About the client: Daikin, a global air conditioning manufacturing company was looking for an innovative approach to collaborating and conducting interactive discussion topics among employees across the globe. 

 Challenges

An interactive and engaging platform for employees to discuss various topics that include industry-related, People related Hobbies, or other interests. Employees should be able to comment, view others' posts, and post likes. The discussion board should be as simple as using a social networking forum.

 Our Solution

Though SharePoint has a default discussion board, we at SharePoint Designs built a custom webpart including Power Automate flows provides all the below features and gives the best user experience.

Discussion post owner and admin privileges

• Using a custom form, any user who has access to SharePoint can initiate a discussion topic and attach files to the discussion post and notify others through an automated email when the discussion is created. 
• The discussion post owner can edit or delete his post.
• The Post owner will get notified when other users post like or comment on the discussion topic.
• Ability to close or reopen each discussion.
• Admin can Pin topics so that users can view them on the top on the discussion board page.‍

Discussion post users

• All users can like, comment and tag other SharePoint users or user groups on the discussion board post. Users will be able to edit or delete their comments.
• Tagged users get notified through an automated email. 
• Users can view and download the attachments on the discussion post.
• Ability to Pin topics of their choice, search with keywords, share the discussion post link, and translate the contents.

Benefits:

A very innovative and interactive tool that engages employees to actively participate in discussions, and contests. The organization that values their employees' feedback are always ahead in the competition. Discussion Board acts as an open forum to discuss with many people at a time. 

Technologies:

SPFx, Power Automate