How we rebuilt the Contentful People Portal as Customer Zero

Contentful relaunched its internal People Portal earlier this summer, creating a more searchable, scalable, and personalized home for employee resources. The project began with a familiar challenge: Employees needed a faster way to find trusted information, while internal teams needed a better way to manage and maintain that information over time.

The initiative also gave us an opportunity to put our own platform to work. We help customers create structured, governed digital experiences every day, and being Customer Zero means applying those same principles to the experiences we run ourselves, both externally and internally.

We’ve already done this through initiatives such as personalization on Contentful.com and AI-assisted editorial workflows on the Contentful blog. The People Portal brought that same approach to an experience designed entirely for Contentful employees.

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Why the People Portal needed to change

The idea of improving the People Portal had been discussed for a long time. As the company grew, however, customer priorities naturally came first, and internal improvements would be parked for a later day.

The platform was never the limiting factor. Contentful already powers experiences including Contentful.com, the Contentful Help Center, and our developer documentation. The challenge was finding the right moment, the right people, and a clear business need to invest in a more capable internal experience.

That opportunity emerged as the People team took a closer look at how employees accessed information. The existing portal contained valuable resources, but finding and maintaining them had become increasingly difficult. The goal was to build a portal employees could trust today and that could continue to grow with the company tomorrow.

Assembling the team

The project built on work already underway across Contentful. Our Web team had recently developed a knowledge base design system and React component toolkit to relaunch the Help Center and Developer Docs. The team could also draw on lessons from our work with personalization on Contentful.com.

The People and Web teams formed a small cross-functional group of user experience specialists, designers, product managers, and other contributors, all working on the new portal alongside their day-to-day responsibilities.

Before designing the experience, the team focused on understanding what employees actually needed.

Requirements were divided into two categories: what the minimum viable product (MVP) needed at launch and what could wait for future iterations. That kept the scope realistic while leaving room for long-term improvements.

The team also surveyed employees through the existing portal to understand where they struggled most. Their feedback helped shape priorities and build support among stakeholders.

Once approved, the project came with one important constraint: Everyone involved still had full-time responsibilities elsewhere. That reality forced the team to prioritize carefully and focus on the changes that would deliver the greatest impact first.

What we built

The refreshed People Portal brings together announcements, knowledge base content, and blog-style articles in one place. Available through our standard single sign-on protocol, it gives employees a clearer starting point for finding the information they need.

Search sits at the center of the experience. Taxonomy helps connect employees with region-specific content, while Contentful Personalization tailors elements such as the homepage hero, which can greet visitors by name and make the experience feel more relevant from the moment they arrive.

Long-form pages now include TL;DR summaries inspired by the Contentful blog, allowing readers to quickly understand the main points before deciding whether they need a deeper dive. The pattern reflects work our Brand Studio team has already done with Contentful AI Actions to support editorial workflows.

Together, these improvements make day-to-day information easier to discover and provide a stronger foundation for future enhancements.

Building the system behind the pages

Much of the most important work happened behind the scenes.

The team redesigned information architecture, established editorial ownership, migrated content, and built workflows that would help keep the portal accurate long after launch.

That meant deciding which content belonged in the MVP, identifying pages that needed rewriting, and assigning clear ownership across the organization. Authors also received training and guidance to help them contribute confidently.

The work expanded from designing pages to designing the content system itself: structured content, reusable models, clear governance, and workflows that scale as the company grows. Those are the same principles many Contentful customers use to manage complex digital experiences across teams, channels, and regions.

Being Customer Zero inside Contentful

The People Portal reflects an investment in employees and a recognition that the quality of internal digital experiences has a direct impact on how people work.

It also adds another example of how we think about being Customer Zero. We use Contentful to power customer-facing experiences, experiment with personalization, support AI-assisted editorial workflows, and build internal tools. The People Portal extends that approach to how employees find and manage information across the company.

The People Portal also shows what cross-functional collaboration can accomplish. Strategy, design, development, content, enablement, migration, editing, and training all played a role in bringing the project to life.

The result is a better People Portal and a practical example of using our own platform to address a real need inside the business.

What comes next?

Launching the MVP marks the beginning of the next phase.

The team will continue expanding the experience, inviting more contributors, introducing new content and features, and learning from employee feedback along the way.

Many of the best improvements are likely to come from employees themselves as they discover new ways to share knowledge and connect information across the company.

Enabling people to do their best work

Evolving the People Portal gave Contentful an opportunity to apply its own platform and content practices to an experience employees rely on every day.

By listening first, focusing on long-term content operations, and building with sustainability in mind, the team created a stronger foundation for trusted information and ongoing collaboration.

The project also extends our Customer Zero approach into the employee experience. When people can find the information they need quickly and confidently, they can spend more time doing their best work.

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