Case Study

MyKCC Portal Modernization and Digital Workplace Transformation

With KCC’s legacy portal approaching retirement, I helped lead a replacement that preserved institutional content, clarified ownership, and gave students and employees distinct paths to the information they needed. The new portal and connected publishing workflows remain in use years after launch.

Employee knowledge SharePoint Online Department resources, policies, forms, and internal documentation

Portal access & discovery Ellucian Experience Applications, student services, audience-specific cards, and employee access points

MyKCC Info Sites connects employees to department-owned SharePoint resources

Update publishing workflow

SharePointAuthor content

Power AutomateProcess content

FTP deliveryMove files

Static publishingPublish communications

ExperienceSurface content

Different platforms serve different needs. Connected publishing preserves institutional communications within the modern portal.

May 2023Portal Launch

~16Info Sites

22+Update Contributors

63K+Sessions · May–Aug 2023

125K+Sessions · Jan–Jun 2026

3+ YearsActive Platform

RoleSharePoint architecture, information architecture, governance planning, content migration, workflow design, communications, training, documentation, and ongoing stewardship

Key decisionUse Experience for portal access, SharePoint Online for employee resources, and connected workflows for communications.

OutcomePreserved institutional content, organized approximately 16 information sites, and supported a platform still in use more than three years after launch.

InstitutionKankakee Community College

ContextForced transition from a legacy SharePoint 2013 and Ellucian portal environment approaching end-of-life

ArchitectureEllucian Experience for portal access, SharePoint Online for employee information sites, and custom publishing workflows for institutional communications

PlatformsSharePoint Online, Ellucian Experience, Power Automate, Jekyll, FTP-based publishing workflows, Microsoft 365

ValidationPreview communications, stakeholder review, launch analytics, contributor adoption, and sustained usage through 2026

The problem

The legacy MyKCC portal combined SharePoint 2013 and Ellucian functionality, providing students, faculty, and staff with applications, departmental resources, team sites, communications, and campus services.

The platform’s end-of-life created a hard deadline to preserve critical employee resources, departmental information, communications, and operational content.

There was no direct migration path. Governance and publishing workflows needed to change, content was spread across repositories, and students and employees needed different experiences.

The work required decisions about what to preserve, where it belonged, and who would maintain it.

My contribution

As Coordinator of Web Content and Design, I led work on information architecture, governance, content review, stakeholder coordination, communications, training, and implementation.

I took primary responsibility for researching, designing, documenting, implementing, and supporting much of the SharePoint Online environment, adapting Microsoft implementation patterns to institutional needs.

I built most of the information sites, lists, libraries, navigation, and governance components. I also migrated and reconstructed content, working with departments to decide what to preserve and establish future ownership.

Working with ITS, Marketing, Administrative Information Systems, departmental stakeholders, and project leadership, I used Power Automate to help solve publishing challenges and shape the platform’s organization, maintenance, and adoption.

The legacy environment

Legacy departmental resources included Human Resources, Institutional Effectiveness, Financial Aid, Advising, Veterans Benefits, Teaching and Learning Center, Curriculum and Assessment, Foundation, Admissions and Registration, Health Careers, and Adjunct Faculty Resources.

Their libraries, FAQs, announcements, forms, and operational information were valuable, but users navigated separate sites with different layouts and ownership practices.

The challenge was preserving institutional knowledge while modernizing the user experience and creating a more sustainable ownership model.

Key decision

We evaluated which platform should own each part of the experience.

Option 1: Recreate the legacy portal

This would preserve familiarity, but it risked carrying forward the same ownership, navigation, and maintenance problems into a new environment.

Option 2: Move everything into Experience

This would simplify the dashboard layer, but Ellucian Experience was not designed to replace deep departmental information repositories.

Option 3: Build a hybrid architecture

The final model used Ellucian Experience for portal access, SharePoint Online for departmental information, and supporting workflows for institutional communications.

The architecture

See the connected platform and publishing diagram above

Ellucian Experience provides portal access, applications, student services, personalized resources, communications, and card-based discovery. SharePoint Online holds employee department resources, policies, forms, procedures, contacts, and internal documentation.

Power Automate, FTP delivery, and static publishing connect institutional communications to Ellucian Experience while preserving existing publishing needs.

SharePoint Online layer

Department information sites
Employee resources
Lists and libraries
Policies, procedures, and forms
Content ownership and governance

Ellucian Experience layer

Card-based portal experience
Student services and applications
Employee application access
Audience-specific resources
Centralized discovery and feedback

Key decision: separate student and employee experiences

We evaluated whether the student-facing resources from the legacy portal should also move into SharePoint Online.

Testing identified permission and governance challenges with broad student access in our implementation. Keeping student services in Experience and employee information in SharePoint Online gave each audience a clearer, more manageable path.

Experience delivers audience-specific cards, application integrations, student services, and institutional resources. SharePoint information sites support employee departmental knowledge and operational content.

The MyKCC Info Sites framework

I created the MyKCC Info Sites framework to connect employee information with the portal.

Employees needed a clear route to departmental procedures, forms, policies, contacts, and institutional knowledge.

The MyKCC Info Sites card connects department-owned SharePoint sites to Experience. Departments retain content ownership, and employees gain a central discovery point.

The MyKCC Info Sites card became one of the primary bridges between the legacy portal model and the modern digital workplace environment.

Portal cards

Audience-specific cards connect students, faculty, and staff to their applications and resources.

Explore the portal card inventory

Employee resources

Employee Applications
Informer
Faculty Alert Submission
Office 365 Apps
Google Apps
TLC Events
MyKCC Info Sites
Update Newsletter

Student resources

Student Applications
Financial Aid
Student Financials
Register for Classes
Canvas LMS
Communication History
Student Success Team
Request Assistance

Shared resources

KCC News
KCC Events
Share Your Thoughts
Student Life
Google Apps
Office 365 Apps
Bookmarks and Links
Update access points

Content review and migration

Content required manual reconstruction using exports, command-line extraction, department interviews, content analysis, stakeholder review, and restructuring.

Departments helped decide which resources to migrate, rebuild, consolidate, or retire.

Financial Aid and Veterans Benefits sites largely duplicated information on kcc.edu or directed users back to it. We retired those duplicate repositories and linked to the authoritative public content.

Content review and consolidation gave departments a more sustainable set of resources to maintain.

Solving the Update publishing problem

Preserving the Update newsletter required a custom publishing workflow.

SharePoint Online’s RSS, public access, image handling, and distribution constraints complicated delivery through Experience.

With ITS and internal development resources, I helped design a workflow connecting SharePoint authoring, Power Automate processing, FTP delivery, static publishing, and Experience consumption.

Authoring

Update authors used a SharePoint Online editor environment with structured lists and libraries.

Workflow

Power Automate processed content and moved generated files through FTP-based publishing workflows.

Distribution

Static publishing infrastructure exposed content in a format the portal and archive systems could consume.

Launch, adoption, and training

The rollout included previews, staff reviews, card inventories, launch and student communications, contributor training, and feedback mechanisms.

Institution-specific documentation covered sites, lists, libraries, permissions, ownership, Update workflows, contributor onboarding, and portal navigation.

The Update workflow supported 22 unique article authors. Stakeholder reviews, ongoing contributor onboarding, and launch analytics helped validate adoption; information resources and governance continued to develop after launch.

Results

The replacement preserved institutional communications and established clearer ownership and publishing workflows. It also provides a foundation for continued Microsoft 365 improvements.

Built and organized approximately 16 SharePoint Online information sites
Created the MyKCC Info Sites framework for employee information resources
Supported more than 20 Update contributors across the institution
Reduced duplicate content repositories through rationalization and consolidation
Preserved institutional knowledge while modernizing delivery mechanisms
Continued platform growth, governance, and enhancement after launch

Adoption metrics

May–August 2023

MyKCC recorded 63,519 sessions, 43,064 views, 2,581 active users, 793,737 tracked events, and a 57.02% engagement rate.

January–June 2026

MyKCC recorded 125,049 sessions, 334,211 views, 4,017 active users, 1,796,787 tracked events, and a 70.05% engagement rate.

The platform continues to serve as a primary institutional resource several years after implementation.

Looking ahead

Ongoing work focuses on information-site governance, portal content, analytics, contributor support, and discovery across MyKCC, SharePoint Online, and the public website.

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