This article provides a clear overview of the differences between the legacy Workspace intranet and the new Embrace Social (Suite). We only highlight the main points: there are countless improvements and optimisations throughout the product, but here we mention only the most important new functionalities. Would you also like to make the step to the new Embrace Social free of charge? Then check out this article: Migration: Steps to the new Social (FAQ)
This article consists of the following sections:
General
Introduction and digital tour
We are very proud of where we stand now and can’t wait for you to start using our new Embrace. A change like this is not taken lightly. We have been working for years to build the new intranet. Our main goal: to speed things up! Now, “years of work” and “speeding up” may sound a bit contradictory, but hear us out.
The Embrace you know is a platform we can also be proud of. More than 400 customers use the platform with satisfaction. It has been around for 10 years and is rock solid. But those 10 years have taken their toll; we are less agile than we want to be. There are various reasons for this: we don’t use the latest technologies, the platform has been expanded so far that new extensions take more time, and we have a strong dependency on Umbraco, which we use as CMS and for widget management.
In recent years, we have invested in completely rethinking our architecture and rebuilding our social intranet. With our own CMS, based on the latest technologies, and a release process that allows us to continuously implement improvements and expansions. So, at pace! And you will soon reap the benefits.
Pictures are nice, but even better is to click through the new Social yourself. Through our digital tours, you can explore Social (front end), Knowledge (CMS), Management (environment management) and Portals (portals builder and theme editor):
These digital tours are publicly accessible and can therefore also be shared internally with colleagues without Zendesk!
Design
Embrace Social has received a new look! Modern design elements that align well with the social media standards of 2024. Rounded corners, more white space (and therefore more readable), and more social formatting options such as more types of likes (hearts, crying) and formatting in the timeline. With our new portals builder, the page layout can be fully customised by you, made possible by our much more modern technology & architecture. Add new features such as the documents overview, favourites overview, a new powerful CMS and more (Microsoft) integrations and you have the most modern digital workplace portal in the Netherlands at your disposal. TLDR; same user-friendly software, more powerful, beautiful and modern version!
Mobile App
The Embrace native app (for iOS and Android) has also been completely rebuilt. New technology, design and more functionalities. For example, we have added one of the most requested user wishes: news on the app’s start page. Click here to explore the Social app yourself!
AI
The new technology of the suite also makes it possible to add AI to Social. Initially, we do this with ChatGPT text improvements (making text longer, shorter or more (in)formal) in knowledge base articles and pages. We are also working on an AI chat, allowing you to ask questions (and receive answers from the AI chat) within your intranet. This will be available soon. View the digital tour of AI in Social here!
Self-service and Process Automation (Conversations)
Curious how you can use workflows, forms and FAQs to improve your internal digital services and automate processes? Quickly check out the digital tour of Embrace Conversations by clicking here.
HelpCenter and e-learning
At Embrace, we believe in full self-reliance of users. This helps your organisation because you receive fewer questions from employees about using Embrace, and it helps us to answer fewer questions from editors and administrators about configuring our software. Win-win! HelpCenter and e-learnings are available for all products, from Embrace Social to Embrace Customers and from the Knowledge CMS to Management environment management. Features:
✅ Play interactive e-learnings and other instructional videos directly in the software
✅ Direct access to other (support) resources such as user groups and documentation
✅ Add your own tools and fully customise HelpCenter for your organisation
✅ Supports interactive digital tours, YouTube, Stream, Vimeo and more
✅ Includes notifications
Social
Timeline
The timeline has become even more social! Format your posts with bold or italic text, bullet points and more. Besides likes, you can now also react with hearts, crying or laughing emojis. Speaking of emojis, they are now much easier to add to posts, just like GIFs. Or mark a post as hooray (anniversary, birthday, milestone), poll, question or announcement. All of this is now much easier to filter. Want only the essential posts? Use the focus filter. Want to click through it yourself? Check out the interactive digital tour here!
Documents
This completely new functionality offers you an overview of all your relevant documents: files from Embrace groups (where you can also pin some groups!), SharePoint Online and OneDrive come together in one neat overview that can be accessed directly from the sidebar. Of course, fan favourites like the file previewer and co-editing via Office Online are still included. Quickly check the digital tour for more information!
Contacts
The directory and the phonebook have been merged into the new contacts overview. In this who’s-who, you can now search not only for people but also organisations, locations and departments. This makes it much easier to find contact details, whether it’s for a person or a building. Quickly check the interactive digital tour!
Knowledge (CMS)
Renewed CMS
Umbraco CMS out, Embrace Knowledge in! We reached the limits of further development with the Umbraco CMS and therefore chose an integrated proprietary CMS. It can do more and is safer. Editors no longer need to switch environments with a separate login and now also receive notifications (for example, for a revision date) directly via the notification centre! Knowledge stands for powerful knowledge sharing and translates concretely into great tools to improve the quality of your content even more: think of quickly switching between A-Z overview / category in the knowledge base (see also digital tour), conversations, smartlabels and more.
Smartlabels
Work smarter > not harder. Create a Smartlabel for your opening hours. If they change, you only adjust the Smartlabel, and the times are automatically updated everywhere they appear.
Click here for more info on how Smartlabels help you monitor content quality faster/better.
Content Control Dashboard
As an editor, you want your content quality to stay up to date without having to do too much work. With the brand new content quality dashboard, this is now possible. This functionality is in development. For more information, contact your account manager.
Portals
Role-based Dashboards: Portals builder & Themes
The new technology and infrastructure of Social make it possible to be much more flexible with the platform’s layout. You do this with Portals. Where previously the timeline was always fixed on the left side, you can now place it anywhere on the start page. You could even remove it entirely! So you use standard software but fully customise the dashboards yourself. And the best part: you can do this entirely in-house! And we go one step further: with the theme editor, you can always adjust the house style (colours, logo) yourself!
With this portals builder, you can now build all kinds of dashboards, such as:
- Role-based dashboards (based on personas, location, etc.)
- Multi-label (different house styles/organisations on one platform)
- Volunteer portal (with different content, page layout, widgets, etc.)
- Onboarding portal (same)
- Narrowcasting dashboards (screens with only news, vacancies or KPIs)
Want to know more? Read here what types of portals you can create and here how to use personas to set up super personal role-based dashboards for your organisation.
Application Launcher (Embrace, Liquit, HelloID)
With the new application launcher (add-on), you can provide a much better overview of all your apps, besides the standard application widget. This works on both desktop and in the mobile app! Quickly display an overview of your recently used applications, all applications and search them directly. We add categories and pinned apps. Want to personalise and automate this even more? Then add the Liquit or HelloID integration to the app launcher; this technology was also available in the old Social but is now even more powerful! Check out the digital tour here!
Widget Store & New Widgets
Widgets, those beautiful blocks with applications and information to fill and personalise the start page, have also improved. Every widget has become a bit nicer and more functional. We have also made adding a widget much easier: with the new widget store, you have a much better overview of what (types of) widgets you can add. Click here for a digital tour of the widget store. Last but not least, here is an overview of new widgets:
- QR code
- Notes (we had something like a notepad, but this one is at least 10x better!)
- Coming soon: AFAS widget (tasks, vacancies, search integration)
- Coming soon: Facilitor widget (reservations, reports, search integration)
- Microsoft 365 widgets - click here for more information!
- Microsoft To Do (new)
- Microsoft Outlook Email (now as separate widget)
- Microsoft Outlook Calendar (now as separate widget)
- For a complete overview of widgets, see: Widgets - Widget library
Microsoft 365 (add-on)
SharePoint Online
We have made the SharePoint Online integration, where you link documents in SharePoint one-to-one to documents in Embrace groups, much more powerful. SharePoint Online is now:
- A prominent part of the new documents overview
- Available as a hybrid variant
The second point requires some explanation: previously, it was only possible to link ALL Embrace groups to SharePoint. This meant that if someone created a cycling group in Social, a SharePoint folder was also automatically created behind the scenes. This caused clutter. For this reason, many organisations chose not to link SharePoint to Embrace. With this hybrid variant, this is solved: you can now choose per group whether or not to link it to a SharePoint group!
Microsoft Widgets
We have added more Microsoft widgets and optimised existing widgets. A digital tour of all Microsoft integrations can be found here. From Microsoft 365, you now have the following widgets available:
- Outlook Calendar (for start page)
- Outlook Calendar (for profiles) [new!]
- Outlook Mail
- Microsoft To-Do [new!]
- Microsoft Teams
- Coming soon: Microsoft PowerBI widget
Microsoft PowerBI & Microsoft Forms
Embed Microsoft PowerBI dashboards directly in Embrace Social. For example, display KPIs about HR or sales data directly in your social intranet. Or display statistics from Social Analytics Pro also on the front end of your platform!
Finally, it is now possible to embed forms from Microsoft 365 in Social. This gives you, besides the forms editor in Conversations, an extra option to replace Umbraco forms.
Other
Digital accessibility & Privacy (GDPR)
Steps have also been taken in the area of GDPR & digital accessibility. More choices can be made regarding visual impairments. With the completely new privacy functionality, you as a user can also much better indicate who may or may not access your personal data. Be sure to check out the digital tour!
Technology & Architecture
All these beautiful functionalities and developments are made possible by our completely renewed tech stack: a new technology and architecture under the hood of Social.
Coming Soon
Of course, we are not finished developing! We have more exciting functionalities planned. We are:
-
Further strengthening our Microsoft 365 integration:
SharePoint Online integration also to be brought to CMS (thus linked to knowledge base) PowerBI widget: display your own KPIs or data from Social Analytics PRO directly on your start page -
Finally, we are working on integrating more professional applications:
- AFAS (besides profile sync, soon also: tasks, vacancies, search integration). See also: https://assets.embracecloud.nl/Social/Embrace-x-AFAS.pdf
- Aareon Facilitor (reservations, reporting, search integration). See also: https://assets.embracecloud.nl/Social/Embrace-x-Aareon-Facilitor.pdf
Release notes
Want to stay up to date with what else is being added and improved in the coming period? Check out our new release notes! You can find them here: https://embracecloud.releasenotes.io/tag/social