What does it do ?
In a previous blog post I used the Invoke-SPOSiteSwap PowerShell cmdlet to convert a classic tenant root site to a modern Communication Site – bringing all the modern goodness in the process.
Microsoft have now released the next stage in this process – the SET-SPOHomeSite cmdlet – which takes that modern Communication site and enables it as your SharePoint home site. A perfect location for your Intranet landing page.
A SharePoint home site is the new top of tenant site that provides ..
- Enterprise wide Microsoft search experience – easily accessed from the top of the browser window.
- An Organisational news source. News published here is visually marked as authoritative news to distinguish it from news that may be rolled up from other sites.
- Provides the landing page in the SharePoint mobile app when the user clicks the Home icon.
- Connects to the users SharePoint start page (previously SharePoint home, confusingly) with a link “My SharePoint” in the top navigation.
SharePoint home page
The users SharePoint start page (accessed from the Office 365 app launcher SharePoint tile) is a personal dashboard for all followed & frequent sites as well as recent documents and bookmarks. Note that the navigation is updated to include the megamenu from SharePoint home so the user can easily return there by clicking “Home” in the navigation bar.
Currently only a single SharePoint home site is supported in the tenant and your starting point must be an existing SharePoint Communication site.
SharePoint start page
Note that both SharePoint home & SharePoint start pages provide enterprise wide search capability – indicated by “Search in SharePoint”
How to use it
Download and install the latest SharePoint Online Management Shell
Run PowerShell (as administrator) and login to SharePoint Online with ..
Connect-SPOService -Url https://mydomain-admin.sharepoint.com
.. where mydomain-admin.sharepoint.com is your tenant admin URL for SharePoint Online (you can confirm this by opening the SharePoint Admin center from the Microsoft 365 admin center)
Once connected, run the following ..
Set-SPOHomeSite -HomeSiteUrl https://mydomain.sharepoint.com
.. where mydomain.sharepoint.com is your existing top of tenant Communication site.
I noticed that it took overnight to update the navigation in SharePoint start but this may have improved.