In this article, we learn how to apply and alter SharePoint site templates for new or existing sites. 

Steps to apply the template to an existing SharePoint site. 

1. Go to the site where you want to apply the template.

2. Click the gear icon on the top right and select ‘Apply a site template’

3. From the ‘Select a template’ dialog choose the desired template

     4. Once you select the template another dialog box will open where you can see the preview. Click on the ‘Use  template’ button to apply. 

    5. It takes a few minutes to deploy the site theme. 

  6. Once it is deployed you can modify the content or rearrange the components on the page based on your needs. 

Important:  

Your content will not automatically integrate with the new template if you apply a template to an existing site. Instead, fresh information will be added to a new default home page. Existing pages, libraries, and lists will be retained and accessible through Site content. 

 Communication Site Templates 

Team Site Templates 

Notes:  

a. In previous SharePoint versions, site templates were called site designs. 

b. The Site templates entry point will be replaced by the  Apply a site template entry point in the setting panel. 

c. The site templates your organization chooses as the default template will automatically apply to new sites. The templates can be updated by the site owner by selecting  Settings and then  Apply a site template. 

d. Future SharePoint updates will include the ability to disable new site templates and the ability to view your template version history. Microsoft has set up targeted release dates for these functionalities. 

e. You need site owner permissions or higher to apply SharePoint site templates. 

Final Thoughts 

In this blog post, we learned about the new scenario-based site templates and how to apply them to a site collection. Scenario-based site templates showcase what’s possible in SharePoint and make it easier for you to build a new site.  

You can also check out our SharePoint custom development services and connect with us anytime. If you want to have additional questions about scenario-based templates or SharePoint in general, contact us at contact@beyondkey.com.  

Our library of Intranet samples covers templates that can be useful for industries like healthcare, real estate, oil and gas, digital media and publication house, construction, manufacturing, and nonprofits, etc.

Let us have a look at the various web parts, add-ins, and components that we have used widely on our Intranet examples to create your digital workspace.

Hub Navigation

Hub Navigation is the kind of common or global navigation that can be created to link the sites that are part of the Hub sites. Hub navigation stays consistent as you navigate from site to site in your environment.

Interactive Banners

Our Interactive banners are any kind of digital display unit that allows the user to be an active participant and not simply a passive consumer in the digital environment. Users can select, scroll or type to respond to questions or triggers with help of these interactive banners.

Employee Directory

Employee Directory is a cloud-based directory that helps you access staff details and connect to the right people quickly. It is a powerful tool for everyone in your organization. For example, you can quickly find co-workers with the expertise to help you with your upcoming project. At the same time, an accurate Employee Directory can help teams collaborate more effectively.

Document Library or Management

A Document library provides you a secure place to store files where you and your co-workers can find them easily, work on them together, and access them from any device at any time. SharePoint is awesome for managing documents and access them with your right user permissions and hence this web part adds value to your corporate intranet and something you must have always!

Birthday Reminder

Birthday and Anniversary reminder is an add-in which helps HR and other staff members in remembering the special days of employees like birthday and anniversary make more valuable and memorable. One can see employee birthdays with photographs on the company home page and also send them personalized greetings in a click to celebrate the day.

Leadership Section

The leadership section can help your employees know about the stakeholders or management team of the organization. The vision, goals, and thoughts of the leading team can also be published in this section, so employees stay connected and are aware of the changing needs of businesses.

Company Calendar or Upcoming Events/ Projects

Company calendar or Upcoming events/ projects is a widely used calendar or schedule where important company events, meetings, product launch dates, project release schedule can be shared with the specific team. Calendars can be personal, team, or for the whole organization.

Video Link and social Media Links

Video link and social media Links are a web part here you can upload relevant videos which you want the teams to see and learn about. Even corporate social media links and handles can be given on the intranet home page which helps them to easily navigate to social media platforms and read more about information published here.  SharePoint by default provides a Twitter web part to show the latest feeds on the page.

World Time Zone

The world time zone is although a small widget but is very useful in scheduling and attending client meetings who are in different time zone. Your employees need not worry about converting the time between two time zones and this helps in being punctuation for your team.

Comment or Chat Section

The comment or chat section helps employees to stay connected with each other. Common questions can be asked on such a platform and answers and be beneficial for the rest of the team. There is a possibility for group chat or personal chat so disturbance during work is also avoided.

Latest Articles

The latest Articles section helps you to share good articles, blogs about the technology, products, or solutions your organization is dealing in. Latest blogs can be published on the intranet homepage from where your employees can read and get knowledge.

Final thoughts

Going by the trend, it is safe to say that future of intranet market solutions is with Office 365. Microsoft keeps improving SharePoint with new features, functionalities, looks, and performance. So, it is understood that Intranet builds on office 365 and SharePoint will also keep improving.

While our team of Office 365 experts works on new and modern-looking Intranet examples and templates, we encourage you to try these solutions for better collaboration of your team.

We are a Microsoft Gold certified company with vast experience in Intranet design and development.

If you are looking to improve your company’s performance with intranet or considering moving from your existing intranet to a full-fledged Office 365 intranet solution, simply write to us to connect with Beyond Intranet as your intranet solution provider.

Get in touch.

How to add ‘Embed’ webpart on SharePoint Online modern Pages?

1. Go to the page where you would like to add the ‘Embed’ webpart.

2. Edit the page by clicking the ‘Edit’ button from the command bar.

3. click the “+” sign, then choose ‘Embed’ Web Part.

4. Once you add the web part right pan will open, where you can add the embed code. It can either be a secure https:// URL or an i-Frame format.

5. In this blog I have embedded a video from youtube.com. So, I first went there and obtained (copied) the video’s embed code and pasted it into the designated area of the Embed web part.

6. Click ‘Republish’ to publish the page.

7. Now you can see content from another site appearing on your modern SharePoint page.

8. You can also refer to this post from Microsoft for more understanding.

Final thoughts

In this blog we have seen how to Embed the content from external websites to modern SharePoint pages, I hope this will help you. If you have any questions or need help solving your SharePoint problems, please contact us today.

On modern SharePoint sites- the team collaboration lists feature is disabled by default. So, if you are looking to create a calendar, document library, or a tasks list on modern SharePoint sites like we used to do in classic SharePoint sites and cannot find the list templates for that then you need to enable that feature.

When you enable the list, collaboration features on a modern site you will get the following list and library templates:

Libraries

• Picture Library
• Document Library

Lists

• Calendar
• Contacts
• Custom List
• Discussion Board
• Links
• Project List
• Tasks
• Announcements

To enable the team collaboration list templates on your site you need to follow the below- mentioned instructions:

1. Click on the gear icon from the top right of the page.

2. Click on the View all site settings.

3. Click on ‘Manage site features’ under ‘Site Actions’ in the site settings page.

4. Activate the ‘Team Collaboration Lists’ feature.

5. Now go to ‘Site contents’ and create a new app.
 

6. You can see all the team collaboration list available under ‘Apps You Can Add’.

Final Thoughts

It’s easy and helpful to create lists using the predefined list templates.  In the above-mentioned process, we have discussed how you can enable team collaboration capabilities for a site by making standard lists, such as document libraries and issues available.

If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment below, or reach out to our SharePoint team for more questions. You can reach us at contact@beyondintranet.com.

1. Check if users have the ability to Create Sites.

When you go to the SharePoint start page, users have the ability to create Team and Communication sites just by clicking on the ‘Create Site’ button.

To restrict user(s) from creating SharePoint sites, Global and SharePoint admins need to follow the steps below.

2. Sign in to the Microsoft Admin Section

Global or SharePoint admins can access the dashboard by logging in:

https://admin.microsoft.com

If you are already logged in, click ‘Admin’ from app launcher as shown in the below image. Note: If you see a message that you don’t have permission to access the page, you don’t have admin rights.

3. Open the Microsoft 365 Admin Center menu

From the ‘Microsoft 365 admin center’, click ‘Show all’ in the left pane.

4. Under ‘Admin Center’ select ‘SharePoint’.

5. Go to the SharePoint admin center settings

Select ‘Settings’ from the menu of the ‘SharePoint admin center’ and then select ‘Site creation’.

6. The Site Creation Box should appear

In the Site creation box uncheck ‘Let users create sites from the SharePoint start page and OneDrive’ if you want to restrict users from creating new sites click ‘Save’.

7. Check that your changes worked

Now go back to the SharePoint start page. You will see that the “Create site” button is no longer available.

Final Thoughts

Organizations need to have a careful plan when deploying new sites. That way they can manage the process in the most effective way for their organization. Often this requires limiting the number of users who can create sites, so your organization can focus on their efforts.

The process above restricts users from creating SharePoint sites. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment below, or reach out to our SharePoint team for more in-depth questions. You can reach us at contact@beyondintranet.com

Intranets are making great strides with their new modern communication sites and are likely to continue. Most organizations use intranets to share a quick fact or an update, or maybe a landing page about a department or working group. For medium- and small-scale organizations this may suffice, however, the larger enterprises need something robust and scalable. 

 The Need for Modern Experience 

Technology has stepped forward swiftly in the last decade as we have moved towards digitization, cloud transformation, robotics, and analytics. Market developments and competition have altered commercial enterprise goals dramatically as their legacy systems are getting a face-lift, they are moving from servers to clouds, a static web-page to a responsive layout and beyond.  

Talking about the legacy corporate intranets, they lack front-end experience and diverse content editor roles. Microsoft realized the need for a modern SharePoint framework and decided to put an end to any updates to the old installations. This leaves many organizations with Intranets having very basic templates that are very nondescript and still doesn’t support accessibility by default. They introduced Modern SharePoint which is a development framework which emphasizes user experience, collaboration and efficiency, and most importantly, isn’t developer-intensive. The fundamental changes are mostly done on the client’s front instead of the server and don’t require manpower and investment for the CSS, JavaScript, and web parts. 

 Capabilities of Modern SharePoint  

-Attractive, brand-specific designs that come with hub-wide navigation with increased search capabilities across all departments. 

-On-site customization within an existing hub become possible along with the easy installation of web parts with conditional formatting.  

-Automate repetitive tasks, assign site design permissions and make sure whatever is done to the intranet stands approved. 

-Turnkey solutions with noteworthy cost savings for democratized intranets that no longer require developer intensive tasks. 

-Smooth migration of complex sites that host monolithic designs and complex navigation.  

Purpose of a Modern SharePoint Intranet  

Modern SharePoint empowers you to do so much beyond simply communicating general procedures using a portal that serves are a repository for documents; it gives you the ability to design functional sites, pages, and web parts. With modernization comes innovation, collaboration and efficiencies that support activities within a working environment.  

Webinar on Modern SharePoint 

Beyond Intranet is hosting its first webinar on Building Smart Intranet using Modern SharePoint. This will be a 30- minute free session which will expose the limitations of legacy Intranets and take a deeper dive into the features of Modern SharePoint. The webinar will be a live session followed by a short QnA session.  

 Audience 

While this session is directed toward anyone wanting to learn Modern SharePoint features, all are encouraged to attend.  

TOPIC: Building Smart Intranet…. Simplified With Modern SharePoint  

WHEN: August 21st, 2019 @ 1 pm EDT 

WHO: Dave Brown, Bhupendra Singh, and Vijay Mangtani  

WHAT: Tips and feature demonstrations of Modern SharePoint  

 Find speaker details and other information here: 

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER!

Microsoft has started the roll out of the modern theming capability in Office365. Other than changing the themes, now you have awesome capabilities to customize the Header, Footer, and Navigation on your Modern Communication sites. On Teams site, you only get options to change the Theme and Header, but not the footer and navigation.

Today in this article, we are going to discuss the step-by-step process of how you can customize different elements of your Modern Communication sites:

a. Themes

b. Header

c. Navigation

d. Footer

Let’s get started.

Note: Change the look settings are located under Settings in the top right corner of your SharePoint site.

1. Change the theme

This attractive SharePoint Site theming option allows user to apply custom or default themes to all Modern sites (Communication or Team sites) to deliver new engaging and familiar looks.

You can refer to our previous blog, How to get Custom Theme for your Modern SharePoint site, to learn more about how customization can be done to change themes.

1. After you select and apply a new theme, you can do further customization in that.

2. Click on Customize.

3. Select the Main and accent color of your choice and save changes to apply.

4. You will see that the selected color is applied all over your new theme.

2. Change the header

You can now easily customize the layout, logo and background color of your site header by this option. Check out how.
1. On your site, click Settings and then click Change the look > Header. You will get a menu for header for customization.

2. Select either the Standard header layout or the Compact option which moves all header content to a single line. Check out the basic difference between standard and compact type header.

3. Click Change to add a site logo.

4. Select a header background to change the background color of your site header.

5. Click Apply to save your changes.

3. Change the Navigation

Customization features on Navigation allow users to change the Navigation layout to either Mega menu style or cascade style.

1. On your site, click Settings and then click Change the look > Navigation.

2. Click on the selected option and click save to apply changes.

3. Mega menu

Mega menu lays down the navigation menus into a large container which spreads across the screen. It is helpful when you have several sub-menus one under the other.

4. Cascade

Cascade lays down the sub-menus one under the other in a compact style. This is helpful when you have very selective and fewer menu items.

Notes:

* The megamenu style is only available on SharePoint hub sites associated with Microsoft Teams or on Communication sites.

* To change your navigation links, see Customize the navigation on your SharePoint site.

* Links added to the 3rd level when using the megamenu style will display as a single vertical list only.

4. Change the Footer

The next customization ability recently developed within the SharePoint modern sites is the ability to customize site footers, which provides additional site navigation, other links, legal documents, or social media sites at the bottom of the website. You can now show or hide a footer, add or edit a logo, add a link, or show Footer name with this new feature.

1. On your site, click Settings and then click Change the look > Footer.

2. Toggle the switch to On to add a footer to your site.

3. Click Upload to add your logo image to the footer. The image is automatically resized.

4. To add a name for your footer, toggle the switch to On and enter the name.

5. To add or change links in the footer, click Edit footer navigation links. You can add one level of up to eight links or labels. For more information about adding or editing navigation links, see Customize the navigation on your SharePoint site.

6. Click Apply to save your changes.

Note: The site footer feature is only available on Communication site pages. They are not available for list pages, library pages, or other pages on your site.

Try on your own or ask for help!

Isn’t it simple to customize your Modern SharePoint site with branded theme, header footer, or navigation styles? Just try the simple steps and let us know how it went.

Even if you face any challenges, the Beyond Intranet SharePoint team of expert developers is always there to help. Connect with us at contact@beyondintranet.com and we will respond to you as soon as we can.

Web parts are the main characteristic of your page in the site. One such dynamic web part is the news web part, which you can easily use to engage the audience and inform them about important announcements, status updates, and more. Here’s a small guide on how to use the news web part for your site that can include graphics and eye-catching formatting.The news web part is by default available on the modern team and communication sites. You can add this web part to other modern pages in just a few simple steps.

How do you add the news web part to a page?

1. 1.Click edit on the top right of your page to switch to editing mode.
2. 2.Click the plus sign to add a web part.
3. 3.Search “News” in the search box.
4. 4.To change the layout, click on the edit button in the left corner of the news web part when you’re in the editing mode.
5. 5.There are many layouts to choose from for the news web part. The default layout will be based on the type of site you have.

Changing the news source:

News posts are published to the page’s library. While working on a news web part, you can specify the source from which news will be picked. To do so, follow the below-mentioned steps:

1. 1.In the edit mode, choose the edit button on the left of the news web part.
2. 2.In the news source part, click this site or select sites. Your source can be the site you’re currently working on or any other site.
3. 3.If you’re selecting sites, you can select one or more sites by searching for it.

You can also filter the posts you want to show in your news web part by title, recently added or changed, created by or modified by, and page properties.

Adding a news post by link:

If you want to show a post by using a link from your current site or any other site, follow the below-mentioned steps:

1. 1.From the home page of the site, click +new and then “News Link”.
2. 2.In the link field, paste the web address. Add the title of the news post.
3. 3.You can also change the thumbnail or the image.
4. 4.Click post.

Removing the new post or news web part:

Whenever we add news in the news web part in the background it creates a page for that news with the page title in site pages. You can find the site pages under site content. You can also remove the news post by using the following steps:

1. 1.Click site content.
2. 2.Select site pages.
3. 3.The page, you want to remove, click on the ellipses next to it and then delete.

If you want to delete the news web part itself, go to editing mode, then hover over news web part, and click delete on left.  Still having doubt Contact us to get SharePoint Consulting Services to know more

Sounds awesome, doesn’t it? If you also want to give a personalized touch to your SharePoint site, then you have landed at the right place.  

What Are SharePoint Themes? 

SharePoint themes are collections of various design elements. These elements include color palettes, font styles, and site layout designs. These customized SharePoint themes offer a lightweight branding experience to the SharePoint site. 

A site owner can curate these themes. This customization is optional as they are available in drag-and-drop options. It will instantly change the look and feel of your SharePoint site. 

Are you ready to give a custom look to your SharePoint site? Let’s get started. 

This attractive SharePoint Site theming option allows user to apply custom or default themes to all modern sites (communication or team sites) to deliver new engaging and familiar looks.

The process is extremely simple. In this article below, we are sharing the step by step process of using the theme generator using PowerShell.

1. Go to https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric

2. Then go to Components>>Customizations>>Colors

(https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric#/customizations/colors)

3. As we proceed further to create our custom theme, we can choose from various color options available under:

a) Primary color theme

b) Body text color

c) Body background color

4. From the color palette choose a specific shade for each one of them; these colors will determine what your custom theme will look like.

5. Copy the PowerShell generated in the Output.

6. Now open PowerShell and connect to your SharePoint Tenant. To Open PowerShell, go to your Windows menu and search for “Windows PowerShell ISE”– Run as administrator.

7. To run the PowerShell cmdlets for theme management, you must do the following:

Download and install the SharePoint Online Management Shell. If you already have a previous version of the shell installed, uninstall it first and then install the latest version.

8. To connect PowerShell with your SharePoint online tenant-

Run “Connect-SPOService” command in your PowerShell.

9. Next, It will ask for SharePoint tenant URl where you want to add the custom color theme.

10. Enter your Microsoft account credentials if prompted.

11. Write “$themecontoso = “ and paste copied PowerShell script

12. Now again write “$themecontoso” at the end of the script and press enter and you will find that the values are assigned to variables.

13. To add this theme, write the below command, and assign a proper name to your theme so it is easily identified.

a) For Light colored theme the command will be: Add-SPOTheme –Name “Theme Name” –Palette $themecontoso –IsInverted $false

b) And for Dark colored theme the command will be : Add-SPOTheme –Name “Theme Name” –Palette $themecontoso –IsInverted $fTrue

14. To Apply the theme:

a) Open your modern site and click on the cog icon

b) Click on “Change the Look”

c) Select your custom theme and click Apply

15. Your custom theme will start appearing on the right side panel.

SharePoint site theming: PowerShell cmdlets

The following cmdlets are available for managing site themes from PowerShell:

a) Add-SPOTheme – Creates a new custom theme, or overwrites an existing theme to modify its settings.

b) Get-SPOTheme – Retrieves settings for an existing theme.

c) Remove-SPOTheme – Removes a theme from the theme gallery.

d) Set-SPOHideDefaultThemes – Specifies whether the default themes should be available.

e) Get-SPOHideDefaultThemes – Queries the current SPOHideDefaultThemes setting.

How We Can Help You In Customizing Your SharePoint Themes

Beyond Intranet is a Microsoft Gold Partner Company. With over 18 years of experience in the domain we successfully served more than 500 clients across the globe. We boast a team of more than 300 brilliant individuals, a significant number of whom hold certifications from Microsoft. We are experts in managing the systems and workings of global enterprises. We help enterprises to steer through their SharePoint journey.  

In case you find it difficult to customize your SharePoint themes feel free to consult us today. Our Customized SharePoint Themes services can offer you the following benefits: 

• Strategic SharePoint Alignment:  

Our SharePoint customization solutions align the SharePoint site with your existing organizational strategy. It provides a unified digital ecosystem. 

• Upgraded User Experience:  

A well-designed and implemented SharePoint theme enhances user satisfaction and productivity by 2x. It will result in increased user engagement. 

• Brand Consistency:  

  We help you to customize SharePoint themes to ensure that your SharePoint site reflects your brand’s identity. It will strengthen brand consistency. 

• Optimized Performance:  

  Beyond Intranet’s expertise ensures that the customized theme does not compromise performance. It will maintain optimal speed and responsiveness. 

• Future-Ready Solutions:  

  We ensure that your SharePoint customized theme is scalable. We ensure it should be adaptable to future SharePoint updates and expansions. 

 Still have any queries write us at: contact@beyondintranet.com 

Try on your own or ask for help!

So, isn’t it simple to create your own branded SharePoint  themes which can be easily applied all over your Modern SharePoint tenant? Just try the simple steps and let us know how it went.

Even if you face any challenges, the Beyond Intranet SharePoint Consulting team of expert developers is always there to help. Connect with us at contact@beyondintranet.com and we will respond to you as soon as we can.