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Finally, create a robust knowledge base in SharePoint

The Sprocket 365 SharePoint App gives you all the extra functionality within SharePoint including:

  • Wiki style menus
  • Document compliance tracking
  • 30+ page customization tools
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What is Sprocket 365?

Sprocket 365 is an extension for Microsoft 365 & SharePoint built to enhance the platforms functionality. SharePoint offers a fantastic foundation to build digital workplaces and includes some amazing web parts and features. However, through our consulting experience we found that it left many clients wanting more. This is especially true with SharePoint Modern which provides some great 'out-of-the-box' functionality but has its limitations when wanting to customise quickly and easily. So rather than building your own web parts (if you know how) we did it for you. We have bundled up a set of customisations that are frequently requested by our clients and users. We continue to add more features and ensure that each of our customisations are rock-solid , so you can get on with your implementation.

We built the product with the power-user in mind. All of our customisations are simple to configure and intuitive to use. Even the installation is easy!

Sprocket 365 Screenshot Sample Intranet

Why would I use Sprocket?

You are implementing a solution within SharePoint and you need it to do more, you have seen Sprocket's features and you want it in your implementation. You don't want to re-invent the wheel because that is both time consuming and expensive. Further more, you risk your customisations not working in the future when Microsoft releases updates. Sprocket will always work in every modern browser, on every modern device.

Motivation

Sprocket is built by Sope, a Microsoft Partner based in Melbourne Australia. After building hundreds of intranets and digital workplaces for companies in different industries of varying sizes, we constantly have requests from clients wanting more. When a client has a requirement we always strive to achieve the desired outcome using 'out-of-the-box' features of Microsoft 365 but sometimes it can't be done. At this point the client either needs to forego their requirement and hope Microsoft releases something in the future or build it now bespoke. We consistently saw many clients wanting the same sort of requirements. So rather than building a bespoke solution for each client we thought it would be better bundled into a product that could benefit businesses all over the world. A product that would deliver tremendous value for a fraction of the cost of building from scratch.

Technology

Sprocket is built using Microsoft's Patterns & Practices approach for extending Microsoft 365 & SharePoint. Using this approach ensures Sprocket will continue to function well into the future as Microsoft SharePoint continues to evolve.

  • React
  • Sass
  • PnP
  • GraphAPI
  • Fluent UI

Features

  • Growing list of Web Parts & Settings
  • Knowledge Hub - create wikis, knowledge bases, policy hubs, induction portals, recruitment portals and more
  • Reading Lists - track who has read which pages
  • Brand your SharePoint site with custom header, css & js overrides
  • Intergration with Google Analytics & Application Insights.

Data Storage & Security

Sprocket in essence is a set of SharePoint SPFx web parts and customisers using all patterns and practices suggested by Microsoft. Sprocket is installed into your tenant and all data remains within your tenant.

However, there are some exceptions where data may be stored within our Sprocket infrastructure. Sprocket offers an additional feature called 'Reading Lists', which is part of Knowledge Hub. A key feature of Knowledge Hub is Read Lists) which allows admins to define which pages must be read by users. Users then need to acknowledge they have read each of those pages. The data of which pages need to be read and which users have read these pages in stored in Sprocket's hosted service. We do this because the data is highly transactional and SharePoint just can't cope with the speed and storage requirements of these transactions.

Imagine you have 1000 pages with 1000 employees. If each user reads every page then you will need to store 1 million records. Furthermore, in order for the Read Rules feature to work well it needs to store and retrieve this data really fast.

The data stored in Sprocket's hosted service are the id's of the pages and the id's of the users. No personable or sensitive data is ever stored. We never store users names, email addresses or any other identifiable information. Similarly we don't store page titles, content or any other potentially sensitive content. This data is stored & backed up within Australia.

Microsoft Graph API Permission Requests

The following requests will be requested and required to be approved by a tenant admin. Without approval not all Sprocket web parts will function correctly.

tip

All graph permissions use 'delegated' permissions which means the effective permissions granted to Sprocket are constrained by the privileges of the signed-in user in the organization. More Information

  • User.Read.All
  • Group.Read.All
  • People.Read.All
  • Directory.Read.All
  • Files.Read.All
  • Sites.ReadWrite.All
  • Sites.Read.All
  • Presence.Read.All

Prerequisites

  • Installation requires tenant level permissions within Microsoft 365.
  • Graph API permission request will need to be approved

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Review Sprocket 365 on Microsoft AppSource