Rollout of SharePoint Communication Sites to First Release?

[John Wynne]

Are the Microsoft folk: @Mark Kashman @Dan Holme @Andy Haon able to date the rollout of Communication Sites to FR please? As an example, I was pleased that @Chris McNulty was able to pin June 12 for the new Filter Panes functionality. Even within FR it's super useful to have a clue when the switch will be thrown. I did wait until June chaps :)

[#2 · Accepted solution]

It is June, and they are coming soon. We can't tell you exactly when, and the update to Filter Panes is a little different scale than introducing communication sites. We're on the final mile of QA and things are looking good. Mr. McNulty set a nice bar, and we'll be clear as to making noise before they come to FR; covers a lot of my to do's this coming month - to launch comm sites so they cannot be missed :-).

[#3]

Thanks Mark for your reply. Perhaps not a fair comparison there! The SharePoint Virtual Summit set my expectations a little high on timing.

[#4]

We're driving really hard to start the rollout to First Release this month, @John Wynne

[#5]

Will there be tools to assist in content migration from an existing team site?

[#6]

There will not be default tools to move content in this way. Can you share more about why you would like to move content from a team site to a communicaiton site? #interestedears

[#7]

@Mark KashmanI can see several scenarios where I would want to replace the Team site that is associated with a Yammer groups with a Communication site. Many of our larger business units use a Yammer group for conversations, and want a site for general news, tools, information etc.

[#8]

I agree. The departments "external" sites would be best served by a public Yammer and a Communication site. The "internal" would be a private Yammer or a mailbox and a Team site. 

[#9]

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@Benoit Fournier wrote:

I agree. The departments "external" sites would be best served by a public Yammer and a Communication site. The "internal" would be a private Yammer or a mailbox and a Team site. 

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Or even a dedicated team in "Microsoft Teams" for internal. From what I see in first adoptions, it's even easier to generate momentum and user involvement with its persistent chat.

[#10]

As Mark pointed out in his reply, communication sites is a very large combination of features spanning across pages, web parts, new site prov and the communication site experiences overall.  Our team has been working really hard to get this rolling out and we have a build now that we are doing our final validation on in order to start the rollout process.  

As some of you may have seen we posted on Message Center yesterday, and we plan to begin rollout next week to the First Release Select Users program.  On our current schedule (always subject to change) we plan to expand from there to 10% of the First Release program after the U.S. 4th of July holiday.

I use my @andyhaon account on Twitter to provide updates on capabilities we're rolling out in SharePoint Online, and will post there as we expand the rings that we are rolled out to.  We're really excited to get this out to customers and to get your feedback.

[#11]

Thanks for providing a more specific schedule of dates...might I ask why are you releasing first to First Release Select Users program?

[#12]

Thanks for the detailed reply @Andy Haon in particular for confirming this will be to FR Select Users rather than Full Org, I'm in a position to switch between these FR options but be prepared for some feedback on this :) It would help if these requirements are made clear across the Office Blog and Message Centre as this level of detail is of course very important to admins to help their customers on board new features. I follow you on Twitter and appreciate you providing updates there too. There are a lot of places to check! I am very much looking forward to Communication Sites! Thanks

[#13]

ooh, exciting.

In order to access the Communication Sites how does the Site Creation need to be set in SharePoint option.

If it's set to "A site with an Office 365 group" will that offer communication sites ?

[#14]

Hi Mark,

I realizedt hat I built our most important Company-Site as a communication site and not as a Team site. The Problem is, that a lot of functions from the team site are missing in the communication site. For instance we use Planner to manage tasks and integrate them into the teamsite, so you can manage them directy within sharepoint. Is there any way to do this at the communication site?

[#15]

The Planner plan instance is currently tied to the Office 365 Groups membership that has at it's root the connected SharePoint team site - and each app (Planner and team site are aware and driven by the same membership set of permissions; aka, the associated Office 365 group). That said, I'll loop in @Kippi Lundgren to see if there are any methods for people to be able to maintain a Planner plan, and use the SharePoint Planner web part to showcase a plan on a Communication site; also looping in @John Sanders to take a look, too; he owns our webpart strategy all up - including working with internal partner teams like the Planner team.

[#16]

@Ülgen Öztürk - We limit planner use to group connected team sites, as Mark points out above. We could potentially augment the webpart to allow you to select a different group to show content from on your communication site (similar to what we do for Group Calendar).

We didn't bui8ld this initially to keep the experience very simple.

If you're interested in having this type of choice on comm sites, please let us know. It does create a potential scenario where people that have access to the comm site are not members of the group governing permissions to the tasks in planner, and therefore won't be able to see them.