A modern TAQANET for every TAQA employee.
An interactive walkthrough of the SharePoint Online intranet Silwatech has designed for TAQA under RFQ HQ-200155. It moves through the solution, the architecture, security, and the delivery plan in the order your engineering and communications teams review them, with the working prototype one click away.
A group operating at national scale, and the intranet behind it.
TAQANET is the digital front door for the people who run one of the region’s most important energy businesses. This engagement replaces its SharePoint Server 2019 foundation with SharePoint Online in three months, and this walkthrough shows exactly how.
TAQA generates power, desalinates water, and moves both across transmission and distribution networks that serve millions of people, with operations spanning the UAE and markets across the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and Asia.
The brief, in plain terms
- Move TAQANET from SharePoint Server 2019 on-premises to SharePoint Online, fully cloud, no on-premises dependencies.
- Build with out-of-the-box SharePoint capabilities first, TAQA’s confirmed preference, so the platform stays upgrade-safe.
- Go live approximately three months from kick-off, followed by four weeks of hypercare.
- Serve ~400 HQ employees at go-live on an architecture that extends to the wider TAQA Group without redesign.
- Migrate website content, pages and news only. Document libraries and business applications are out of scope.
- Deliver in English only, meet WCAG 2.1 AA, and stay inside TAQA’s existing UAE-resident tenant.
Engineering partner for government and enterprise across the Gulf.
Silwatech is a technology consulting and digital engineering company with delivery across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, the wider GCC, Europe, and Africa. Its Microsoft practice covers Microsoft 365, SharePoint, Power Platform, Dynamics 365, and Azure, alongside enterprise software development and AI engineering.
Portfolio reflects direct engagements and collaboration within partner-led programs.
One intranet, four surfaces, zero new platforms to buy.
TAQANET moves to SharePoint Online inside TAQA’s existing Microsoft 365 tenant. Every experience below is delivered through services TAQA already licenses, configured rather than custom-built, so the platform keeps improving as Microsoft ships updates.
TAQANET Home
The corporate front page: CEO messages, news, announcements, alerts, events, quick links, and key documents, curated by Group Communications.
Department, campaign & micro sites
Hub-connected sites for HQ departments, plus campaign and micro sites for time-bound initiatives, provisioned from governed templates so they can be archived cleanly.
My TAQANET
A personalized layer that targets content by department, role, location, and frequently accessed resources, and follows each employee across the intranet.
Search & knowledge
Microsoft Search across SharePoint Online content, sites, pages, news, and the people directory, tuned with verticals, promoted results, and metadata refiners.
Ten functional domains, each mapped to the RFQ.
Every module below traces to a requirement in HQ-200155. Select a module to see what it does and which Microsoft 365 capability delivers it.
Home & Communications
The configurable corporate homepage that greets all of HQ: leadership voice at the top, organizational news underneath, and the tools people came for one click away.
Capabilities
- CEO messages, corporate news, and announcements with featured placement
- Alerts and urgent banners for time-critical updates
- Events calendar, quick links, and key documents
- Announcements targeted by department, role, or location attributes
How it’s built
SharePoint communication site with out-of-the-box web parts: News, Hero, Events, Quick Links, and Highlighted Content, arranged with audience targeting.
Publishing & Governance
Structured authoring for a small, accountable publishing group: content moves draft to review to approval to publish, with scheduling and archiving handled by the platform.
Capabilities
- Draft, review, approve, schedule, publish workflow for every page and news post
- Centralized publishing governed by Group Communications, up to five content authors
- Scheduled publishing, featured content rotation, and archiving rules
- Authoring simple enough for non-technical editors, no HTML required
How it’s built
SharePoint page approvals driven by Power Automate flows, with content scheduling and version history native to SharePoint Online.
Search & Discovery
The fix for TAQANET’s weakest link today. One search box that understands pages, people, news, and documents, and puts the official answer first.
Capabilities
- Microsoft Search across sites, pages, news, people, and files
- Search verticals for the content types employees actually look for
- Promoted results and bookmarks for high-intent queries such as payslips or VPN
- Metadata-driven refiners powered by the enterprise taxonomy
How it’s built
Microsoft Search configuration: verticals, result types, bookmarks, and Q&A entries, refined continuously using search analytics.
My TAQANET
The personal layer. Two employees in different departments open the same intranet and see different news, different quick links, and different documents, automatically.
Capabilities
- Content targeted by department, role, location, and profile attributes
- Frequently accessed resources surfaced per person, with followed sites and recent items
- Department-aware quick links and applications
How it’s built
SharePoint audience targeting bound to Entra ID attributes and Microsoft 365 groups, with Microsoft Graph powering recent and followed content.
Department & Campaign Sites
A hub-and-spoke estate that gives every function its own portal, plus campaign and micro sites for time-bound corporate initiatives, all consistent in navigation, branding, and governance.
Capabilities
- HQ department sites under one corporate hub, reachable from the main landing page
- Campaign sites for time-bound corporate initiatives, and micro sites for specific programmes or events
- Both provisioned from governed site templates, so branding, navigation, and lifecycle rules apply automatically and sites archive cleanly at the end of a campaign
- Mega menu, breadcrumbs, and categorized navigation across every level
How it’s built
SharePoint hub sites with inherited navigation, theme, search scope, and permission model, plus site templates for campaign and micro sites. Full structure in the Backend Architecture section.
Social & Engagement
The features that turn an intranet from a noticeboard into a workplace: conversation, reaction, and feedback loops between leadership and employees.
Capabilities
- Likes, comments, and social reactions on news and pages
- Discussion threads and interest groups
- Polls, surveys, and structured feedback collection
How it’s built
Native SharePoint page reactions and comments, community and interest group sites under the hub, and Microsoft Forms for polls and surveys. Live discussion runs through the Microsoft Teams integration.
People Directory
Find a colleague by name, team, or role, then see where they sit in the organization and how to reach them, without asking around.
Capabilities
- People search with profile cards: role, department, contact, presence
- Organizational context: manager, team, and peers
- One-click handoff to Teams chat, call, or email
How it’s built
Microsoft Search people vertical over Entra ID profiles, enriched through Microsoft Graph. Profile quality is validated during discovery.
Documents & Policies
A governed home for the documents people rely on: policies, procedures, forms, and templates, each with an owner, a lifecycle, and consistent metadata.
Capabilities
- Standardized libraries with content types and managed metadata
- Versioning, co-authoring, and controlled key document surfacing on the homepage
- Lifecycle management for policies, procedures, and corporate documents
How it’s built
SharePoint document libraries with enterprise content types, term store taxonomy, and retention behavior aligned to TAQA’s classification rules. Note that migrating existing document libraries is out of scope: these libraries are established on the new platform and populated by TAQA going forward.
Analytics & Adoption
Evidence, not anecdotes. Dashboards that show what employees read, search for, and ignore, so Communications can steer content with data.
Capabilities
- Executive dashboards for adoption and engagement
- Page views, content consumption, active and returning users
- Engagement metrics: likes, comments, polls, survey participation
- Search analytics including failed queries, feeding continuous improvement
How it’s built
SharePoint and Microsoft 365 usage analytics, search reports, and curated dashboards for the executive and communications view.
Content Migration
Website content, pages, and news move from SharePoint Server 2019 into the new TAQANET, validated and findable. Document libraries and business applications are out of scope.
Capabilities
- Content inventory and audit with TAQA before anything moves, with cleansing and approval performed by TAQA
- Website content, pages, news pages, and related intranet content migrated with metadata validation
- Migration rehearsal before the production run
- Legacy URL redirects for the high-traffic entry points agreed during Discovery
How it’s built
SharePoint Migration Tool for SharePoint Server 2019 to SharePoint Online, with validation checkpoints and a migration report at completion. In-scope content volume is assumed not to exceed 50 GB, fixed during the Discovery inventory.
Stop reading. Start clicking.
Silwatech built a working interactive prototype of TAQANET alongside this proposal. It runs in any modern browser, needs nothing installed, and demonstrates every scope commitment with sample data.
TAQANET Interactive Prototype
Persona switching
Four fictional employees. Switch persona and watch Home retarget news, links, and apps live.
Responsive on any screen
The same experience from desktop to phone, which is exactly how mobile access is delivered in the proposed solution.
Search that answers
Search “payslip” or “VPN” and get a promoted result with a working action, not ten stale links.
Publishing Studio
An interactive kanban of the draft, review, approve, schedule, publish lifecycle.
13 working micro-apps
Payslips, leave, expenses, helpdesk, meeting rooms, learning, travel, and more behind every quick link.
Ask TAQANET
A scripted assistant preview showing where Copilot-era answers fit into the intranet.
Adoption analytics
The engagement dashboard Communications would use, with a downloadable report.
URL continuity
A working demo of legacy link redirects, so old bookmarks land on the right new page.
Suggested five-minute path
Cloud-native on Microsoft 365, end to end.
One diagram, the whole system. Employees authenticate through Entra ID and land on SharePoint Online in Microsoft’s UAE regions; every capability around it is a Microsoft 365 service. Select any component for its role in TAQANET.
How a page reaches an employee
Every request is authenticated by Entra ID under Conditional Access and MFA, then served by SharePoint Online from Microsoft’s UAE data centre regions. No component below sits outside Microsoft 365.
- Configure-first: native services before custom code
- No on-premises dependencies anywhere in the design
- Extensible for Phase 2 enterprise integrations
Why it matters: the platform inherits Microsoft’s availability, security, and roadmap, and TAQA’s team operates configuration, not infrastructure.
The experience layer, engineered to stay standard.
TAQANET’s interface is built from SharePoint’s modern experience: the same components Microsoft maintains, themed to TAQA’s brand. Custom code is a last resort with a governance gate, not a starting point.
Configure
Out-of-the-box web parts and settings: News, Hero, Events, Quick Links, Highlighted Content, People, and site navigation.
Compose
Page templates, section layouts, audience targeting, and the TAQA theme applied through supported theming and site designs.
Extend with SPFx
SharePoint Framework web parts or extensions only where a requirement has no native answer, code-reviewed and tenant-safe.
Fork the platform
No unsupported customization, no modified system files, nothing that breaks when Microsoft ships an update.
Brand & theming
TAQA’s colors, typography, and header applied via supported theming, aligned with brand and communication standards during design.
Mobile responsive
Every page fully mobile responsive from phone to desktop through SharePoint modern experiences. Native mobile apps are out of scope, so there is no separate app to design or maintain.
Accessibility
WCAG 2.1 AA as an acceptance criterion: contrast, keyboard paths, focus order, and alt text validated during testing, not assumed.
Governed site templates
Campaign and micro sites are provisioned from templates that carry branding, navigation, and lifecycle rules, so a campaign can launch quickly and be archived cleanly.
SharePoint Online does the heavy lifting.
There is no application server to build and no database to administer. The backend is SharePoint Online’s content services, organized through a hub-and-spoke estate and automated with Power Automate.
- Leadership
- Vision & values
- Corporate pages
- Department landing pages
- Department news
- HR · Finance · IT
- Policies & services
- Time-bound initiatives
- Governed templates
- Programmes and events
- Clean archival
Content architecture
Enterprise content types, managed metadata in the term store, naming conventions, and standardized libraries. The taxonomy that makes search and navigation work.
- Hierarchy aligned to TAQA’s organization
- Breadcrumbs and contextual navigation
- Document lifecycle management
Process automation
Power Automate carries the operational load: approval routing, scheduled publishing, notifications, and governance checkpoints, all configuration rather than code.
- Draft to publish approval flows
- Publishing schedules and reminders
- Notification and escalation rules
Data & services
Microsoft Graph supplies people, organization, and activity signals for personalization. Content lives in SharePoint repositories with versioning and audit built in.
- Graph-driven profiles and targeting
- Version history on every artifact
- Activity captured in unified audit logs
Deep in Microsoft 365 now, ready for the enterprise next.
Phase 1 keeps integration inside the Microsoft ecosystem, exactly as the RFQ scopes it. The same integration layer then accepts TAQA’s enterprise systems in Phase 2 without rework.
In scope now
Phase 1News pushed to Teams channels, TAQANET pinned as a tab, and person-to-chat handoffs from the people directory.
Single sign-on, profile attributes for personalization, and the group membership that drives audience targeting.
Events surface on the intranet calendar; invitations and mail handoffs open where people already work.
Documents open in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint with co-authoring; personal files stay in OneDrive.
SharePoint Migration Tool and Microsoft Migration Manager carry HQ content from SharePoint 2019 with validation checkpoints.
Architecture-ready
Phase 2 · Future scopeEmployee services and HR data surfaced into the intranet through Graph connectors and supported APIs.
Tickets raised and tracked from TAQANET, with status visible where employees look first.
TAQA’s named business systems join the same integration layer as demand matures.
Five layers between the internet and a TAQANET page.
Defence in depth on a Zero Trust footing: every request is verified, every permission is least-privilege, and every action is auditable. Select a layer to see its controls.
Nobody reaches TAQANET anonymously
Microsoft Entra ID is the single front door. Every session is authenticated with corporate credentials, challenged with multi-factor authentication, and evaluated against Conditional Access policies before a single page loads.
- Single sign-on through Microsoft Entra ID
- MFA enforced by policy
- Conditional Access evaluates user, device, and location
- No separate intranet credentials to manage or phish
TAQA requirement: SSO through Microsoft Entra ID with Conditional Access and MFA, met natively.
Permission model
TAQA confirmed the solution should use existing SharePoint security groups and existing Microsoft Entra ID groups. This model implements that direction while enforcing least privilege.
| Role | Assigned via | Permission | Scope |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intranet Administrator | Entra ID security group | Full Control | Hub and all associated sites |
| Group Communications Publisher | Entra ID security group | Edit + Approve | Corporate home and news |
| Departmental Content Author | SharePoint Members group | Contribute | Own department site only |
| Content Reviewer | Entra ID security group | Review | Assigned content sets |
| Content Approver | Entra ID security group | Approve | Assigned content sets |
| Site Owner | SharePoint Owners group | Full Control | Single site |
| Employee (all staff) | Entra ID all-users group | Read | All published content |
- Permissions are assigned to groups only, never to individual user accounts
- Inheritance is preserved by default; broken inheritance requires a documented exception
- Administrative rights are restricted to a named group
- External sharing is disabled: TAQA confirmed external users do not require access
- Access is reviewed on a defined cadence, with reports produced for TAQA IT
- All access and content activity is traceable through Microsoft 365 Unified Audit Logging
Fast because it stays light.
Performance on SharePoint Online is won by discipline, not tuning servers: standard web parts, optimized media, and metadata-driven queries on Microsoft’s globally distributed infrastructure. Page load performance is benchmarked with SharePoint Page Diagnostics before go-live, alongside accessibility validation.
Six phases, each closed by a stage gate.
A milestone-driven methodology combining Microsoft Success by Design, agile delivery, and PMI-style governance. To hold three months, design, configuration, and migration preparation run in parallel rather than strictly in sequence, and every phase still closes with a formal stage gate. Select a phase.
Initiation & Discovery Weeks 1–2
What happens
- Kick-off, governance and communication plan, stakeholder map
- Current state assessment and discovery workshops with Communications and IT
- Content inventory and migration assessment of the existing HQ intranet
- Risk identification and detailed project planning
Gate deliverables
Solution Design Weeks 2–4
What happens
- Information architecture built from a zero baseline, since TAQA has confirmed none exists today
- Card-sorting and taxonomy validation workshops with Group Communications and department representatives
- Hub and site strategy including campaign and micro site templates
- Homepage UX, navigation, and mega menu design against TAQA brand guidelines
- Security and permission model, search architecture, Teams integration design, governance framework
Gate deliverables
Configuration & Development Weeks 4–9
What happens
- Hub, communication, and department sites created and configured
- Campaign and micro site templates built
- Homepage, mega menu, quick links, and branding implemented
- Microsoft Search, metadata, and the Power Automate publishing workflow configured, including scheduled publishing
- Microsoft Teams integration, and SPFx extensions only where approved
- Progress demonstrated in sprint reviews throughout
Gate deliverables
Migration, Testing & Validation Weeks 8–11
What happens
- Migration rehearsal first, then the validated production run of website content and news
- Legacy URL mapping and redirect configuration for agreed entry points
- Functional, integration, and security testing
- Accessibility validation against WCAG 2.1 AA and performance benchmarking
- UAT with Communications and IT, defects resolved to closure
Gate deliverables
Production Deployment Week 12
What happens
- Production deployment and validation, including URL checks
- User verification with the launch group
- Go-live support alongside TAQA’s launch communications
Gate deliverables
Hypercare & Transition Weeks 13–16
What happens
- Four weeks of hypercare with daily monitoring and incident triage
- Administrator and content author training, end-user awareness sessions
- Adoption measurement and reinforcement
- Knowledge transfer to TAQA’s IT team and formal project closure
Gate deliverables
Governance cadence
- Daily stand-up, project team
- Weekly status, TAQA PM and Silwatech PM
- Weekly risk and issue review
- Fortnightly steering committee with sponsors
- Weekly critical-path review, with at-risk dependencies escalated the same week
Delivery discipline
- Requirements Traceability Matrix from RFQ to acceptance
- Stage gate reviews closing every phase
- Sprint demos for continuous stakeholder validation
- RAID register reviewed in governance meetings
- Formal change requests, impact analysis within 3 working days
Toolchain
- Azure DevOps and Azure Boards for agile delivery
- Microsoft Project for the plan, Teams for collaboration
- Figma and Visio for wireframes and architecture
- Azure Test Plans for test management
- SharePoint Migration Tool for SharePoint Server 2019 to SharePoint Online
Twelve weeks to go-live, sixteen to closure.
TAQA has confirmed a target go-live of approximately three months from kick-off. Configuration completes in week 9, migration and UAT run to week 11, production go-live lands in week 12, and four weeks of hypercare follow. Hover any bar or milestone for its deliverable.
| Role | Count | Responsible for |
|---|---|---|
| Project Manager | 1 | Plan, coordinate, and manage delivery to scope, schedule, budget, and quality. |
| Business Analyst | 1 | Gather and document requirements; translate them into functional specifications and the RTM. |
| Solution & Technical Architect | 1 | Own the solution architecture; keep implementation aligned with business, security, and scalability requirements. |
| Microsoft 365 / SharePoint Consultants | 4 | Configure and implement the SharePoint Online and Microsoft 365 solution. Increased from three to four to support the three-month schedule. |
| UI/UX Consultant | 1 | Design the homepage, navigation, and page experiences to TAQA brand and WCAG 2.1 AA. |
| QA Consultants | 2 | Plan and execute functional, integration, security, accessibility, and performance testing. |
| Change & Training Consultant | 1 | Run the change, awareness, and adoption workstream, and build and deliver training, user guides, and video tutorials. |
| Activity | Silwatech | TAQA IT | Group Comms | Business Sponsor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Project governance | R | C | C | A |
| Discovery and requirements | R | C | C | A |
| Information architecture design | R | I | C | A |
| UX and brand design | R | I | C | A |
| Tenant and Entra ID access provisioning | C | R/A | I | I |
| SharePoint Online configuration | R/A | C | I | I |
| Security and permission model | R | A | I | I |
| Content cleansing and approval | C | I | R/A | I |
| Content migration execution | R/A | C | C | I |
| Legacy URL redirect configuration | R | A | I | I |
| User acceptance testing | C | C | R | A |
| Go-live approval | C | C | C | R/A |
| Training delivery | R/A | C | C | I |
| Change management and adoption | R | I | A | C |
| Hypercare and transition to support | R/A | C | C | I |
Go-live is the start, not the finish line.
TAQA confirmed that awareness, training, and post go-live support are all required. Adoption decides whether a modernized intranet delivers its business case, so this workstream starts in design, not at launch.
The change workstream runs from week 2 to week 16, led by a dedicated Change & Training Consultant.
| Activity | When | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Stakeholder mapping and impact assessment | Weeks 2–3 | Change impact assessment |
| Champion network established across HQ departments | Weeks 3–4 | Named champion list and briefing pack |
| Awareness campaign: teasers, countdown, leadership messaging | Weeks 6–12 | Communications plan and assets |
| Champion preview and feedback sessions | Week 10 | Feedback log and design refinements |
| Launch event and go-live communications | Week 12 | Launch pack |
| Adoption measurement and reinforcement | Weeks 13–16 | Adoption report with recommendations |
Three audiences, three formats. User guides and video tutorials are handed over at closure and stay with TAQA.
| Audience | Format | Covers | Materials |
|---|---|---|---|
| Administrators (TAQA IT) | Instructor-led, 2 sessions | Site and hub administration, permissions, search management, governance, troubleshooting | Administration guide, recorded sessions |
| Content authors (Group Communications, max 5) | Instructor-led, 2 sessions plus hands-on lab | Page and news authoring, publishing workflow, scheduled publishing, audience targeting, metadata | Author guide, quick reference cards, video tutorials |
| End users (approximately 400) | Awareness sessions and self-service | Navigation, search, personalization, engagement features, mobile access | User guide, short video tutorials, intranet help section |
Support is proposed in three tiers. The first two are included in the project; the third is optional and priced separately.
Hypercare
Weeks 13–16
- Dedicated project team availability for four weeks after go-live
- Daily monitoring, incident triage, and rapid resolution
- On-hand support for content authors during their first publishing cycles
- Weekly hypercare status report and issue log
Warranty
90 days from go-live
- Correction of defects attributable to Silwatech configuration or development, at no additional cost
- Excludes new requirements, content changes, and defects arising from changes made by TAQA
Application Management Services
Priced separately
- Incident management, troubleshooting, and performance optimization
- Preventive maintenance and Microsoft 365 change monitoring
- Monthly allocation for minor enhancements
- Named service manager, single ticketing channel, documented escalation matrix, monthly reporting
| Priority | Definition | Response | Resolution target |
|---|---|---|---|
| P1 · Critical | Intranet unavailable to all HQ users, or corporate communications cannot be published | 1 hour | 4 hours |
| P2 · High | Major function unavailable with no workaround; affects a department or the publishing process | 4 business hours | 1 business day |
| P3 · Medium | Function degraded but a workaround exists | 1 business day | 3 business days |
| P4 · Low | Minor, cosmetic, or how-to request | 2 business days | 5 business days |
The questions your engineers will ask. Answered.
Ten questions we expect from the TAQA evaluation, with the answers we stand behind. Anything not covered here becomes an agenda item for the clarification workshop.
Where TAQANET goes after go-live.
Ideas for TAQA’s roadmap conversation, sequenced by readiness. None of this is in the current scope or price; all of it becomes possible because the foundation is native Microsoft 365 with clean metadata and governed permissions.
Switch on what’s already there
The intranet’s clean metadata and least-privilege permissions are exactly what Copilot needs to answer safely. Activation becomes a licensing decision.
A grounded assistant answering from intranet content only, with citations. Previewed today inside the prototype.
Drafting, summarising, and tone-of-voice support inside the publishing flow for the Communications team.
Let the intranet tune itself
Classification suggestions applied against the term store as content is published, keeping search quality high without author effort.
Failed and trending queries mined monthly to create promoted results and close content gaps before employees complain.
A weekly “your TAQANET” summary in Teams or email, assembled per person from targeting data and reading behavior.
From intranet to workplace agent
Once Phase 2 connects HR, Oracle Fusion, and ServiceNow, requests like leave or tickets complete conversationally from TAQANET.
As entities join the hub estate, cross-company search and insight over policies, projects, and expertise across the TAQA Group.
Natural-language questions over adoption and engagement analytics for the executive dashboard audience.
Let’s build TAQANET.
A modern digital workplace on the platform TAQA already owns, delivered by a team that has done this before, with the product already visible in a working prototype.
A guided session of this walkthrough and the live prototype with TAQA’s evaluation team.
Deep-dive with TAQA IT and security on architecture, residency, and governance questions.
On award: governance setup, workshop calendar, and the week 1 project plan.
© 2026 Silwatech · Confidential, prepared for Abu Dhabi National Energy Company PJSC (TAQA). www.silwatech.com