SharePoint hub sites new in Office 365
Published Sep 26 2017 06:00 AM 242K Views
Microsoft

Today at Ignite 2017, we announced SharePoint hub sites, a new building block of the intranet, to bring together related sites to roll up news and activity, to simplify search, and to create cohesion with shared navigation and look-and-feel.

 

The digital workplace is dynamic and ever changing. Business goals and team structures evolve and change – often frequently. SharePoint helps your organization adapt, by connecting your workplace with intelligent content management and intranets that give you the tools to share and work together, and to inform and engage people across the organization. And now it gets easier to organize your intranet dynamically.

 

You can associate multiple team sites and communication sites to model and promote an intranet that reflects the way your people organize. Hub sites provide common navigational structure, look and feel, and search across associated sites. Hub sites also aggregate news and activities from associated sites and display the roll-up on the hub site’s home page.

SharePoint hub sites bring together related sites to roll up news and activity, and to create cohesion with shared navigation and look-and-feel.SharePoint hub sites bring together related sites to roll up news and activity, and to create cohesion with shared navigation and look-and-feel.

You can use SharePoint hub sites to organize concepts, teams, divisions, or resources throughout your businesses. Let’s dive into the details.

Create a cohesive set of related sites with shared navigation, look and feel

A hub site brings consistency across sites from the top down. When a team site or communication site is associated to a hub site, it inherits common characteristics, including:

 

  • Navigation – Define top navigation in the hub site that is inherited by associated sites.
  • Theme – Define the look and feel of the hub site, and that theme remains consistent across associated sites.
  • Logo – A logo on a site is like the green sticker on a map that says, “You are here.” It’s an important identifier of the site you are visiting, and the information and people the site represents. A consistent logo defined by the hub site and used by associated sites says, “You are here, and you have not left.”

SharePoint hub sites bring together team sites and communication sites together into more centralized locations within your intranet.SharePoint hub sites bring together team sites and communication sites together into more centralized locations within your intranet.

Roll up and present a consolidated view of news and activities

Throughout the lifecycle of your projects, your launches, your internal campaigns, it is important to increase visibility, awareness and discoverability beyond the core day-to-day people, and not expect everyone to have to drill into the various related sites, but more represent a clear, broad picture of what’s happening across sites, aka, what’s happening across projects and initiatives. Team sites and communication sites push content and information up to the hub site level with:

  • News aggregation –After you create and publish a news article on an associated site, the news article surfaces on SharePoint home, in the SharePoint mobile apps, and now on the hub site’s home page.
  • Combined site activities – It’s important to know what is happening within sites, so you can prioritize your focus and your time. Site activities are visible on a team site’s home page, and on the site’s card on SharePoint home. Now, site activities will roll up from each associated sites so that they are visible on the hub site’s home page, so you can see what happening across related sites, instead of having to view activity site by site.
  • Scoped search – When you search for content from a hub site, results include content from all associated sites. Because associated sites are related, search from the hub site home page increases relevance, and enhances content discovery.

Create hub sites and associate team and communication sites

It is easy for admins to create one or more hub sites. After a hub site is created, site owners can associate existing team sites and communication sites with the hub site, or to associate a new site while creating a site from SharePoint home in Office 365Soon you will be able to create an associated site directly from within the hub site itself.

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.

Site owners can associate an existing team site or communication site with a hub site.

  1. Click the gear icon in the upper right of the site.
  2. Click Site information.
  3. In the Edit site information pane that appears, click the Hub site drop-down menu and choose the right hub site to join.

Note that team sites and communication sites can only be associated to one hub site. And as easy as it is to join a site to a hub site, you, too, can un-join from one. 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.        

Access hub sites and associated sites with the SharePoint mobile app

The SharePoint mobile app helps keep your work moving forward by providing quick access to all your sites, news and the team members you work with, and search to find content and people across your organization.

 

With the addition of SharePoint hub sites, the SharePoint mobile app will be updated to natively render 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!

SharePoint hub sites and their associated sites are easy to access and navigate via the SharePoint mobile app.SharePoint hub sites and their associated sites are easy to access and navigate via the SharePoint mobile app.

Moving forward and growing together

Team sites, communication sites and now hub sites – as well as classic publishing sites and sites for applications – are building blocks of your intranet. SharePoint connects the workplace so that you can share, manage, and find the content, knowledge, and apps you need, on any device.

 

As you modernize and extend your intranet to support collaboration and communication, SharePoint will support you and your teams now and into the future.

 

Let us know what you need next. We are always open to feedback via UserVoice and continued dialog in the SharePoint community in the Microsoft Tech Community —and we always have an eye on tweets to @SharePoint. Let us know.

 

—Mark Kashman, senior product manager for the SharePoint team

 

Additional materials:

 

FAQs

Q: When can I expect to see SharePoint hub sites appear in my Office 365 tenant?

A: 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 join one SharePoint hub site under another hub site?

A: No, you won't be able to join a SharePoint hub site to another hub site.

 

Q: Can a team site or a communication site be joined to more than one SharePoint hub site?

A: No. It will only be possible to join a site to one hub site at a time. It is possible to link to various un'joined sites in the top naviogation. And it will be possible, within seconds, to join and/or un'join 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.

112 Comments
Iron Contributor

@Mark Kashman Thanks for your prompt response! So what is the key difference between a "modern team site" and a "classic team site" that is using a modern page as its homepage? What would I be missing out on if I use the latter? Thanks! 

Steel Contributor

@Mark Kashman said, in reply to a comment from @ivan unger, that 'we are looking at how we can enable admins to be able to create new hub sites, and uplevel an existing site with the additioinal 'hub' capabilities.'

 

We are right on the cusp of re-creating our existing, multi-subsite-based, intranet with the new communication site-based design, using multiple sites with lots of pages instead of sub-sites. It will be really useful to know soon if we will be able to 'convert' an existing comms site to a hub site.

 

Otherwise, we will have to create a temporary site with links to the other related comms sites, then delete that and re-create the new site (with the same content) when the hub site option is made available.

 

Knowing if we will be able to make our 'intranet landing' page the hub site retrospectively ('uplevel') now will save us (and maybe many others) a lot of time and hassle later on having to re-create a new top level site with possibly a different URL (we have over 8,000 staff so I'm conscious of the need not to make too many URL changes). Our comms team want this to happen soon so it would be good if comms sites can be make a hub site retrospectively. Thanks

Microsoft

Is there a TAP program for this? 

Iron Contributor

 @Mark Kashman or any other experts who know- is there any big difference between a modern team site and a classic team site using a modern page as its homepage? I am currently trying to decide whether to create a communications site and migrate stuff to it from a classic team site, or whether I can "modernize" is by simply making a modern page its homepage. Are there any things "under the hood" that make a modern team site different than a classic team site? I actually don't want an O365 group created for this particular site, so my choices are really keep as a classic and make a modern page the homepage or make a new communications site and migrate all my content from the classic team site into the comm site. Help! :) I'd like to make an educated decision. 

@Katrin Weixel the difference between modern and classic team site is from this article  : 

"Modern" team sites are responsive by design and are much faster to create and use from an end user perspective. Following are some of the key benefits of the "modern" team sites:

  • Designed to scale for any device natively without customizations for a fully responsive experience.
  • Contain native news, quick links, and activity capabilities.
  • Integrated with Office 365 groups.
  • Significantly faster site creation compared to "classic" team sites.
  • Include "modern" lists and libraries with support for Microsoft Flow and PowerApps.
  • Contain "modern" page editing capabilities.
  • Include an updated site contents page with additional insights on site usage.

And for me you can create juste One Communications site for The Home Page of your intranet and then migrated Classic Team site to Modern team site because it's very easier to use for your users. And do links from your Communication site to the New Modern team sites you have created.

And after in the 2018, you can use the hub site to do a modern intranet.

Iron Contributor

@Mark Kashman - are there going to be possibilities of converting an existing site to a Hub Site? With all of the information architecture for 11 years of SharePoint it sure would make life easy!! :)

Steel Contributor

Thanks again, @Mark Kashman, for another wonderful update. Excited for Hubs to release. The search feature will be great for limiting to just that area of the portal without having to create a custom search scope in admin. Also like how you can associate an existing site with the hub. On the edge of our seats! 

Copper Contributor

We're excited about the prospect of using Hub Sites.   Is there any more specific update now that we are into 2018 as to when we'll be able to start using this?

Copper Contributor

What is the suggested design for an intranet that needs to be built before hub sites are available but is also extensible to accommodate a hub site when it is available?  Just create multiple communication and/or team sites and achieve the hub site effect manually (i.e. through links and having content managers from each site update their top menu to be the same as other sites that will eventually join to the hub)?

Copper Contributor

Will we be able to combine all sites related to a particular department under a single Hub site? Example department has a site collection, separate team sites, group sites, and a communication site. If the department has or needs a ECM, where is the best location to originate from in a Hub architecture model or will it matter?

Copper Contributor

Any updates on Hub Site release date for Targeted Release or Standard? Thanks so much!

Copper Contributor

Supposedly Hub Sites have been deployed to my tenant but I cannot figure out how to confirm this or attempt to create a new Hub site.  Furthermore, I cannot find any documentation yet.  So, assuming my tenant really is updated, how does one go about creating a Hub site? 

Bronze Contributor

I'd try to to take a look at the Site Information SidePanel.

Copper Contributor

Any news about hub sites? @Clay Hagler do you already figured out how to use the hub site? Maybe you can share some screen dumbs:)

Brass Contributor

Hello,

We have a site collection that has nearly reached the limit of 2000 subsites. Would switching to a Hub site help the situation? How would these subsites be connected to a main hub site?

Iron Contributor

Check the Roadmap:

https://products.office.com/en-us/business/office-365-roadmap?filters=&freeformsearch=hub&featureid=...

 

SharePoint hub sites

Estimated Release: February CY2018

Last modified : 02/23/2018

 

It seems that we are quite near to the release!

Iron Contributor

I understood this was due for release on 26 February 2018 - any news anyone ? Thanks.

Steel Contributor

@Vinita VERMA 2000 sub-sites under a site collection seems a lot. Does the top level site have any value in that structure? In other words, do all of the 2,000 sites navigate via the top level site, or go directly to the sub-sites? I would argue that the top level site seems redundant and a completely flat structure with *some* hub sites for a small number of connected sites may be a better model, but without knowing your situation it's hard to say.

Brass Contributor

I see that the roll out will be starting soon according to an announcement in Office 365 message centre. 

 

Can I check via Powershell to see when this is enabled on our tennant?

Brass Contributor

@Mark Kashman - can an Office 365 Group SharePoint site be turned into a hub site?  We really like having the group mailing list and SharePoint site associated, if we could convert the SharePoint site into a hub site that will help for division level groups.

 

Thanks!

Microsoft

Hi @John Tropea - yes, you can have any number of web parts - balanced with what makes sense as a good user experience :-).

Microsoft

Hi @Douglas Plumley - yes, you can turn either a modern team site (group-connected) or a communication site into a hub site. - Mark.

Microsoft

Hi @Phillip Shilling - you won't yet be able to do anything related to hub sites via PowerShell, incl checking to see if the feature is ON for your tenant yet :-). 

 

We're working on hub sites Targeted Release very soon. The message center post went out last week as a heads up to Office 365 admins.

 

We’re glad to see you’re excited for the coming SharePoint hub sites. Everything we have to date is in this disclosure blog post (which also links to a webinar we gave around the same time): https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/SharePoint-Blog/SharePoint-hub-sites-new-in-Office-365/ba-p/1....

 

And soon we’ll have an updated “launch” blog to announce Targeted Release, new documentation for how to set up and configure them, plus a webinar to showcase it along with a broader intranet planning and strategy with Sue Hanley, Sam Marshal and myself on Mar.28.2018, “Intranet Strategy & Planning with SharePoint Hub Sites & Office 365”: https://collab365.community/events/intranet-sharepoint-hub-sites-office-365/.

 

Lots to come, and we’ll soon be very engaged with answering any open questions during an AMA on Mar.23.2018 within the SharePoint portion of the MS Tech Community: http://office.com/sharepoint/community

 

Thanks,
Mark

Microsoft

Hi @Alan Boulter@Nicolò Manzotti@Jan Willem Lutgendorff@Clay Hagler@Yu Chen, @Deleted, and @David Leveille,

 

You all had been asking about when SharePoint hub sites were to release, And we can now share that we're working on hub sites Targeted Release very soon. The message center post went out last week (Mar.9.2018) as a heads up to Office 365 admins.

 

We’re glad to see you’re excited for the coming SharePoint hub sites. Everything we have to date is in this disclosure blog post (which now links to a webinar we gave around the same time): https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/SharePoint-Blog/SharePoint-hub-sites-new-in-Office-365/ba-p/109547.

 

Soon we’ll have an updated “launch” blog to announce Targeted Release, new documentation for how to set up and configure them, plus an important webinar to showcase hub sites along with a broader intranet planning and strategy discussion with Sue Hanley, Sam Marshal and myself on Mar.28.2018, “Intranet Strategy & Planning with SharePoint Hub Sites & Office 365”: https://collab365.community/events/intranet-sharepoint-hub-sites-office-365/.

 

Lots to come, and we’ll soon be very engaged with answering any/all open questions during an AMA on Mar.23.2018 within the SharePoint portion of the MS Tech Community: http://office.com/sharepoint/community. And last a teaser - for beyond "how to" we're working on an all up intranet planning guide that we'll post alongside the help content in support.office.com - this takes the minds of our engineering team, one of our key MVPs and yours truly. 

 

Thanks,
Mark

Microsoft

Hi @Kurt Weissgerber - we are working on this guidance, a soon-to-come intranet planning guide, that takes into account both if you're getting started, or have a number of classic team sites, portals, modern team sites and communication sites. We hope this will best address your question, but more importantly help you plan and design your roll out and maintenance of sites and organization within Office 365. Cheers, Mark.

Microsoft

Hi @Rob Bowman - this is a big component for SharePoint hub sites, to be able to "give superpowers" to an existing modern team site or communication site. You will be able to run a PowerShell command (Register -SPOHubSites https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/Communications); where Communications is the existing site you will convert into a hub site. Once you do this, it becomes the hub that you can associate sites to, holds the cross-site nav, theme is inherited from, etc... you could create a new modern site and give it hub powers, or give it to an existing one - your choice/design.

 

We're working on hub sites Targeted Release very soon. The message center post went out last week as a heads up to Office 365 admins.

 

We’re glad to see you’re excited for the coming SharePoint hub sites. Everything we have to date is in this disclosure blog post (which also links to a webinar we gave around the same time): https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/SharePoint-Blog/SharePoint-hub-sites-new-in-Office-365/ba-p/1....

 

And soon we’ll have an updated “launch” blog to announce Targeted Release, new documentation for how to set up and configure them, plus a webinar to showcase it along with a broader intranet planning and strategy with Sue Hanley, Sam Marshal and myself on Mar.28.2018, “Intranet Strategy & Planning with SharePoint Hub Sites & Office 365”: https://collab365.community/events/intranet-sharepoint-hub-sites-office-365/.

 

Lots to come, and we’ll soon be very engaged with answering any open questions during an AMA on Mar.23.2018 within the SharePoint portion of the MS Tech Community: http://office.com/sharepoint/community

 

Thanks,
Mark

 

Brass Contributor

Hi @Mark Kashman - sorry for the additional questions.  How do permissions work with hub sites and the sites associated with them?  We'd like to have an Office 365 group with a hub site that all members of a division are a part of.  We'd then like to have individual department Office 365 groups that have a subset of the division members in them.  When you attach one of those department sites to the hub site would division members that aren't a member of that department site see content like news they wouldn't normally be able to see?

 

Or does the hub site dynamically roll up content only from the associated sites you have access to?

 

Thanks!

Brass Contributor

@Mark Kashman,

My client has been holding off building a project management site collection and I think the timing with Hubs/General Release is going to be perfect.  Some existing SharePoint Team Collaboration sites (not Team sites) are managing documents that we'd want to connect to in a possible project hub, and ultimately archive completed project documentation from the hub into those existing Project Management documentation sites, on project completion.  How friendly is search from Hub with regard to pulling content from another site collection?  CQWPs are....ok....but it would be nice to not have to build them in the Hub to surface the Collab Team documents.

 

A sort-of related comment:  Please can MS blog commenting settings display the most recent activity first, rather than making readers have to toggle through to the end page to add an item?  Maybe add a Search Comments feature, like in User Voice, so we can see if a comment has already been made and what its replies might be. Thanks - 

 

Iron Contributor

@Mark Kashman Thanks for the update and happy to see the release notes in the Messaging Center! I was wondering if a good indicator that it was available might possibly be the Shell command showing up for us? Also, can you talk more about how content from Classic Team sites will be visible and rolled up to the Hub sites? We are not using Office 365 Groups as of yet (we are a fairly large organization) and we would love to be able to create a modern site that is NOT an Office 365 group - not to get off topic, but would love to hear more about that also.

Steel Contributor

Looking forward to Hub sites soon - yippie! cc @Mark Kashman

Iron Contributor

Got the new hub sites feature in my targeted release tenant this weekend.

 

I was able to associate sites to my hub site via PowerShell. The news aggregation and inheritance of the hub site theme works good.

It looks like the hub site navigation, combined site activities and scoped search doesn't work yet. Are you guys still working on that part?

Brass Contributor

 Hi,

 

This feature looks good in terms of bringing related sites under one umbrella. But it opens many questions, many of the addressed on the top also clarification on below queries.

 

1. Are there any possibility to use MS graph for collecting the events in different type of sites?

2. What happen is a group site is expired? 

3. Is HUB site again a site collection or is it only to join different site at single place?

4. If HUB site is a site collection, are there any option available to publish the content from Hub site to connected sites?

5. Can user join hub site directly? If Yes, then what all joined user can do in hub site and connected site?

6. How security and access handled in hub site? for example I have access to a publishing content which resides in a sub site but does not have access to any other content in the subsite and toplevel site. Once the site collection added to hub site can I see the content?

7. Will all user get added to Hub site when a site collection attached to Hub Site? or Do we need to grant additional permission to the Hub site?

8. How to detach a site from Hub site?

9. What happened to users permission if site is detached from Hub site?

10. Will this support SPFx web parts?

 

Microsoft

Useful article! 
Thank you! :) 

Copper Contributor

Hi,

So, if I'm creating an Intranet on SharePoint Online that is cross-regional. i.e. Each region has their own Site based on a template. How do we do this? Do we use a Hub site as Global site and then communication sites as each region? Is the Navigation from the hub site inherited by the communication sites if so? 

Thanks.

John.

Steel Contributor

Hub sites. They're so hot right now.

Copper Contributor

I don't understand. I have set myself to receive targeted release (First Release), I have followed steps in all microsoft docs about creating hub sites and associated sites, but I don't see it working. I don't even see "Hub site settings" on the gear, nor any settings related to hub sites.
Am I missing something?

Steel Contributor

@RadityoArdi we also don't see the options yet, and assume we have to wait for it to rollout to our tenant. We have been able to set a site as a hub site already through a PS script but nothing is visible on that site to indicate that (yet).

Copper Contributor

large.png

Anyone can help me to add news roll up web part same as in above mentioned picture? I had a hub site configured. Its working fine on . I just couldn't find webpart with this layout

Brass Contributor

I was able to configure the hub site through PowerShell (register and association ) - and still it is not available in the UI. In the roadmap it shows still under roll-out - but it is not clear if it target release rollout or GA rollout. Has the target release rollout completed for all tenants?

Microsoft

Hi @Stefanescu Ovidiu. SharePoint hub sites have not yet rolled out beyond Targeted Release, and will shortly as the team assesses flipping that switch in the next week or two. We'll note this with an update to the above timing FAQ, and tweet about it from @SharePoint :). 

Microsoft

Hi @Ali Raza. Take a look at this updated support article that should help: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/use-the-news-web-part-on-a-sharepoint-page-c2dcee50-f5d7-43...

 

Mainly it's an adjustment in the news web part editing pane, to select "Hub news" for the layout.

 

And another good article about configuring SharePoint hub sites all up: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/set-up-your-sharepoint-hub-site-e2daed64-658c-4462-aeaf-7d1...

 

Cheers,

Mark 

Microsoft

Hi @John-Pierre Guilbert

If you want a SharePoint hub site per region, you can create a communication site that you will convert into a hub site, and then associate all the sites of that region under this new hub site.

And if you wish to have one SharePoint hub site for all regions - and each region has their own communication site, then you take a similar approach of creating a new communication sites, making it the hub site, and then associate all regions' communication sites under this one new hub site.

The cross-site navigation element will show on the hub site itself and any site that has been associated to it.

Hope that helps.

If not, there is more here:

And we have an upcoming planning guide in the final stages of being released on support.office.com.

Thanks,

Mark

Brass Contributor

Hi @Mark Kashman - thank you for your reply. As some of the comments above, I was able to register and associate hub sites in PowerShell in some tenants with Target Release accounts (with all needed permissions), however I do not see the in the UI the options related to the hubs (not in the hub site nor the associated site). In other tenants, with the same procedure I see correctly the hub and association.

 

My understanding of your reply is that you are preparing hub sites for general availability.

 

However, my question is rather this:

 

Are there tenants where Hub sites have not been roll out even for target release? Or I should check something in the tenant configuration? Any input on this is highly appreciated.

 

*********************

Edit 02.05

 

I have found the answer to this with the help of Microsoft Support. It actually needs the entire tenant to be in targeted release in order for the Hub options to appear. Having only some user profiles selected as targeted release will not make the Hub settings appear.

Iron Contributor

Hi @Mark Kashman, we are a Target Release tenant but still haven't seen the Hub Site switch when creating a site. Is hub site only available via Powershell @ the moment?

Brass Contributor

@Mark Kashman Any news on further deployment? Considering switching profile to targeted release to get hub sites.

Copper Contributor

@Frank HessenI was waiting too, I just noticed Hub Sites working for me this morning. I had already powershelled the connections but until this morning the nav bar hadn't showed up.

Copper Contributor

This is great !

 

does anyone know how to set the Contoso Travel with mountain logo at the top center as shown on the post ? 

 

Thanks

 

Brass Contributor

@Man Lam Cheng

 

Thats not part of the hub site settings or SharePoint. You can set the logo in the office 365 bar right at the top of the page in the organisation profile custom branding settings in office 365 admin portal. Be aware though that the logo is moving and showing in place of the offfice 365 logo/wording in the left instead of stating in the middle.

Deleted
Not applicable

When will the limit of 50 hub sites be changed? We have over 100 business units, each with 10-20 sites and each unit would like a hub site to aggregate content and restrict search.

 

The 50 Hub Site limit seems to not really make sense? Or is there a work around to use a communication site for the same purpose, restrict search to linked sites and cross link content.

Brass Contributor

Governance question: How I can get  all HUB sites and details like owners ,mapped sites etc using getspsite or pnp ? Has a HUB site an own template not using group#0 ? What is the identifier using powershell or graphapi ?

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