Office 365 is now revisiting the way information circulates into an organization by offering a new and easy way to create great looking sites/pages. Communication sites are the latest addition the SharePoint family. How do they work? What are they good for? What's the difference between these sites and existing publishing sites? In this session, we should answer those questions by going into a detailed analysis of their features and functionalities.

1. DEEP DIVE INTO COMMUNICATION SITES
Louis-Philippe Vallée
November 7th 2017
Product manager at Sharegate

2. @valleelp
@Valleelp
https://en.share-gate.com/blog
SHAREGATE | PRODUCT MANAGER | SPEAKER
Louis-philippe
Vallee

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WE ARE HERE
BECAUSE
IT HAPPENED

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MICROSOFT
DID IT
AGAIN

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THEY RELEASED
A GAME
CHANGING
FEATURE

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COMMUNICATION SITES

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WHAT’S THAT?

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DON’T WORRY

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WE’RE
GOING TO
FIGURE IT
OUT
TOGHETER

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WHAT IT IS

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HOW IT WORKS

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IS IT AN INTRANET
OUT OF THE BOX?

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LIMITATIONS

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WHEN SHOULD I
USE IT?

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Before we begin let’s go
BACK IN TIME

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So you understand
our history

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First, there was the publishing portal

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And they made it better …

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And better …

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And search oriented
Cross site publishing:
« Create content in an
Authoring environment
and use it in one of your
SharePoint publishing
environments »

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SharePoint became the
MOST COMMON
LARGE ENTERPRISE
INTRANET SOLUTION

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WHAT ABOUT
TODAY?

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SHAREPOINT ONLINE PUBLISHING SITE

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NOTHING
HAS
CHANGED

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ANYTHING
BETTER TO
OFFER?

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COMMUNICATION SITE
perfect for internal cross-company campaigns, weekly and monthly
reports or status updates, product launches, events and more.

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WHAT IS IT?

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It’s actually a
SHAREPOINT
SITE

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That looks great on any device
. . . OUT OF THE BOX

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That is easy to create

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Helps broadcast
information to other
teams or to an entire
organization
to help you jumpstart getting your message out
fast, communication sites provide configurable
templates for the sites and pages within.

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LIKE A MICROSITE?

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YEAH,
WHY NOT?

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WHAT YOU GET

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Pre built designs

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Topic design
Hero web part
News web part
Events web part
Documents web part
Quick links
People web part

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Showcase design
Hero web part
Image gallery web part

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Blank design
No web part

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ARE YOU READY TO DIVE IN?

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LIVE
WALKTHROUGH

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IS IT AN
INTRANET?

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You tell me!
DOES IT OFFER
EVERYTHING
YOU NEED?

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LET’S PUT THE
QUESTION
ASIDE FOR A
MOMENT

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GIVE ME MORE
DETAILS ON THE NEW
STUFF IN A
COMMUNICATION SITE

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HOW DOES IT
WORK

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Hero webpart
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Use-the-Hero-web-part-d57f449b-19a0-4b0d-8ce3-be5866430645?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US
• Not every tile needs an image
• Each tile is a link, not an item
• History is not preserved
• It’s possible to re-order the tiles

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Event web part
• Events are stored in a sharepoint
calendar
• Links to a full event page
• Includes bing location integration
• Events don’t show in search
results

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People profile web part
• List of people cards from delve
• No editable properties

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COMING soon TO PEOPLE CARD :
LINKED IN
INTEGRATION

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Comments on page • Appear only after you've
published a first version
• NOT linked to Yammer or
teams
• Stored in the site page item
(in a column)
• You can delete your
comments but not edit
them

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THAT’S ALL?

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THE BEST PART
IS COMING

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MODERN
EDITING

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Flexible page layouts
Users now have the flexibility they need to present information
more efficiently, and the way THEY want to present it.

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COPY PASTE THAT ACTUALLY WORKS

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Set focal point

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IT’S LIKE
IMAGE RENDITIONS
BUT BETTER!

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Coming up for contributors

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OTHER THINGS
YOU
SHOULD KNOW

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NAVIGATION can have only 2 levels
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Customize-the-navigation-on-your-SharePoint-site-3cd61ae7-a9ed-4e1e-bf6d-4655f0bf25ca?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

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Global
navigation
Keep an eye out for
hub sites!

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WHO CAN
ACCESS YOUR
COMM SITE?

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Anyone it is shared with
Even external users

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Behind the scenes
A communication site is a standalone SharePoint site
It goes under the / sites managed path
It’s not associated with an Office 365 group
The site template is « Sitepagepublishing#0 »
But cannot be created through powershell yet

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The limitations
Pnp provisionning not supported yet (But will be)
Not available on prem
No metadata on pages (announced at Ignite)
Custom page layouts/content types not supported
No multilingual features
No approval flow
It’s not possible to make it your root site collection yet
Can’t activate publishing features (and vice versa?)

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WILL I BE ABLE TO
BRAND MY
COMMUNICATION
SITE?

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- OOTB site theming and branding
- Custom site themes and site designs
ANNOUNCED AT
IGNITE 2017

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SO IS IT AN
INTRANET ?

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COMING UP FOR
OWNERS AND
END USERS
AND MORE

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WHEN SHOULD WE USE A
COMMUNICATION SITE?

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Most often, a Communication
Site has a small number people
who have permission to author
content
and many more people who
only have permission to read
content.

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Possible scenarios
• Governance and Training for your intranet
• Travel team publishing guidelines about corporate travel
• Policies and procedures
• Micro-site for a new corporate initiative
• Resources for the sales team for a product or service
• Organizational achievements—summary or report of key
business metrics to highlight for the rest of the
organization
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3212834/enterprise-applications/what-to-choose-a-communication-or-team-site-in-sharepoint.html

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HOW DO YOU FEEL?

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THAT WAS EASY!

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Other references
Microsoft presenting Communication sites:
https://www.slideshare.net/markkashman/sharepoint-communications-sites-overview-presentation
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Communications-Sites-AMA/bd-p/CommunicationsSitesAMA
Microsoft vision on intranets:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/building-blocks-your-intranet-mark-kashman/
Customizing modern pages:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/pnp_articles/modern-experience-customizations-customize-pages
Roadmap presented at Ignite 2017:
https://en.share-gate.com/blog/microsoft-ignite-2017-takeaways-an-updated-sharepoint-roadmap

80. @valleelp
Thank you!
Follow me for
more @valleelp