SharePoint is a web-based content management platform. SharePoint Site is one of the main components of it. The Sites are essentially a collection of libraries, apps, pages, links, content, configurations, features, and sub-sites. Among different SharePoint Sites, the three most used are—hub site, team site, and communication site.

In this article, we'll show you how to set up SharePoint sites that are perfect for creating a team collaboration platform for any project or routine work.

What Is SharePoint Hub Site?

As the name suggests, the SharePoint hub site is the hub of sites and content of the organization, team, or personal who use SharePoint. The Hub site facilitates the services that you need to run your organization or personal work smoothly. For example, you can organize and connect sites from different team members, departments, projects, regions, and divisions on one primary web platform.

Hub sites are vital elements for building your team or company intranet. A hub site stays in the center of any unit/department of your work. Other sites like the team, communication, navigation, etc., connect to the hub site to form a productive intranet that delivers outstanding results.

Related: Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do With Microsoft SharePoint

In summary, the hub site facilitates the following services for an effortless experience:

  1. Search any shared content from the entire personal, team, or organization-level SharePoint intranet.
  2. It helps you brand your team’s or company’s workspace so that everything looks uniform.
  3. Hub site enables you to bring consistency in site structure and navigation.
  4. Access all the related content to your project or task, like other sites, news, announcement suggestions, etc.

Essential Elements of the Hub Site

If you want to create a responsive and productive intranet for your team, project, or business, include the following elements in your hub site:

  1. A communicative home page feeding news, updates, and project status from all the work that you or your team do. It could be a space on the hub site or a linked communication site of the overall intranet.
  2. There should also be a content section where you and your team members can access project-related files, invoices, timesheets, meeting minutes, meeting agenda, to-do lists, multimedia, etc.
  3. You should also consider adding activities to your hub site like links to an upcoming team meeting, expense reports, time-tracking system, etc.
  4. A collaboration section where team members can discuss multi-role tasks, resolve bugs, and pass on content for editing or approvals.

Related: How to Use Google Jamboard for Visual Collaboration From Anywhere

SharePoint Team Site: Explained

Team site helps you to connect your team members for collaborative work in a productive environment. It's the intranet site where your company or team resources create or develop services, products, or content. You would also want to create a team site to let your team members plan an event, track project statuses, discuss project deliverables, and exchange ideas.

All the members of a SharePoint team site possess permission to create or edit content. Therefore, the team members of a specific project can work on project deliverables in real-time. As the resources in a task deliver their own assignments simultaneously, project bottlenecks reduce substantially.

An overview of the team site services are:

  1. Stay on top of your tasks, task dependencies, and project updates.
  2. Create, edit, organize, and co-develop shared project deliverables like web assets, content, or apps.
  3. Get access to team resources and apps of your Microsoft 365 subscription.

Essential Features of the Team Site

Though the team site eventually connects with the hub site, there are fundamental differences in user expectations and governance. The following are inherent features of a team site:

  1. Collaboration is the primary feature of a team site. You can create different team sites for different projects. Then, upload project resources, files, guidelines on that site and keep them open for all members.
  2. All the users of a team site are content authors. This feature ensures that the project resources have access to enough permission to change the asset responsibly. For quality assurance and compliance, admins can audit the activity logs.
  3. The team members determine the governance feature of the team site. The members should choose site practices and policies to embrace the Getting Things Done philosophy.
  4. Integrate with Microsoft 365 apps like Outlook, Teams, To Do, Lists, Excel, etc., for productivity and efficiency in project tasks.

SharePoint Communication Site: Explained

The communication site lets you share a story with team members, external collaborators, or clients. You can showcase team events, goals, achievements, milestones without giving edit rights to the audience. In comparison to team sites, there are fewer content authors in communication sites.

You can keep the site users informed about upcoming events and changes so that the users stay engaged with your work or project tasks. SharePoint lets you design your communication site in such a way that content consumption becomes effortless and time-efficient.

The following services summarize communication sites effectively:

  1. Display news and updates in a visual format that attracts the readers.
  2. Let internal and external users know about the services/products you offer.
  3. Exhibit client reviews and case studies professionally.
  4. Connect your brand with the external audience securely and without any extra cost.

Essential Features of the Communication Site

A communication site is also a part of the hub site. The following features and elements distinguish the communication site from the team site or hub site:

  1. The navigation pages of a communication site guide the reader to specific content by providing header buttons or content snippets.
  2. The destination page is the terminal point where users find the content they’re looking for. This page should ideally host downloadable, readable, or printable content. The destination page should also provide a search bar for efficient content retrieval.
  3. Topic-type communication sites offer the ideal structure for news, updates, and events.
  4. Showcase-type communication sites are appropriate if you want to display images or videos of your team, product, and services.
  5. Site policies ensure UI/UX consistency and effective content management.

Get Going With Effective Team Collaboration

Now you should be able to design your own SharePoint hub site, team site, and communication site to facilitate real-time team collaboration, productive work, and secure file sharing. The SharePoint app of Microsoft 365 subscription also hosts a number of site templates that you can instantly use by editing a few elements.

You can start from the basics of Microsoft SharePoint if you’re a new user of this powerful content management and collaboration platform.