Introduction
Microsoft recently provided a huge update for SharePoint online customers to view the SharePoint sites in different level User Interfaces. This site template is named “Communication Site.”
Now how can you get the “Update” in your tenant?
Navigate to http://portal.office365.com
Open Admin Center ->Settings -> Organization Profile
Release preferences -> Click Edit ->Select “First release for eveyone”
Click Next -> Click Save
Just wait for a couple of hours and the update has been applied to your Sharepoint tenant.
Now let’s check communication site template in your sharepoint tenant
Open Admin center -> Click sharepoint
On that page click Create Site
You are now able to see the two site templates: one will be Team site, and another one is Communication site
Communication site
Communication site template provides a beautiful look and feel of Sharepoint sites across all the devices like mobile, web, tablets, and Sharepoint mobile applications.
It’s showing three types of design layouts
- Topic -> Contains News, Events, Documents and other webparts as team sites
- Showcase -> It helps to display the photos and images well suitable for products related sites
- Blank -> It’s a blank site template, we need to integrate all the webparts and layouts from the scratch
Now let’s create all the three templates and see the experience of beautiful communication sites
Click Communication site -> Choose Topic design template-> Provide the site title and Description -> Click Finish
Site has been created successfully
Here we discuss about
- Navigation
- News webpart and its layouts
- Page layouts with Mobile and desktop views
- People Picker Card Webpart
Let’s Get started with navigation
Now I will show you how to create a link and sub link
Click Edit -> Click on the child navigation -> Click Make Sub link ->Click Save
Now the “Document” link has been moved as sub link “Home”
Create a New Menu Item -> Click on ADD Icon
Click Ok
“Our tenant” Menu item has been added successfully
News Webpart (This new News web part provides the rich UI experience for display and reading news)
Click Edit Page -> Click Add in a Page
Select News Webpart from Add web part selection window
When you click on EDIT
You can see the three types of layouts
- Top Story [View the content and images as a thumbnail widget]
- List View [This layout shows one by one ]
- Side by Side [It shows the content and images side by side]
Just Add going to news content into this News webpart
Click Add
It navigates to content page -> Provide the title of your News page
Click ADD Icon -> Click Image
Click Upload
Add Text Into it
You can also now adjust the font settings
Top story layout
List View Layout
Side By Side Layout
People Profiles
This webpart helps to show the people card in your sharepoint page
Click Add -> Select People
Provide the People name and Press Enter it added automatically
Click on the profile -> It will pop up the user information like phone, email and recent activities of the user
Page Layouts
- One Columns - Seperated grid into one single portion
- Two Columns - Seperated grid into two portions
- Three Columns – Seperated grid into three portions
- One Third – left column- separate grid into one thirds, adjust left column
- One Third – Right column - separate grid into one thirds, adjust right column
Now you can select your column grids on the go and there's no need to write even a single line of code. It works well across all the devices.
Let’s check the one column layout
Desktop
Mobile
Two columns
Desktop
Mobile
You can also change the background image of the title section
Three Column Layout
Added Iframe Webpart into the third column
Desktop
Mobile
One Third – left column
Desktop
Mobile
One Third – Right column
Desktop
Mobile
/* End of Page Layouts */
Conclusion
I will discuss the other components in communication site template on my second article, which will be coming soon
Happy sharepointing!..
Join the conversation! Your thoughts help the community grow.