Duplicate Hub Names Issue

Copper Contributor

Hub site admins can rename their hubs using the Hub Site Settings. Or you can register a site as hub from Admin Center and re-use an existing hub name. SPO doesn't enforce unique names for hubs, which becomes problematic. When you try to associate a site with a hub, you get back more than one Hub with the same name and you can't tell which one to pick. The drop-down doesn't display the URLs. I think the Hub names should be unique to prevent any confusion and make them more usable. 

 

Also, is it possible for Hub site admins to see which sites are associated with their hubs? The hub navigation doesn't seem to be automatically updated when sites are associated or disassociated.

3 Replies

@ErkanCh the unique identifier for SP sites, therefore hubsites as well, is the URL. Perhaps a uservoice?

Information about sites associated to a specific hub is usually cached, and refreshed on a schedule. Immediate changes may not reflect in navigation. If you would want to develop something take a look at this. You can force refresh the data of a particular hubsite. 

@mrehmat Hubs can have a different name from their site names. Sites can have duplicate names as they have unique URLs. However, hubs only have a name.

@ErkanCh Hubs are SharePoint sites and will always have a URL. See how PS gets unique hubsites from the tenant. Best practice is to only allow a hand full of users to permissions to create/modify hub sites and regular audits. A daily script to check of all hub site properties that matter is simple enough. If open access to create/modify hubsites is must AND being able to allow end users to created associated sites; its probably easier to give them a custom solution to provision sites than use the OOTB method.