This presentation gives an overview of SharePoint Online Communication sites and how they compare to the older Publishing Site model. It also goes over Hub sites.

1. Introduction to SharePoint
Communication Sites
Savvy Technical Solutions

2. Becky Bertram
Savvy Technical Solutions
Twitter: @beckybertram
• Owner of STS based in St. Louis, MO
• SharePoint MVP since 2007
• Author of several MS exams
• Author of Wrox book on SharePoint
development
• President of St. Louis SharePoint User Group
• Wife and mother of 3 kids, 6 and under
Contact Details:

3. Agenda
• Governance
• Publishing Sites
• The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
• Communication Sites
• Creation
• Section Layouts and Web Parts
• What’s Next
• Hub Sites
• Page, News, and Web Part Improvements
• The Last Word

4. Understanding the Governance
Spectrum
Low vs High Control and SharePoint

5. What is Governance?
• Managing change
• Greater control = less flexibility

6. More control Less control
Public
site
Intranet
site
Department
site
Department
collaboration
App-specific
/cross
departmental
collaboration
Project Ad-hoc

7. More control Less control
Public
site
Intranet
site
Department
site
Department
collaboration
App-specific
/cross
departmental
collaboration
Project Ad-hoc
Outward
Communication
Internal
collaboration

8. More control Less control
Public
site
Intranet
site
Department
site
Department
collaboration
App-specific
/cross
departmental
collaboration
Project Ad-hoc
Publishing site Team site Office Team

9. Publishing Sites
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

10. Brief History of Publishing
• Publishing industry: content + workflow
• MS: buys Encompass in 2001, becomes MS
CMS
• MS CMS rolled into MOSS (SharePoint 2007)

11. The Good
• Highly branded
• Great for communicating web content
• Built-in approval workflow

12. The Bad
• Not mobile friendly unless mobile-friendly
master page and CSS implemented
• Approval workflow part of deprecated
SharePoint 2010 WWF approach
• No form of mobile notification or
dissemination of news

13. The Ugly
• Calendars don’t work with Exchange
• SharePoint entities still not mobile-friendly
inside custom, adaptive designs

14. Communication Sites
Overview, Creation, Hero Web Part

15. Communication Site Overview
• Publish news and events
• Mobile-friendly/adaptive design (“Modern” page
design)
• News can be published to mobile devices via
SharePoint app
• Customizable UI without custom master page or CSS

16. Creating a Communication Site
• Does not create Office 365 Group BUT
• User must have permission to create a Group
if they want to create a Communication Site
• Create from SharePoint page

17. Template Options
• Topic to share information such as news,
events, and other content.
• Showcase to use photos or images to
showcase a product, team, or event.
• Blank to create your own design.

19. Hero Web Part
• Tile or Stacked
• Customizable to determine number of tiles
or “layers” (stacked view)
• Topic site uses tiles, Showcase uses stacked

20. Hero Web Part
• Every tile or layer requires a title and URL which is activated when the
item is clicked
• You can choose a link from:
• Recent Location
• Browse (SharePoint)
• Upload
• Link
• You must supply a title but can choose to show or hide the title
• You can let SharePoint auto-detect the image or you can manually
supply one
• For tile layout, you can choose “color only”
• You can choose a “call to action” text (any layer in stacked or just
largest tile in tile layout)

21. Demo
Creating a Communication Site and Editing the Hero Web Part

22. Section Layouts and Additional
Web Parts
SharePoint Calendar, Documents, Quick Links, People Profiles

23. Section Layouts
Similar to page layouts, these allow content to be displayed
in adaptive columns, not just sequentially from top to
bottom. Options include:
• One column
• Two columns
• Three Columns
• One-third left columns
• One-third right column
• Full-width column

24. News
• Surfaces the latest news pages from the current site
• Display options:
• Top Story
• List
• Side by Side

25. Events
• Uses an underlying
SharePoint calendar list
• Displays events with an
“Add to My Calendar” link
• Notice: no O365 Group so
no Exchange calendar
• There is a Group
Calendar web part

26. Documents
• Set filter properties
• Location
• Type
• Library type
• Content type
• Document type
• Keyword filter
• Sort
• Set display properties
• Cards
• List
• Carousel
• Film Strip

27. Additional Web Parts
Other web parts for “modern” pages available as well, such as:
• Image
• Text
• Yammer Feed
• List
• Link
• Embed
• File Viewer
• Map
• Video
• People

28. Demo
Configuring Section Layouts and Additional Web Parts

29. What’s Next
SharePoint Calendar, Documents, Quick Links, People Profiles

30. Hub Sites
Ability to group sites
• Common theme, logo, navigation
“Roll up” or aggregate information from member sites (Team or
Communication)
• News
• Activity feed
• Scoped search

31. Additional Improvements
• Add news to navigation
• Push news stories to SharePoint page and mobile
app, including mobile notifications
• Create e-mail digest of recent news stories
• Page animation (“Paralax”)
• More and improved web parts

32. Demo
What’s Next

33. Last Word
But what about Publishing sites?
According to Mark Kashman, product manager at Microsoft:
Q: Can a hub site replace my current organizational portal?
A: Hub sites are designed to let you dynamically organize closely related sites, bringing together
similar projects, and binding related assets, and presenting common activity. Customers with
portals that include customization beyond the web parts and extensions that SharePoint
Framework currently supports are likely to continue using the SharePoint publishing
infrastructure, which continues to be fully supported both in SharePoint Server on-premises and
SharePoint Online.
“
”

34. Questions?