Hub Sites are helping to make SharePoint’s subsites more user friendly. Traditionally, each unit within a SharePoint collection gets a separate site. This can become a bit unwieldy. However, the use of Hub sites takes away the inflexibility of these traditional subsites while replicating one of the best subsite features—creating shared experiences amid related sites.
SharePoint Hub Sites
To get started, it really is helpful to read the planning guide Microsoft made available for users. Additionally, here are two tips that can help you best utilize hub sites for SharePoint.
Tip #1: Plan for more than one hub site for your intranet
While it’s possible to plan a single hub site to navigate your intranet, it’s better to use more than one. This is true for organizations of any size. You should use more than one hub site for two important reasons: context and search.
Context
The ability to organize information contextually is one of the most popular benefits of using hub sites. Let’s talk about sales, for example. First, you start with a sales hub site. Under this site, you’d also have all the regional sales sites. A benefit you’d get from this set up is that you’d then be able to view all the sales-related news across the country from just the sales hub.
Search
Hub sites are also a good way to perform a scope search of the sites related to the hub. If you restrict the scope search of a query to just a hub family, your search results become more relevant. This helps searchers get to the information they need quicker. Using only one hub site takes away your ability to search scope.
Tip #2: Develop a strategy for ‘hubification’
There are three ‘categories’ of hubs:
- Geographic—the hubs all function geographically, so if you’re working with SharePoint Multi-Geo, the only sites that will work are those located in the same location geographically.
- Organization or functional
- Portfolio—group of sites associated with an acquisition or integration.
Chances are your business will have hub families that fit all these purposes. Therefore, it’s good to plan your organization’s hubs before you jump in with both feet. Currently you’re only allowed 50 hub sites; however, Microsoft may be increasing this number soon. Luckily, it’s possible that, with proper planning, that you won’t need as many hubs as you think you do. This is another reason that planning is essential.
If you don’t plan properly then you’ll likely create more hubs than needed, which creates unnecessary work.
You’ll find more tips like this like this on our blog.