Saphna (School and Public Health Nurses Association) is a professional organisation that champions the voice of school and public health nurses across the UK. Their mission is to influence policy, provide expert guidance, and support the development of public health nursing to improve outcomes for children, young people and families. Their digital infrastructure plays a vital role in supporting collaboration and advocacy.
Saphna’s SharePoint environment had become disorganised and inefficient, failing to follow best practice. Our engineers identified several issues: the default SharePoint site was unused, missing a central hub for updates and communication. Pages and subsites were underutilised, leading to fragmented content and reduced collaboration. Team sites relied on default document libraries, limiting scalability and customisation. The security setup was overly complex, making it difficult to manage and potentially exposing vulnerabilities. Teams-connected sites lacked unique group-based permissions, and classic team sites were still in use, restricting access to modern collaboration tools. These structural issues were impacting productivity, data security and user experience.
We proposed a multi-project solution to modernise Saphna’s digital workspace. This included a full SharePoint restructure, implementation of conditional access policies, Intune configuration and Datto backup deployment for users and the new SharePoint environment.
The SharePoint rebuild involved migrating all data from Teams-connected and classic team sites into a new modern SharePoint Communications Site. We created multiple, well-structured document libraries designed for long-term use and aligned with best practice. This approach offered several benefits: reduced sync errors due to shorter path lengths, fewer sync cycles, and improved performance. Users could now sync only the libraries relevant to them, enhancing efficiency and reducing clutter.
Security was simplified by applying permissions at the document library level, making management more straightforward. Navigation was improved through logical structuring, and each library was enhanced with custom views and metadata tags to support better categorisation and searchability.
Alongside this, we configured conditional access policies to strengthen security and enrolled devices into Intune for centralised management. Datto was implemented to ensure robust backup and recovery for both user data and SharePoint content.
The transformation of Saphna’s SharePoint environment has delivered significant improvements in usability, security and collaboration. Staff now benefit from a streamlined, intuitive structure that supports efficient document access and sharing. Sync issues have been minimised, and users experience faster, more reliable performance.
Security management has been simplified, with clearer permission structures and improved compliance with data protection standards. The introduction of conditional access and Intune has further enhanced device and data security, while Datto provides peace of mind with reliable backup and recovery.
The new SharePoint structure supports future scalability and has empowered staff with the tools they need to work more effectively. Overall, the project has laid a strong foundation for digital collaboration and operational resilience
- Migration to a modern SharePoint Communications Site
- Creation of structured document libraries aligned with best practice
- Reduced sync errors and improved performance
- Simplified security management with clearer permissions
- Enhanced navigation with custom views and metadata
- Implementation of conditional access policies
- Device management through Microsoft Intune
- Reliable backup and recovery with Datto
- Improved compliance with GDPR and data protection standards
- Increased staff productivity and collaboration
