Google Analytics shows me the types of intranet content that our staff find useful or interesting and has allowed me to make more informed decisions about what to post and how to manage campaigns.
Heather Bower, Head of Communications, Competition & Markets Authority
Overview
The Competition & Market Authority’s Communications team use SharePoint Online for their intranet. They use their intranet to deliver campaigns to their 700 staff and they wanted to learn what makes for an effective and engaging campaign. To do this they needed to collect data about how their staff were engaging with the intranet. Then they needed to decide which metrics from the data would help them measure each campaigns effectiveness. Over time they would be able to compare how effective a campaign was compared to previous campaigns and draw insights on how to improve subsequent campaigns to make them more engaging.
We connected Google Tag Manager to their SharePoint intranet sites to record data about how staff were interacting (e.g. page views, file views, searches etc.) with the intranet. Google Tag Manager passed this data to Google Analytics, we configured custom reports in Google Analytics to transform this data into insight. The Communications team download these reports to PDF each month, and the reports enable them to make data-driven decisions about how to improve the intranet.
The CMA’s Communications team needed reports on how their SharePoint Online intranet was being used by their 700 staff. To deliver this insight Google Tag Manager (GTM) was connected to their SharePoint Online Communication sites, GTM then passed data through to Google Analytics (GA) about how the staff were interacting with the SharePoint sites (page views, file views, outbound clicks, usages times etc.) and GA was configured to display custom reports which are downloaded to PDF each month and used by the Communications team to make data-driven decisions about how to increase their staff’s adoption of the intranet.
Key Benefits
- Measure how effectively a campaign engages your staff across several metrics.
- Understand the types of engagement that staff have with your content.
- Identify successes or concerning trends that may need investigation by looking at month-on-month intranet usage data.
- Get answers to common questions like:
- Which documents/files are the most viewed?
- What site pages are the most popular?
- What are the peak hours when staff view the intranet?
- How many staff use the intranet on different days of the week?
- What are the most popular search queries on the intranet?
- Which links are the most popular?
- Zero technology cost to deliver the reports (both Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics are free to use).
The Challenge
Connecting SharePoint Online and Google Analytics required some detailed configuration. The biggest challenge was accurately recording which files/documents were being viewed in SharePoint. We configured Google Tag Manager with several layers of logic to account for the many ways staff could view a file (e.g. clicking hyperlink, or clicking a link on a quick links webpart etc.). We also needed to carefully consider the additional information (event parameters) that we wanted to Google Tag Manager to pass to Google Analytics so that it could be reported on.
Joining together SharePoint Online and Google Analytics required some complex configuration. One of the biggest challenges was accurately capturing which files/documents were being viewed in the SharePoint sites, since there are multiple different ways to view a file in SharePoint (e.g. clicking on a button from a quick links webpart, clicking a hyperlink in the page’s text etc.) it meant that there were several layers of logic that needed to be configured in Google Tag Manager in order to capture these events, and record the file name that was being viewed.
The Approach
We listed the ways a member of staff could interact with the intranet, and the information that we wanted to capture about each interaction. For example we wanted to capture when someone views a “Know-how” Word document and we wanted to record the name of the file. We then configured the logic in Google Tag Manager and tested it using Google Tag Manager Preview and Google Analytics Debugger.
The Solution
After we were confident all the interactions were being recorded, we configured custom reports in Google Analytics. The Communications team use these reports each month to influence decisions about how to improve their intranet and their campaigns. We provided a training session to them to help them understand where the data behind each report originated. We also provided a technical handover to their IT team who now support the solution going forwards.
The Result
CMA’s Communications team have been using these reports and have been able to make better informed decisions about how they use their intranet as a tool to engage their staff and influence the culture and direction of their organisation.