Way to convert existing site to modern team site UI?

[Chris Gilson]

The new modern team site home page looks great and new team sites get to use it.  How about existing sites?  Is there a way for a site owner to convert their site (especially the home page) to the modern team site UI?  One of my colleagues found a post to do it with PowerShell as a SharePoint admin, but it would be nice if the site collection owner could change it in a way similar to the setting for the document libraries modern experience.

[#2]

I'm still waiting for out-of-the-box feature to create a modern site. Currently I've realized that the only root site collection (https://<your_tenant_name>.sharepoint.com) gets modern experience applied. The other site collections are still classical. 

[#3]

Same issue here - site collection admin and Global Admin on our tenant but our root site collection homepage https://"tenant".sharepoint.com is still the classic homepage - any subsequent page created isnt using the Modern UI. In an ideal world I would want to convert it into a communication Site.

Any help would be great

[#4]

I like the Communication Site layout and easy navigation style. Ideal for organization knowledge base sharing. Only that we have tonns of article in current Team Sites and practically impossible to migrate all pages / documents one-by-one.

I tried using Hero content part on Team Site but the layout is way different from actual Communication Site. E.g., it doesn;t fit the width of the page,  search option is missing, navigation elements are incomplete. Hope there will be a way to migrate content from team sites one day.

Regards,

SM

[#5]

There is a solution for that, same comms site as template and use for root site collection, there's a blog out on the webs for it, seems to work fine.

[#6]

I'd love to be able to create modern site pages within a legacy publishing site collection, but don't yet have the option.  Is this feature going to become available?  I can create modern libraries ansd lists with no problem, but desperatley want to modernise the home pages of subsites etc.

Is there a setting within site features or page layout templates that needs to be manually changed? 

Thanks in advance,

L

[#7]

Okay so here's how I did it,

I activated the Site Pages feature in Site Features on the destination site which is the root site collection on our tenant

I then used Sharegate migration to copy the Site Content Type for Site Page to the destination site collection. I then copied the Site Pages library and the Pages Library to the destination site and merged changes.

I can now create Modern pages 

Hope that helps

Chet

[#8]

Not sure if this might help anyone on the "Get a site provisioned using the 'classic' sites method - SharePoint Admin Centre, Site Collections, New Private Site - but using the Office 365 Group team site (with modern UI home page) as the template", type angle ...

How to save the team site of an Office 365 Group (Unified Group) as a template, and create sites via the "classic" provisioning process from that template

Create a Unified Group with associated team site.  This team site will be used as the source for the site template.

Navigate to team site, Site Settings (Site information, View all site settings), notice Save site as template is missing.

Notice that appending _layouts/savetmpl.aspx to the URL doesn't work, you get "Sorry, you don't have access to this page".

This is due to scripting being disabled in the Unified Group team site, which over-rides the SharePoint Admin Centre, Settings, Custom Script, configuration.

To enable the scripting for the site, per this article, …

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Allow-or-prevent-custom-script-1f2c515f-5d7e-448a-9fd7-835d...

… run the following PowerShell …

# Import general SPO module and connect

Import-Module Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell -DisableNameChecking

Connect-SPOService -Url https://yourname-admin.sharepoint.com/

Set-SPOsite "https://yourname.sharepoint.com/sites/yoursite" -DenyAddAndCustomizePages 0

Return to the Unified Group team site, Site Settings, notice Save site as template is now available.

Click Save as a template and save the site as a template.

Go to Site Settings (Site information, View all site settings), Web Designer Galleries, Solutions.

Notice the site template you just saved, click the file, Save the .wsp file locally.

Go to SharePoint Admin Centre, site collections, New, Private Site Collection, and create a site collection using Custom, <Select template later… > .

Go to the home page of the new site collection, in the Template Selection choose Solution Gallery.

In the Solution Gallery click Upload Solution, browse locally and select the .wsp file you just downloaded.

Click Activate to activate the template solution.

Return to the home page of the new site collection, the Template Selection is displayed again.

Select Custom, then your template you just uploaded.

Use the default SP groups for the site's groups setup.

So this new site collection has the following properties: -

1. The home page is a genuine Unified Group team site home page, because it is based on a template that was a Unified Group team site.
2. The site collection appears in SharePoint Admin, Settings, site collections, because it was provisioned using the "classic" site collection provisioning process.
3. None of the steps performed are "unsupported" by Microsoft.       There was no "copy-and-paste" of the _layouts/savetmpl.aspx URL (as, for example, can be performed to save Publishing Sites as a template and thereby render them unsupported by Microsoft). Microsoft technical support confirmed this.
4. The site is linked into the Unified Group that is associated with the source site of the template. Clicking on "Group Conversations" on the home page of the newly created site takes you into Outlook positioned on the Unified Group associated with the source of the template. So now instead of a 1-to-1 relationship between the Unified Group and the Site, it is 1-to-many.
5. If you create sub-sites using the template, in either the source site or any site created from the template, these behave similarly i.e. all have the relevant properties 1, 3-4 above.

All References

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/2492356/save-site-as-template-option-isn-t-available-in-sha...

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Allow-or-prevent-custom-script-1f2c515f-5d7e-448a-9fd7-835d...

http://www.contentprecedesdesign.net/2015/04/save-site-as-template-in-sharepoint-online.html

https://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/192050/save-site-as-template-in-sharepoint-online

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/how24/2013/06/13/save-sharepoint-2013-publishing-site-as-a-template...

[#9]

Hi Luke, can you build a new page inside the Pages library, and then use the "..." content menu option "Make Homepage" to set the new page as the default home page for the team site?

[#10]

I'm up and running having now enabled the Site Pages feature and can now create modern pages.  As simple as that.  Many thanks!

I now have a strange oddity with the Quick Links webpart, which is not displaying in comapct view for my end users (defaulting to filmstrip), despite the page being saved and published. 

Homepage appears fine for me and I've logged users in and out of their browser, clearing cache etc... 

But appreciate that's not for this forum!  ;)

Through testing, it appears that the compact view for the quick links webpart, is only available to users that are configured for first release.  Does that sound correct?

[#11]

What is wrong when I can create new modern pages to old "traditional" Team Sites and Project Sites but from the (Site) Pages library I cannot promote them as the default home page for the site? There is no such option.

[#12]

I just delete the existing Home.aspx and rename the Modern Page to Home.aspx - works without errors

[#13]

Yes that seems to work! Thanks.

[#14]

I did this some weeks ago on my teamsite or better on its subsite.

Worked fine.

I don't know if it corelated but yesterday all my subsites modern pages are not accessible any more.

Only the modern pages of the teamsite (parent) and the classic of the subsites + the libraries and stuff of the subsites are still ok.

Everything else I receive a NULL pointer.

Sites have not been touched.

That's annoying. Even going back to an older version does not work.

[#15]

How did you create that beautiful calendar? I think they only have calendars for groups and they show up as events .

[#16]

To remove the banner from a new modern page, all I had to do was change the PageLayoutType from "Article" to "Home" 

<mso:PageLayoutType msdt:dt="string">Article</mso:PageLayoutType>

to

<mso:PageLayoutType msdt:dt="string">Home</mso:PageLayoutType>

[#17]

I've got a good one here - I have created a subsite using the Blog template and its stuck in classic mode, meaning no easy way of creating flows from the posts or comments lists. I have managed to get around this but this prevents me utilising all the new functionality for modern lists.

Thanks

Chet

[#18]

This can only be done with Admin rights?

[#19]

Sharepoint admin isn't needed, just need proper access within the specific site and Sharepoint designer. 

[#20]

How did you do this? Did you do it on SharePoint Online?

[#21]

Hey Eric,

I tried to do the same. I copied the site page> Home.aspx from O365 Group and uploaded it on another Normal SPO Site. But its giving error of "No ComponentID"..

Did i miss anything?