Last but not least: each and every company is about processes. Those processes can be related to the line of business, or it can be backend processes, but regardless of that, it is one of the cornerstones of modern work. And, as such, of modern workplace.
The story is not new. Information Technologies are helping industry to solve this problem through some sort of forms and workflows since decades now. It was Microsoft who first went into all-in standardization of those technologies for the enterprises, with InfoPath and SharePoint Workflows, back in early 2000s. SharePoint, as we see, was a natural host for forms, and for workflows, since the day one.
As the times change, the requirements, the technologies, and – foremost – the expectations of the employees change. They now want to work from everywhere, from any device, anytime. Rendering InfoPath forms, hosted in a classic SharePoint site, outside of the company network, is pretty much an impossible thing to achieve today. Sticking to IE11 to “preserve” the standardization of the “modern workplace”, what lot of companies are doing, is not helping.
Microsoft has realized that with the new SharePoint modern interface, available for SharePoint Online and SharePoint Server 2019. Furthermore, with PowerApps and Flow, there are new forms and workflow solutions to support these requirements.
This way, both resident and mobile employees can easily participate in all the processes inside (and outside!) the company, regardless of the location and the device they are working on.
This, also, completes our modern workplace story, and this series of the blog posts. We have seen what are the key concepts of the modern workplace – enabling resident and remote employees to work from anywhere, on any device, anytime, and to partake in collaboration, communication, knowledge sharing, and corporate processes.