Now Live – SharePoint home sites: a landing for your organization in the intelligent intranet

[DC Padur]

Last year, at the SharePoint Conference, we announced SharePoint home sites, the latest innovation for the intelligent intranet. And now, just when staying connected is key and communication is needed more than ever, SharePoint home sites feature is available to all customers.

A SharePoint home site is a communication site that is designed and designated to serve as the top portal in your organization. We like to call it a communication site with some extra superpowers. It is an organization’s front page; a carefully crafted collection of news, content, conversations and video to deliver an engaging experience that reflects an organization’s voice, priorities and brand. See the tools in action by watching the keynote presentation, and then try your hand at creating your own home sites. 

We cannot wait to see what you create! Install a template from the SharePoint look book to get a jump start on a beautiful and effective intranet.  

[Nuno Silva]

Well done Team, Congrats !

Best Regards,
Nuno Árias Silva

[Kevin McKeown]

How is this different from a regular Communication site?

Is it just that these three specific functionalities will be enabled when you set a site as a Home site?

• It's easily accessible from the SharePoint mobile app for Android and iOS. All users that have access to the home site will see a home button on the Find tab of the mobile app. Being communication sites, home sites are designed to be mobile friendly from the start.

• Search for the site is scoped to all sites within the organization. Having a great search experience is critical for the success of the home site. 

• The site is automatically set up as an organization news site. (Although you can have only one home site, you can have multiple organization news sites.)

Are there plans for additional features or functionality that will further distinguish a Home site from a regular Communication site?

[DC Padur]

Great question Kevin ! We are exploring many more ways of having a unique treatment for a Home site. What would you like to see ?

[Dips365]

That's Amazing !! 

[Daniel Westerdale]

One thing to note is the Home (communication) sites are  rollout automatically to new tenants such as the developer tenant I created last month. Tenants created before April 2019 are more likely to have a classic team site in place at the tenant root level. In which case, you will need to to perform a site swap with either an existing communication site, or one created via the Lookbook as suggested by @DC Padur  . 

[dhawalmehta]

Nice to see the announcement though can you also confirm if once we set this site as a home site using the PowerShell command. Will it also going to change the navigation from office.com tile of SharePoint to this site or not? because after setting our root communication site i still see the URL as <Domainname.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/sharepoint.aspx> which i would expect as the home site.

Or am i missing something.

Thanks,

Dhawal

[Eric Mases]

When do you expect to release the Home site navigation and theme on SharePoint Start? Or is it not going to happen? 

[Todd Bleeker]

Why limit this to Communication Sites? To be consistent with the navigation on other modern sites in some Intranets, a Team Site (with or with an Office 365 Group backing it) seems like it would be just as viable of an option. I can totally see how the Site Collection in the root of a tenant would be a Hub Site, a Home Site, and the SharePoint site backing a Microsoft Team (potentially Org-wide). This is altogether commonplace for small businesses but cannot be achieved with a Communication Site.

Giving Communication Sites back the "Quick Launch" for navigational consistency with Team Sites would go a long way to achieving this goal too.

[ArchitectSimba]

Hello, 

• How is a Home Site different from a Hub Site? 

[Daniel Westerdale]

@ArchitectSimba  A  Home site can be made into a Hub site, say from a communication site  -  I don't think you can site swap with an existing Hub Site, unless you de-register it beforehand .  There is only one  top level Home Site, whereas you can have up to 2000 Hub sites  .  

[Denis Tiri]

@DC Padur  What would we want to see?

That's an easy question, what about the functionality that was promised in the beginning? 

Namely integration with the start page

(and maybe even one step further: also integration with the office.com page)

These 3 features are a bit underwhelming. Only the button in the app is nice
(but why no button on the desktop? Many people don't know they can click the company logo).
The other 2 (auth. news & search scope) are easily done with 1 powershell command anyway.

[Abhimanyu Singh]

@DC Padur  how about a global nav? Hub navs are a good step for a common navigation across related sites. But, we find ourselves copying certain links across all hub navs to mimic a global nav. A truly global navigation element via home site could be a good value. 

[DC Padur]

@Abhimanyu Singh : Thank you for the comment. Global nav is top of our mind and we are exploring solutions. I do not have much to share now, but when we have concrete feature plans with timelines, it will appear on our Microsoft 365 roadmap

[DC Padur]

@Denis Tiri : Fair comment on the SP start page integration . Glad to see that there is continued interest in that specific experience. We are working on the best way to get that experience to our customers. I do not have much to share now, but when we have concrete feature plans with timelines, it will appear on our Microsoft 365 roadmap.

[DC Padur]

@dhawalmehta : Setting a communication site as a Home site will not change the the SharePoint tile experience in Office.com. That tile will always take you to the SharePoint start page ( the  "..../_layouts/15/sharepoint.aspx" page ). 

[DC Padur]

@ArchitectSimba :

What is the difference between a hubs and home site?

Hubs and Home sites are added functionalities to our two modern site types Team and Communication.

A hub is used organize Team and Communication sites with a shared theming, navigation, search and news roll ups. There can be up to 2000 hubs in a organization

A home site serves as the top level portal with unique functionality like special SP mobile treatment, organizational news, tenant wide search. Any comm site can be elevated to be a Home site and there can be only one Home site in an organization.

[dhawalmehta]

Thanks for the clarification though, can you please also confirm like Home Icon on the Mobile App, what would be the equivalent available for the browsers?

Thanks,

Dhawal Mehta

[DC Padur]

@Todd Bleeker : Thank you for the comments. Fair points on smaller organizations using a org wide team site to serve as top of the intranet. We are planning what's next for Home site and will take this into consideration.  I do not have much to share now, but when we have concrete feature plans with timelines, it will appear on our Microsoft 365 roadmap.

[DC Padur]

@dhawalmehta : For the browser, admins can create Home site "apps" which can then be pinned by end users. There is a feature coming soon that will allow admins to pin "apps" for all users. here should be a demo here https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/81559?source=sessions

[Abhimanyu Singh]

@DC Padur the home icon on mobile app lacks much usefulness in its current state IMHO.

The bigger usability problem is that when a user had been browsing different sites and pages in the app, after a time, there is no obvious way to get back to root or home. One has to either wade their way home by tapping back buttons infinite number of times, or close and restart the app, or place a link on every site's (or hub site's) nav.

If the home icon/button is sticky or placed on the skinny toolbar at top, then it makes it very easy for users not to lose their way and get a one-tap ticket back to home. 

Talking about mobile app, I also have this concern on SVG requirement of the company logo: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-sharepoint-blog/sharepoint-mobile-app-will-now-allo...

[Denis Tiri]

@Abhimanyu Singh I totally agree with your comment! 
+1

[Glenn Walker]

weeks ago, I swapped our Intranet site to SharePoint root, when the swap was complete, I successfully ran the powershell cmdlet to make it our Home Ste.
We still do not see any change to the navigation or SharePoint start page. Is this fully rolled out?

[Denis Tiri]

@Glenn Walker  no that functionality isn't even rolling out at the moment. They left it out.
(Featured ID: 26842 )
There is no new roadmap ID for it either.

[Glenn Walker]

@Denis Tiri 

Thanks for the swift reply Denis.

[shakir majeed]

Looks so good!

[Benjamin Bennett]

@DC Padur Has there been any further news on the potential for multiple home sites? I asked about this on your initial post a while back and the question wasn't addressed other than asking about the use case. I work for a college and we have very different communication needs for employees vs. students, far more than could be achieved using audience targeting features within the one site, so it would be very helpful if it were possible to have separate home sites for the two user groups within the same tenant.