Forum Discussion
Communication Site vs Team Site
As has been said already, Communication Site are readymade from the get go for sharing information. While only two designs are offered currently out of the box, this will expand over time. For me, Communication Sites are a convenient way for broadcasting information where as Team Sites are more a collaboration space. Here were some example uses of Communication Site from the AMA. There is some overlap of course.
Here was SusanHanley explanation, which expands on this:
"Team sites are focused on Collaboration and backed by Office 365 Groups. Communication sites are focused on broadcasting or communicating a message to a wide audience. In a team site, most users contribute content. In a Communication site, typically there are a small number of users and a large number of readers and the security groups are the more traditional SharePoint groups. Just like team sites and publishing sites previously, you want to chose the type of template that fits your business purpose."
Claudia Lake - Following on from your Communication Sites Help Documentation post, which inspired me to http://bit.ly/SPCommSites by the way, this might be a good topic to cover officially. Either in the https://support.office.com/en-us/article/What-is-a-SharePoint-communication-site-94a33429-e580-45c3-a090-5512a8070732 page or perhaps in a dedicated help page, just a thought anyway!
Thanks for everyone's reply. Let me see if I can summarize. The only current difference between a Team site vs a Communication site is 1) how Microsoft is positioning them:
- Team site- most users contribute content
- Communication site- typically there are a small number of users and a large number of readers
2) pre-made Communication site page templates, and 3) Office 365 doesn't automagically create other tools with Communication sites (i.e. planner, group, OneNote...etc).
BUT, I'm struggling to see the difference from a features perspective. For example, can you do everything on a team site that you can do on a communication site and vise versa? I would love to know if the feature pariety between the two are always going to be there or are they on two parallel tracks that are eventually going to diverge to create their own unique use-cases, from a features perspective. Mark-Kashman Are there going to be Communication site exclusive features in the future? Is that the vision? Because right now there are none other than the pre-made templates that can still be built using a Team site. Or said another way, if we already have a Team site whose purpose aligns with the positioning of a Communication site, will we wish we should have switched to a Communication site in the future?