The Development Team site template is a communication site designed to serve as an internal home page for your training team. Create a collaboration space for your team where you can access frequent tools, share project updates, post meeting notes, and upload team documents.
Site features
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Customizable site that comes with pre-populated with images, web parts, and content that's meant to inspire site editors when making customizations to fit the need of your organization.
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Ready-to-use news post templates that make it easily to easily publish and share departmental news, events recaps, and announcements.
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Pre-populated pages and web parts that showcase leadership teams, department profiles, company culture, and access to departmental lists, documents, and resources.
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In this article, we share the elements that are on the Development Team site template in SharePoint and discuss how you can customize the site to make it your own.
Notes:
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Some functionality is introduced gradually to organizations that have opted into the Targeted release program. This means that you may not yet see this feature, or it may look different than what is described in the help articles.
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When you apply a site template to an existing site, the new site template home page will replace the current site's home page. Any customized content that was formerly on the home page can be found as a copy of the home page in the Site contents folder.
Step 1: Add the Development Team site template
First, add the template from the SharePoint site home page.
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Note: You must have site creation permissions to add this template to your site. Work with your SharePoint admin to enable site creation if needed.
Step 2: Review pre-populated content and pages
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Explore pre-populated site content, web parts, and pages and decide what site customizations will be necessarily to align with your organization's brand, voice, and overall business objective. Keep customization considerations in mind as you edit and align site content with the rest of your organization.
Pre-populated site pages:
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Home page - Provides and landing place for viewers to engage in departmental news, events, conversation and learn more about leadership and vision.
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Our leadership - Introduction to departmental leadership profiles.
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Our teams - Overview of teams that work together within the department or division.
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Vision and priorities - Displays organizational values and priorities at a department level.
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Culture - Highlights departmental culture and ways of working.
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Documents - Document library provides easy access to departmental resources.
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Pages - Stores site pages and page template content.
Customization considerations:
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Edit and customize site navigation, web parts, and the look of your site.
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Add or remove pages to this site or update the site navigation to accommodate existing content.
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Choose to associate this site with a hub site within your organization, or add this site to an existing hub site navigation to improve discoverability if needed.
Step 3: Customize your site
Once you've added the Development team site template, it's time to customize it and make it your own.
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Step 4: Share your site with others
Share your site with others after you've customized your site, reviewed for accuracy, and published the final draft.
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Select Share site from the right-hand corner.
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In the Share site pane, enter the names of people you want to share the site with. Choose Everyone (except external users) if you would like everyone in your organization to have access to the school landing site. The default permission level is Read only.
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Enter an optional message to send with the email notification that will be sent when the site is shared or clear the Send email checkbox if you don't want to send an email.
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When you're done, select Share.
Step 5: Maintain your site
After you create and launch your site, the next important phase is maintaining site content. Ensure you have a plan to keep content and web parts up to date.
Site maintenance best practices:
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Plan for site maintenance - Establish a schedule to review the site content as often as needed to ensure content is still accurate and relevant.
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Regularly post news - Distribute the latest announcements, information, and status across the organization. Learn how to add a News post on a team site or communication site, and show others who will be posting announcements how they can use SharePoint news.
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Check links and web parts - Keep links and web parts updated to ensure you are leveraging the full value of your site.
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Use analytics to improve engagement - View site usage by using the built-in usage data report to get information on popular content, site visits, and more.
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Periodically review your site settings - Once you've created a site in SharePoint, you can make changes to the settings, site information, and permissions for the site.
Customize your new Development site
Customize your site's look, site navigation, web parts, and content to fit the needs of your viewers and of the organization. When making customization, ensure the site is in edit mode by selecting Edit in the top right of the site. As you work, Save as a draft, or Republish changes to make edits visible to viewers.
Highlight team news
Use page templates for newsletters and event recaps
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Find and review templates
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To view newsletter and news post templates, navigate to Settings and then select Site content, and then Site pages.
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Select the Templates folder to view the newsletter template (Newsletter-Template.aspx) and the event recap template (Town-Hall-Recap-Template.aspx.)
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Make edits to the templates and then select Save page template.
Use page templates for news posts and event recaps
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To use one of the templates in a new news post, start by selecting New in the top left corner, then select News post.
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Then, you will see the two news post templates. Select the template you'd like to use, and then start writing your news post.
Learn more about creating and using page templates.
Promote upcoming events
Add and remove news posts
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To add news posts to your site, do the following:
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Select + Add in the News section to start creating your post. You'll get a blank news post page ready for you to start filling out.
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Build the news post page and select Post when you are ready to share with others.
Edit your news post if needed. There are many more options you can set to fully utilize the power of the news web part. For more information on all options, see using the News web part.
Add or edit events in the Events web part
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Edit the web part to determine the event source and layout.
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To add or edit events in the Events web part, navigate to the Event web part and select + Add event.
Learn more about using and editing theEventsweb part.
Access team documents
Edit the Document library web part
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To change the view, or folder source for the Document library web part, select the Edit icon.
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To edit document library folders, labels, content, navigate to library in Site content, make your edits and then you will see content update in the web part.
Learn more about editing and customizing the Document library web part.
Showcase team members
Go to the site navigation and review pre-populated content in the Who we are section for Our teams and Our leadership pages.
Upload new images to the Image web parts
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Select Edit on the image.
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Select Change and upload an image.
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Choose to remove the text over the image by turning the toggle On or Off or edit the text be selecting the text box.
Learn more about editing, cropping, and resizing images using the Imageweb part.
Edit content in Text web parts
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Select Edit on the text.
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Use the rich text editor to add text styles, links, and anchors.
Learn more about using the Text web part.
Edit the People web part
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Select Edit on the People profiles.
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Choose a layout option.
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Enter the name or email of the people profile you want to display.
Learn more about using the People web part.
Edit images and text in the Hero web part
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Select Edit on the Hero web part.
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Select the image of text to update and select Edit to change the image, title, description, and more.
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Select the Hero web part to change the layout.
Learn more about using the Heroweb part.
Customize the look and site navigation
Before you share your site with others, put the finishing touches on your site by ensuring users can find the site, navigate through links and pages easily, and quickly access content on the site.
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Edit and customize site navigation.
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Customize the theme, logo, header layouts and the look of your site.
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Add or remove pages to this site or the site navigation to accommodate existing content.
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Choose to associate this site with a hub site within your organization, or add this site to an existing hub site navigation if needed.
Still need help?
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