Overview of Communication Sites in SharePoint Online

By

Vignesh Ganesan | MCP, MCITP,MCTS

& ITIL V3

SharePoint & Office 365 Technical

Specialist

&

Jayanthi P | MCTS

SharePoint & Office 365 Developer

About the speakers :

• Vignesh Ganesan

• SharePoint & Office 365 Technical Specialist

• C Sharp Corner MVP

• Active Blogger on C Sharp corner , Collab 365 community & European SP Community

• www.vigneshsharepointthoughts.com

• Jayanthi P

• SharePoint & Office 365 Developer

• Specialized on SQL Server, Asp. Net, SharePoint, Office 365, Dynamics CRM & Power BI

Today’s Agenda :

Targeted Audiences

IT Admins Office 365

Admin & Dev

Other RolesFolks who are

new to Office

365

Evolution of SharePoint :

Department ‘about us’

Business unit news

Event ‘brochure’ site

SharePoint Communication Sites

How do I get access to Communication sites ?

Communication Site Designs:

1. Hero web Highlights important content (can add up to 5 items )

2. People web part Showcases notable members of the team

3. The Events web part Displays important upcoming events and lets you easily add them to your calendar

4.Microsoft Stream web part Presents a gallery of videos from a Stream channel.

Web Parts in communication sites (All designs)

5. News Web part keep your team in the loop as well as engage them with important or interesting stories

6. Document Web part To insert an Excel, Word, PowerPoint, or Visio document on the page

7. Image Gallery To share collections of pictures on a page

Web Parts in communication sites contd ….

Which web part belongs to which design template?

Showcase:

Blank:

1. Theming

Preview and apply custom styling and colors to your sites. IT administrators can manage the custom themes that are available to the organization.

2. Top navigation

Make it easy for visitors to get to important pages with the top navigation. Click Edit to add, arrange, and modify menus and submenus.

3.Change page layout

In addition to changing the order of web parts on a page, you can also change the page layout for any of the site designs

4. Site usage

How is your site doing? Review charts and reports that show daily unique user trends, most active readers, and page views. These insights are right at your fingertips. Click the upper-right gear and select Site usage.

5. Custom web parts

If you’re a developer, you can use the SharePoint Framework (SPFx) to create fast, modern, client-side user experiences and web parts that authors can add to their pages in communication sites.

What else do I get to do ?

Events

About us sites

Status updates & Product launches

Basic reference information

Benefits of using Communication Sites:

What’s lacking in Communication Sites ?

• Anyone who has access to create team sites can create Communication Sites .

• No review process on content

• Audience Targeting is missing

• SharePoint home will present news to

users depending on the Office Graph

Issue 1 : Lack of Governance Controls

• Difficult to extend communication sites with customizations currently.

• What you see is what you get

• Not as feature rich as the older

publishing model

• To extend you will still need to write

custom code using the new SharePoint Framework

• Lack of extensibility can be a good thing or a bad thing…

Issue 2 : Lack of Extensibility

• Communication sites are very image reliant

• Make sure that your content authors

understand that most items in communication sites need some sort of imagery

• For organizations where bandwidth is a concern this will be something you need to plan

Issue 3 : Image reliant

Pros and Cons:

• Site creation is fast

• Editing experience is much improved

• Highly recommended for static information such as Events, ‘About us’ sites , Basic reference information

• Mobile Responsive

• Easy to access from any device

• Easy to convey the information

• No specific license /plan required

• Hard to govern

• Limited news management

• No Audience Targeting feature

• No cross-site publishing

• Not recommended for an intranet homepage

• You can’t create a commn subsite .

• No master page

• Not recommended to use SP Designer

• No Navigation and Quick launch

• No PowerShell as of now

• What is a SharePoint communication site?

• Create a communication site in SharePoint Online

• Hero web part

• News web part

• Image Gallery web part

• Events web part

• People web part

• Add a page to a communication site

• Add or remove columns on a page

• Use the Quick Links web part

• Customize the Navigation

• PowerShell script for creating Communication sites (not supported by MS)

Want to learn more about Communication sites ?

• Introduction to Communication sites in SharePoint Online

• Different designs and what’s inside a communication site?

• Demo on creating Communication sites

• Demo on Customizing Communication sites

• Benefits of using Communication sites

• What's lacking in Communication sites?

• Pros and Cons

Recap

Conclusion:

Questions ?????????

Thanks for joining us today