Forum Discussion
Communication Site vs Team Site
Adding my frustration...
I find the choice between Team and Communication site to be increadibly confusing. We're just a small company who needs an intranet, plain and simple. When I created our company's site about 6-12 months ago, I used a Communication site. Why, I'm not sure. I think I needed a certain web part or something, though I'm not sure if I ended up using it.
Now I wanted to add the Planner Web Part, but for some reason that's exclusive to team sites. I guess I could move everything over (manually), but what about the Sharepoint document library I created? It doesn't seem I link to it from a team site. Was it wrong of me to use a communication site for the company's file server in the first place?
Oh pretty please give me a simple advise on what to use. Why can't we just have one single "Modern Site" template and then let users customize it to the way they like over time?
Agreed! I share the same frustration. As a part-time SharePoint Administrator I do not have the expertise to catch the implications of the terms and language used in the help texts and discussion forums on the topic. I also started out with a communication site because the main purpose was to broadcast information, only to find out the various limitations later. One by one.
I now think that if there is any level of user/guest contribution or permission management one should go for a team site!?!
The preconfigured design-template aspect of the team vs. communication site's initial setup is secondary to me. What I need is an overview of hard limitations in terms of web parts, permission management, user/guest grouping, navigation etc. Who would guess that it is not possible to implement a left side navigation bar in a communication site?
What are the things you can NOT do when you start out with a team site? Any?
I wrote this up as I was doing my testing. Biggest for me was communication sites don't allow guests.
And not having Planner.
What are the technical differences between a communication site and a team site?
- Communication sites don't have the option of creating a classic wiki style page that allows our old customizations from on-premise to work.
- Pages in a communication site can have a full width section that can contain an image or a hero webpart. Team sites only have a one column section, and it doesn't go the full width.
- Communication sites don't have an Office 365 group. Security is done with the standard SharePoint permissions groups. No guests allowed.
- Communication sites have no Planner, because there isn't a group. Though you could link to another groups Planner, but permissions would be tricky.
- Otherwise, webparts look the same.
- Since there isn't a left navigation column in a communication site, images in the top of pages or on a full width section bleed fully to the edge of the page.
- The first release of the Mega Menu will only work on communication sites. Same with the new footer.
- Thanks for that input, it's possibly the best summary I have read in months. I'm very intrigued with your comment regarding no guests on communication sites. I haven't found this to be a problem, at least not yet anyway I'm able to add guest users via AAD and then provision access to those guest users within SharePoint. admittedly I haven't tried this on a communication site at a site level permission as yet, only granular access to lists and libraries on a communication site.
- This is not all correct as of mid June 2019.
1) You can allow guest/external access to a comm's site via the SharePoint admin center.
2) While the quicklaunch is present in a modern SharePoint teams site, the page content will stretch to be full width like a Comm's site if the quicklaunch is emptied.
3) Yes you can not make classic style pages in a Comm's site
4) Yes there is no Planner plan linked as there is no 365 Group associated with a Comm's site
What I would like to know is if Microsoft intends to allow a 365 Group or (purple) Team to be associated with a Communications site.
The reason for this is to use the Comm's site's navigation and theme settings inside a Teams tab. This would enable a company to use Outlook and Teams exclusively, cutting down on jumps/jolts in interface for the end users.Peter Vincent #2 is not entirely correct. Yes if you remove the quick launch the page will stretch to the left but the main content area of a modern page in a team site is limited in width and will not fully stretch to the right like a page in a communications site would.
Peter Vincent wrote:
2) While the quicklaunch is present in a modern SharePoint teams site, the page content will stretch to be full width like a Comm's site if the quicklaunch is emptied.
