Hub Sites SharePoint Online Office 365 Tutorial Download PDF Free

Introduction:

In this SharePoint online tutorial, we will discuss what are Hub sites in SharePoint online? Advantages or features of a Hub Site, How to create a Hub site in SharePoint online using PowerShell?  Then we will discuss how we can associate a team site or a communication site to a Hub Site in SharePoint online? How can we change the logo, theme, and customization in Hub site? Then we will discuss how we can add a news web part and site web part to a hub site. Then we will discuss how we can disassociate a SharePoint site from a Hub site. And finally, we will see how we can remove the hub site as well as we will discuss few points to remember about Hub site.

What is Hub Site in SharePoint Online?

In an organization you can have more number of sites grows with time, they can be number of team site or organization can have more number of newly introduced communication sites. So it is difficult to manage number of sites.

Hub site helps bring together team sites and communication sites and also it provides the capabilities to better organize and also provides better visibility towards what is happening in all those sites which are associated with the hub site. Read: SharePoint online: Ultimate tutorial guide PDF download

SharePoint Online HUB Site PDF FREE Download

According to Microsoft “SharePoint hub sites are a new building block for your intranet, to bring together related sites to roll up news and activity, to simplify search, and to create cohesion with shared navigation and look-and-feel — ultimately giving your business the flexibility and agility to dynamically grow and respond to the changes in business, without rigid siloes, helping bind a more cohesive workforce moving forward in the same direction”.

As an organization you may need to change the site structure, contents within the site for the business need. Hub site will give you this flexibility to show the navigation easily.

Hub sites will be created by admin from Office 365 admin centre or by using PowerShell and site owners can then able to join underneath the hub site.

Advantages / Features of a Hub site in SharePoint Online:

Now we will discuss few features of advantages of using hub site in SharePoint online.

  • Hub sites brings your organizations team site and communication sites together.
  • Hub site displays news, events and site activities across all the sites (both team sites and communication sites). Your users will be stay up to date with the latest news and events within one location.
  • When you will search at hub, you will automatically search from all the related sites. Even when you search at any sites which are joined, they will have the same search experience like the hub level. In short the search experience will appear for the hub site as well all the team sites and communication sites joined to the hub site. Internally a search scope got created which allows users to directly search for content within all the joined sites.
  • Hub site displays cross site navigation, meaning you will see a top navigation bar at the hub site as well as it will display in all the joined sites (both team site & communication site). So the navigation to any site will be easier. Consistent navigation will be always there in any joined site as well as hub site.
  • When we joined a team site or communication site under a hub site, the site will inherit the look and feel, theme and logo from the hub site level. All the joined team site and communication sites will have the same consistent look and feel.

How to create a hub site in SharePoint Online?

Here we will discuss how we can create a hub site in SharePoint online Office 365. Creating a hub site meaning, converting an existing site to hub site using SharePoint online management shell. It is better the existing site to be a communication site or a new experience team site. If you will use classic site templates then, the hub site settings will appear in modern pages.

Here I have a SharePoint communication site and a SharePoint team site, both the site is having new experience.

Communication Site URL:https://onlysharepoint2013.sharepoint.com/sites/SharePointSkyCommunitySite/

Team Site URL: https://onlysharepoint2013.sharepoint.com/sites/SharePointSKyTeam

Now we will try to create a hub site by using the communication site.

So search for “sharepoint online Management Shell” and there type the below command.

Register-SPOHubSite https://onlysharepoint2013.sharepoint.com/sites/SharePointSkyCommunitySite/

If you will get an error something like below:

“Register-SPOHubSite : The term ‘Register-SPOHubSite’ is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again’, you need to install the updated SharePoint online management shell.

Register-SPOHubSite : The term ‘Register-SPOHubSite’ is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program

Register-SPOHubSite : The term ‘Register-SPOHubSite’ is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program

Download URL: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=255251

Make sure to uninstall first the previous version and then install the updated one. Once you installed the management shell, you can run below command to test whether it is connected to SharePoint online site or not.

$adminUPN=”bijay@onlysharepoint2013.onmicrosoft.com”

$orgName=”onlysharepoint2013″

$userCredential = Get-Credential -UserName $adminUPN -Message “Type the password.”

Connect-SPOService -Url https://$orgName-admin.sharepoint.com -Credential $userCredential

Once it is connected you can run the below command.

Register-SPOHubSitehttps://onlysharepoint2013.sharepoint.com/sites/SharePointSkyCommunitySite/

Once you run the above command in the SharePoint online management shell, it will ask you to provide values for Principals[0].[1]…, here you can provide a mail enabled security group or you can also add individual users. You can see here I have added two users into it.

Create Hub Site in SharePoint online

Create Hub Site in SharePoint online

Then you will see the site will be converted to a hub site. Previously the communication site looks like below:

SharePointSkyCommunitySite

SharePointSkyCommunitySite

Now once it converted to hub site, you can see the site looks like below, you can see the navigation.

Convert a existing team site to hub site in SharePoint online

Convert a existing team site to hub site in SharePoint online

Join SharePoint online team site to Hub Site / Associate SharePoint online team site to Hub site:

Now we will see how we can add a modern team site to hub site whose URL is https://onlysharepoint2013.sharepoint.com/sites/SharePointSKyTeam

Open the team site in the browser and then click on the Gear icon and then click on “Site information” like below:

Site Information

Site Information

This will show to Edit site information where you can edit site name, site description, privacy settings and then you can see the Hub site association. The Hub site association dropdown will show you all the Hub sites presented. Choose the Hub site for which you want to associate your site.

SharePoint online Associate team site to hub site

SharePoint online Associate team site to hub site

Once the team site associated, you can see the top navigation will appear from hub site like below:

SharePoint online hub site navigation

SharePoint online hub site navigation

We can easily change hub site logo. Click on the gear icon and then click on “Hub site settings”.

SharePoint online Change Logo in Hub site

SharePoint online Change Logo in Hub site

Then click on the Change button to browse a logo like below:

Edit hub site settings

Edit hub site settings

Now if you will open the communication hub site, you can see the logo applied like below:

Associate SharePoint communication site to Hub site

Associate SharePoint communication site to Hub site

Customize Hub Site Navigation:

We can easily customize hub site navigation and the navigation will reflect in all the associated site.

Open the Hub site and then you can see “Add link” in the navigation area. Click on “Add Link”.

Add link

Add link

In the side bar add link option will appear, click on the + icon and then in the “Add a link” dialog box, give a Display name and the URL Address. Here I have added SharePointSky.com. Then click on OK.

Hub site navigation add link

Hub site navigation add link

Then click on Save button like below. You can also add multiple links at one time.

SharePointSky Hub Site

SharePointSky Hub Site

Now you can see the link will appear like below:

SharePoint online hub site add navigation link

SharePoint online hub site add navigation link

If you want to add more links, click on + icon like below:

Add more links

Add more links

Once you will add a link to the hub site, it will take some time to reflect into all associated sites. If I will navigate to the SharePointSkyTeam site, I can see the navigation in the hub site.

Add link to hub site navigation

Add link to hub site navigation

Change Theme in Hub Site:

We can easily change the theme by clicking on the Settings icon and then “Change the look”

Change the theme

Change the theme

Then you can change and click on Apply.

Change the look

Change the look

Add/Edit News Web Part in SharePoint online Hub site:

News web parts are very useful in hub site, where you can see news from all the associated sites. Either you can edit the existing News web part or you can edit an existing web part. Here in my case I have just edited the existing web part which was there in the Hub site.

Once you edit the news web part, in the News Source, choose “All sites in the hub” under Select a news source like below. Once you select, you can see in the left side 2 news are appearing, one from the hub site and another one is from the associated SharePointSkyTeam site.

All sites in the hub

All sites in the hub

Add Site Web Part to Hub Site:

We can also add site web part to a hub site where we can see activities from the associated sites. Edit the page and then you can see Sites web part in the list like below:

Sites

Sites

There you can edit the Site web part and then choose “All sites in the hub” option like below. And you can see the SharePointSkyTam associated site appear. This will be helpful to see the activities of the sites.

Add site web part to Hub site SharePoint online

Add site web part to Hub site SharePoint online

Disassociate a SharePoint Site from Hub Site:

As a site owner you can disassociate site from a SharePoint hub site and the association will be no longer available. Once disassociate, the hub site navigation will not appear in the top of the site. One thing you have to remember is that, even if you disassociated the site, the look that your site inherited from the hub site will stay the same. Any hub-site-related web parts added to the home page will only show information from your site instead of from sites associated with the hub site.

To disassociate a site from hub site, Open the site and then click on the “Settings icon” and then click on “Site Information”.

Site Information

Site Information

Then in “Edit site information”, in the “Hub site association” choose “None” like below:

Edit site information

Edit site information

This will disassociate the site from the Hub site.

Remove Hub Site:

We can remove a hub site by using PowerShell. You need to be a global or SharePoint admin in Office 365. When you disable the hub site feature, any sites still associated with the hub site will be automatically disassociated.

Open SharePoint online management shell and then connect to SharePoint online site.

$adminUPN=”bijay@onlysharepoint2013.onmicrosoft.com”

$orgName=”onlysharepoint2013″

$userCredential = Get-Credential -UserName $adminUPN -Message “Type the password.”

Connect-SPOService -Url https://$orgName-admin.sharepoint.com -Credential $userCredential

Then you can run the below command:

Unregister-SPOHubSitehttps://onlysharepoint2013.sharepoint.com/sites/SharePointSkyCommunitySite/

You can see the PowerShell command.

Administrator

Administrator

Once you remove the hub site, you can see the navigation has been removed like below:

SharePointSkyCommunitySite

SharePointSkyCommunitySite

Point to Remember about Hub Site:

  • Sites that are already associated to a hub site cannot be converted to a hub site.
  • You can unjoin a team site or a communication site from hub site.
  • You can move a team site or communication site to another hub site.
  • One hub site cannot join to another hub site.
  • A team site or communication site cannot be joined to more than one hub site.
  • You can create up to 50 hub sites for an organisation but there is no limit on the number of sites that can be associated with a hub site.
  • Hub sites are not available if you have set up SharePoint Multi-Geo for your organization.
  • When users associate their sites to a hub site, it does not impact the permissions of either the hub site or the associated sites. It is important to make sure all users you allow to associate sites to the hub have permission to the hub site.

SharePoint Online HUB Site PDF FREE Download

Conclusion:

Here we discussed about what are Hub sites in SharePoint online? Advantages or features of a Hub Site, How to create a Hub site in SharePoint online using PowerShell? Then we will discuss how we can associate a team site or a communication site to a Hub Site in SharePoint online? How we can change the logo, theme and customization in Hub site? Then we will discuss how we can add a news web part and site web part to a hub site. Then we will discuss how we can disassociate a SharePoint site from a Hub site. And finally we will see how we can remove the hub site as well as we will discuss about few points to remember about Hub site.

About the Author:
I am Bijay from Odisha, India. Currently working in my own venture TSInfo Technologies in Bangalore, India. I am Microsoft Office Servers and Services (SharePoint) MVP (5 times). I works in SharePoint 2016/2013/2010, SharePoint Online Office 365 etc. Check out My MVP Profile.. I also run popular SharePoint web site EnjoySharePoint.com
Reference:
Kumar, B (2018) Hub Sites SharePoint Online Office 365 Tutorial Download PDF Free. Available at:https://www.sharepointsky.com/hub-sites-sharepoint-online/ [Accessed 12 September 2018]
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