The Foreign Service Journal, April 2017

22 APRIL 2017 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL MIX homepage. For example, 65 percent of traffic to Finance’s section of the SharePoint site was seeking details about how to get reimbursed for private, value-added tax payments. So this went onto a new page, reachable with a single click under “Services.” It includes procedures, Fre- quently Asked Questions and informa- tion on pending reimbursements. Mak- ing the most-sought information easier to find should lead to fewer phone calls to the Finance office and less need for in-person meetings. A new Travel page centralizes information that had been spread among General Services, Finance and the Regional Security Office. A Health page gives everyone access to the same information about, say, Zika. Medical providers at the consulates can focus on serving patients rather than posting duplicate versions of the same thing. Other management topics and mission- wide resources (e.g., maps, biographies, media links, awards) got the same treat- ment. Each office retained its own section within SharePoint, which became a tool for employees in those offices to col- laborate online. • Users empowered with owner- ship. SharePoint is often referred to as a place where documents go to die. That’s because people often have incorrect permissions or lack technical know-how, and content quickly gets out-of-date. MIX largely eliminates the need to update individual pages. Content is arranged in document libraries, and pages are set up to automatically draw from those libraries. If a document is updated or replaced in a library—as easy as putting a document in a com- puter’s shared drive—it automatically appears on the corresponding pages. This ensures there’s a single version of each document. One or two Locally Employed staff were recruited from each office—about 40 people in all—to assume full control of their online section as “content own- ers.” They received training to manage their document libraries and the per- missions for their pages, and their name appears prominently on their page so users know who to contact if something isn’t correct. • Connect locations. We initially pursued an additional SharePoint site collection for MIX and also asked to pilot the newest version of SharePoint. Neither effort gained the necessary approvals, so we applied the new MIX “look and feel” to the 10 existing site collections of the embassy and consul- ates so they would appear seamless, uti- lizing the existing version of SharePoint. Now they share the same navigation banner across the top of the page with five categories of dropdowns: Mission, Services, Embassy, Consular, Locations. Users in Tijuana and Guadalajara, for example, see different homepages— each with locally controlled content— but they can easily navigate to informa- tion shared across Mission Mexico. As a result, usage of the intranet has been The MIX homepage was designed to be the common online starting point for employees each day, like a virtual “town square” for the mission community.