Organize your intranet with SharePoint hub sites
Published Mar 21 2018 09:00 AM 159K Views
Microsoft

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.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.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.
  • 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:

SP-hub-sites_blog_003.png

 

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”

99 Comments
Microsoft

@Barbara Falchi, Thanks for using it, answers to your questions:

1. The cache should take at most 2 hours for changes to reflect. If you notice it taking longer, please let me know

2. On sharepoint home reflecting hubs, automatically adding associated sites to the nav and security trimming, will take it back to the team. Thanks for the feedback.

3. Can you provide me more details on what you mean by social bar?

Brass Contributor

Is it official that publishing sites will continue to work?. I see one of the faq about organization portal mentioning the same.

 

Regards,

Syed


@Mark Kashman wrote:

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.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.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.
  • WEBINAR | “Intranet strategy and planning with SharePoint hub sites & Office 365” – In this insightful LIVE Show, Andy Talbot will be joined by 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 will provide 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 will be 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! Get ready to 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)
    • REGISTER TODAY
  • 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
    • REGISTER TODAY. [this link saves you $50 at time of registration]
  • GUIDANCE | SharePoint intranet planning guide [coming soon]

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?

A: SharePoint hub sites will begin to roll out to Targeted Release customers starting late March 2018 and will be completed within 1 month. We are then targeting early May 2018 for complete worldwide rollout. You can track release progress on the public Office 365 Roadmap; note this link is filtered on “SharePoint” items.
Note: Anyone in Targeted Release (TR) can run the new hub sites PowerShell command (Register-SPOHubSite) -- and it does what it needs to do, and will retain the command on that site -- yet, if your tenant has not received the additional service-side update we are rolling out, then you won't see the new capabilities show up on the existing site you are working to convert to a hub site. We start at 10% of TR, and will quickly move to 100% TR within ~ one week.

 

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:

SP-hub-sites_blog_003.png

 

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”


 

Copper Contributor

when you say COMING SOON on the GUIDANCE | SharePoint intranet planning guide how soon do you mean? Would love to see the ideas and potentially some road map on moving forward with the new hub site functionality.

Brass Contributor

Hi  @Melissa Torres, thanks for your reply.

Tht's what I mean for social bar:

 

SocialBar.JPG

 
Thanks,
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  

Barbara 

Brass Contributor

What about Office 365 Group sites?

 

Can an Office 365 Group site be a hub site or associate to a hub site?

Microsoft

@Barbara Falchi, the social bar is specific to the news item your viewing. So it will continue to reflect counts of whoever likes, views or comments on the news item or page. In terms of rollup, are you saying you want to sort news on # of views, likes or comments? 

Microsoft

@Lawrence Duff, you can make Office 365 Group site a hub site or associate them to a hub site. 

Brass Contributor

Hi  Melissa, when I say Rollup, I mean that news webpart on pages shold show the total number of like, comments (such as already does for views) per news.

The same should do the Higlighted Content Web part. This one should also provide sort order for likes (I.e. Most Liked). At the moment, I tried with managed properties, but Likes Count is not available, event if you create a news one or try to use a refinablestring.

Brass Contributor

I get the feeling this might be the usual Redmond half-baked "Agile / Scrum mess".  Not being able to multi-parent and create a hierarchy deeper than one means 99% of real world business requirements aren't deliverable.

 

So we'll have to wait a another couple of years before v2.0 comes out - like everything else from the MS development teams.

 

It's sad when you find yourself heading for the user voice to post up the shortcomings of a "new" product and it isn't even live in your tenancy yet.

 

I say "new" product because, I mean, how "new" is a hierarchy grouper / structurer product concept?  We were using folders from the year dot.  Why all this triumphant hub-bubba nonsense from the MVP Redmond brown-nosers about something that's been around for years and has just made it into DespairPoint after twenty years - and is still half-baked?

Silver Contributor
@Lawrence Duff you make some fair points but why the snide remarks? This community is about helping each other and the tone is the same respectful.
Brass Contributor

Because I'm sick of MVP Redmond brown-nosers bigging up something that's actually nothing - hubba-bubba-bs.  It generates false expectations from the customer base which then requires a lot of resetting.  It's puerile and false, and tarnishes all MS Consultants with their brush.

 

If puerility and falseness are accepted, then why not "fair points" with some "snide" as a counter balance to better serve and help the community?

Deleted
Not applicable

To my knowledge, multi parent and hierarchies were never communicated in any of the road maps for the initial release of the feature. Neither were 100 other capabilities that different clients might like to see. The one that was communicated at Ignite has been delivered as advertised, OOB. If it doesn't work for your scenario, maybe there are other products that will, or maybe create your own custom navigation store through the SharePoint Framework.

Silver Contributor
@Lawrence Duff this community has Microsoft employees marketing their products. Incidentally this is a Microsoft resource run and paid for by them. Nevertheless, I and many others have strong opinions here which don’t always take Microsoft’s viewpoint. You can express those viewpoints in a professional way. I get you’re unhappy.
Microsoft

Hi @Niclas Carlsson - the SharePoint mobile apps are just now shipping final updates so that hub sites work 100% properly. The last element was mainly the nav, and this should be in place by mid next week for iOS and Android. Thx, Mark.

Microsoft

Hi @Mudasar Syed - Yes, classic publishing sites will continue to work if you have built a custom portal. It's not uncommon, and they are supported in SharePoint within Office 365 :-).

Microsoft

Hi @Michael Pullen. It's in final review with our Support team who manages support.office.com and it should be within the next few weeks. Our primary goal was to get it out before the SharePoint Conference in May, and feel we're ahead of schedule.

Microsoft

Hi @Lawrence Duff. Appreciate your interest in SharePoint hub sites, and sharing your take on where we are at their initial launch - a true first offering of cross-site awareness out of the box. The good news is that we are in an era of "service" not "product" and the speed of visible innovation will delight you. Even with a peak of your interest, mixed with your feedback, the team is hard at work with our next set of refinement announcement that we will share this year at the SharePoint Conference (May.2018) and Ignite (Sept.2018). This maintains our cadence of growing the mobile and intelligent intranet, where the true modernization of SharePoint began to take hold ~ 2 years ago. And my ask to you is to consider the progress since then across all primary SharePoint assets, plus the addition of new components, capabilities and apps. Hub sites have a bright future among all the build blocks of your SharePoint-based intranets; group-connected team sites, communication sites, hub sites, SharePoint home, SharePoint mobile apps, personalized search, team news, pages, web parts, integrations with PowerApps and Flow - Microsoft Stream - Yammer - Microsoft Teams - Planner, the SharePoint Framework brings significant improvement to client-side development, improved performance and stability, and much more. I showcase this short list in hopes that you consider the breadth of what the team is offering and responding to (based more so on customer feedback than ever in the nine years I've helped manage our product), and the depth of feature capability over time as they refine, listen and innovate. We have a lot of listening channels, some like UserVoice for the engineering connection and feedback, some like the MS Tech Community, some like Twitter and Facebook, some like face-to-face at events, some go direct in email, some submit from directly within the product - and I can introduce you to 900 people who listen - with big ears and good brains like Jeff Teper at the helm crafting solid deliverables with an equally solid team that gets better and better over time. It's all about the journey, and we're never finished.

 

Keep the eyes open, more to come quarter-over-quarter. And please, keep the feedback coming on the service as you see it.

 

I foresee delight in your future assessment,

Mark

Brass Contributor

Can anyone tell me when Hubsites will be universally available? my tenant still does not have this.

I am able to register the hub site but the option doesn't show up in site information.

its April 24, 2018. 

Iron Contributor

I'm looking forward to the SharePoint intranet planning guide!  That will be super helpful as we build out our infrastructure with hub sites!  And NO SUBSITES!!!  :)

Copper Contributor

@Mark Kashman Great reply to @Lawrence Duff but I wonder if Microsoft would consider publishing more of a roadmap so that we can see where the vision goes?  Even if the vision is only partly formed, it'd help us to understand it.  As an O365 Consultant, I want to be on board with the new functionality coming out but it's hard to recommend to customers because we don't quite know where it's heading.  Having to wait for quarterly announcements isn't great.  I get there's a marketing strategy at play here but surely there's some kind of middle ground that can be achieved? :)

Silver Contributor
I agree @Deleted and I think Microsoft Teams has set a precedent here. Their roadmap was updated today in a neat PDF format. Obviously the product approach at this stage differs in maturity to SharePoint but I don’t think this has diminished their marketing efforts at all. I think Microsoft can reasonably argue that they have shared a long term strategic vision for SharePoint but piecing the details together matters too. As an example, setting out a roadmap for the publishing cycle in content services at a feature level would be incredibly helpful. I have argued elsewhere that as an ‘evergreen’ service the old style big pushes at conference time doesn’t work as well as when on premise products prevailed.
Brass Contributor

I have the same question as @Fernando Melo above. Is there a date when the 'Hub sites' will be available universally - a complete worldwide rollout in all tenants?

 

I check on a daily basis for the option to create Hub sites. We have lots of sites that just need that 'umbrella' style love :). Thank you                             

Microsoft

@Fernando Melo & @Stephen Spooner we rolling out to all tenants so you should check now. :)

Copper Contributor

This is great Mark, off the back of this and with the first release to my tenant, I have created the Ultimate Guide to SharePoint Hub Sites, which Ironically is not as detailed as yours but i'll be updating it the more I use Hub Sites.

 

A week in i'm loving the way it all hangs together and even in a small business I find it useful that we can bring a couple of our groups together under one site.

 

Thanks

 

Matthew Hughes

Brass Contributor

Hi @Melissa Torres, am I right in thinking that the only way to get a Hub site is by using PowerShell to convert an existing Communication/team site?

 

I keep expecting to see a 'create hub site' button/option on the SharePoint landing page > /_layouts/15/sharepoint.aspx

 

Thank you

Microsoft

@Stephen Spooner, correct. Currently the only way to create a hub site is to use Powershell and run the "Register-SPOHubSite" command with an existing site. I recommend using a communications site. 

Copper Contributor

Great development!

One question.

The demo video shows that it is possible to use a hierarchy in the hub navigation bar (e.g. Benefits > Benefits Planning > Savings) , I do not seem to be able to create such a hierarchy in our environment and only seem to be able to create a "flat" navigation bar. Any suggestions how to add a hierarchy would be much appreciated.

Microsoft

@Lucas Laumans, when you're editing the hub nav if you click on the ellipsis you should see the option to "make a sub link". See image below, if you aren't seeing this please reach out to me privately so I can investigate. 

Level3NavEditing.PNG

Brass Contributor

Am I to understand that hub site navigation has to be manually created at the top level hubsite?

 

also, what happens if you have a top level Intranet Hub site and departmental hubsites? is there a way to connect the departmental hubsites to the intranet hub site?

@Fernando Melo  There's no layering of Hub Sites, and you probably wouldn't want that, anyway. The sites which are connected to the Hub Site inherit branding, and the Hub Site rolls up News, Events, etc. More likely, you'll simply want to add navigation from one Hub Site to the other in the navigation. In your example, you could have a Departments link in the Intranet Hub Site, and/or you could have a Departments Hub Site if you want that middle layer.

 

M. 

Copper Contributor

@Melissa Torres I've used the "make a sub link" tool and it works well.  Frustratingly, though, the 'link group header' still needs to have an associated URL.  Will Microsoft provide the option to make a navigation menu a header so that it doesn't have an associated link URL? 

Brass Contributor

 Hub Sites is still not available in our tenant. Did I understand something wrong about the 100% Worldwide Rollout? 

Microsoft

@Ady Foot, non-link nav headers is in our backlog, definitely something we are thinking about. 

 

@Julius Riegler, followed uo with you separately. 

Steel Contributor

Does anyone know what happens if you do run the "Register-SPOHubSite" on a "Team site (classic experience)" hosted in Office 365 tenant ?

Since there is not a lot of impact information out there I figured I would ask here.

We are not overly concerned about the navigation bar issues since we will be changing the layout of sites & sub-sites anyway.

What we are concerned with is;

1 InfoPath 2013 forms - we have them on many Lists

2 Workflows (2010 & 2013) - we have a lot of them on various Lists that we depend on.  [Do not tell me about Power Apps and Flow. They are not a solution for us yet.]

3 SharePoint Designer connectivity, for moving objects and maintaining the aforementioned Workflows.

 

We are very close to just running the Script and living with the consequences because we really want to use the Hub sites and Modern Experience but our business is dependent on the old ways.

If I am being paranoid and the command will not affect any of the back-end services we may just try it,

Microsoft

@Forrest Hoffman, running the Register-SPOHubSite on any site will enable the hub site features (hub nav, rollup web parts, search) but you will need to be in modern to take advantage of them. With that said, running the command should not affect any of the items you list out. 

Steel Contributor

@Melissa TorresAlas, MS have not given a date for how to convert those old Team Classic templates based SharePoint to the New Experience Communication sites. We have done some testing and the Modern Pages are available on the tenant and the News Feeds web parts do work to aggregate from other sites, even if they are not Hub Sites.  I guess we may just have to try and see what breaks / doesn't work.  Thanks for letting me know that at least InfoPath and the Work Flows will not break.

Brass Contributor

From my testing it looks like if you have an InfoPath form on a hub site, the hub navigation is gone. it reverts back to classic sharepoint.hub.jpg

 what would be great is if there was a way to show classic webparts on modern sites and vice versa.

Who is with me on that? 

 

 

Brass Contributor

Hello , are there any plans to be able to move classic site collections and their subsites into hub sites?

 

CHeers

Brass Contributor

@Mark Kashman - I am curious to know, what happens behind the scenes? Hubsite is actually not a template, but just a capability to associate an existing communication or modern team site to a hub. So when you enable the Hubsite does it activate a feature behind the scenes or something else? When you create a hub the URL will be the site which we created hub for is the home URL?

Brass Contributor

Two related Questions......

  1. Can a Subsite become a Hub Site ?
  2. Is possible to associate a Site to a Hub Site, where that Site has a hierarchy of subsites that are a Hub Sites ?

Cheers

Microsoft

@Frank Smith

1. No, a subsite can't become a hub site. The site collection that subsite belongs to can. 

2. You can association a site to a hub, all subsites under that site become part of that hub as well. Per #1 subsites cannot be a hub. 

Microsoft

Hi @Frank Smith - one thing I'd add to Melissa's response is that you do have the choice to up-level a subsite to be it's own site collection. There is not an easy button, but on the guidance and direction we are moving, you could create a new site collection (team site or communication site), and then move/migrate your content to this new site, which then could become a hub site, or you then associate to a hub site.

 

Hope that helps,

Mark 

Brass Contributor

Hi,

 

I've been experimenting with the following model....It appears to work but I'm wondering if there is something I've missed !

 

I work in education and have created Office 365 Teams for College Departments and College Courses. That works fine but there's no visible relationship between a Department and its associated Courses.

 

So, I've looked at the underpinning SharePoint Sites that were automatically created when the Office 365 Teams were created.....

Basically I made each Department Site a Hub Site, and associated with it the Course Sites that were related to that Department.....This now provides a Structure in SharePoint that gives me the visible relationship I need.........

 

However is this an acceptable process ?

Could Microsoft pull the plug ?

 

Frank

 

@Frank Smith, that’s a great use of Hub Sites - no plug pulling to worry about here. If Departments are the organizing body for Courses (they sure were when I was in college in the 1800s), then the structure you’ve set up is great. News from Courses will roll up to Departments, there’s a search scope per Department, etc.

 

We can’t nest Hub Sites (yet?) so you can’t organize your Departments into Schools the same way, but it sounds like this will meet your needs for now.

 

M.

Brass Contributor

@Marc Anderson - Thanks for that !

For your information, we're also creating Department Repository SharePoint Sites directly within SharePoint that will also be associated with each Department Hub Site

Each Department Repository will hold all the resources used by associated Courses and be grouped by Course Name

 

Students will open their Course Team to find links at appropriate places, to Repository Folders or individual files

And in the future I see Tutors searching a Department Repository for materials using meta tags.

 

A further development will be to use Moodle as a Repository of Activities that are not available in Teams, or have a price

 

Frank

@Frank Smith, why would you create a second site per Department? Wouldn't it make more sense to store the "repository" in the Department site itself? There are people who work with .edu customers who could give you more better practices for all this - no reason to reinvent the wheel. I'd suggest starting a new thread with your ideas.

 

M.

Brass Contributor

@Marc Anderson 

My plan is to give students links to Course Repository Folders and Files, but there is a problem with this.........Students can open the full SharePoint Repository and view other Folders........I'd like to hide specific folders from students as necessary - I can do that by breaking the permissions hierarchy 

 

I thought....

  1. If I use the Department Team SharePoint Site then i am limited to what I can do with the Folders created by Team channels
    1. As said, I'd like to hide certain Course Folders
  2. Teams are collaborative which means Students and Staff can change Folder contents

Having said all that, I suppose I could add an additional Document Library to each Department Team Site which might give me the control I need........

Food for thought

 

Frank

Brass Contributor

@Mark Kashman Hi Mark. I just thought i would ask how close you guys are to giving us the megamenu.

I checked the roadmap here https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?ms.url=roadmap&rtc=3&SilentAuth=1&wa=wsignin1.....

Its Oct 30. I am wondering if it got bumped to november and if so when?

Brass Contributor

@Fernando Melo I've just noticed a comment from Chris Cundy on a related blog post saying Q1 2019 > https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-SharePoint-Blog/SharePoint-hub-sites-updates-plus-n...

 

@Mark Kashman Is this release date accurate?

 

Thanks

 

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