Hub Sites! Modernizing Your Approach to Site Architecture in SharePoint and Office 365 - Part 2

Wow! The interest in modernizing SharePoint Site Architecture has been strong. Thanks to everyone for your comments and feedback on my previous blog post. If you haven’t yet read through the Part 1 of Modernizing your Approach to Site Architecture in SharePoint, please see that here. Let’s keep the dialog going! As we continue with our story around modernizing our site architecture, we need to address the addition of some new functionality in SharePoint Online called a Hub Site.

Note: Hub sites are now in “Launched” status according to the Office 365 Roadmap. This means they should be available to 100% of the tenants worldwide! It’s important to note that Hub Sites are a SharePoint Online “only” feature – they didn’t make the cutoff for SharePoint 2019 on-premises release.

No Column Formatting in List View Webparts? No problem!

OK, guys and gals, I’m sure you disagree with the title and that’s alright because it is a problem. A rather big one. But, I have a workaround to offer you until Microsoft catches up with the demand for functionality in our list view webparts.

JSON Column Formatting (Part 1)

I am a grumpy information worker. I work with customers for weeks, sometimes months, hammering out an information architecture for their Office 365 assets. We sweat details of navigation, metadata, and security. Queries are honed, web parts are implemented. User testing goes great. Naysayers start nodding their heads and smiling. Test groups give us notes and we knock off the rough edges. Plans are made, final deadlines are set and in a final attempt to button up the project someone goes and shows an executive and the fateful question is asked.

Modernizing Your Approach to Site Architecture in SharePoint and Office 365

If you’ve ever wondered how to structure your SharePoint sites, you’re not alone. For those that have been doing SharePoint for a while, you may already know that we’ve long had the debate – where do your department sites go in SharePoint? Are they considered publishing sites or collaboration sites? Or both? Are they sub-sites or site collections? How can we structure sites so we secure some content and still publish content for others, without making it too complicated? This concern often leads to a successful intranet build, but prevents true collaboration from occurring in SharePoint. We watch as our HR teams, Finance, and others still resist adding their most secure content into SharePoint (and especially into the cloud!) when we know the file share is no longer the best place for that content. This issue gets even more complex when we bring Microsoft Teams– which are supported by SharePoint sites – into the picture. I want to take some time to talk through what is no longer considered a good approach, and then provide a replacement, modern approach to site architecture best practices in Office 365.

Is It Time to Give Up SharePoint Classic Sites?

If you are an Office 365 user then you’ve no doubt experienced SharePoint’s new Modern sites by now. These sites are simple, elegant, and mobile friendly. Modern sites come with a lot of great web parts and they are definitely the future of SharePoint sites.

We actually did a Techsplaining podcast about Modern sites that you can listen to as well: Techsplaining Episode 13-Demystifying “modern” in the O365 world

But what about your Classic sites? For those of you not familiar with the distinction, Classic sites are just normal SharePoint sites that you’ve been using for years. So, to you, “Classic” sites are just your normal SharePoint sites.

The Best Free Forms Solution for SharePoint

In all my years of working in SharePoint, there has been one consistent need from users: Forms… Better looking forms… more powerful forms… mobile friendly forms… There has ALWAYS been a need for a better forms experience in SharePoint. To help address this need, I created a forms solution for SharePoint several years ago called StratusForms. StratusForms allows you to create forms in SharePoint using HTML, JavaScript, and CSS and works for SharePoint 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, and Office 365. The goal of StratusForms was to remove limitations of form creation in SharePoint and to get developers off of InfoPath.

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