The problem

Kankakee Community College's legacy MyKCC environment was built on SharePoint 2013 with Ellucian portal functionality layered on top. The platform served as a central destination for students, faculty, and staff, providing access to applications, departmental resources, team sites, institutional communications, and campus services.

When the legacy portal approached end-of-life, the college faced a hard deadline. Critical employee resources, departmental information, institutional communications, and operational content needed to be preserved before the old environment disappeared.

A simple one-to-one migration was not enough. There was no direct migration path between the legacy environment and the new architecture. Existing governance models did not translate directly to SharePoint Online, departmental information was distributed across multiple sites and repositories, student and employee needs differed significantly, and existing publishing workflows depended on infrastructure that would not survive the transition.

My role

At the time of the project, I served as Coordinator of Web Content and Design. While my formal responsibilities focused on web design, development, content management, and digital communications, the MyKCC initiative required broader leadership across governance, information architecture, stakeholder coordination, communications planning, content rationalization, training, documentation, and implementation strategy.

Because SharePoint Online expertise within the project was limited during implementation, I assumed primary responsibility for researching, designing, documenting, implementing, and supporting much of the SharePoint Online environment. While I completed introductory SharePoint Online training through LinkedIn Learning, much of the implementation required independently learning modern SharePoint Online architecture, identifying Microsoft implementation patterns, researching platform capabilities, and adapting those patterns to institutional needs under project deadlines.

I ultimately built most of the SharePoint Online information sites, lists, libraries, navigation structures, and governance components that became part of the new MyKCC environment. I also personally migrated and reconstructed significant amounts of institutional content from the legacy environment, evaluated what should be preserved, and worked with departments to determine future ownership.

I learned Power Automate during the project and used it to help solve publishing and workflow challenges that emerged as the new architecture took shape. Working alongside ITS, Marketing, Administrative Information Systems, departmental stakeholders, and project leadership, I helped shape how the platform would be organized, governed, maintained, and adopted across the institution.

The legacy environment

The previous MyKCC environment consisted of numerous departmental resources connected through SharePoint 2013. Examples 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.

These sites contained document libraries, FAQ systems, announcements, forms, department resources, institutional documents, and operational information. While valuable, the experience depended heavily on navigating between separate sites with differing layouts, ownership models, and maintenance practices.

Decision point

Several paths were possible, but each carried different governance, maintenance, and user-experience tradeoffs.

The architecture

The new architecture assigned the right role to each platform. Ellucian Experience became the user-facing portal layer for applications, student services, personalized resources, institutional communications, and card-based discovery. SharePoint Online became the employee information layer for department resources, policies, forms, procedures, contacts, and internal documentation.

Supporting publishing workflows connected SharePoint Online, Power Automate, FTP delivery, static publishing infrastructure, and Ellucian Experience. This allowed the college to preserve key publishing needs while working around platform limitations.

Key decision: separate student and employee experiences

The legacy SharePoint 2013 environment included student-facing sites and departmental resources. During implementation, similar approaches were evaluated within SharePoint Online.

Testing revealed governance and permission challenges that made broad student access difficult to manage safely and sustainably. Unlike the previous environment, SharePoint Online did not provide a practical way to deliver the same student-facing experience while maintaining appropriate control over content and site structure.

Rather than recreating the legacy model, student experiences were intentionally centered within Ellucian Experience through audience-specific cards, application integrations, student services, and institutional resources. SharePoint Online information sites became primarily employee-facing resources supporting departmental knowledge, policies, procedures, and operational information.

The MyKCC Info Sites framework

One of the most important architectural decisions was creating the MyKCC Info Sites framework.

While Ellucian Experience provided a modern dashboard and application layer, employees still needed access to departmental procedures, forms, policies, contacts, operational resources, and institutional knowledge that had historically lived within SharePoint.

To bridge this gap, department-owned SharePoint Online information sites were connected to Ellucian Experience through a centralized MyKCC Info Sites card. Departments retained ownership of content while users gained centralized discovery through the portal.

Launch card ecosystem

The new portal introduced a broad collection of audience-specific cards supporting students, faculty, and staff.

Content migration and rationalization

Because no automated migration path existed, content often required manual reconstruction. Methods included content exports, command-line extraction, manual review, department interviews, content analysis, stakeholder meetings, and content restructuring.

Not all content was migrated. Throughout implementation, departmental stakeholders helped evaluate which resources should be migrated, rebuilt, consolidated, or retired.

Financial Aid and Veterans Benefits provide examples of this approach. During review, it became clear that much of the information planned for those sites duplicated content already maintained on KCC.edu or primarily directed users back to public website resources. Rather than maintaining duplicate content repositories across multiple systems, those sites were retired and users were directed to authoritative content maintained on the college website.

Solving the Update publishing problem

One of the most technically challenging aspects of the project involved preserving the institution's Update newsletter process.

Native SharePoint Online approaches did not provide a straightforward method for exposing institutional content through Ellucian Experience. RSS feeds, public access limitations, content distribution, image handling, and cross-system delivery all required alternate solutions.

Working with ITS and internal development resources, I helped design a publishing architecture connecting SharePoint Online, Power Automate, FTP delivery, static publishing platforms, and Ellucian Experience content consumption.

Launch, adoption, and training

The rollout included preview environments, staff review periods, documentation, card inventories, launch communications, student communications, contributor training, and feedback mechanisms.

Because vendor documentation did not fully address institutional needs, extensive institution-specific documentation was created. Training and documentation covered SharePoint Online information sites, lists and libraries, permissions models, content ownership, Update publishing workflows, contributor onboarding, and portal navigation.

The Update publishing environment eventually supported 22 unique article authors, demonstrating adoption across multiple institutional areas while reinforcing the governance and publishing structures established during implementation.

Validation

The implementation was validated through departmental stakeholder reviews, preview communications, launch planning, cross-functional collaboration, ongoing contributor onboarding, and sustained platform usage after launch.

The strongest validation came after implementation. The platform remained actively used and maintained, additional information resources were created, governance practices expanded, and contributor workflows continued to grow.

Results

• 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

During the first four months following launch, MyKCC recorded more than 63,000 sessions, 2,500 active users, nearly 794,000 tracked events, and a 57% engagement rate.

The platform continued to show sustained use several years later. Between January and mid-June 2026, MyKCC recorded more than 125,000 sessions, 334,000 views, 4,000 active users, nearly 1.8 million tracked events, and a 70% engagement rate.

Long-term impact

The MyKCC initiative became far more than a portal replacement project.

Rather than simply migrating technology, the project transformed MyKCC from a legacy portal environment into a governed digital workplace ecosystem. The initiative established clearer ownership models, reduced content duplication, modernized employee information resources, improved discoverability, created sustainable publishing workflows, and provided a foundation for future Microsoft 365 initiatives.

Several years after launch, the platform continues to support institutional communications, employee resources, departmental information sites, and student services while serving as a foundation for ongoing digital workplace improvements.

Looking ahead

The strongest next step is continued stewardship: maintaining information-site governance, refining portal content, monitoring analytics, supporting contributors, and improving how institutional resources are surfaced across MyKCC, SharePoint Online, and the public website.