Having blogged at work previously, I thought making a decision on where to blog externally would be a nice simple one. My first thoughts were to use a platform to get up and running quickly. I had a [Blogspot](https://www.blogger.com) login from many years back and follow a few people from LinkedIn and Medium but that didn't quite feel right. This will have elements of technical delivery on it so to have a site that can hold that as well as the blog content felt right. I already had my domain which was running my Office 365 domain but the public site on that was due to be decommissioned in March so it was time for a new site.

##How do you host your own blog?

The first thing to decide on was a blog engine. I wanted something easy to host and deploy on a cloud platform. Coming from a C# background, my first thought was to use [BlogEngine](http://www.dotnetblogengine.net) and found that there was an [Azure marketplace entry](https://azuremarketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/apps/BlogEngineNET.BlogEngineNET) to get started quickly. With this, I was up and running in about 15 mins and could start creating my content. So did I stick with this?

No. Unfortunately while doing this, I was also watching [Halt and catch fire](http://www.amc.com/shows/halt-and-catch-fire) with Joe MacMillan talking about challenging yourself to be better. I know C# but want to know more about NodeJS so took a look at what engines were available on that. The strongest one that I found was the [Ghost publishing platform](https://ghost.org/) and as well as having a [large marketplace of themes](http://marketplace.ghost.org), it could host html content directly. A quick download from the [developers site](https://ghost.org/developers/) and I was up and running (I already had Node JS and NPM installed).

##Changing the theme

Browsing through the marketplace, I found a few different themes I liked the look of but what I really wanted was to look like an Office 365 blog. I had used the new blog pages from Delve and wanted to retain the look and feel. Having used [Office UI Fabric](https://dev.office.com/fabric), I took this as a basis and built up a similar look to the main Delve blogs. Being new to Ghost, I needed a little kick start to get moving and found that [Raivis Vitols Willow Theme](https://github.com/raivis-vitols/ghost-theme-willow) was a close look to what I wanted and acted as a basis for it.

With some rework, I now had a theme which could be uploaded and you can see the SourceCode at https://github.com/kevmcdonk/GhostFabric.

##Hosting

Next on to where it would be hosted. A blog about Office 365 had to be hosted on Azure, right? That was certainly my first reaction. I had four criteria:

- Easy to deploy
- Could host NodeJS
- Have a custom domain
- Supports SSL

Then the final thing was to be as cheap as possible.

Azure met all four criteria but to host a web app with SSL and a custom domain was looking at a higher price than I was hoping to pay. Next stop Amazon.

With their [free tier for a year](https://aws.amazon.com/free/), ability to have SSL and custom domains, this certainly felt like the right answer. I had used Azure to set up web apps quite a bit but this was my first proper exploration of AWS. The [GhostForBeginners](https://www.ghostforbeginners.com/) page on [setting up Ghost on AWS ](https://www.ghostforbeginners.com/how-to-setup-an-amazon-ec2-instance-to-host-ghost-for-free/) got a site up on the AWS domain but finding out details around setting up the custom domain and SSL took a lot longer.

To help others get ahead, the first thing to say is that EC2 will only support SSL through a Load Balancer - here's [the post](http://serverfault.com/questions/560552/how-to-forward-godaddy-domain-to-ec2-load-balancer) that gave me the best confirmation of this. I followed [this guide](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-aws-certificate-manager-deploy-ssltls-based-apps-on-aws/) to set up the certificate and then [this post](https://aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/applicationloadbalancer/getting-started/) to set up the load balancing. I hit a few bumps along the way with my domain provider, mostly due to trying to remember what a A record and CName is but it is also important that you set up with the certificate with \*.yourdomain.com AND yourdomain.com (thanks to vercettie in [this post](https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=226133) for pointing me right there).

The final step was to set up SMTP and I decided to keep it simple and used GMail. Bitnami's [help page](https://docs.bitnami.com/aws/apps/ghost/#how-to-configure-outbound-email-settings) got me details of the config but I also had to [install and connect with Putty](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/putty.html?icmpid=docs_ec2_console) - make sure you check the bitnami docs to get the correct username.

And that's where it is now. There are a few changes I'd still like to make:

- Add discussions, probably with Disqus
- Improve on the profile pane on the homepage
- Add some navigation for static pages
- Support more profile links and make them dynamic

I'll certainly give AWS a year and then review what the costs would have been after that.

Please do [tweet me](https://twitter.com/kevmcdonk) or contact on LinkedIn if you have any questions or comments.


Hosting a Ghost publishing blog on AWS using a custom Office UI Fabric theme

## It is more than just an Intranet

For people who have an Intranet at their organisation, there is a natural place to go to that people can say "There's the Intranet". When it comes to a Digital Workplace, is there the same thing? How is it different?

The key is to have a hub that supplies three main functions for all staff, regardless of their location or area of the organisation:

- Stay updated
- Stay productive
- Stay connected

Many current intranets are news driven and is often the key way that people across the organisation find out what is happening. Even in the modern workplaces, having an overall company vision is key and the central hub is vital to driving this still. Sharing what is happening in different areas and helping staff engage with these happenings ensures that you have an organisation moving along in the same direction, with the same goals and aims. But this is not everything.

## How you start your day?

Think about how you start your day - what is the first thing you do? Check your email? Check a to-do list? Pick up the latest research? Confirm the latest sales figures? Where do you start with this? Most people now have to wade through their emails to get all of the above and this is where distraction kicks in. Instead of reading your latest research, you end up distracted by a different conversation. If you had a central hub showing all these items immediately, you can set up what is most important to you up front and quickly and easily get to your next set of items.

There is more than just functions at work though, there is also people - organisations are powered by the people that work there and the connections that exist are what enable work to happen. Social platforms help power these connections and set up teams and communities that would require huge effort to set in place without the natural evolution. Have an idea on how you could better support clients? Share it on a connection and join in with others who have similar ideas and can help.

## So what about Office 365?

There are many platforms out there and ones that can be developed. The power that Office 365 brings to the table is a set of tools that most organisations are familiar with (Outlook, Word, PowerPoint) but now being brought together with the power of AI and Machine Learning to help get an understanding of what you are most likely to be working on and what people connected to you are doing. While updates/news have long been possible and enterprise social networks have become established with many organisations, the difference that Office 365 now brings is the ability to become more productive. One of the new examples of this has been where Cortana can now analyse your mails and if you have promised to reply to someone or create an action then it will automatically create that as a task. No more remembering at the end of each day to go through your notes and set up tasks for the next few days, Office 365 can start to do it for you. This is where productivity can start to be improved, allowing people to focus on important tasks without changing the way that they work.

## Help me to help you

The key to all this is to have self-service, allowing people to do things themselves without waiting. Making things simple and easy to use with guidance available digitally. Many of the latest features of Office 365 have been about helping power users to be able to get things done without needing developer support. There is lots of help and support around Office and this can be supplemented with tools like WalkMe to provide the right guidance at the right time. Bots are now available to be created so that people can talk in natural language and get to the items they need. With PowerApps and Flow, users can create their own mobile first applications based on what they want.

My next couple of blog posts will tie together a few of these items mentioned and show how you could create a daily reminder to set your tasks for today and focussed on your key goals.

[^n]: Image courtesy of Nicdalic via Flickr - https://flic.kr/p/A1tPF


What does a Digital Workplace look like?

## Do you remember the first day you started work?

Perhaps it was in a fast food restaurant or shop. Perhaps it was, like me, in an office. Maybe there was a computer there, maybe not. For me, there was a large beige box. It had a large CRT monitor attached to it that didn't leave much space. There was a beige phone next to it with an extension number scribbled in pen on top. When I'd found the right person who had an envelope with my password in, I logged in and found a blank blue desktop. I opened up Internet Explorer and there was a page showing some of the corporate news, some deal related news, a few links to key applications that "everyone" used and a big navigation bar along the top with a search box next to it. I browsed through some of the pages trying to suck in some information. Some had helpful details, some had conflicting details, some were obviously out of date. PING. I received an email from another colleague with some useful links and a lot of attachments that had to be printed, filled out and posted to various departments. I had to update my extension number on to the corporate phonebook. There was a huge shared drive with hundreds of documents to hunt through to find anything useful but I also needed to ask colleagues for documents they'd stored on their C drive. After a few months of getting used to it, I started to feel a little productive.

![Class assignment](/images/2017/03/Students_working_on_class_assignment_in_computer_lab.jpg)

Fast forward to my last new starting day. Two flat screen monitors with a tiny box interfacing my virtual desktop. I logged on to the phone with my new ID that was there waiting in my email and it was already showing on my corporate profile. Opening up the browser showed corporate news, local news, news for my area and a set of links. Search was prominent and the page was dynamic. There was a new joiners section with all the details I needed to get going and nothing needed printing out. There was still a large navigation but most of the content was up to date and useful. There was still a shared drive but there was also a set of sites holding relevant information. Booking leave was online and if I had a question, there was a prompt asking if I needed help that then showed me what I needed to do. Even more, I could talk with others in the organisation, commenting on new ideas and seeing what people were thinking about - the pulse of the organisation was there ready for me. I had access through mobile apps and could log on to my virtual desktop from anywhere.

I'll confess, I have added some gloss to the latest story. Not everyone engaged online and not all information was straight forward to find. Commenting and sharing were active in some places but non-existent in others. At the time, news was very top down driven still and finding out what other teams were up to was hard. But all this was changing, people were collaborating more, sharing more information, getting engaged across different previously siloed areas. What was enabling this - the Digital Workplace.

## The Digital Workplace isn't just one single thing

It's the use of digital platforms to get greater productivity for staff, aiding collaboration and knowledge sharing. The phrase first came to my attention as a member of the Intranet Benchmark Forum that became the Digital Workplace Group. Is it just a fancy name for an Intranet? No, as it encompasses how you engage with many other items, how you can work from anywhere, how you can chat with other people you've never met but have similar passions to, how you can find out what is happening across an organisation, how you can form groups to get things done, how you can tell everyone else what you think is the Digital Workplace.

Does this sound like a load of waffle repeating what others have already said? Possibly. Plenty of people like Paul Miller, Gartner, Ephraim Freed, Christian Buckley and many others have spoken about it and often in a more eloquent way than I have here. What I will talk about is how digital workplaces can be established and the many challenges along the way - both technical and related to people. It's a bumpy road so what 4x4s are out there to help.


What is the Digital Workplace?

Blog

My involvement in the Microsoft Community