SharePoint Sites

The SharePoint sites are the core of the SharePoint tenant. All content is added, and all work is done, within the context of a site. Therefore, each site has a huge number of settings that control how the site works and looks. To see the contents of a site, click on the ‘Site Contents’ link in the lefthand pane, the Quick Launch, or select ‘Site Contents’ in the dropdown under the settings icon.

You can reach the settings for the current site via a settings gear in the Site Contents and in the right part of the Office 365 navigation bar.

To create a new SharePoint site, open the Site Contents of any existing site, click on ‘New’ and select ‘Subsite’. Now a new site will be created under the current site.

The first site – the root site – and its subsites form a so-called Site Collection. By default, the subsite inherits permission settings from the parent site, and the navigation can also be inherited.

2.3 THE CLASSIC TEAM SITE

The classic team site is intended for work group collaboration, and it is the most used type of SharePoint site. By default, the team site has a classic home page, but modern apps and pages can also be used in the team site. (There is also a modern, more limited team site, that can be created from the SharePoint Online home page. It is described in chapter 7, but that team site is not what we are talking about here.) The image below shows the default home page (Home.aspx) of a SharePoint team site. It is a so-called Wiki Page and intended to be customized to fit each organization, but here we will use it to go through the different parts.

1. The Office 365 section is the same as you find in most Office 365 apps, but for SharePoint administrators the settings gear has many options for managing and modifying the SharePoint site. Ordinary users with Edit permissions on the site can also add new apps and pages from under that gear.

2. The SharePoint ribbon has various controls under the tabs. As in the Office ribbon, the tabs and controls within those tabs vary depending on what you have selected and which object you are working with. The image below shows the controls under the PAGE tab.

3. The Top Navigation usually shows links to sites within the same site collection.

4. The Quick Launch usually shows links to apps within the current site.

5. The SHARE command is used to share the site. As the first site collection by default is shared by all the tenant’s user accounts, the command is not often used there, but other sites also have the same SHARE command. In those sites, it is more useful.

6. Each user can use the FOLLOW command to follow the site. The user can find all his/her followed sites in the SharePoint Online home page; refer to 2.4, Modern Team Sites, below.

7. The EDIT command opens the page in edit mode, so that you can customize it. When a page is open in edit mode, the EDIT command is replaced by a SAVE command.

8. The Focus on Content command shows the page without the navigation parts. Click on the icon again to show the navigation.

9. The Search field is used for searches in SharePoint. By default, the current site is searched, but the search can be filtered, or you can search in all content of the tenant. Refer to 3.4, Search.

10. The Get Started tiles give links that may be important when you are new to SharePoint. These tiles are often removed after a while, when the team site should be customized. They are easy to remove by clicking on ‘REMOVE THIS’.

11. The Newsfeed is intended for sharing information and ideas among the people who use the team site.

12. SharePoint stores different kinds of files in document libraries, but the content of those libraries can also be displayed in a page by using an app part. The home page contains an app part that displays the files that are contained in the default Documents library. Here you can create new files, upload existing files and search among those files.

Demo: http://www.kalmstrom.com/Tips/Office-365-Course/Start-With-SharePoint.htm

2.4 MODERN TEAM SITES

When you click on the SharePoint tile in the Office 365 App Launcher, you are directed to your SharePoint Online home page.

The SharePoint Online home page is a kind of SharePoint Favorites page. Here each SharePoint user can find links to SharePoint sites he or she has decided to follow, to recent or frequently used sites, to news and to sites promoted by the organization.

2.4.2 Create Sites

With the ‘Create site’ button on the SharePoint Online home page, users who have permission to create subsites can also create their own modern team and communication sites to manage projects and related documents and communications.

The modern sites can be customized with dedicated web parts, which you can add, remove or reorder as needed. You can also add new apps, pages and even classic subsites to these sites. The new site will appear among the user’s followed sites on the SharePoint Online home page. It will not inherit permission settings or navigation of other sites, as it is a totally new site collection. There are two types of modern sites. Use the Team Site for collaboration on a specific project. Use the Communication Site for showing information to a broader audience.

The creation steps for the two types of modern sites are described in the exercise in chapter 7, where we create a modern sites intranet.

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