Choose the right site type - SharePoint Online Tutorial

- [Instructor] Focusing now on the two modern site types, let's talk about how we choose what type of site we want to create. First we have communicate sites and with communication sites, we have few authors, a very small number of people creating content but many people viewing it because communication sites are created so that we can broadcast or share our content. They're focused on communication and unlike team sites, there is no automatic Office group that is created for a communication site. If I set up a communication site, I will then specifically invite different people who I'd like to have edit that site with me and then we'll make the site available more broadly to everyone else. A typical use of communication site is a product or service showcase. In fact, one of the templates that's created for a communication site is called a showcase template. So imagine for example that we want to show off the different solar products we have, that's what I'll be doing with my communication site and I have access to things like an image gallery that allow me to do that. But we don't need to stick with showcases, we can also look at other uses like policies and procedures. Imagine a human resources department using a communication site as a way to be able to display information about HR benefit options and links to places where employees could go to the self-service portal to actually fill out forms or download them. Make whatever choices they need to make. Another great use for a communication site is reporting. Keep performance indicators and other metrics or even annual report summaries that would be useful to employees internally. We have a Power BI web part that we can use in SharePoint online that makes it super easy to take visualizations that we have created in Power BI and use those in reports in our communication sites. Another possibility would be onboarding information so that when we have new employees in the organization rather than simply taking them to an orientation and telling them some things or sending them some links to documents or even sending them to a team site, we can send them to a site that was created specifically to provide an overview of the content that they will need to become familiar with as part of their employment. And one final use case, training and support is another way to use a communication site. For example, I can include maps, I can include Office 365 videos, I can easily imagine a communication site that was created that's how to use our SharePoint site. Not to teach people how to use SharePoint, that's my job, but to show people how our particular site is laid out and what the features of our site are. So when you're a new employee, go to the onboarding communication site and if you'd like to know more about the different products that we sell and support, go to the products and services showcase, that kind of information. So training and support and general employee communications are great uses for communication sites. There are many other use cases as well but if the kind of site you want to create seems to fit in this profile, and again has a small number of authors creating content for a much larger group, you probably want a communication site. Now the other type of a modern site is a team site. Team sites have many authors because by default, when I create a team site, everybody who is invited to that site, every member is in fact an author. And they are created not to broadcast or share content but to create the content that will be broadcast or shared. Or in the case of a project site, to collaborate on deliverables. These sites are focused on collaboration, this is what has moved us to SharePoint to begin with, is to be able to work collaboratively with other users and as I stated previously, when I create a site for a team, I am in fact also creating an Office group by default. Now individual organizations can change these settings, they can change the settings so there is no Office group created and you can also associate an Office group with a communication site, you could associate an Office group with a classic site. But by default, when I create a communication site, no automatic Office group. When I create a team site however, I get one. And use cases for team sites abound because we've been using SharePoint team sites for a long time. Most organizations typically create departmental teams. Everyone in IT is on the IT team site. In our organization, everyone who does installs is on the install site. Everyone who is in sales is part of the sales site. We can also have geographic teams. If all of your employees are in one place, if you have offices in different locations, it's really nice to have sites that are specific to the geography so that everybody in the organization doesn't need to get notices about what's happening in a particular office. Whether it's the schedule for the massage therapist or the fact that the office is closed for inclement weather so geographic teams are also very popular. But so are teams that are focused more on role, a leadership team for example, perhaps for the executive staff or I've seen organizations have leadership teams for everyone who's in middle management for everyone who is a supervisor. We can create project teams and one of the project teams that we have in our site is a policy review team because we're in the process of reviewing our employment policies. Another use of team sites is for event planning or planning of any type that isn't directly project related. Whether the group is planning the annual meeting, an executive conference or a baby shower for one of the employees. You would create a team site if your use case is similar to any of these or is any other use case where you have a number of people who have a need to collaborate together and collaboration is the primary purpose for this site. Whether you are creating a communication site or a team site, many of the steps to create and customize the sites are the same. That's what we'll focus on next, the common features of both communication sites and team sites.