The Arabic intranet problem, and why it stays unsolved
A bilingual organisation usually ends up with an intranet in English that Arabic-speaking staff do not use, or a translated site that nobody maintains and which drifts out of date within a year.
The failure is rarely translation. It is structure. Navigation that reads left to right, document libraries with English-only metadata, search that does not handle Arabic word forms, and a content approval process that quietly assumes the authoritative version is the English one. Staff work around it, the intranet becomes a link farm, and the investment is written off.
Getting this right means deciding early which language is authoritative for which content, how navigation mirrors, how document metadata works in both languages, and who owns Arabic content after go-live. Those are governance decisions, not development tasks, and they need making before anyone builds a page.
We publish this site in both languages with full right-to-left layout, so this is work we do rather than work we subcontract.
Where your Microsoft 365 data actually sits
Microsoft 365 data residency works differently from Azure, and the difference surprises people.
Your tenant has a home geography, chosen when it was created, and core workload data is stored according to that geography rather than to a region you pick per service. Microsoft offers Advanced Data Residency as a separately licensed capability for organisations that need specific commitments, and the detail of which workloads are covered changes over time.
The practical consequence for a UAE organisation: if in-country residency matters to you, it is a tenant-level decision that is awkward and sometimes impossible to change after the fact. It belongs in the first conversation, not the fifth.
We check the current position per workload during design rather than repeating what was true a year ago.
Migrating off file shares, and why it takes longer than quoted
Most UAE migrations we see are not SharePoint to SharePoint. They are a decade of file shares, a few personal OneDrives doing load-bearing work, and one folder nobody will admit to owning.
The technical move is straightforward and well-tooled. What takes the time is everything around it: deciding what does not come across, mapping permissions that accumulated through a dozen staff changes, dealing with file paths that exceed limits, and finding the documents with three versions where nobody knows which is current.
A migration quoted purely on data volume is quoted on the easy part. Ask instead what happens when the assessment finds 400 GB nobody can identify an owner for, because it will.
The honest advice is to move less than you think. A migration is the one moment you have organisational permission to leave things behind.
What we deliver
• SharePoint Online intranets, in English and Arabic, with right-to-left layouts • Document management — libraries, metadata, versioning and search that works in both languages • Migration from file shares, on-premises SharePoint and other platforms • Microsoft Teams rollout, structure and governance • SPFx web parts and custom components where out-of-the-box does not reach • Retention, sensitivity labelling and Purview configuration • Power Automate workflows for approvals and document processes
Governance and retention, decided before rollout
Teams and SharePoint are easy to deploy and hard to keep orderly. Left alone, an organisation generates hundreds of teams within a year, most of them abandoned, several containing documents that should have been controlled.
The decisions worth making before rollout rather than after: who can create a team, what the naming and lifecycle rules are, which content gets retention applied and for how long, what sensitivity labels exist and what they actually do, and whether external sharing is allowed and with whom.
For UAE organisations there are usually two additional considerations. Contracting and trading businesses often have contractual retention obligations that differ by client. And organisations working with government entities frequently have sharing restrictions that need to be enforced technically rather than by policy document.
None of this is glamorous and all of it is cheaper to decide now.
Dubai delivery, Indore engineering
Discovery, content workshops, training and adoption support run from Dubai — this is the practice area where being in the room matters most, because intranet and Teams projects succeed or fail on adoption rather than on build quality.
Development runs from Indore, where our 20 Microsoft-certified engineers are. Our week is Monday to Friday, Gulf Standard Time.
Frequently asked questions
Can you build an intranet that genuinely works in Arabic?
Yes — right-to-left navigation, bilingual document metadata, and search that handles Arabic properly. The harder part is governance: deciding which language is authoritative for which content and who maintains Arabic content after go-live.
Where is our Microsoft 365 data stored?
According to your tenant’s home geography, chosen when the tenant was created, rather than a region you pick per service. Microsoft offers Advanced Data Residency as a separate capability. Because it is tenant-level, it is awkward to change later and belongs in the first conversation.
How long does a file share migration take?
The data movement is the fast part. Permission mapping, deciding what does not move, and resolving documents with unclear ownership take the time. An assessment before quoting is the only way to answer this honestly.
Should we move everything from our file server?
Almost certainly not. A migration is the one moment you have organisational permission to leave things behind, and most estates contain a large amount nobody has opened in years.
Can we stop staff creating unlimited Teams?
Yes — creation can be restricted to approved groups, with naming conventions and expiry policies applied automatically. This is far easier to set before rollout than to unwind after a year of sprawl.
Can we apply different retention to different clients’ documents?
Yes, through retention labels and policies, which matters for contracting and trading businesses with client-specific contractual obligations. It needs the document structure to support it, which is a design decision.
Can we restrict external sharing for government work?
Yes, and it should be enforced technically rather than by policy document. Sharing can be limited by domain, by group or disabled entirely for specific sites.
Do we need SPFx custom development or is out-of-the-box enough?
Out-of-the-box covers more than most people expect, and we will say so. Custom SPFx components are worth it for genuinely specific requirements, not for styling preferences.
Will our staff actually use it?
Only if adoption is planned as work rather than assumed. That means training in the language people work in, a named owner per content area, and content that is genuinely maintained. Most failed intranets were built correctly.
Do you have UAE SharePoint references?
Not yet — the Dubai office is new and we will not manufacture one. We can introduce you to clients elsewhere on comparable Microsoft 365 work, and our published case studies are real.