Getting started with SharePoint home sites

SharePoint home sites provide a landing page and a Microsoft 365 “home” for your organization. An effective home site brings together personalized organizational news for your employees along with events, conversations, videos, and content.

Your home site will be your Microsoft 365 home base. Your tenant admin can configure your Microsoft 365 navigation bar so users are taken to your home site when they click on your company logo. And when mobile users click on the “home” icon in their SharePoint mobile app, they’ll be taken to your home site.

As the new Microsoft 365 landing site for your organization, your home site needs to engage users, reflect your brand identity, and highlight key organizational news and messaging. And if you incorporate SharePoint shy headers and megamenu navigation, your home site can connect your employees with key SharePoint sites and hubs across your tenant. When home sites are paired with company branding, hub sites, and effective site designs, they support your organization’s intelligent intranet.

You can only have one home site in  your tenant, and the home site must be a SharePoint Communications site. Your home site can also be a hub site.

A natural progression
Many organizations already have a de-facto home site within their tenant. The site may serve as their launchpad for Microsoft 365, providing getting-started information for their users. Building a de-facto home site can be a great stepping stone on the path to implementing the intelligent intranet at your organization. Making your de-facto home site a SharePoint Communications site will ensure the site can be promoted to an official home site when you are ready.

Enabling a home site
Your administrator will need to use PowerShell to elevate your SharePoint Communications into a home site. When you designate a home site for your tenant, the site receives several key feature enhancements:

• It becomes an official organizational news site
• Its search scope is automatically reset to be tenant-wide
• It is linked to from the home button on your SharePoint mobile app (enabling 1-click access)
• It is connected to your SharePoint start page

Want to see sites in action?
Check out the SharePoint look book (http://aka.ms/SharePointLookBook) to see some beautifully-built example sites. Microsoft even enables you to provision the sites in your tenant!

More information on home sites

And don’t forget to check out our Microsoft 365 Voice podcast episode on home sites and hubs: