SharePoint communication sites offer a fast and simple way to set up beautiful pages for internal communication, using content blocks from various sources. Soon after the roll-out for first-release customers, the question was asked whether this is Microsoft’s answer to the growing demand of ready-to-go intranet solutions.
Microsoft’s views on communication sites
Microsoft explained Communication sites during the SharePoint virtual summit 2017. In the accompanying post, the company shares it’s views on the relation between communication sites and ‘classic’ intranet sites.
“Q: How do communication sites compare to intranet sites based on the classic SharePoint publishing infrastructure?
A: Communication sites are complimentary to the sites and portals you’ve built using the SharePoint publishing infrastructure. The publishing infrastructure continues to be supported both on-premises and online. Communication sites are out-of-box sites you can use for internal campaigns, reports, product launches, and other scenarios that address broad audiences across the organization. Communication sites are easy to create: they require no code or design expertise. Simply point-and-click to add pages and parts. Communication sites are mobile-ready by default, looking great across browsers and devices, and in the SharePoint mobile app. For scenarios that go beyond those supported by communication sites today, Microsoft’s vibrant partner community has great expertise and offers services and tools that can help you build your mobile, intelligent intranet with SharePoint in Office 365.”
So Microsoft does not position the communication sites as a complete intranet solution, but rather as a complementary tool which you can use to quickly create interactive pages without any programming knowledge. Communication pages can be used to quickly set up internal campaigns, reports and product launches, among other purposes.
Our views on communication sites
The arrival of communication sites is, without a doubt, a positive development for all SharePoint users. Everyone, even non-programmers, can now create appealing and interactive pages with content from various sources.
In addition to the ‘blank’ template, there are 2 communication site templates to choose from:
Topic: a template designed to share a large amount of information like news, events and other content. This template includes:
- Hero web part: Display up to 5 items with images, text and links.
- Events web part: Display upcoming events. This web part is not entirely new, it is a display web part for the existing SharePoint calendar list.
- News web part: A web part for displaying news items.
- Documents web part: A web part for displaying 10 items of the site’s document library.
- Quick links: A web part that collects links to documents, pages or external URLs.
- People web part: Used to add people for easy access to their profile information.
Showcase: a template designed to display more static information. For example, the showcase template can be used to showcase a product, team or event by using images. The showcase template is simpler and consists of the new hero web part and a classic image gallery web part.
Do you want more ready-to-go and flexible possibilities? You could go for an intranet solution by Involv:
- Integration with all Office 365 tools
- Extensive, ready-to-go and customizable designs
- Department and Team sites
- Customized applications
- 3rd party integrations
- Collaboration with external users
- FAQ – How do I
- My apps
- Upcoming birthdays
- Recent hires
- Internal Jobs
We will already start testing the possibilities of communication sites and how we can integrate these in Involv. Make sure to follow this blog for updates!
Tim Bogemans
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