AOK is the largest health insurance provider in Lower Saxony, with around 3 million insured individuals.
It is distinguished by its excellent service, extensive network of branch offices, and consultation options available online or by phone.
To support their employees in their daily work and provide access to important documents and information, the AOK previously used an intranet based on Microsoft SharePoint 2013. Over time, the AOK’s requirements evolved, leading to the pursuit of implementing a new, modern intranet.
The goal of the AOK was to migrate their existing SharePoint 2013-based intranet to SharePoint 2019 while also transforming it into a knowledge management platform. The aim was to leverage the accumulated knowledge of employees to support their daily work, such as customer interactions. Working together with the project team from Alight, the structures, design, and layout of the intranet were redefined in various requirement workshops. This led to the decision to develop the new intranet using SharePoint 2019 Modern instead of classic to better meet the requirements.

The decision to use SharePoint modern has already proven to be successful, as it allows us to react much more flexibly to internal adjustments and represent requirements better. The competent advice from Alight was crucial in this regard, so we are now delighted to have a future-proof intranet.
Doris Lungenstraß
Marketing Director AOK Niedersachsen
The AOK’s intranet had a very nested and hierarchical structure. It consisted of a collection of web pages with many underlying pages. However, a modern and cloud-ready solution calls for a flat structure with many groupings of websites and no subpages. Accordingly, an on-premise solution with a new structure was implemented here, which, like the new intranet, is already fully cloud-ready to be well positioned for a possible later transition to the cloud.
The intranet was divided into three main areas. The first area represents the organizational structure. The second main area is a thematic area where all relevant information about the company, insurance, services, and other information is stored. The third and final main area is the collaboration area for active exchange among employees.
In the development of the intranet, many different additional modules were created. Among them were a custom mega menu, a web part for changing page properties, a search center, centrally defined and customizable favorites and quick links, and many other components. Based on these, the AOK’s intranet was gradually built up. The AOK’s news was divided into global news, departmental news, and local news, which can be displayed on the homepage.
Since the MySite, a page where employees can present themselves, is only available in the classic version in SharePoint 2019, a custom profile page was developed here, giving AOK employees the opportunity to present their profiles in a modern “look and feel”.
In addition to developing the new intranet, there were also additional tasks. Firstly, the SharePoint 2019 farm was set up in the test and production environment. Secondly, the page contents were almost completely migrated from the previous intranet to the new intranet, despite the structures having completely changed. Custom scripts were used for this purpose. Furthermore, a new area was developed (Navigator Knowledge), which supports employees with a conversation guide during customer discussions.
In summary, the AOK intranet was successfully implemented through very good and agile collaboration in the project. The next tasks involve the continuous development and support of the intranet.
As the first major project following the central introduction of a new corporate identity, the introduced intranet of AOK Niedersachsen can now shine in the new green color scheme.
