SharePoint Hub Sites due in February for Targeted Release?

[John Wynne]

I was just thinking about Hub Sites and how to prepare for them and then I checked the Office 365 Roadmap and notice they are estimated for this month! Very happy but @Mark Kashman is Targeted Release around the corner? ;) I hope so!

SharePoint hub sites
SharePoint sites are the building blocks of the mobile and intelligent intranet. SharePoint hub sites bring together related sites to roll up news and activity, and to create cohesion with shared navigation and look-and-feel. A hub site can have both team sites and communication sites associated under it.
Estimated Release: February CY2018
Feature ID: 21036
Added to Roadmap: 10/20/2017
Last modified : 02/03/2018

[#2]

Interesting! Not seeing this message yet in my tenants

[#3 · Accepted solution]

Nearing the home stretch for hub sites into Targeted Release. We'll have an announcement blog to inform when we start rollout, plus a webinar, AMA and a fast follow 'planning guide' beyond the main help articles that will publish in parallel with the start of rollout. Hang tight, the team is working thru the last mile of this significant feature. :) Cheers, Mark.

[#4]

Thanks, Mark!  Is there a way to be notified about the rollout events?  We might be an early adopter once hub sites are available, so I don't want to miss these.

[#5]

Just got off of a very informative call about the new Hubs with lots of demos. You may want to check out the recording when it gets posted at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_mKdhw-V6CeCM7gTo_Iy7w/featured  

[#6]

Mark,

How it will effect the existing o365 online intranet?

[#7]

Thanks Dean, wouldn't have come across that otherwise.  It's been posted here, the hub sites section starts at 16 minutes in https://youtu.be/3iryF8Zh1yM

[#8]

@Savita Mittal from the demos I have seen, it will not have any impact on existing sites. They are providing the ability to create a new site collection that can be designated as a Hub and then you will be able to connect existing sites the new Hub, but this is totally optional. You may to replace some of the existing functionality in your intranet, but that will be up to you.

[#9]

Thanks Dean.

Do you know when will it roll out. Its almost end of February.

[#10]

in the meeting yesterday they said it would be a few more weeks, sometime in march.

[#11]

Thanks for the update Dean.

[#12]

I have a question on Hub Sites, perhaps you can help with although I suspect I already know the answer.

Can I share libraries across sites joined to a Hub?

In my scenario, I have four teams each with their own team sites.  I join them to a Hub.  I have a single document library called "Policies" that I want to all four teams to have access to.

I do not want to create separate libraries on each site.  I do not want the users to leave their Team site to access the 'Policies' library.

I expect that while the Hub sites may be useful for newsfeeds, there is a failure to address sharing of documents across teams.

[#13]

Hi Craig, I notice your reply is to @Mark Kashman who can give you the authoritative reply and as you remark you do answer your own question in respect of the initial function of hub sites in modern SharePoint. I don’t feel there is a failure as the document library functionality is not the intended role of a hub site. I wonder if @Chris McNulty might comment on whether there is a modern or classic method rolled out or planned to meet your use case. Regards

[#14]

Thank you for this information.  Is there a general rule for how long it takes First Release (Targeted Release) functionality to make its way to Standard Release customers?

More specifically, if Hub Sites arrive to First Release customers in March, any guess as to when they may propagate to everyone?

[#15]

Hi John. Thank you for the fast reply.

Apologies for the poor choice of wording, as you point out it is not the intended role. It would definitely be a game changer for our application of SharePoint if it was possible to leverage Hub site in this manner.

Regards,

[#16]

Sorry, but there is no good way to estimate how long it takes for a deployment to finish. Sometimes it is a few weeks other times it has been many months. MS gathers data during the deployment process and adjusts things when necessary. 

[#17]

You can easily accomplish that goal by using the Content Search web part. https://support.office.com/en-us/article/when-to-use-the-content-query-web-part-or-the-content-searc...

[#18]

Thank you for your suggestion.

Unfortunately it is not a very elegant solution and has some major limitations.  I require a regular document library experience so that the user experience is seamless between libraries, regardless of their physical location.  However I do not mean to hijack this thread with alternatives.  I was simply hoping the Hub sites would offer shared libraries.

Thanks,

[#19]

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@Dean Gross wrote:

Sorry, but there is no good way to estimate how long it takes for a deployment to finish. Sometimes it is a few weeks other times it has been many months. MS gathers data during the deployment process and adjusts things when necessary. 

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That's what I was afraid of. 

Just curious how many of you have your production tenants set to Targeted Release?

We've been reluctant to do this, because it feels like beta testing in production.  Honestly, we're constantly seeing SharePoint updates with little or no warning in Standard Release, so I'm not sure there's much additional risk.

[#20]

Even within Targeted Release things differ between whole org and selected users around specific functionality. For a large corporation going Targeted Release I’d see as pretty unworkable. Thinking about functionality such as Hub Sites even working with selected users might be difficult. I’d recommend having a separate ‘test’ tenant where possible. My impression is Microsoft is getting to grips with releasing ‘directly’ to Standard Release but of course this is subject to a tenant admin team following the Admin Centre, this Community and official social media such as Twitter quite closely (in my case obsessively)