Apparently Hub SItes have started to rollout...

[John Wynne]

Courtesy of @Chris McNulty over on Twitter. Keep a lookout for them in the wild..:grinning_face:

[#2]

Saw this as well. And i noticed commands in CLI for office365 as well to register hub sites.

[#3]

So will we get the option to build new sites in the UI or will it be command line only for converting existing sites?

[#4]

I think it will be for SharePoint Admins only in the admin center. but this is just guessing as i have not seen it yet. I am checking every day now in the hope i see a change :)

[#5]

I was able to activate a Hub site via PowerShell (thanks to a tip from @Michel Verwijmeren).

I used the Register-SPOHubSite & Add-SPOHubSiteAssociation cmdlets to see the new hub sites feature in action on my Targeted Release tenant :)

[#6]

As Dennis mentioned, it is possible to activate Hub Sites through the PowerShell CLI. Some functionality, notably News Rollup, is then enabled. However, the full template for Hub Sites is not yet available (at least to me!) even within TR. This means core aspects such as navigation are still to be deployed. I’m hoping that Sites I’ve enabled as Hub Sites will automatically pick up the new template when it’s rolled out.

[#7]

@John Wynne, you are right.

I don't see all the functionality of hub sites either. I am missing navigation, combined site activities and scoped search.

[#8]

To be fair @Deleted Microsoft has not officially launched Hub Sites even though some Microsoft folk have referred to rollout as I started this discussion thread. Hopefully not too long now!

[#9]

Pretty sure the infrastructure is still rolling out. News rollup is working, but takes a few minutes after publishing.
Also for anyone who gets errors in the sharepoint online shell, make sure you have the latest version of the module installed.

[#10]

Very exciting. As mentioned further up, Hub Site CLI commands are up in documentation.  Register-SPOHubSite worked for me and Get-SPOHubSite verified the conversion, however Add-SPOHubSiteAssociation isn't recognized just yet interestingly.

Still toying around to see if Set-SPOHubSite will effect any visible change. 

[#11]

The only visible change, for me, so far is the News rollup. All the commands worked in the CLI for me but no visible changes from that so far. Patience is required. I have asked if Sites set up before the new UI rolls out will be picked up.

[#12]

One visual change I do see on a associated site is a message in the change the look settings menu that it is connected to a hub site :)

 

Hopefully in the next few weeks we are getting the rest of the functionality.

[#13]

scoped search seems to be working as well now. I was able to find news and an event from a connected site.

[#14]

I've managed to run the Powershell command to convert to a Hub site, here:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/SharePoint-Blog/Organize-your-intranet-with-SharePoint-hub-si...

Says that I should then be able to go to a site and associate it with a hub site in the UI under Site Information, but I still don't have that option.   Is there something else I need to do apart from be patient?

Thanks...

John

[#15]

@Ivan Unger thanks for you reply.

The scoped search is also working on the Targeted Release tenant, great! :)

[#16]

Hi John, I think we just have to wait for the service update. @Melissa Torres has confirmed elsewhere that Hub Sites provisioned through PowerShell will load the site navigation once your tenant has been updated. Even through the PowerShell update you should be seeing the News roll up and scoped search features. There is an AMA this afternoon in this community where we go throw our questions to the Microsoft team (0900 PST/1600 in the UK). The implementation for Hub Sites is a little messy imo hence this interim stage. Hopefully all will resolve soon!

[#17]

Thanks for your reply John. I figured it would just take some time. I'll be around for the AMA I think, although 4pm on a Friday definitely sounds more like pub time ;o)

[#18]

I'm able to register hubsites and associate sites via powershell on my tenant.

However I'm not seeing anything on SharePoint reflecting this.

Waiting, waiting ;)

edit*  I removed news webpart and created it again on my start page too see that the news rollup does work