Forum Discussion
SharePoint Online Custom Master Page
You definately could use Visual Studio to create a custom Master Page so that you can utilize version control / source control. You should however consider your approach to branding carefully. In general custom Master Pages should be avoided...
Please read about the latest guidance in the articles below:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/solution-guidance/portal-branding
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/solution-guidance/branding-and-site-provisioning-solutions-for-sharepoint
Have you considered making use of Communication Sites in SharePoint Online? These type of sites are generally considerd to be the successor to traditional Publishing Sites
Thank you for the response.
I understand I should avoid custom master page route and I would also want to stick to the recommendation.
Please review the attached screenshot and the site https://www.parlament.ch/en (The Swiss Parliament). I want to build similar thing.
Basically, in Office 365 (E3 license), I want custom branding with webparts that pull information from various SharePoint Apps (such as Delve, PowerApps, Yammer, Planner) and few more webparts that contain news, events, rollup data from sharepoint etc...
I can build SharePoint Addins to pull data from various SharePoint Apps and create webparts to get data from within sharepoint.
The only question that remain is about branding the SharePoint landing page such that it only contains things that I want to expose to the users and not other things such as Apps launcher, Ribbon, etc..
I couldn't find anything that specific in the recommendation links you sent. Any suggestions on sticking to the recommendation and brand SharePoint similar to the screenshot/Swiss Parliament website?
Please advise.
Users expect the App Launcher to be present, i would not recommend trying to hide it or anything on the Office Suite Bar. You cannot anticipate what a user wants to do next and trying to force them to go on a specific path will be huge waste of time and effort.
I recommend thinking about this a little differently. Office 365 is a huge set of apps that is constantly changing, your app/intranet is going to be just one more of those apps. You will be more successful if you design your content to work within the Office 365 suite provided by MS than if you try to replace what is already there.