What are custom intranet cards? Use cases and expert insights from a ThoughtFarmer developer

One of ThoughtFarmer’s greatest strengths is its flexibility. Unlike some platforms that are locked down and limit branding, ThoughtFarmer supports the ability for customizations through something called Custom cards.

Custom cards (sometimes referred to as modules or widgets) are the building blocks of all ThoughtFarmer pages. For example, most intranet home pages will include cards like a news carousel, quick links, a launch pad, and groups, whereas team pages tend to include more specific cards like a document library, forms, or a team calendar.

Custom Cards take our platform’s flexibility even further by allowing users to add custom extensions to their intranet, so that they can really get the most out of the ThoughtFarmer experience.

We recently sat down with Tim Schiller, Software Developer at ThoughtFarmer, and the brains behind Custom card development. He revealed some cool insights into common customer requests, undervalued customizations, and the custom cards he enjoys creating the most. 

What are custom cards? 

Custom cards are modular intranet components that allow teams to add integrations, UI enhancements, and custom functionality without modifying core platform features.

What can you do with custom intranet cards?

• Integrate third-party tools (e.g. CRM, HR platforms)

• Improve UX (navigation, layout, overlays)

• Boost engagement (gamification, seasonal themes)

• Extend functionality without core development

What are some of the most common customizations? 

The main type of request we get is for integration with some 3rd party tools which we currently do not support. Often there is a way via custom cards to embed a quick and simple integration that has much reduced cost when compared to sponsoring a feature. Sponsoring a feature means paying to have our development team work on it right away. So it bypasses our typical roadmap based on feature request popularity. Also, it can be turned around much quicker than waiting for a feature request to become popular enough that it gets added to the product.

What’s the most popular custom card?

Falling Fun is by far the most popular card ever. It started out as the “Let it snow” card,  which was a simple card to add falling snowflakes to your intranet around the holiday season.

Now it has been extended to allow for anything to fall. People now set it to show pumpkins and ghosts during Halloween, Shamrocks during St Patrick’s Day, and even falling money to celebrate big sales wins. I have even seen an instance of falling Justin Timberlakes. 

Are there any customizations you feel are underused?

Simple cards like the “Back to Top” and the “Table Of Contents” card are not as popular as I would have expected. They can provide some great user experience enhancements for pages with a lot of content on them.

What cards are best for building culture and community?

The best one on the Card Marketplace is the Gamification card. It helps promote engagement with the intranet which ultimately helps build community. 

There is also the Core Values custom card. This lets users shout-out to each other and award someone with a badge for a specific company Core Value. For example, “Great job @Kelly for showing Creativity on the new blog post!”. 

This would get tracked as a Creativity badge for that user, then leaderboards, and profile page badges, and reporting custom cards could all leverage that data to provide visibility into them. This is great for getting employees engaged around the company culture. This is fast becoming popular and will likely end up on the marketplace soon.

What customization did you enjoy working on most? Why?

From an effort to enjoyment level the Falling Fun card was simply the best. It was very simple to build, yet it proved widely popular and fun to use.

From a technical standpoint I really thought the “Content overlays” turned out well and looked great. The original request was to make something that appeared like the overlays you see on Wikipedia. However, we needed something much more flexible and configurable. The result is very eye-catching and the dynamic “smart” positioning of the overlay works very well. It goes above and beyond what Wikipedia does for their overlays.

What is your favorite part of your job? 

My background was originally Psychology. I wanted to be a Psychologist and help people. However, the length of time to achieve this goal proved daunting. As well, I found I was much better suited towards programming and had been programming since I was 10 (my first computer was a Commodore Vic 20). So after a two year diploma in Psychology I switched to Computer Science and achieved my Bachelor’s of Science from UBC.

So this job is a perfect match for me in that I am always working front and center with people first. I get to listen to and interpret their needs and come up with a project plan and set of requirements that meet those needs. This job allows me to be in a place to help people directly with their problems with technical solutions.