The Challenge
The Social Research Centre provides the Australian social science research community with access to world class survey research services, covering survey design, data management, analytical, and qualitative skills across 400 staff.
They needed an intranet with enterprise document management and a collaborative portal that was easy to modify. Research teams needed to control the look and feel of their project spaces without waiting for IT.
What Evocate Delivered
Evocate delivered a custom-built SharePoint 2013 intranet that replaced unstructured shared folders with a browser-based document repository, running on high-availability infrastructure to match the organisation’s reliability needs. The standout capability: all custom web parts are fully user-editable via attachable JavaScript, HTML, and CSS files, giving research teams direct control over how their workspaces look and behave without waiting for IT.
- Central document management portal: a structured project repository replacing scattered, unstructured shared folders
- User-editable web parts: teams customise renditions and presentation themselves through attachable JS, HTML, and CSS
- Automated approval workflows: internal review and sign-off processes handled inside the platform
- High-availability infrastructure: SharePoint 2013 on SQL 2012 built for resilient, always-on access across 400 staff
Outcomes
The Social Research Centre’s 400 staff now work from a structured, searchable document repository instead of unstructured shared folders, delivered in three months. The defining outcome is self-service: research teams control the look and feel of their own project spaces through user-editable web parts, removing the bottleneck of routing every presentation change through IT. Automated approval workflows keep internal processes governed, and the high-availability infrastructure keeps the platform dependable for an organisation whose work depends on it.
Why This Matters
Rigorous research organisations need collaboration tools as disciplined as their methodology, but they also need the freedom to shape their own workspaces without a support ticket for every change. Most intranets force a trade-off between governance and flexibility. Evocate’s user-editable web part model resolves that tension: IT sets the structure, governance, and resilience, while teams retain direct control over presentation. That balance, structured document management plus genuine self-service customisation, is what makes an intranet something teams actually own rather than merely tolerate.
