contrast against a black background is insufficient for accessibility purposes.
The "Embed" web part allows embedding iframe content from other web services. A common example is embedding a web form from Qualtrics.
As a security precaution, the domains allowed are restricted per site. If you are embedding content from a specific domain, please contact UCM for assistance reviewing and approving the domain. The domains are managed by an Inside U of I infrastructure manager by adding the domain to the "HTML Field Security" setting.
To enable Qualtrics embedding on your site, submit a request to UCM. Select "Surveys/Forms (Qualtrics)" as the service you are requesting.
The Embed web part
When adding content using Embed you may encounter this error message:
Embedding content from this website isn't allowed, but your admin can change this setting. They will need to add 'uidaho.co1.qualtrics.com' to the list of sites that are allowed.
Relevant article from Microsoft: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?linkid=837500