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10/10/2017

Communication Sites in SharePoint Online

Explore the SharePoint © 2017 All rights reserved Page 1 of 21

Contents About the eBook ........................................................................................................................................... 2

About Me ...................................................................................................................................................... 2

Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 3

What is Communication Site? ....................................................................................................................... 3

How to Create Communication Site? ............................................................................................................ 3

Communication Site Designs ........................................................................................................................ 5

Topic design explained .................................................................................................................................. 5

NEW Hero web part .................................................................................................................................. 8

News web part .......................................................................................................................................... 8

NEW Events web part ............................................................................................................................... 8

Quick links ................................................................................................................................................. 9

Documents web part ................................................................................................................................ 9

NEW People web part ............................................................................................................................... 9

NEW Comments on Page ........................................................................................................................ 10

Easy Page Layouts (finally!) ..................................................................................................................... 10

Top Navigation changes .......................................................................................................................... 11

NEW “See all” pages ............................................................................................................................... 11

NEW Quick Chart..................................................................................................................................... 11

NEW GIF support ..................................................................................................................................... 12

NEW Bing Maps ....................................................................................................................................... 13

Power BI Integration ............................................................................................................................... 13

Microsoft Stream .................................................................................................................................... 14

NEW Document Library/ List Preview ..................................................................................................... 14

Yammer integration ................................................................................................................................ 15

Share news via email............................................................................................................................... 15

Set Focal Point......................................................................................................................................... 16

Consume, create and connect from your mobile device via the SharePoint apps ................................. 17

Modern Page Editing ............................................................................................................................... 19

Showcase Design ......................................................................................................................................... 19

Blank Design Explained ............................................................................................................................... 21

See Also ....................................................................................................................................................... 21

http://sharepoint-works.blogspot.com/


About the eBook This eBook is provided "as is". The information and views expressed in this eBook, including URL and other

web site references, may change without notice. You assume the entire risk of use.

This eBook does not provide you with legal rights to the ownership of a Microsoft product, but just the

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I make sure that whatever content I write is helpful to my reader. All content provided on this blog is for

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owner will not be held responsible for any errors or omissions in the information provided on the blog,

nor for the availability of this information. You can copy and use this whitepaper for your projects, and

other needs.

Maruthachalam Krishnamurthy, Explore the SharePoint © 2017 All rights reserved.

About Me Maruthachalam is a SharePoint Consultant in a leading software company and have expertise in

SharePoint Online (Office 365), SharePoint 2013, SharePoint Migration, SSRS Integration with SharePoint,

Power BI, MSBI, MCTS in SharePoint 2010 and .Net Passionate technologist, likes blogging, cooking,

listening to music, reading books, and chatting with friends. Busy bee. Pretty much sums me up!

Thanks for reading!!!

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Introduction In this year SharePoint Virtual Summit, Microsoft announced several improvements to SharePoint Online

and One Drive. One of the important and interesting additions is new “Communication Sites”

Microsoft says: "Reach your audience via SharePoint Communications Site”

In this article, we will learn about what is new about it? How to create it and how does it work? Did we

get something newly added to SharePoint Online? Are we really looking at something innovative?

What is Communication Site? Communication site is like Team Site in SharePoint site that anyone can create in the organization from

SharePoint Home (it is available only in Office 365 and not in on premise environment). So, this is for

internal users of organization.

Communication sites are beautiful, dynamic sites that let you reach a broad internal audience, and that

appear great on the web, in the SharePoint mobile app, on PC and of course on Mac.

How to Create Communication Site? From home page of SharePoint site collection -> click on the app launcher -> click SharePoint -> just click

Create Site (if you don’t see this option then your self-service site creation is not enabled for your ID) as

shown below:


https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/SharePoint-Blog/Reach-your-audience-via-SharePoint-communication-sites-in-Office/ba-p/70079


If you didn’t get this option, you may have to change the settings in Admin Center -> Settings ->

Organization Profile as shown below

For more information of standard and first release options in Office 365, check out this information from

Microsoft

Note: It took just 10 minutes for me to get the updates to my ID after enabling this option. Way to go

Microsoft!! Sometimes it may take few hours or overnight to update/assign new features to your ID. Also,

noted how fast it creates these sites. It just took 15 seconds in our tenant which is very fast!

Communication Site Designs There are three types of design available in Communication Site:

Topic

Showcase

Blank

First two types are pre-configured with some web parts by default and the blank one is to start from the

scratch.

Topic design explained Use the Topic design option when you have a lot of information to share, such as news, events and further

updates with good images which describe the information.

A site collection created using "Topic" design which is shown below:


https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Set-up-the-Standard-or-First-Release-options-in-Office-365-3b3adfa4-1777-4ff0-b606-fb8732101f47?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US&fromAR=1


Following are the list of web parts (some NEW) or the changes made to this site collection or you will

observe in this page:



NEW Hero web part This is a new web part which has tiles with various layouts available to show the highlights of the site. You

can embed an image, link to the external content. We can say there is no need to create a custom news

slider/carousel Just configure this web part!!

News web part This is existing web part where you can add images, link to the SharePoint pages with content and in side

by side layout. Have added few images, content from Microsoft which is shown below:

NEW Events web part This web part shows the upcoming events. It's not new, but it just the good old Calendar list but displays

in a different view in the home page as shown below:



Quick links This web part aggregates quick links to documents, pages or to external URLs. This web part is empty

which is not visible upon site creation but will show up once customized as shown below:

Documents web part An existing web part pre-configured to show 10 items of the current site’s document library, in a card-

style layout.

NEW People web part This web part is empty when the page is added. You can add the people to contact or someone who is

related to that page or team members, etc. This is linked to Delve profile.



NEW Comments on Page Each news article and page can have its own set of comments. So, commenting on page is possible now.

Disabling comments to the page is also available. Comments can be switched OFF/ON with the below

option shown below:

Easy Page Layouts (finally!) Now with communication sites, you can use a variety of multi-column section layouts on your pages, to

arrange information side-by-side. Click on edit page to view the page authoring toolbox. It has new Section

layout choices.



I personally think this is one of the best features newly added. This will help to have multiple layouts on

the same page and it is easy to create as well - Just in clicks. This will help the content editors/authors to

create pages in SharePoint easily than before.

Top Navigation changes New way to edit the site links, name and title from the page without navigating to other pages as shown

below:

NEW “See all” pages When there is more content than can be shown within the first view the Highlighted content and Site

activity web parts, you can click See all to go to a full-page experience to see all the content and activity.

NEW Quick Chart As the name suggests, this web part allows to add a chart quickly and represent your data in either bar or

pie chart. Up to 12 data can be added which is allowable limit now. I am sure MS will add other chart types

soon.

Also, this is not a web part where you connect the data, show real time results but this is a web part which

allows the content authors or power users to visualize the data quickly.



NEW GIF support When you add an Image web part into a news article or page, you can now include animated GIFs in

your layout.



NEW Bing Maps With the Bing Maps web part, you can display a place / address and pin the location as shown below.

This has Road, Street and Aerial views like normal Bing Maps.

c

Power BI Integration Bring in interactive reports using the Power BI web part, display reports and dashboards in a single click.



Microsoft Stream With the Stream web part, you can display a video from Microsoft Stream directly on your site. Screenshot

at the end of Topic Design explanation

NEW Document Library/ List Preview As the name suggests, both will display the preview of Document Library and List respectively. It is like

List view web part but we have quick options to limit the items displayed. It has Auto Size, Small (5 items),

Medium (15 items) and Large (30 items) display options. It also has "see all" option to view all items.



Yammer integration It is now possible to use the Yammer web part for broad discussion scenarios as well as targeted responses

to engage your viewers on the message and content on the page.

Share news via email When you share news via email from a communication site, it’s not just a blue link but a visual, informative

preview that adds context to both the email and the news article itself.

Within the email, the recipients will see a thumbnail, title, description and an optional message from the

sender.



Set Focal Point In the modern UI, a site page has a top image which was blank previously. Now, Microsoft has added a

nice touch to this page header; a way to add an image and re position the focus on the image. In edit

mode, you'll find a "Set focal point" button on the top right.



Consume, create and connect from your mobile device via the SharePoint apps It’s easy to access, engage with and create content for communication sites from any device. The full site,

pages, news, navigation, search and more are native view able, functional and engaging. Almost you can

do everything using mobile app

You can download the SharePoint mobiles apps for Windows, iOS and Android. Learn more about the

SharePoint mobile app for iOS, SharePoint mobile app for Android and SharePoint app for Windows 10

Mobile.


https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/sharepoint/9nblggh510hb

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/microsoft-sharepoint/id1091505266?mt=8

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.sharepoint&hl=en


I have created a page and add some of this web parts/features which looks as shown below (Some images,

Videos embedded from Microsoft sites, blogs, etc.):



Modern Page Editing New page layouts available when you create a page:

Showcase Design Use the Showcase design option to feature a product, team or event using photos or images. This site is

more simplistic. The home page contains only the new Hero web part and a classic Image gallery web part

in the home page.

Its purpose is to hold information that is more "static". Like the description suggests, it's a perfect layout

to present a product, a team or an event.



Blank Design Explained Use a blank site and to piece together your own vision for a communication site to share information of

you are choosing.

Tons of cool features!!! We will explore more in the forthcoming articles as well. Please free to

comment your valuable feedback.

See Also SharePoint Online Modern Team Sites

SharePoint Online Differences between Communication and Modern Team Sites


https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/40067.sharepoint-online-modern-team-sites.aspx

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/40233.sharepoint-online-differences-between-communication-and-modern-team-sites.aspx