Slides used on my webinar on SharePoint Online Communication on Aug 12th,2017

1. 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

2. 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

3. Today’s Agenda :

4. Targeted Audiences
IT Admins Office 365
Admin & Dev
Other RolesFolks who are
new to Office
365

5. Evolution of SharePoint :

6.  Department ‘about us’
 Business unit news
 Event ‘brochure’ site
SharePoint Communication Sites

7. How do I get access to Communication sites ?

8. Communication Site Designs:

10. 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)

11. 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 ….

12. Which web part belongs to which design template?

13. Showcase:

14. Blank:

15. 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 ?

17. Events
About us sites
Status updates & Product launches
Basic reference information
Benefits of using Communication Sites:

18. What’s lacking in Communication Sites ?

19. • 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

20. • 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

21. • 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

22. 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

23. • 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 ?

24. • 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

25. Conclusion:

26. Questions ?????????
Thanks for joining us today