The city of Seattle needed a new secure, agile and 21st century platform to replace their legacy intranet. The new intranet needed to be more efficient, adaptable and allow for greater collaboration on a day-to-day basis.

Affirma first designed and built an entirely new modern Microsoft 365 intranet that leverages SharePoint and Microsoft Teams for each of the City of Seattle’s four largest departments: Seattle City Light (SCL), Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT), Seattle Fire Department (SFD), and Seattle Public Utilities (SPU).

Affirma migrated content from 3 legacy systems to the new environment, establishing a proven process and pattern for future migration of other Seattle department’s intranets.

Legacy, hierarchical site designs were replaced with modern, “flat”, hub-and-spoke designs to simplify administration and governance.

Affirma rebuilt 5 legacy SPD workflows with Microsoft 365 Power Apps and Power Automate.

Affirma partnered with City of Seattle to create a modernization roadmap with key milestones to successfully move the organization’s four largest departments to a modern, Microsoft 365 platform.

By working in phases and focusing on the modernization of four City of Seattle departments – SCL, SDOT, SFD, and SPU – Affirma was able to create a set of standards, patterns, and lessons learned on how to modernize communication and collaboration within the city.

The finished solution has more than a new look: it leverages the more efficient, secure and user-friendly experience of Microsoft 365, fully incorporating Microsoft Teams, Modern SharePoint and the Power Platform.

These were the key milestones to complete the modernization of legacy systems to a modern City of Seattle communication platform.

• Discovery sessions for teams to identify uses and roles.
• Table of needs, personas and UX creation.
• Information architecture creation to unify and organize SharePoint sites.
• Migration plan with department strategies and wireframes.
• Hub site navigation and implementation, hub site landing page design and department landing page designs.
• Citywide ‘Governance Plan’ and department ‘Governance Guides’ creation.
• Employee training with an adoption plan, virtual training, user guide, ‘How To’ videos, Q&A sessions and 1-on-1 support.
• Page creation and modernization.
• Workflow automations.

City of Seattle’s new intranet accomplished the following goals:

• The platform provides an authoritarian source for the most current information, procedures, documents, forms, schedules, announcements, memos and bulletins.
• The standard place where LOB’s, divisions and teams meet, chat, collaborate, and coordinate work.
• Secure, reliable, and easy-to-use.
• Flexible to adapt and change to support the evolving needs of the City over time.

Affirma is looking forward to continuing our relationship with the City of Seattle to continue modernizing the remaining department’s intranets for greater productivity and customer experiences and collaborations.