Communication Sites

If your goal is a private centralized location for you and your team to collaborate on projects, share and store documents, chat, and exchange information, you might want to make a team site, not a communication site.

Communication sites are ideal for broadcasting news and reports to a large audience. A few editors create and post content, not for collaboration, but for wide distribution. Once content is posted, the site link can be shared for others to view.

When considering creating a communication site, consider if it would be better to create a page on an existing website or intranet with the same audience instead of a new site.

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. Site owners can add or remove site members at any point. All owners and members can create, manage, and edit all content.

Viewers can be added at a larger level, such as everyone at Tufts. 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 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.