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Microsoft SharePoint Blog
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Now Live – SharePoint home sites: a landing for your organization in the intelligent intranet

DC_Padur's avatar
DC_Padur
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
May 18, 2020

Last year, at the SharePoint Conference, we announced SharePoint home sites, the latest innovation for the intelligent intranet. And now, just when staying connected is key and communication is needed more than ever, SharePoint home sites feature is available to all customers.

 

 

A SharePoint home site is a communication site that is designed and designated to serve as the top portal in your organization. We like to call it a communication site with some extra superpowers. It is an organization’s front page; a carefully crafted collection of news, content, conversations and video to deliver an engaging experience that reflects an organization’s voice, priorities and brand. See the tools in action by watching the keynote presentation, and then try your hand at creating your own home sites. 

 

We cannot wait to see what you create! Install a template from the SharePoint look book to get a jump start on a beautiful and effective intranet.  

Published May 18, 2020
Version 1.0
Product Updates
sharepoint

26 Comments

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  • dhawalmehta's avatar
    dhawalmehta
    Copper Contributor
    May 20, 2020

    Nice to see the announcement though can you also confirm if once we set this site as a home site using the PowerShell command. Will it also going to change the navigation from office.com tile of SharePoint to this site or not? because after setting our root communication site i still see the URL as <Domainname.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/sharepoint.aspx> which i would expect as the home site.

     

    Or am i missing something.

     

    Thanks,

    Dhawal

  • Daniel Westerdale's avatar
    Daniel Westerdale
    Iron Contributor
    May 19, 2020

    One thing to note is the Home (communication) sites are  rollout automatically to new tenants such as the developer tenant I created last month. Tenants created before April 2019 are more likely to have a classic team site in place at the tenant root level. In which case, you will need to to perform a https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/modern-root-site with either an existing communication site, or one created via the Lookbook as suggested by DC_Padur  . 

  • DC_Padur's avatar
    DC_Padur
    Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
    May 18, 2020

    Great question Kevin ! We are exploring many more ways of having a unique treatment for a Home site. What would you like to see ?

  • kevinmckeown8's avatar
    kevinmckeown8
    Iron Contributor
    May 18, 2020

    How is this different from a regular Communication site?

     

    Is it just that these three specific functionalities will be enabled when you set a site as a Home site?

     

    • It's easily accessible from the SharePoint mobile app for Android and iOS. All users that have access to the home site will see a home button on the Find tab of the mobile app. Being communication sites, home sites are designed to be mobile friendly from the start.

    • Search for the site is scoped to all sites within the organization. Having a great search experience is critical for the success of the home site. 

    • The site is automatically set up as an organization news site. (Although you can have only one home site, you can have multiple organization news sites.)

    Are there plans for additional features or functionality that will further distinguish a Home site from a regular Communication site?