The Essence of Building a Team Site/Communication Site in SharePoint

With SharePoint communication site, those crews working for the same goals can get updates, information, and applications that are vital for the realization of the goals. SharePoint brings all your teams together ensuring that they share knowledge and vital documents to foster management of projects.

The platform is diverse, and you can’t just hop into it without proper information for planning. Depending on your objectives, size of your enterprise and the number of teams, SharePoint has an option for creating subsites.  Once you’ve created your SharePoint intranet service within O365, you’ve two choices: create a communication or a team site.

We’re going to highlight some of the rudimentary differences that will define the site you’re going to create:

Attribute	Team site	Communication site
Business goals	Collaborative Platform Where groups working on similar projects (same or different departments) connect and share ideas and strategies. Teams can plan, brainstorm, strategize and execute projects Suitable for cross-departmental projects Team members can access project or event progress in real-time Ideal for creating ties between employees in different jurisdictions	Social media-like Platform Apt for sharing instant news updates for the entire organization Allow managers and employees to interact freely Vital for developing a brand that resonates in every employee’s mind Promote user engagement through sharing of personal and organizational stories
Content Management	All users can be content authors Thus, everyone can contribute his/her knowledge & ideas	There’re few news/stories creators Most users are readers
Responsibility & Control	Rules and regulations are set by the users	Rules and regulations are set by admins
Scale & Capacity	Its use is limitless Can involve several departments	Only created for key subjects to share
Usage	Project management & coordination Events/celebrations planning Mostly used for official organization’s projects	A news broadcast channel Sometimes policies and procedures may be posted Updating teams on forthcoming events/tasks
Benefits	Project’s confidential details are highly protected Pulling of human resources results in higher productivity Consistent and diligent results for better organizational reputation Collaborative environment accelerates execution process of a project Better and secure workflow management process Integrating teams from different departments and jurisdictions lead to a stronger brand name Excellent where the project has to transition from one phase to another	A quicker way of announcing corporate events Instant notifications to any user regardless of the department or country Increased transparency within the organization Improved relationships promoting the development of organizational culture Eliminates employee attrition Easy on-boarding and orientation of new talents

Using a Communication Site

SharePoint communication sites are essential for engaging all employees (in-house and remote) thus ensuring that everyone is on the same page. Admins use such sites to announce deadlines for submission of insurance details and appraisal forms. They can also notify employees of forthcoming events such as exhibitions, webinar sessions with execs, etc.

Using a Team Site

As elaborated, team sites are places where a group of professionals or executive members meet to discuss, strategize and plan for projects/events.

So, the question is, when should you create a team site?

• Whenever you have projects steered by experts from different departments
• When teams from various countries have to connect and collaborate to discuss or plan a marketing or expansion strategy
• If you’d want to connect the team with new Office 365 group in future
• Foster security of certain information when planning/executing crucial projects

Each department can create its own team site, or several departments can create a site where they can coordinate particular programs. Check out on how a team site can streamline workflows in your department.

Marketing/Sales Department

• Bring all sales’ department factions under one place for easy management
• Keep all acquired market information including the competitor’s data on a secured platform
• Connect sales teams in various countries and help engineer a unique strategy for every sales team
• Add subsites for social networking to boost collaboration among the stratified teams

Human Resource Department

• Pull organizational human capital resources together to accelerate project planning and implementation processes
• Promote collaboration between various professionals and experts for higher productivity
• Encourage a paperless office and foster digital document management systems
• Align admin procedures and tasks with the existing human resources to increase individual productivity and decrease turnover
• Make use of features such as Blog and Newsfeed to keep all your teams updated with a single click
• Use existing documents and subsites to train recruits and track performance of other teams – all on one platform

IT Department

• Set up permissions and controls to prevent control who shares particular information
• Perform integrations and configurations to keep all process within the intranet smooth
• Create a subsite for helping users having problems in using the platform
• Carry out upgrades and updates for a resilient platform
• Create disaster recovery solutions

You can design your SharePoint team and communication sites based on your organization’s objectives and available resources. Use Team Sites to plan and execute projects and utilize Communication Sites to promote social networking among your employees.

LS Intranet offers you unlimited and unique solutions for creating these sites. Our experts will analyze your internal IT and human resources and come up with a solution that suits your needs. We offer reliable, flexible and affordable options for setting up an intranet that you can use on the go.