Want to Get a Look at the New Communication Sites? Here’s a Trick!

If you’re like me, words can be confusing. When Andy Haon (@AndyHaon) tweeted that Communication sites were starting to roll out, I wanted to get a look. However, I didn’t see the option in my First Release tenant. I wondered what “Select Users” meant and whether I wasn’t one somehow.

We began rollout of #SharePoint communication sites to Office 365 with release to First Release – Select Users. https://t.co/pGm63aYuij pic.twitter.com/9oz8guMhNP

— Andy Haon (@andyhaon) June 27, 2017

Luckily for me, Twitter is really useful for stuff like this. Rick de Vries (@RickdeVries) pointed out that there a two “flavors” of First Release – First release for everyone and First release for selected users.

You have two first release options: first release tenant wide and first release for select users. Change the option to select users ;)

— Rick de Vries (@rickdevries) June 28, 2017

By switching my tenant so that Julie (@jfj1997) and I are “selected users” instead of just having the tenant-wide setting, we can now see the option to create Communication sites.

Here’s how you do this, assuming you have administrative permissions.

Got to the Admin center and click on Settings / Organizational profile / Release preferences. There you’ll see the two different First Release options:

For more information, check out Set up the Standard or First Release options in Office 365. I couldn’t figure out how to get the UI to add individual users to work, so I ended up uploading a csv file with our two email addresses. #YMMV Note that it took at least a few hours (possibly overnight) for me to see the Communication site option.

Et voila! We can now create Communication sites from the SharePoint home page.