Communication Sites
If your goal is to share or broadcast news, reports, and other information with a large audience while only having a few site editors that can create and edit content, you’ll use a communication site. Communication sites are not used to get work done – they are used to easily share finished documents for many individuals to view. You and a small number of collaborators can post the content, then widely distribute the link to your site for others to view.
When considering creating a communication site, would your communication site and your department or school’s existing website or intranet have the same audience? If so, consider if it would be better to instead create a page on the existing website or intranet.
Some examples of communication sites might be:
- An employee services site editable only by a small group of administrators that showcases resources on benefits and policy changes for the entire department to view.
- A site created by a faculty member for students to check for upcoming class events.
- A school posting travel guidelines for all faculty to check.
You can add members as owners, members, or viewers. All owners and members can create, manage, and edit all content. Viewers can be added at a larger level, such as everyone at Tufts.
Site owners can add or remove site members at any point.
You or other team members can also grant permissions to specific individuals that aren’t part of your team to view specific files, document folders, or document libraries.
The home page of a communication site by default is designed to be friendly and easy to quickly find and view information.
The main navigation visitors to your site will use is the top menu above the panels on the page. You and other team members can customize what shortcuts appear in the top menu. By default, the menu will have a link to all document libraries and other pages on the site.
Communication sites can have many pages, but each page has the same section and menu options, designed to easily showcase your content. Pages on communication sites are comprised of section panels to showcase events and content. Team members can collectively change what each page on the site looks like: what panels are on each page and how they are arranged. Like a website, these page edits will be reflected for every person viewing your site.