My presentation on SharePoint Saturday Helsinki 2018 on Modern News Publishing in SharePoint Online. Topics covered are Team Sites vs Communication Sites, Site Themes and the brand new Site Designs

1. Modern News Publishing with SharePoint
@maarteneekels

2. Thank you to our sponsors!

3. Maarten Eekels
20+ yrs in IT, 13 yrs in SharePoint
CTO Portiva
DIWUG board member
Speaker, vlogger
Contact
meekels@portiva.nl
www.eekels.net

4. Agenda
• A brief history
• Team sites vs Communication sites
• News publishing
• Mobile experience
• Branding options
• Site designs
• Roadmap

5. Publishing pages

6. Team sites vs Communication sites
Communication sitesTeam sites
Department
Team
Project
Extranet (Partner, Customer)
Committee (Planning, Executive)
Initiative, campaign or event
Share work with organization
Community of practice or interest
Training and policies
Updates and reports

7. DEMO
Communication sites

8. Why is branding of your intranet important?
Consistency in your
company brand –
thoughts and feelings
about company and
culture, sense of
community
01
Represents trust –
gives users
confidence, sense of
solid foundation
02
Define objectives –
colouring and fonts
suggest work style,
sense of expectations
03

9. What makes up an intranet brand?
• Colours / theming
• Content
• Intranet name
• Logos
• Navigation
• Page designs

10. Custom site
theming
PowerShell management support
(6906.1200):
https://aka.ms/spsitetheming
Theme builder tool:
https://aka.ms/spthemebuilder

11. DEMO
Branding

12. Custom site designs
Site Scripts - Actions
• Create List
• Add Column Formatting
• Apply Theme
• Add to Navigation
• Set Site Logo
• Trigger Flow
• Join Site to Hub
• Create Page
• Enable External Access
Execute Site
Design

13. DEMO
Site designs

14. Tip #1
When the design execution
panel keeps “Initializing” 
Check if Site Scripts actually
exist
Get-SPOSiteDesign
Get-SPOSiteScript

15. Tip #2
The PowerShell module does NOT
support Update cmdlets
The REST API however DOES
support Update commands:
• UpdateSiteScript
• UpdateSiteDesign
REST API support:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/
declarative-customization/site-design-rest-api
var updated_site_script =
{
"$schema": "schema.json",
"actions": [
{
"verb": "applyTheme",
"themeName": “SharePoint Saturday"
}
],
"bindata": { },
"version": 2
};
RestRequest("/_api/Microsoft.Sharepoint.Utilities.
WebTemplateExtensions.SiteScriptUtility.UpdateSiteScript",
{updateInfo:{
Id:"07702c07-0485-426f-b710-4704241caad9",
Title:"New SharePoint Saturday theme",
Description:"Updated SPS site script",
Version: 2,
Content: JSON.stringify(updated_site_script)}});

16. Tip #3
Apply Site Design to default site
templates  Use the –IsDefault
parameter
PowerShell management support (7206.1200):
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/declarative-customization/site-design-powershell

17. ROADMAP

18. Hub sites
• Brings together related
team sites and
communication sites
• Roll up of news and site
activity
• Search across connected
sites for content
• Cross-site navigation
• Consistent look-and-feel
across sites
• Admins create, site
owners adopt and use

19. Hub sites

20. Thank you!
bit.ly/spshel2018
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