SharePoint: Hackathons Winning Portal

Key insights

• Custom SharePoint Portal Design: Summary of a YouTube demo showcasing the Hackathon-winning portal by Richard Plantt and Mallika Limbu (2toLead).
  Demo presented on the Microsoft 365 & Power Platform weekly call on May 27, 2025.
• Flexible page layouts: The design uses flexible sections and new web parts like the Editorial Card and Hero Carousel to build rich, visual pages without code.
  Authors can mix layouts to create branded landing and editorial pages quickly.
• Copilot-assisted authoring: AI helps draft and rewrite content inside SharePoint pages, speeding up page creation.
  Preview mode and rewriting tools make authoring faster and clearer.
• Improved collaboration and engagement: The landing page and editorial page act as central hubs for teams, making resources easy to find and share.
  Visual layouts and editorial cards boost content clarity and user engagement.
• SharePoint pages and web parts: Portals are built on SharePoint Online using pages, reusable web parts, and branding to match organizational identity.
  Using out-of-the-box components reduces development time and maintenance.
• Accessibility and modern UX: The Pages Authoring Accessibility Assistant and modern design patterns ensure content is inclusive and user-friendly.
  The approach supports beginners and designers alike with low-code, accessible options.

Overview of the Demo

The Microsoft YouTube video, presented during the Microsoft 365 & Power Platform weekly call on 27 May 2025, highlights the winning entry from the company’s recent Hackathon. In the video, presenters Richard Plantt and Mallika Limbu from 2toLead walk through a polished, production-ready portal built on modern SharePoint features. Their submission aims to show that designers and content authors can deliver rich, branded intranet pages without writing custom code. Consequently, the demo serves both as a showcase and as a practical how-to for teams planning similar projects.

The presenters emphasize practical outcomes, noting how the portal organizes resources for a fictional Marketing & Communications department. Moreover, they demonstrate a custom editorial landing page that uses new layout tools to present stories, assets, and navigation in clear visual groupings. Importantly, the demo focuses on out-of-the-box capabilities rather than heavy engineering, which lowers the adoption barrier for many organizations. Therefore, the video makes a case for rapid, design-driven intranet development using built-in platform features.

Key Demo Highlights

First, the video shows flexible page sections that let authors combine different content blocks in new ways, and the presenters build pages live to illustrate the process. They use components such as the Editorial Card and carousel-style hero elements to create engaging, scannable layouts that guide readers to important content. In addition, the demo highlights features that support visual branding, including typography choices and color blocks that align with departmental identity. As a result, the portal looks modern while remaining consistent with organizational style.

Second, the walkthrough includes authoring tools that improve efficiency and quality, including preview modes and AI-assisted editing with Copilot. These features help content creators iterate quickly and maintain clarity, which is especially useful for small teams with limited design resources. Furthermore, the presenters point out accessibility checks that run during creation, helping authors detect common issues before publishing. This combination of rapid layout, AI support, and accessibility guidance forms the core value proposition demonstrated in the video.

Design, Branding, and Accessibility

The winning portal balances strong visual design with attention to usability, and the presenters stress that good aesthetics should not come at the expense of navigation or clarity. For instance, editorial pages use consistent card patterns to present articles and resources, which improves scanability and reduces cognitive load for users. Meanwhile, brand elements such as logos and color bands reinforce identity without overwhelming content, showing how visual emphasis and content hierarchy can coexist. Consequently, the design choices reflect a thoughtful mix of visual appeal and practical information architecture.

Accessibility is a recurring theme in the video, and the presenters showcase the SharePoint Pages Authoring Accessibility Assistant that flags issues during authoring. Moreover, they demonstrate how simple choices—like text contrast and alt text for images—can dramatically improve the reading experience for people with disabilities. While AI features speed up writing and editing, the presenters remind viewers to validate accessibility manually where automated checks fall short. Thus, the demo underscores that automated tools help but do not replace careful human review.

Tradeoffs and Practical Challenges

Although the approach reduces the need for custom code, it also introduces tradeoffs in flexibility and control. For example, relying exclusively on native web parts speeds deployment and simplifies maintenance, but it can limit highly bespoke interactions or advanced integrations that organizations sometimes require. Additionally, while Copilot and template-driven design accelerate content creation, they can encourage uniform layouts that may not suit every use case. Therefore, teams must weigh speed and consistency against the desire for unique functionality or highly tailored workflows.

Another challenge is governance: democratizing page creation increases the risk of inconsistent content quality if approval workflows and templates are not in place. The presenters suggest establishing clear templates and authoring standards to mitigate this risk, and they demonstrate how the platform’s built-in features can enforce some aspects of style. However, organizations with strict branding or compliance needs may still need supplemental controls or light custom development. In short, the balance between autonomy and governance requires thoughtful policy and tooling.

Implications for Organizations and Next Steps

For organizations considering a similar approach, the video offers a practical starting point for piloting modern portals with real users and measurable goals. Early wins are likely when teams focus on high-value pages such as departmental landing pages, news hubs, and editorial-style content that benefit most from visual layout improvements. Moreover, integrating checkpoints for accessibility, governance, and analytics will help organizations scale these designs responsibly. Thus, the demo provides both inspiration and a roadmap for incremental adoption.

Finally, the presenters invite the community to experiment and to share feedback, which suggests Microsoft intends to iterate on these features with real-world input. Consequently, organizations can play a role in shaping future capabilities by testing flexible sections and reporting their needs. Overall, the YouTube presentation by Microsoft and 2toLead demonstrates a pragmatic path to modern intranets—one that emphasizes design, accessibility, and speed while acknowledging necessary tradeoffs and governance needs.

Keywords

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