Different Types of SharePoint Sites to Organize Information

The organization knows SharePoint for its sites and subsites feature. It is a part of the Office 365 subscription plan. People use SharePoint to provide information, assign tasks, make announcements, and for many other purposes.

It doesn’t limit itself to creating a single type of site. You can use it to create different types of sites and subsites. Let’s explore the reason why you should create the sites in SharePoint.

Why Create Sites in SharePoint?

There are multiple reasons to create the different types of SharePoint sites. Here are some of the major reasons.

• Easy Sharing – SharePoint allows you to add team members to access the site content. You can add the required team members and share the content with the members that you want to share using the document library in SharePoint.
• Enhance Collaboration – With the help of SharePoint, you can enhance the collaboration of the team members. You can share the regular tasks with the deadlines so that members are also aware of the deadlines. You can set a calendar for the meetings.
• Manage Documents – People also know SharePoint for its document-storing feature. Most of the Organizations used SharePoint as the document storage related to the Organizations in the Document library through which it is easy to track the version of the documents.
• Intranet and Extranet Sites – Not only does SharePoint serve for sharing information among team members, but it also creates sites for both team members and external partners. You can set up both intranet and extranet sites in SharePoint.
• Easy Integration – SharePoint integrates with OneDrive, Teams, Power BI, and other Office 365 applications to share the content with others.
• Support Remote Work – SharePoint sites can be accessed through any location with the help of the Internet. Due to this, the team members can work remotely.
• Scalable – SharePoint sites scale well and suit organizations of any size. Admins can add or remove users in the SharePoint sites as needed.

What to do Before Creating Sites in SharePoint?

Some of the points you should keep in mind before creating different types of SharePoint sites.

• Purpose of Site – Before creating a site in SharePoint you should find what is the purpose of creating the site. What are the gaps it will fill? Is this used for the collaboration? Or just to share the information.
• Find the Audience of the Site – You need to find the audience of the site. Is it used for the customers, partners, or team members?
• Identify the Features – After selecting the audience for the site. Then find the required features on the site such as tasks, lists, news, discussion boards, images, and many more.
• Setup the Budget – After finalizing all the required details of the site. It’s time to make the budget and set up the features according to the budget.

Different Types of SharePoint Sites

As per the requirement, the organizations can create distinct types of sites in SharePoint to store and manage their information. You can also enable subsite creation for all sites in SharePoint.

1. Modern Team Site (Connected to Office 365 Group)

The modern team site allows team members to collaborate on files by adding them. In this type of SharePoint site, team members share lists, information, and updates. All members connect to a single group within it.

• Conversation – A shared mailbox for the team conversation and calendar in Outlook.
• Documents – Shared file storage in SharePoint Online.
• Notebooks – A shared OneNote notebook is included.
• Chat – For the real-time chats, the Microsoft Teams is used.

You can also connect the site’s group to the different apps of Office 365 such as Task management tool planner. You can create group in SharePoint either in public or private mode, and it is identified by the text underneath the site name.

“ The modern team site connected to a group is mostly used for small team members“.

“You can implement the Modern team site without a group, but it still utilizes the same template as the Modern team site connected to a group. However, this site isn’t linked to the group.“

“When working on business solutions, huge groups of people or organizational departments can greatly benefit from the modern team site that isn’t affiliated with any group.“

2. SharePoint Communication Site

In SharePoint, people don’t use this type of site for collaboration. Instead, employees use them as a one-way channel to share information. They mainly serve as intranet sites, landing pages, specific departmental sites, and platforms for company news updates.

Communication sites are not connected to Outlook/Teams/Planner. It has three different templates Topic site (for events and news), Showcase( to show the images of the events), and blank(to create customized applications).

3. Classic Team Sites

Previously, in SharePoint, users utilized Classic Team sites to create blogs, wiki pages, and web parts among different types of SharePoint sites.

Classic team sites require more customization and do not have the new features to make collaboration easier.

The company has deprecated the classic team sites, so if you stick to the classic team sites, you need to upgrade to the modern team site to enjoy the rich features it offers.

Some Other Types of Sites in SharePoint

• Document Center site – It is used to store thousands of documents such as Word, PDF, and photos.
• Enterprise Wiki site – These are used to share a large volume of information.
• Phishing Portal site – It is a type of classic site used for authorizing and publishing content for a large volume of people.
• Developer site – The developer site used to develop and deploy an app for the organization.
• Project site – Project sites for track and assigning project-related tasks.
• Community site – Community sites are ready to share ideas.
• eDiscovery center – It manages the preservation of content and export to the SharePoint farm.
• Record center – Manages and stores the records.
• BI center – It analyzes data for activities such as creating dashboards and reports.
• Enterprise search center – Here users search their queries and results pages.

Have you ever thought about what will be the solution if your organization is going to merge with another organization or rebrand itself?

Basically, then, we need to relocate all the SharePoint data to the new SharePoint. But, you do not need to worry about the issue. Here is a solution through which you can relocate the data to the destination SharePoint.

Conclusion

SharePoint supports different types of SharePoint sites which creates confusion for the users when to choose what. This article explores all the distinct types of SharePoint sites in detail. Choose the right method as per your requirements and research.