Using SharePoint’s architectural features for your intranet

There are different types of sites you can use in SharePoint to help make an intranet easier to find and use.

This article sets out these sites and some important considerations before you use them for your intranet.

Hub sites

You can group independent sites in a hub and operate them as part of one solution. This is done by labelling one site as a ‘hub’ and connecting other sites to the hub.

Hub and connected sites in a SharePoint intranet

What it means

• Shared navigation across sites
• Shared search (at the hub site-level)
• Shared theme (colours)
• Ability to sync permissions

Things to consider

Searching at the hub site returns results from every connected site in the initial results view. Searching on a connected site returns results from that site in the initial results view. When it comes to intranets, this can be confusing for staff who are looking for something and shouldn’t have to know which site they are on to find it. To make the search experience uniform across intranet sites, you can amend each site’s search scope with a simple PowerShell script.

Home site

As well as creating a hub site, you can also designate your main intranet site as the ‘home site’ for the whole environment. You do this by formally labelling/authorising this site to be the main site in SharePoint.

Using a hub connected site as the home site for a SharePoint intranet 

What it means

• Creates tenancy-wide search
• Ability to customise the global navigation
• Can be used in conjunction with Viva Connections

Things to consider

The most successful intranets are the single source of truth for official corporate-wide information. When intranet search results are combined with non-intranet search results, it makes it difficult for staff to find what they need and often causes distrust in the intranet. Just like hub sites, you can use a simple PowerShell script to amend the search if that’s a problem.

Root site

Root sites are automatically provisioned when you set up a Microsoft 365 plan that includes SharePoint.

A home and hub site set as the root site for a SharePoint intranet 

What it means

• Creates an easier to remember URL (name.sharepoint.com)
• Creates tenancy-wide search
• Simple configuration change

Things to consider

In our experience news article images will usually break on a site when it is set as the root site. It’s important to allow enough downtime to remediate if your intranet has a significant archive of news.

Tenancy-wide search on root sites introduce the same challenges as home sites so it’s worth considering if you should amend the search scope or if the intranet is best placed as your tenancy’s root site.

In conclusion

There are lots of benefits for using hub, root and home sites for your SharePoint intranet but it’s important to understand the consequences of each one. Connecting sites and adding sample navigation to test the user experience is critical for understanding the opportunities and limitations of the different approaches.