Although ESMO is still adapting and learning the new ways of working, we are pleased with this success. I would like to thank everyone for their support and good work on the SharePoint project. “

Cesare Melchiorre, ITDS Department Head, ESMO

The European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) is Europe’s leading professional medical oncology organization comprising a network of over 25,000 oncology experts in more than 160 countries.

The company’s mission is to interconnect professionals with diverse experience with the aim of improving patient care. ESMO seeks to erase the borders in cancer care – among both countries and specializations. It fulfills its mission in the field of oncology all over the world.

ESMO is constantly striving to address issues that affect individuals as well as the entire oncological care sector. Their aim is to develop and promote the specialization of medical oncology, to provide postgraduate education and training to medical oncologists, and to create platforms for the dissemination and sharing of knowledge. They support a multidisciplinary approach to cancer treatment with special focus on its prevention and on provision of optimal treatment to all patients with this disease.

Initial Situation of the Client

ESMO approached IseoLabs AG, Zug, who engaged IXTENT for the technical implementation, with the demand for an Intranet update and a solution for improved team collaboration across its broad association.

ESMO provided the first version of its Intranet based on the SharePoint Online platform using their internal IT resources. Due to a hesitant Intranet user adoption and also due to ever-increasing complexity of the non-standardized solution, ESMO decided to reimplement the solution as a professionally managed platform applying current industry standards.

IXTENT’s Solution

Intranet V2 is the name of an overall Intranet solution deployed within the Office 365 environment at ESMO as implemented by IXTENT. It is the successor to the original Intranet solution implemented by ESMO’s IT. The solution consists of several dozen modern websites, grouped into logical areas according to departments, teams and collaboration with external partners.

IXTENT has provided an Intranet solution to ESMO combined with a document management system on the Microsoft 365 and SharePoint Online platform. All documents are going to be protected by Azure Information Protection service in the next phase.

The delivered solution can be divided into the following/main areas:

  • common home website as a signpost to other parts of the solution,
  • portal for individual departments,
  • collaboration center,
  • extranet for external sharing (ESMO “Drop Box”).

In addition, ESMO operates not yet migrated parts of the original Intranet solution (classic pages & workflows) and the OneDrive repository for each user in parallel with the new solution. ESMO has managed to migrate the main part of the formerly heavily used File System content into the new collaboration sites and has reached a new level of user adoption by this.

Functional model of the intranet:

The solution of the ESMO project consists of one central Intranet homepage, which on the one hand, is a portal for internal information sharing and communication and, on the other hand, it also serves as a gateway to all resources and shared tools both inside and outside the company.

Furthermore, the websites are divided according to types into:

  1. Websites of single departments – assigned to a specific department/work-activities.
  2. Teamwork websites – “open and managed” across departments for collaboration on specific projects or business-process related work activities.
  3. Extranet – websites for external sharing.


Each department or team website comprises of 4 main libraries:

  • team library for given department / team,
  • public library for other departments/ teams,
  • strictly confidential library for management,
  • archive library.

Moreover, the website also contains, among other things, a common calendar, image gallery, video gallery or contact list.

IXTENT’s Solution Benefits

The client now uses an efficient tool for comfortable internal/external collaboration over documents and business processes. The IXTENT solution provides a platform for industry cooperation, a channel for disseminating information from the organization and a portal for collaboration across departments including various teamwork tools or resources for external sharing.

All ESMO users can easily search for stored documents; they can use a “mobile office” from anywhere (with no need for VPN) and have their data protected (GDPR). Documents are classified, connected to other systems and business processes such as project management, daily tasks, various workflows including enhanced security, interconnection of all devices, classification of documents, access rights assignment according to roles within the organization, and much more.

The system is currently used by 110 internal users and 250 external workers to their full satisfaction.

On January 2, 2020 we went live with the new ESMO SharePoint Intranet. After almost a month of use, we can say that the deployed solution and documents migration performed during the Christmas holidays was successful. Starting from today, we have provided support to all departments and individually to most users. Although ESMO is still adapting and learning the new ways of working, we are pleased with this success.
I would like to thank everyone for their support and good work on the SharePoint project.

Cesare Melchiorre, ITDS Department Head, ESMO