The Modern SharePoint Communication sites provide a responsive rich experience which makes them a great candidate for SharePoint Intranets. Along with it, the modern experience enriches the way content can be structured, tagged with metadata and curated by content owners. There are obvious limitations with the modern experience and will present few approaches to overcome these limitations. In this session, we will get a quick overview of Communication sites, and various advantages and limitations of the modern experience sites. In addition, we will look at how to map the old SharePoint structures in Classic sites to New experience and options to achieve that.

2. Practical guide to build Modern Intranet sites
with SharePoint Communication Sites
Asish Padhy

3. About me
SharePoint, Office 365 and Azure Solutions Consultant at Kloud Solutions
12 years of experience working on SharePoint and MS Technologies
I am a Consultant, Architect, Project Lead and always a Developer.
Microsoft Certified Professional in SharePoint
https://asishpadhy.com
https://twitter.com/asishpadhy - @asishpadhy
https://www.linkedin.com/in/asishpadhy
https://blog.kloud.com.au/author/asishpadhykloud/

4. Agenda
 Introduction
 Communication Sites
 Mapping the old structure
 Configure Communication sites as Intranet
 Demo
 Challenges
 Extensibility Options
 Final thoughts

5. Intranet build cycle
Scope
Design
ReviewImplement
Adopt
 Scope for MVP
 Design a layout (UX)
 Review with Stakeholders
 Feasibility with Technical
team
 Identify limitations
 Prepare for upcoming
changes
 Implement with minimal
support strategy
 Present it to business
stakeholders and get
regular feedback

6. Benefits of Communication sites
Easy Content Management
 Site Pages grouped based on content groups
 Role based pages (coming ..)
 Target based on Business functions
 Page Details (Metadata)
 Types of Site Pages – Promoted state (0 = Site Page, 1 = Article Page, 2 = News Page)
Easy Targeting of Content
 Site Pages with Highlighted web parts with metadata
Announcements and Updates
 Create and Promote News
 Configurable News web parts
Content Aggregation, Global Navigation to all sites
 Could be promoted to Hub sites
Forms
 Embed Microsoft Forms and PowerApps Forms onto the page
Content Approval
 Promote site pages to news
 Page Approval Flow – Publish a page after approval (Demo)

7. Communication Sites - Inclusions
• Full width layout
• Top Navigation
• Site Pages
• Responsive design
• Site Themes
• New Web parts – Weather, Page Properties etc.
• Ease to create Site Pages and News (that fit on your phone)
• Interactive Components
• Pre-built templates – Topic, Showcase and blank
• Pre-built page templates

8. Communication sites - Limitations
• No Master page
• No Publishing Feature
• No Page Layouts
• No Office 365 Groups features
• No OneNote Notebook
• No Left hand navigation
• No Custom Scripting

9. Configuration options
Branding
• Use SharePoint themes for customizing look and feel
• Create custom themes using the Theme generator
Web parts
• Use Hero web part and high resolution images to tell a story
• Use Highlighted content to target and group content based on user
roles
• Use various layout options on the page to arrange components
• Use News web part for showcasing news from selective SharePoint
sites
• Use Events calendar to show upcoming events
• Use Yammer for sharing and communicating user voices
• Use Site Activity to show the latest working content
… and many more

10. Configuration options (cont’d…)
Pages
• Add custom metadata as per business groups and activities
• Use News posting for sharing latest content
Navigation
• Configure navigation
• Limitation : Navigation element can’t be blank, even for headers
Page templates (customization)
• Could be done via programmatic approach
• Use of OfficeDevPnP library for modern page operations
 Add Page and Sections
 Add web parts
 Configure properties

11. Demo -
Communication Sites and Page
Approval

12. Mapping Old structure to New
Old Structure New Structure Comments
Publishing Pages Site Pages Site Pages have responsive design
and full width layout
Page Layouts Sections Sections could be easily configured for
each page
Site Hierarchical
Navigation
Hub Sites Hub sites also allow you to aggregate
News, Search and Themes
Content Publishing Page Approval
and Promoted
State*
Promoted state and Content Approval
for managing content status
Master Pages Site Designs and
Site Scripts*
Site Designs provide a combination of
Themes, Provisioning template and
SPFx components
Web Parts and Hosted
Apps
SPFx web parts* SPFx are client side driven
components
* Development required

13. Extensibility options
Challenges Approach
Top Banner or Footer customizations Application customizers
Custom business requirements SPFx web parts
Custom Layouts and sections* SharePoint Online CSOM
Content Approval and Lifecycle* Flow with Azure Functions
Page Metadata Management* SPFx extension with Azure Functions
Custom forms PowerApps and SPFx web parts
* Development required

14. Latest Updates
(SharePoint Conf NA 2018)
• Audience Targeting – link
• New List Creation options – create from existing, from excel and new templates – link
• Copy and paste data directly from excel - link
• Change type of column on the list view directly – link
• Edit in place in List - link
• Assign a task to Planner directly from a List item – link
• Row Conditional Formatting - link
• Analyse Image information and get recommendations from Azure Cognitive services -
link
• New Search results with filtering experience - link
• PowerBI integration with List views and analysis information for List items – link - link
• Sentiment analysis via Flow on List items - link
• Search transcript for videos in Microsoft Stream – link
• Upcoming Web Parts – Map View web part
and many more ..

15. Final Thoughts
Winners
• Great fit for business teams moving to Office 365
• Latest releases and updates
• Seamless integration with other Office 365 suite services such as PowerBI,
PowerApps and Flow
• Best Mobility experience
Things to keep in mind
Targeting release
• Target release for everyone – more frequent changes, beta releases
• Target release for specific users – beta release only affect specific users,
power users
• Standard release – GA available features
Changes might break functionality. Keep users regularly informed

16. Questions