MICROSOFT 365: SHAREPOINT BRANDING CENTER REVIEW - REDUX
About the author: Jonathan Stuckey
Released in May this year, the SharePoint Brand Center solution (read: app-page) delivered partial font management and promised the return of site palette and themes to the business user, rather than a developer. Over the last 4 months this has gradually released updating the basic page features until we have what Microsoft refers to as release (production-ready) solution. So, does it deliver?
SharePoint Brand Center
What has changed since release?
The Brand Center is a SharePoint page | app providing access to branding management functionality that can be used to customise the look and feel of the end-users UI in SharePoint and Microsoft Teams. The brand asset management features handle your brand approved: corporate fonts, brand-palette themes, key digital assets (images, icons, banners, templates) in one place.
The key features of the SharePoint Brand Center are now:
Custom Fonts: It allows the use of custom fonts in SharePoint and Viva Connections;
Font Package Creation: create font package(s) to apply your fonts to locations in SharePoint;
Package Deployment: font packages can be pushed out for use by intranet admin and site Owners;
Custom Theme Palette: a modern theme-generator is embedded for UI driven creation of themes,
Brand Application Visualiser: Real-time previewing of themes applied to SharePoint site, and Microsoft Teams/Viva Connections UI.
So, for the first time ever I find myself in the position of having Microsoft delivered on the promise for this tool as it transitioned to Production.
How does it work?
The deployed Brand Center "App" is still largely for a specialist role in your environment, but its now fairly and firmly back with the rightful owners in Communcations and Marketing (brand managers).
The Organisation Asset Library setup in your SharePoint tenancy is a mandatory pre-requisite or forget having this work properly. Then the organisations brand assets are uploaded to hidden system folder locations on the site, in the /_layouts/15 and /Fonts libraries.
What does it bring to Intranet Publishing?
We have the return of functionality for uploading Font-packs (standard formats only e.g. TTF, WOFF, OTF), but we do seem to lose access to the new core-set of Microsoft standard fonts e.g. Aptos, Amasis, Segoe, Sitka, Verdana and Walk when you are creating your own theme.
Second we get end-user management for creating and publishing SharePoint themes. With the newly embedded theme generator tool, and the packaging pages which allow a user to create, publish and apply brand to your tenancy and delegated access or role-group should be used in this context - you dont want just anyone doing this in your tenancy.
Notes for the watchful
Lets be clear the Fluid UI theme generator has been available on developer page for about 8 years+, had been embedded into the solution. Its not new, its not been improved, but it works and now you don't need PowerShell to publish the JSON definitions! Which is a very good thing.
If you want to know the full-scope of how badly you can mess-up with theming, then Laura Kokkarinen is still the go-to person - even though her articles now 7-years old. It still applies.
Pros and Cons
The Branding Center was positioned to provide a more consistent, and centrally managed experience for applying corporate brand to your (Microsoft 365) SharePoint and Microsoft Teams centric intranet which it delivers on - and boy are they hyping it.
Pros:
Tangible benefits being:
support for managed Fonts, a key component of many organisations' Brand identity.
delegated ownership and management of key assets (Fonts) to business-roles, without need of IT.
support for creating and deploying theme colour palettes in SharePoint and Microsoft Teams.
a simple UI visualiser built-in showing the brand-manager impact of options selected.
simple form-driven page for theme and package deployment
Cons:
There are still some limitations and possible drawbacks:
this release only supports a basic Font-pack assets when applied in the environment
the range of supported Font-type formats is limited today
business access to new Fonts, like Aptos, are not in UI for use in your own brand
the UI has some limitations in brand-management, that full-CMS tools support
no published roadmap
There's a paragraph and an MVP's video on the September Roadmap update Microsoft SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop September 2024 Microsoft 365. ...but nothing more at this point.
The biggest gripe I have at the moment is that I have to now extract versions of the secondary and tertiary font types I want to use when creating a Font-pack for deployment and use - Because Microsoft blocks me from adding theirs which are already published, if I create my own deployable font-package. A small but really flippin annoying limitation.
Fit for Purpose?
Yes.
If you are in communications or marketing role and have despaired of being able to do your job properly with 365 and SharePoint Online, then this will work for you. With minimum effort and training required almost anyone can drive the Brand Center and get a good outcome.
Microsoft is never going to transform SharePoint Online into a full Web Publishing and Content Management Solution in the way you would employ one for your web-site branding, but that is not what they set out to do.
What you have is (finally) a usable toolset which allows you to imprint your own organisations full brand identity - all be it in a limited manner.
Verdict
The Branding Center approach is useful in that it is moving away from requiring a SharePoint developer or technical administrator to do basic brand management. It is a much-needed return of useful tools to the business users. It is a limited toolset though. Don't expect it to be on a par with Website brand management tools.
Just remember SharePoint is the workhorse for your organisation, not the shop-front, and Brand Center will provide you a good level of business-value without significant cost.
If you have questions and want to understand more about if or how Microsoft's services might fit into your Intranet and Employee Experiences - give us a call: hi@timewespoke.com
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About the author: Jonathan Stuckey
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