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OverviewOn March 23, 2018, the Microsoft Tech Community hosted a SharePoint hub sites AMA. The live hour of Q&A provided members the opportunity to ask questions and voice feedback with the product team. We hope you join us live next time! Resources SharePoint TrainingSharePoint UserVoiceSites and Collaboration UserVoiceHybrid Resource Center on OfficeMicrosoft MechanicsNeed technical support? Please visit the?Microsoft Community?or?Office 365 Support.SharePoint sessions at Microsoft Ignite 2017TopicsIntroductionGeneral DiscussionAdditional ResourcesThat's a wrap!IntroductionWelcome to the SharePoint hub sites Ask Microsoft Anything! View the list of introductions in this thread.General DiscussionQ: In the documentation of the hub sites, it is written that every site owner can assign a communication site or team site to a hub site. I think there should be some kind of approval for this in the case of intranet government. (thread)A: We are looking at various approval flow scenarios and will share more in the near future. For now, note that you can scope the hub site if you want to restrict who can associate sites to it. At this point, only SharePoint tenant admins can promote a site to a hub site. We are exploring alternatives for the future. That's not quite the full story, though: admin "delegates" who can join each hub. If I am allowed to join HubX, I can join any site I own to it, but I can't join HubY. So, it's not like any site owner can join any hub.Q: Someone on community the other day posted some hub screenshots of a "Scope" setting for the news webpart. Is that something that got pulled or will that be added to the webpart in the near future? (thread)A: Yes, as part of the hub site release we are including updates to the News webpart which include the ability to specify one or more sources to query for News. If the hub sites feature has been enabled for your organization, the new webpart functionality should be included.Q1: Yeah that's why I'm confused, I have hub sites activated and it works great, and the news rollup works, but I do not have the scope options or the "New" view option in the edit settings for the web part.?The only way you get the "hub" view is when you first add the webpart, if you change it, you can't change it back, you have to re-add. So, might be something there needing looked at?A1: See the section "Change the news source" in the help article. Q2: Yeah, I’ve seen that, but mine doesn't have those options. It seems half deployed or something. That's why I was wondering if that web part may have a separate update path and it's not fully updated? A2: We had a glitch as we were expanding access. It should be fixed now. Q: I thought I remember seeing that events will roll-up to the hub, in addition to news posts. I'm testing this now, but in the meantime, is my memory correct? BTW the requirements would be similar to news posts (e.g. selective roll-ups). (thread)A: Events will not roll-up from associated sites. Great to see interest on this though so we can think about this.Q: A lot of my customers would love to cross-post news on multiple sites. Will this be available in the future??For example: When they use a part of the company as a hub, and they use different regions as hub-sites, they would love to post a news post just once for multiple but not all regions. (thread)A: We disclosed a little information at Ignite last year about the next level of news service investments that revolve around scheduling, targeting, cross-posting, pinning - and we talk about this in the terms of "company news" alongside what is in the service today, which is more bottoms-up "team news." We'll be sharing more of what's next coming next at the SharePoint Conference North America in Vegas, May 21-23.Q: I've seen Hub Sites UI features appear in a couple of tenants to which I have access, however, in Mark's video "Introducing SharePoint hub sites in Office 365" there was mention of a new "Sites" web part that lists the sites associated to the hub.? When I edit a page in a Communications site declared as a hub (and has all the other features showing like news aggregation, scoped search), there is no new Sites web part. Is the rollout of this web part on a different schedule to the other UI elements of the hub sites roll-out?? If so, what's the approximate schedule? (thread)A: Yes, as part of the hub sites release we are also releasing this new web part for viewing activity from associated sites. We don't automatically update your home page to add the part, you need to edit the page and add the part from the toolbox. See?: Is there a web part that allows you to "Search" for people? The search box on the communications site only searches content on the site and not people. (thread)A: There is no search specific web part. You can search for people by up scoping to SharePoint search. We do have a people web part where you can choose to display specific people.Q: Are "site designs" the recommended OOB method (for now, at least) for replicating the existing "site template" type functionality?? And, I think I saw this in documentation, but can you add a site to a Hub as part of a site design script?? So, the thought being that you could have scoped site designs that allow people to create sites (within their area) that would then automatically associate that site to the appropriate Hub? (thread)A: Yes there is a site script action to add a site to a hub. Site designs are the best way to accomplish templating, but it is still limited but they give us the ability to call a flow and then we can do whatever we need as part of that flow include launching a PnP Provisioning template.Q1: I did see that site designs are limited to 30 actions, which does seem like a small number, especially if you are saving customized lists and things.? Is the idea that you could launch the PnP provisioning template (via the flow), which could ultimately do whatever you want (without the limitations)?A1: Yeah, by launching a PnP Provisioning template you are not limited to the 30 actions. In a webinar I did yesterday on Site Designs and scripts, my recommendation is that things that the site scripts can do to be added there, within the 30-action limit. The reason is that the user gets status updates to those pieces being accomplished. When you trigger a flow to apply the last bits with PnP the user loses status updates. So, I suggested if you need to do that, make sure your Flow Trigger action tells the user that the last parts will be applied asynchronously. That way the expectation is set. Q2: Any chance the webinar you referenced could be watched on demand??A2: Yeah it was recorded and should be posted next week. It was part of?this series. Q: I’m aware of some of the changes added to web parts as hub sites rollout. Are there any more first party changes or additions we can expect in the short term? (thread)A: News and highlighted content will support rolling up content from all associated sites. We're also introducing a new web part, the Sites web part that will display sites associated to the hub.Q: I understand that is possible to display news from sites associated with a hub site, on the hub site. But is it also possible the other way around??Case:?We have a hub site called HR. We also do have for?each HR related topic a site, e.g. Onboard, HR Events and Vacancies, which are all associated with the HR hub site. On the HR site, we are displaying all HR news, so news from the HR hub sites and aggregated from the HR related topics e.g. Onboard, HR Events and Vacancies. On the Onboard site, I want to display one news web part which displays all news created in the Onboard site the normal way. Using another news web part, which I call "General HR News", I want to display news specifically created at the HR hub site (without news from the associated sites). I expect it is possible to display news from the HR hub site on this Onboard site using a Highlighted Content web part, but that doesn't have the same look and feel as the News web part. So, can I use another News Web Part to display the "General HR News" from the HR Hub Site on the Onboard site? (thread)A: You can do this now. On the associated site, you can add the News web part and select the HR hub site from the "Select sites" UX. That will surface only News posted on the HR hub site itself and not from the associated sites. See the section on "Change the news source" in the help article. Q: I see some people have the Hub sites available to them already. Do i need to do something in admin settings to turn them on or will it be pushed out to everyone by a certain date?(thread)A: No, the feature is still in the process of rolling out to Targeted Release tenants. Once its rolled out to you, you can run the PowerShell commands to make a hub site and then when you visit the site you should see the hub features enabled for you.Q: More widely, what are folks’ thoughts on managing Hub Sites? Who manages what and how will they stop being overwhelmed? This is a particular problem without a UX level feature available. End users may not appreciate using PowerShell. Really an adoption and management issue. (thread)A: At the moment the creation and management of Hubs is done through the SharePoint Online Management Shell. So, I would say that hubs should be centrally managed. This would help prevent the creation of too many hubs. If there are too many hubs this could be a bad UX for the users.Q1: Understood but this needs to be resourced. In a larger enterprise the effort across the lifecycle may not be trivial. Not a tech problem but a real people one - potentially.A1: Definitely, I understand the resourcing problem. I believe you could have one of your SharePoint admins take this responsibility. But still it will probably remain an admin task in the future. Q: Any resources how to approach but also how to do the branding of SharePoint Hub sites? All related communication or team sites under a hub site will have a conformity look and feel. (thread)A: Check out this article. It talks a bit about this and links to an article about changing the look of your SharePoint site. When you associate a site to a hub, it will inherit the hub site's theme. For more details on what's possible w/ modern theming (incl. creating and publishing your own company themes) check this out. Q1: I had a few questions, first is related to the creation of a Hub Site.? Is our only option in creating a web site beforehand (i.e Communications Site) and then covert it to a Hub Site via PowerShell? Will there be another option (i.e SharePoint Admin Center) to handle the creation of Hub Sites in one shot?? I also noticed a 50 Hub site limit, is this a performance type of boundary/limit and are we also limited on how many sites can be associated with one Hub site?? A1: For now, yes, the only option is to create a site beforehand and then use PowerShell to make it a hub site. I'll check with the team to see if making a new site a hub site during provisioning is on the backlog. The PowerShell cmdlet to?convert a site to a hub site?is: Register-SPOHubSite?URL.?If you're comfortable using PowerShell, you can write a script that automatically runs that cmdlet for each site you want to convert. No limits on how many sites can be associated with a hub site.Q: Just a suggestion, Hero style layout "Full page width" for news webpart. (thread)A: Thanks for the suggestion, we’ll take this back to the team. Q: What the expectation on getting Hub Sites fully out into Targeted Release? (thread)A: We are hoping to finish rolling out fully to Targeted Release in the next weeks.Q: I understand that you can set a policy on a SharePoint hub site regarding which groups are allowed to associate a site to it using the PowerShell?Grant-SPOHubSiteRights command.?But looking at governance, can an administrator get notified when a site is associated or disassociated from a hub site? So,?instead of checking all the sites or generating weekly lists of hub sites and underlying associated sites using PowerShell, can an administrator receive a notification when a site has been associated or disassociated from a hub site? Get notified regarding hub site association using Microsoft Flow triggers? For example, can?the following Microsoft Flow / Azure Logic Apps triggers become available: "When a site has been associated to a hub site" and "When a site has been disassociated from a hub site"? (thread)A: We don't currently provide notifications for when a site gets associated to a hub. We are working on an approval process so that when someone associates their site to a hub, the hub site owner gets to approve the request. Great feedback though for those that don't plan to use an approval process.Q: Is it possible to have Managed Navigation on Hub Sites with Communication Site template & also activate Publishing feature? (thread)A: It is not recommended. The team is reviewing numerous points of innovation for navigation all up, including audience targeting, permissions trimming, metadata driven, ... we'll have more to share soon on the go-forward plans you can expect - to be shared at the SharePoint Conference North America (Vegas, May 21-23). Q: Is there going to be a way for an article to auto expire from visibility?? Some groups don't publish enough news to have them roll off.? Unpublishing doesn't help because then it's a manual process and probably removes article from search results. (thread)A: We disclosed a little information at Ignite last year about the next level of news service investments that revolve around scheduling, targeting, cross-posting, pinning - and we talk about this in the terms of "company news" alongside what is in the service today, which is more bottoms-up "team news." So great feedback, and we'll be sharing more of what's next coming next at the SharePoint Conference North America in Vegas, May 21-23. Q: If I reduce the width of a site (e.g. Windows snap left) that?has Hub site navigation (hub or associated site) at some point the hub site navigation disappears but I don't seem to see it anywhere in the page.? The burger menu has the local site navigation, but the Hub navigation is gone.? Is that by design or should we expect an update to the layout on reduced width windows (haven't tested on mobile devices yet). (thread)A: Expect an update soon that will address this. The hub nav will be part of the burger menu in small screens.Q: Branding has become a high priority with our company.?Being able to apply a custom theme to SharePoint Communication sites is a huge win. But the custom theme is not applied to site logos or the Site header in the SharePoint mobile app.?Is a fix for this being developed??Microsoft support has said there is no way to change the color in the mobile app. (thread)A: This is a known issue and the team is working on it for sure to make sure that the experience from site to site, esp. in a hub site across sites, that the experience and theme are as you planned.Q: How are hub sites are different from Communication sites? For which purpose can we recommend to our clients about HUB Sites? (thread)A: Hub sites are a way to organize and link together multiple sites. When you create the hub, you get to specify which site is the home of the hub -- we do recommend as a best practice using a communication site for that purpose, since it will do a great job of highlighting news, activity and content from across the hub. Don't think of "hub site" as a new type of site or new template. Comm sites can be hubs! Think of a hub as a designation that gives a site superpowers. After making a site a hub, content from associated sites rolls up to it, search scope includes associated sites, branding and navigation are shared with associated sites. I expect we will see most hubs are comm sites, as comm sites are all about reaching a broader audience.Q1: Client says that hub sites are similar to site collection, so what specialty and how exactly they differ from Site collection?A1: I think of Hub sites as a way of making it easier to organize the sprawl of sites that get created by adding common theming, search, and navigation across all sites that belong to a hub. So, for your customers this could be a way to make it easier to link sites that have common goals, such as sites for HR initiatives. In a literal sense they are a collection of sites but each site that is joined to a hub is itself a site collection. So, each site has its own security and isolated content. The hub allows pieces to be shared across the members. Be sure to check out the latest documentation (we'll also have more guidance/planning materials coming).?Q2: Just told to client who extensively uses SharePoint. He told SharePoint hub sites are nothing new. If it is collection of sites, what is special again? In classic terminologies, we call it as Site collection and in new terminology, we are calling as Hub. Need more detailed thing how it really works and how client can use it and how it saves his time.?All these are very important.A2: There are some key differences.? First, hub sites are designed from the start to both push down to associated sites (nav, theme) but also to roll up content (news, sites webpart).? Site collections/subwebs didn't really have great roll up functionality.? Second, hub sites and associated sites are designed for a dynamic, flexible organization, where relationships may change over time, and the association between a site and its hub is asimple link that is easily changed.? Site collections/subwebs were designed as a durable relationship and as you know the product does not make it easy to move subwebs between site collections.? But for now, there aresome needs best met by hub sites, and some needs best met by site collection/subwebs, and we'll do our best to make that clear.Q: An SPO Admin can control, who is allowed to assign a site to a specific hub.?But who is allowed to disassociate the sites??Site Owners? Or same users as for associating??(thread)A: Site owners can disassociate the sites.Q: Do we have any option to monitor hub site activity in Office 365 admin center usage/health or PowerBI adoption? (thread)A: For now, it just all shows as regular site activity and there's no tag or other way to identify which activity is coming from hub-associated sites. This is something we'll look into more going forward.Q: We want to use a hub site as an intranet portal. One Communication Site for each department, connected to the hub. The departments shall publish their news on their comm. site. Only important news shall be published as a hub news as well, all other news on the news rollup. Is there an easy way to publish a news from a connected site on the hub site? (thread)A: News from sites associated to the hub get automatically rolled up to the hub site if you're using the News web part set to "all sites in the hub". All news articles roll up though, we don't have a mechanism to allow the hub site owner to pick and choose which article to feature at the hub site. A2: You can also choose which sites you want to roll up news from into the hub, so if there are select sites that you want and not others you can set that up. A3: Check out the section "Change a news source" in the help article: LinkQ: Now I’ve sorted my Hub Sites I need a Hub of Hubs and the best way of expressing that might be an Enterprise Landing Page. I realize much must remain NDA and this is a genuine question rather than a fishing expedition. Are we heading in that direction? (thread)A: Have a look at the new capabilities we've added to the News webpart and the Sites webpart, they allow you to roll up content from multiple locations. does that meet your needs?A2: SharePoint Home does some of this for individual users, and of course you can program featured links there. Also, if you built multiple hubs there are a couple of ways you can model a site that provides a landing experience to help people navigate and learn about the set of hubs. A3: You can use the hub news layout here: Link (part way down the article)Q: 90% of the users in our company have F1 licenses. We are implementing SharePoint Online Modern communication sites (no previous on-prem SharePoint environment). F1 licenses do not have a SharePoint Tile in the Office365 App Launch. So, 90% of our users do not have a way to get to the SharePoint Home Page. Can an update be applied to add the SharePoint Tile to the F1 license? (thread)A: Thanks for the report. We are aware of this and working to update the app launcher for F1 users.Q: Given that hub sites/ Teams/Groups etc. is forcing users to have thousands of site collections instead of a site hierarchy, what recommendation do you have to simplify the design of Information Architecture for any large-scale SharePoint deployment. Do users create thousands of copies of the same content type and site columns on all Site Collections, or is there a better way? (thread)A: The core of our modern IA for SharePoint Online is the combination of hub sites and site designs (). Hub sites provide the shared navigation and roll up of related sites, and site designs give you the flexibility to apply customizations as sites are created, including (through integration with the patterns and practices toolkit) content management. We will continue to look at ways to streamline sharing content types across an organization. and while we hope Office365 Groups and self-service site creation are a net value add for your organization, and that hub sites help IT organize those user-created sites, you can use admin controls to disable self-service for some or all users if your particular needs require a more centralized/managed process.Q: When you create a team site, and afterwards you attribute it to a Hub site: which result is given within a search of the whole tenant? Reference to 2 sites? (thread)A: No matter where you search from, the search result is the same, for example if you search for a document, you will see the document and the site it lives in - not a reference to more than one site. The search is scoped within the hub, but it does not duplicate the files, merely references them in the framing of finding content only from within the hub, until you up-scope to full enterprise search - where still you would find the same document and the same reference to the main site it sits in.Q: Although we have the basic Hub Sites functionality now, is there a roadmap regarding additional Hub Sites features and when they are planned to be released (like in which quarter)? (thread)A: Hey Harold, the best way to stay up to date with SharePoint hub sites roadmap is to: 1) Follow our SharePoint community blog here: Link. 2) Attend SharePoint Conference 2018 where we'll be sharing a ton of news + content!: Link.Q: Will it be possible to convert the root SharePoint site () into a hub site? (thread)A: Great question! We are looking into options for the root site, but don't yet have details to shareA2: Yes, it is possible to make the root site a hub site.Q: If I deploy a SharePoint extension on a hub site that will insert content in header or footer, will it be shared with every site attached to the hub site? (thread)A: No, to achieve that you could use a site design to ensure a created site gets joined to a particular hub and the right extension gets applied. For more on that capability, see : Is it planned to add the hub feature in all native webparts? We're using a lot of the HighlightedContent and we'd like to limit the crawling to the hub. Is this kind of things planned? (thread)A: For highlighted content, check out the help article which shows new option for Source: Link A2: You can do this today. When you use the highlighted web part on the hub site home page, then it can be scoped to show results from all associated sites. And for other web parts, they will work the same as any modern site. More here about the highlighted web part: Link.Q: Hello, I have created a new team site then promoted it to a hub site. The I associated a communication site to hub site. No changes to navigation yet. I don't see top nav appear in both hub site and also in the associated site yet. Has hub site nav functionality rollout to target tenants? Also, another question about navigation: If the associated site has subsites, is there a way to make them appear in hub site navigation? (thread)A: If you aren't seeing the nav set yet, the feature has not yet been enabled in your tenant. We are enabling for all targeted release tenants, but it takes a few days to get everywhere. on subsites -- the hub navigation is manually curated by the hub owner. you are welcome to add links to any subsites, but we don't automate that process.Q: I've noticed that the new Hub nav bar position is above the top placeholder used for extensions. This means this placeholder is between two native elements which makes it harder to have a custom look and feel on this part of the screen... (thread) A: Good point Jonathan, we'll follow up on that but agree it should be below the placeholder.Q2: Hello everyone, First of all, let me apologize if this is a repeated question, but I didn't read all the previous questions. This is the scenario: We developed a custom global navigation, in form of a mega menu, using SPFx extensions application customizer. This is present in all the site collections at the moment and it's taxonomy driven. Questions: Where does the top place holder sits in relation to the hubs top navigation (on top/bottom)? Is the top navigation on hub sites optional? Can we customize the top navigation (get the items and apply custom rendering)? Was this scenario planned? What's exactly the right approach in our case? A2: The placeholder should sit above the hub nav bar. If you make a site a hub site or associate a site to a hub, you will get the hub nav (not optional).Q: Since we are planning to create a bunch of site collection/subsite in our environment do you have any plan to replace hub site with site collection? (thread)A: We do think hub sites provide a modern, more flexible approach to providing shared navigation and theming across sites. Over time we plan to add more of the features you might be depending on for subsites today, but for now if you are depending on subsite functionality like shared security groups or content types, you should continue to rely on that.Q: Will the limit of 50 hubs be raised in the future? (thread)A: We are taking the approach of reviewing this consistently, paying attention to the needs, and ensuring that all goes smoothly during each phase. So, it's not out of bounds to expect the limit to go up, and we hope the match the pace of having a limit that is consistently above use. So, we're monitoring this from a scale perspective and don't wish to slow you down.Q: Besides using the PowerShell commands like Register-SPOHubSite, can we use the (Modern) SharePoint Admin Center to register a site as a hub site now or in the nearby future? (thread)A: We are working on bringing support to the modern SP admin center at a future date.Q: How are permission inconsistencies handled? For example, a user is member of a hub-connected group but has no access to the hub. Will he see the hub navigation? (thread)A: The main thing by design is that when you associate a site to a hub site, the service does not adjust permissions. Current guidance, if you wish all to have the same permissions across all sites (hub and all associated), you'll need to ensure that the same Office 365 groups (or security groups) are programmed for each site. However, if you do wish to have varying permissions for various sites, even if they are associated to the hub, you can certainly do this, too. Again, when you join the sites with varying permissions, the hub site will not adjust them automatically.Q: Does the shared navigation etc. for a Hub site respect the security configuration of associated sites? For example, if a user doesn't have access to a site, will that site still show in the Hub site navigation? Thinking of something like a collection of Finance sites with one being the Payroll team site collection and where most members of the Finance team wouldn't have access to the Payroll site therefore wouldn't need to see the link. (thread)A: At this time, the nav is manually created and available as is to everyone. It is not yet audience targeted or driven by permission groups or metadata. All are certainly within scope for the future, and the team is aware of the feedback.Q: Are there any plans in the works to improve the provisioning of Hub Sites? A combination of PowerShell commands is not ‘modern’ SharePoint. (thread)A: At this point we are exploring modern alternatives including the SharePoint Admin CenterA2: We are working on bringing support to the modern SP admin center at a future date.Q: Recognizing we are at the earliest stages of Hub Sites it would be useful to pin News items. A very active hub site can quickly ‘demote’ relevant news? Thoughts from the team? (thread)A: We are looking into the ability to pin news posts generally as part of the news layout options. More to share in the future.Q: How many sites can you associate with a Hub site? Also, if you have associated more sites than can be shown on a small screen, what’s the experience like for end-users? Do they drop off onto a sub menu like the ribbon on modern document libraries? (thread)A: You can associate any number of team sites and communication sites to the hub site. You'll want to consider which ones you promote from the top nav, like you said for the experience of the cross-site nav element. But each site will contribute to the value of news and search and such for rollup of content, even if it's not in the nav. And the nav element is responsive, so the menu will collapse as you would expect to a waffle, and still they would see all sites and drop-down elements as you design.Q: Will Hub sites be available for SharePoint Multi-Geo in the future? (thread)A: Yes. It is a work in progress.Q: Hello, I tried SharePoint Hub site in my two different tenants couple of minutes after Mark Kashman releases the blog on Wednesday. The script worked without any errors, but now my site got hub site theme, but I can't see the hub site menu, also I don't have the option to change hub site in site information, and I don't have hub site option in Create Site. (thread)A: Hi Alireza, the command will run but the sites won't activate until your tenant gets the Hub sites update. I think it can take up to two weeks from the announcement for all "Targeted Release" tenants to get them activated. If you ran the command, you will see your sites update soon as you get that update and you won’t' have to run the command again.Q: Does the whole tenant have to be in Targeted Release to get Hubs working in March, or will individual users that are Targeted Release get it before the rest of tenant? (thread)A: We are rolling hubs out to tenants in Targeted Release.Q: Can we use the (Modern) SharePoint Admin Center to see a list of SharePoint Hub sites? (thread)A: To view the full list of hub sites you can use the get-SPOHubSite PowerShell command. We are working on bringing support to the modern SP admin center at a future date.Additional ResourcesHere are links to some of the help documentation for SharePoint hub sites. Be sure to leave feedback in the articles to let us know if you found them helpful.?What is a SharePoint hub site??Create a hub site in SharePoint Online?Set up your SharePoint hub site?Associate your SharePoint site with a hub site?Disassociate your SharePoint site from a hub site?That’s a wrap!Thank you for joining for?this fun hour! We hope you'll continue to ask questions and share your feedback. See you next time!? ................
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