UJA Federation: Custom SharePoint Intranet

The United Jewish Appeal (UJA) Federation is a community not-for-profit (NFP) organization promoting Jewish faith and culture across North America. As part of their initiative to provide a community experience in-tune with the digital age and knowing the importance of modern communications and collaboration software, the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto partnered with MRS to develop and deploy a modern intranet portal for community members.

Creating a modern, digital experience for community members with a custom SharePoint intranet

As a community-based organization, the UJA Federation knows how important it is to inspire a tight-knit family feeling. Keeping members engaged, informed and active in their community is critical in enabling them to accomplish their mission of promoting Jewish faith and culture. With digital technology drastically changing the landscape of how individuals and communities communicate and interact amongst peers and coworkers, the organization knew it was imperative to implement an intranet portal that could serve as the central hub for all members to interact.

UJA partnered with MRS to develop a custom-built, cloud-based SharePoint intranet portal. Assuming full project management and software development roles, the MRS team worked with UJA stakeholders to determine organizational needs and assess all technical requirements, define the strategy/roadmap and execute on developing and implementing the solution. Leveraging agile scrum methodologies and emphasizing constant feedback and user-testing, the MRS team ensured evolving requirements were met and an optimal user-experience was achieved.

The organization is using the SharePoint intranet portal as both a platform for community members to interact amongst each other as well as for employees to communicate internally and collaborate on tasks. At any time, from any location and on any device, UJA community members can log in to the system – dubbed “The Loop” – and get a social-media like news-feed experience that provides the latest news and announcements from around the organization, as well as access to all the documents they need as part of the community.

The key features of the intranet include:

• Custom built with Microsoft SharePoint and .NET
• Cloud-based and mobile responsive
• Community-wide newsfeed displaying important information and events
• Calendaring and scheduling capabilities to organize events, meetings, discussions, etc.
• Document repository to hold files and content
• User profiles
• Direct messaging