As business goals and team structures evolve, so too must your sites and the content that lives within them. Ideas must flourish and grow, not become rigid or stale. SharePoint hub sites bring flexible, dynamic building blocks to your company intranet – connecting collaboration and communication. Associating sites together in a hub site enhances discovery and engagement with content, while creating a complete and consistent representation of your project, department or region.
Microsoft first disclosed SharePoint hub sites during Ignite 2017. And today, we are pleased to announce that they are now rolling out to Targeted Release customers in Office 365. We are encouraged by early adopter feedback and can’t wait for every customer to use and adopt them.
SharePoint hub sites bring the following new capabilities to you and your intranet:
- Cross-site navigation – increase visibility of and navigation among associated sites
- Content rollup – read aggregated news and discover related site activities
- Consistent look-and-feel – establish a common theme to improve visitor awareness of connected sites
- Scoped search – focus on finding content that resides within the hub site’s associated sites
The Contoso Travel HR communication shown here as a part of the HR hub site, Web view on the left, within the SharePoint mobile app on the right.
Hub sites support good governance, giving admins a growth framework to maintain relationships between sites over time. They are easy for admins to establish and bring efficiencies for people who work inside and across the sites on a day-to-day basis. And when managing change within the business, it is easy to move a site from one hub site to another.
Getting started with SharePoint hub sites in Office 365
You can convert an existing communication site or modern team time into a hub site, or you can start with a brand-new modern site. We recommend selecting a communication site as the hub site. You can associate multiple team sites and communication sites to model and promote an intranet that reflects the way your people organize. It is easy for admins to create one or more hub sites. After a hub site is created, approved site owners can associate existing team sites and communication sites with the hub site.
Let’s dig into the details.
Use the SharePoint Online Management Shell to establish your hub sites
Admins, you are the enablers. And the SharePoint Online Management Shell (aka, PowerShell for SharePoint in Office 365) is your enabling tool of choice.
The PowerShell cmdlet you’ll want to get most familiar with is: Register-SPOHubSite https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/HR (where HR URL is the full-path address of the existing site that you want to convert into a hub site). You then will assign a unique security group to designate approved site owners that can associate sites to this new hub. You simply create a mail-enabled security group and add the users. You then run an additional PowerShell command to give that group permissions to associate their sites to the hub site.
Note: You must be a SharePoint administrator or above in Office 365 to create SharePoint hub sites. Site owners, however, can associate a SharePoint site with a hub site that already exists.
Learn more how admins create and manage hub sites.
Associating a site under a hub site
Once a hub site is established, it’s then a two-click process to associate to the hub site.
As the site owner, go to the site you want to have associated to the hub site. Click Settings (gear icon) > Site information > hub site association and select the desired hub. You’ll only see the hubs you have permission to associate to. And then click Save. You will see the hub navigation appear above. The site itself will inherit the hub theme, and news and activities will begin to flow up to the hub site home page – along with a search crawl of content for any site associated to the hub site. And at any time, per a reorg or change in business direction, you can easily move sites between hub sites. This is the power of a dynamic intranet, one that can change and adapt with the ebb and flow of your ever-changing business landscape. Note: individual sites can only be associated to one hub site at a time.
Site owners can associate an existing team site or communication site with a hub site.
Note: Sites associated with a SharePoint hub site don't inherit the permissions of the hub site or any other sites associated with it. Each site, including the hub site, will retain their current permission settings. And as easy as it is to associate a site to a hub site, you, too, can dissaciate from one.
Learn more how to associate and dissociate your sites to and from hub sites.
Design your layout and choose you theme
Once the hub site has been established, you’ll then want to further set it up and refine it for that organization -- so the hub site carries the right name and logo, the preferred navigation elements, a preferred theme, and the desired layout for news, sites and highlighted content. And all will re-flow and present beautifully within the SharePoint mobile apps.
The SharePoint mobile apps will display hub sites, and their pages, news, and content, with smooth navigation between associated sites and the scoped search experience. Find what you need on the go and get going! Install or update the SharePoint mobile app today: aka.ms/getSPmobile.
Review best practices for setting up your hub site.
Up next
To learn more about creating, using and benefitting from SharePoint hub sites, please join us in one or all these related upcoming events:
- AMA | “SharePoint hub sites AMA” within the Microsoft Tech Community - the SharePoint product team will be online for an hour of Q&A and feedback.
- WHEN | Friday, March 23rd, 2018 from 9am – 10am PT (5pm – 6pm UTC)
- Review all the Q&A from the AMA event (now archived)
- WEBINAR ON-DEMAND | “Intranet strategy and planning with SharePoint hub sites & Office 365” – In this insightful LIVE Show, Andy Talbot joined Mark Kashman (senior product manager from the SharePoint team), Sue Hanley (SharePoint Consultant (MVP)) and Sam Marshall (ClearBox Consulting – owner) for the launch and strategic overview of SharePoint hub sites. The first segment of the webinar provides a detailed view into the core scenarios and capabilities of SharePoint hub sites, plus demo the user and admin experiences when working in and with hub sites. The second segment is devoted to a real-world discussion to uncover best practices, insights, and gotchas for decision makers & intranet-owners as you prepare to transform where you are and where you want to be! See a ton and take a bunch of notes to accelerate your digital workplace of now.
- WHEN | Wednesday, March 28st, 2018, 8am – 9am PT (5pm – 6pm UTC)
- ON-DEMAND NOW (login in to view, signup is free)
- BIG EVENT | SharePoint Conference North America (#SPC18) - This is a premier opportunity to hear experts from Microsoft and around the world share their experience and knowledge. We will share best practices and future enhancements across the whole of SharePoint and related technologies – including what’s coming next for hub sites.
- 100+ Microsoft & MVP speakers, 160+ sessions, 1 big keynote with Jeff Teper (CVP) and 1 giant SharePint.
- WHEN | May 21-23 – Las Vegas, NV
- Watch the keynote (now on-demand; register to watch for free): https://aka.ms/watch/SPVS).
- GUIDANCE | SharePoint hub sites planning guide https://aka.ms/PlanningSPhubsites
SharePoint hub sites are designed to extend the reach of your information and to bolster the connective tissue each organization brings across the company. We are on this intranet journey through Web’space and time together. And we’re just getting started. (set your phasers to “fun”)
We are always open to feedback via UserVoice and continued dialog in the SharePoint community in the Microsoft Tech Community —and an eye on your tweets to @SharePoint. Let us know.
—Mark Kashman, senior product manager for the SharePoint team
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: When can I expect to be able to create SharePoint hub sites in my Office 365 environment?
UPDATED [5.7.2018] | A: SharePoint hub sites have now been rolled out to 100% worldwide in Office 365, including enterprise, education and government customers. Also, the SharePoint mobile apps have been updated in the production versions to fully support them.
Q: Can I associate one SharePoint hub site to another hub site?
A: No, you won't be able to associate a SharePoint hub site to another hub site.
Q: Can a team site or a communication site be associated to more than one SharePoint hub site?
A: No. It will only be possible to associate a site to one hub site at a time. It is possible to link to various non-associated sites in the top navigation. And it will be possible, within seconds, to associate and/or disassociate a site as the business changes.
Q: Can a hub site replace my current organizational portal?
A: Hub sites are designed to let you dynamically organize closely related sites, bringing together similar projects, and binding related assets, and presenting common activity. Customers with portals that include customization beyond the web parts and extensions that SharePoint Framework currently supports are likely to continue using the SharePoint publishing infrastructure, which continues to be fully supported both in SharePoint Server on-premises and SharePoint Online.
Q: When should I use a team site, and when should I use a communication site?
A: Your SharePoint team site lets you share content, knowledge, news and apps with your group as collaborate on a project. A communication site lets you tell your story, share your work, and showcase your product across the organization.
P.S.
Extra credit for making it this far: a screenshot showing what a SharePoint team site when associated to a HR hub site:
P.S.S.
Thanks for finding out what all the hub hub hub site hubbub is all about! :)
P.S.S.S.
[Small update: we have our winner. Congrats, Pavan! And thanks all for playing]
First person to tweet the exact sentence below in quotes to me (@mkashman) and @SharePoint gets a free SWAG combo kit – a SharePoint Monkey, a Microsoft Graph hat, a Microsoft pen and a pair of SharePoint socks. GO!
“My heart beats a mighty lub’dub over all the hubbub and the Hubba hub hub of #SharePoint hub sites! @mkashman @SharePoint”
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