How do you currently manage staff briefings?
Is it pinned to a noticeboard in the staffroom? But everyone’s crowding around trying to get a look at the agenda before the day starts.
Or maybe you email it out in the morning? But then a mistake gets spotted, another version goes out, and then another, and nobody’s quite sure which one to trust.
If either of those sounds familiar, there is another way.
In this guide, our CEO and Founder Tony Phillips shows you how you can use SharePoint to manage your daily or weekly staff briefing, so there’s always one clear, up-to-date version that everyone can find.
A single source of truth for your daily briefing
The Cloud Design Box SharePoint staff briefing web part gives your school one clear, central place for the daily or weekly briefing.
There’s no need to worry about version control or time wasted digging through inboxes.
Staff know exactly where to look, and they always see the most up-to-date version.
You can add the staff briefing web part to any SharePoint site, but the obvious home for it is your staff page, the area that only staff have access to.
And it’s flexible enough to use for more than just the briefing. You can add it to the same page more than once, so it works just as well for things like your lunch rota or the detention schedule too.
How to add the Staff Briefing web part to your SharePoint site
It’s easy to add the Cloud Design Box Staff Briefing web part to your SharePoint site.
Note: You need Edit permissions or higher on the SharePoint site.
- Go to the SharePoint site and open the page where you want to add a web part.
- Click the Edit button in the top-right corner of the page (pencil icon).
- Hover over an existing section or between sections on the page. You’ll see a “+” (plus) button appear – click it to open the web part picker.
- A panel will slide open showing all available web parts – choose CDB Staff Briefing.
How to create a new Staff Briefing in SharePoint
Once you’ve added the CDB Staff Briefing web part to your school SharePoint, adding a new staff briefing is easy.
- Go to the Staff Briefing webpart in your SharePoint site. If you have edit or contribute access to the site, you’ll see a Create new button.
- Tap New to create a new Staff Briefing Document.
- From here, choose Word Document, PowerPoint, link to an external website or upload a file you’ve already prepared.
- Next, decide the date you would like this Staff Briefing to expire.
- Tap Create and Open to get started on your document.
- You can then go ahead and either create your staff briefing document from scratch or upload an existing file.
When saved, you will see your new document on the Staff Briefing Web Part on your SharePoint site.
How to view a staff briefing in SharePoint
For any SharePoint sites that you’ve added the CDB Staff Briefing web part to, staff will be able to see the latest staff briefings.
Tap Open Staff Briefing to see the latest.
If no briefings are available, it will look like this.
View archived staff briefings
Staff can also view archived staff briefings by tapping View Archived Staff Briefings.
This brings up a list of previous staff briefings that have expired.
Use a template to keep things consistent
Creating from scratch is quick, but most school leaders will want a consistent format that staff recognise day to day. That’s where templates come in.
If you have a briefing format that works well for your school – with set sections for key notices, cover arrangements, reminders, and so on – you can save that as a template and use it as your starting point each day.
When you select Create from an existing file, it creates a fresh copy of your template rather than editing the original. So your template stays intact, ready to reuse the next day, and you just fill in the details for today.
It means staff always know where to find the information they need on the page, and whoever’s writing the briefing has a clear structure to work from.
Make SharePoint staff briefings part of your school’s daily routine
One of the most effective ways to make this work is to set your staff SharePoint page as the default browser homepage on school devices. That way, when staff open their laptop at the start of the day, the briefing is right there – no need to remember to check it, no need to search for it.
Combined with the lunch rota, cover schedule, or any other regular announcements you want to share, it becomes a genuinely useful reason for staff to visit the intranet every day. And the more useful it is, the more staff engage with it.
The Staff Briefing web part is just one feature within the Cloud Design Box SharePoint intranet platform, built specifically for schools and education organisations.
From staff communication and document management to news, forms, and automation, Cloud Design Box helps schools get the most from Microsoft 365 – with a structure that’s designed for how schools actually work.
If you’d like to see how it could work in your school, get in touch with the team.
