This SharePoint Online tutorial we will discuss, how to create and use the community site template in SharePoint online Office 365. Community site is a new site template it provides a forum experience in SharePoint online. Use communities to categorize and cultivate discussions among a broad group of people across organizations in a company.
New to Office 365 SharePoint Online? Get Office 365 Enterprise E3 Subscription & Try out all the features
You can also activate community site features on existing sites without creating community site templates to access the features like Badges, Discussions, Community Members, Categories.
Let’s see How to create a community site in SharePoint online (Download PDF for FREE)
Open http://portal.office365.com. Logged in with your valid Office 365 tenant username and password.
Navigate to admin center -> Click SharePoint and Click New -> Private site collection.
Provide the SharePoint site title and web site address. Pick a site template -> Community site.
Click Ok
So community site has been successfully created with awesome community experience features
Lists: Categories, Community members, Discussion List, Site Pages
Categories:
Using this category list, we can define the categories for discussion for example Products, Clothing, Electronics like this kind of key terms.
Discussion List:
Using Discussion list, it holds the posts posted by the community members and likes, ratings and replies from other members inside the community,
Community Members:
This list may work as a database for holding all the community members information inside the community forum
Site Pages:
In this site template site pages were pretty different It holds the different pages by default here the list of pages Community home, About, Topic, Categories, Category, Members
– Community Home: It’s a default home page it holds all the discussions, Top members widget, Community tools it helps to create badges, assign badges, set reputation and more… will discuss after with detailed information
– About: This page provides the rules and regulations about the community rest of other components as same as the Home page
– Topic: This page is a separate page for discussion related information
– Categories: Using this page we can create and manage categories for discussions
– Members: It holds the members and top members information inside the community
Let’s Explain all the components:
Discussions inside the community based on categories:
Navigate to homepage -> Community tools -> Click create categories
Click Create categories
On the page Click New-> provide Category Name, Description and Image source
Am created “Electronics, mobiles, Clothes”
Now create discussion based on categories
Navigate to homepage -> click New Discussion
Click save
Now you can see this discussion was under category “Electronics”
Also, you guys can provide likes and reply comments your suggestion about the discussion.
Now you are able to see the member of community sites and his posts
Now let’s assign a badge for a community members
In community tools -> click Create badges
By default, you get Expert, Professional
Am going to Add “Member”
Let’s Assign a Badge to members
Click Assign badge to members
Click on -> moderation -> Give Badge
Assign Badge as “Professional”
Let’s see here.
Badge has been assigned to the community member
Open community tools -> Click Reputation settings
Here you can assign reputation points for creating and replying posts for likes and best replies
You can also achievement levels as points and images.
Click ok to complete the setup
Now open community tools -> Click Community settings
Enable auto approval for permission requests and reporting of offensive contents
Read some SharePoint tutorials below:
- Configure Add-In or app development environment in SharePoint server 2016
- Communication Site Overview in SharePoint online Office 365
- SharePoint Online communication site Hero webpart
- Change the SharePoint List View into JQuery News Ticker Using JS Link CSR
- Promoted links web part in SharePoint online
Am just check Enable auto approval and click ok. So as of now, you guys know about community sites and its default components and working cycle.
