In this video I explain how to use Microsoft Graph in SharePoint Development Framework (SPFx) to show Microsoft Teams information such as ID and Display name of user who is logged in.
Answer question as below – yo @microsoft/sharepoint
What is your solution name?: spfx-graphAPI
Do you want to allow the tenant admin the choice of being able to deploy the solution to all sites immediately without running any feature deployment or adding apps in sites?: Yes
Which type of client-side component to create?: WebPart
What is your Web part name?: SP Graph API
Which framework would you like to use?: No JavaScript framework
Use Microsoft Graph type declarations – npm install @microsoft/microsoft-graph-types
1.Building a Me-experience in Microsoft Teams by Waldek
2.How to use Microsoft Teams Templates as end user and Admin – Paolo Pialorsi
3.General Availability of Microsoft Graph Teams Membership API – Brian T Jackett
4.Improved News / Page Publishing Exprience –Marc D Anderson
5.Power Automate Desktop October 2020 update
Transcript of the video:
Hello and welcome all to series “Last week in Microsoft 365”, this is the second video in this series and we have 5 topics to be highlighted this week which I liked.
1. First one is the Building a Me-Experience in Microsoft Teams which I got to know from Waldek’s blog, as it says there is no “I” but Me in Microsoft Teams. Basically it explains how you can utilize SharePoint Framework to offer a Me-Experience where users can start their day seeing their personal information. The article explains each options in very detail. So how to do it
a. Embed a modern SharePoint page: this approach is great as it does not any coding and can be done by creating modern page with different web parts and embedding it as Teams tab
b. Build a multi tab personal teams app: this requires some coding effort but not so difficult as you can steps are quite self explanatory
c. Combine multiple web parts in single tab: This is same as before but you need to use React to combine multiple React components Link: https://blog.mastykarz.nl/build-me-ex…
2. Second topic is from Paolo Pialorsi where he explains how to use recently introduced Microsoft Teams templates as an end user and Admin. He walks you through all details of the how to create a template etc from Admin portal. He also explains how you can utilize Microsoft Graph explorer Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YQxF…
3. So the third one is General Availability of Microsoft Graph Teams Membership API which I saw from a Tweet of Brian T Jackett, basically it is an announcement made regarding Microsoft Graph Team Membership APIs that is a newly added API which adds , removes users faster. As we can see the article was originally written by Abhishek Anand. Link: https://twitter.com/BrianTJackett/sta…
4. The fourth one is also regarding a roadmap announcement which I came to know more Marc D Andersson where we will have an improved expriences in which users needs to input mandatory fields before publishing a news or page. This is planned to be released in Oct 2020 Link: https://twitter.com/sympmarc/status/1…
5. The last one today is related to Power Automate Desktop October 2020 update. Recently Microsoft has released Power Automate Desktop and lot of improvements will be released soon so here is a summary of all those. If you want to try Power Automate Desktop please refer to link pasted in description Link: https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/blog…
Learn how to use conditional formatting to customize SharePoint or Microsoft List forms. Bascially you can show or hide columns based on conditional values of other columns.
Check the video below to understand how it works, you can also read the transcript below
Transcript
Hello and welcome all to this new series and also first video of the series where we will go through a Microsoft 365 topic. Today’s topic is related to Microsoft Lists and specifically how to show or hide columns based on conditional formatting.
Conditional formatting is a concept which has been introduce recently in Lists and has gained lot of popularity for formatting list column, views, coloring, text formatting etc. Microsoft recently has added lot of options around this but the I will be showing today how to hide or show columns in forms based on value of other columns.
For this example I have created a “Content scheduler” Microsoft list where I am storing when to publish content for my YouTube videos, I have added two items and my objective is to show column “Published Link” when status is “Ready to publish” OR “Published” because the link is not yet ready in other cases, very simple.
So let’s start with this. The same formula works in all 3 forms that is new , edit and view =if([$Status]==’Ready to publish’ ||[$Status]==’Published’,’true’, ‘false’)
You can see that I have here used OR parameter and similarly you can also use AND or NOT operator. It is important to put a logic which is applicable of handling all forms. It took sometime for me to get the OR operator right but finally it worked.
There are certain limitations such as below column types cannot be used in conditional formatting
Person columns with multiple selections
Multiple choice column
Time calculations in DateTime column
Currency columns
Location columns
Calculated columns
Managed Metadata columns
Before this feature was added in SharePoint online we had to rely on Power Apps or SPFx development which I think was an over kill for such a thing but now this is available OOB and this really adds value to Microsoft Lists.
So ya that’s it in this video if you have any questions or suggestions please reach out to me in Twitter, Linked in or in YouTube comments, please share the video and subscribe the channel if you like it.
4.Cross platform PnP PowerShell preview version released by Erwin
5.App capabilities of Teams 6.Project Nucleus teaser
Transcript of the video:
Hello and Welcome everyone to very first Vlog of ”Last week in Microsoft 365”, since this is the first VLog ever I want to tell you what it is? In this series of videos I will be picking some of things I read or liked in Microsoft 365 area during last week and I will be telling you about in brief and if you like it you can find more about in the link pasted in YouTube video or in my blog post. So let’s gets started
1. First up is of course the champions of the community or I should say leaders of the community @vesajuvonen and @waldekm who finished 100th episode of their PnP weekly which was SP Dev Weekly when it started actually, If you would like to know the story of how it started you should listed or view the video (hint it points to one and only Chris Kent). They also discussed what is the purpose of these videos and it is very encouraging to know that they do this for the community to amplify their reach and also develop a bridge between community members and Microsoft. Do listen to this video highly recommended. Here is a link to it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs_8b…
2. Number second is that Scottish Summit has been announced and call for speakers expires on 31st Oct so if you have a nice cool topic please submit it, most amazing thing about this summit is that it will have 250 sessions and that too in different languages such as English, Spanish, German, French, Mandarin and my own Hindi. Plus they also have a program for new speaker like me so if you are going to speak for the first time they will help you out. So what is that you are waiting for either send a session or buy the tickets? Register here: https://sessionize.com/ss2021
3. Next up is the a Twitter announcement which I believe is important that there will be one admin center for SharePoint and OneDrive which of course make sense as both of them are so tied up so get ready for that one. Link: https://twitter.com/SharePoint/status…
4. Next up is announcement by father of PnP PowerShell @erwinvanhunen, that is preview version of cross platform PnP PowerShell has been released. In his blog post he explains why it took so long and what are the key changes coming up. So if you are using PnP PowerShell for your work or you rely it on running scripts this is an important information, please reach out to him on Twitter or read the blog. Blog: https://www.erwinmcm.com/cross-platfo…
5. Next one is something which widened my eyes when I looked into this on my Twitter feed, the picture. It shows all he App Capabilities of Teams which is fascinating as you can see it can do almost everything, right from embedded tabs, Bots, Messaging extensions, WebHooks and connectors as well so if you are planning to create an App for Teams do read this and understand what all can be achieved. All thanks to Bill Bliss (@bill_bliss ) for sharing this. Link to docs: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/micr… Tweet: https://twitter.com/bill_bliss/status…
6. Ok so the last one, and it is related to one of the big announcements which was mentioned in the Microsoft Ignite this year, that is Project Nucleus , as you are aware we got SharePoint Syntex out of Project Cortex and Nucleus was announced this year. A teaser of this was shown in SharePoint monthly community call – October 2020 at the end so if you would like to see just that part then find the link in YouTube video description or on my blog. So biggest thing you need to know that it allows web apps such as List to be available offline for browsing and editing capabilities. This teaser explains how it works and how they are doing it. It demonstrates a List with 100,000 items and also shows what happens in the backend and also how you can join Project Nucleus.
Modern site templates created by Microsoft and available free to be used and get inspired for creating modern portals, intranet , team and communication hub sites.
Firstly why create the wheel again! Portal which your developers might take few months to create is easily available at free of cost. Of course it will not suffice all your needs or requirements but it can be a great starting point, I am very sure 50% of the work is already done.
What templates are available?
Templates have been categorized and Microsoft keeps on adding new templates keep an eye of the web site URL shared before and Twitter handle of Microsoft SharePoint https://twitter.com/SharePoint
As of 29th August these templates are available
Organization based: Leadership connection, The Perspective, Crisis Communications, News site, The Landing and Benefits
Department based: Global sales hub, Fly Safe Conference, Retail Operations, Human resources hub, Global marketing hub, Workshop training site
Team based: Team communication site, Product Support Collaboration team site, Mark8 Project Team
Community based: Charitable site, Branding site
Solutions based: Microsoft 365 learning pathways, Microsoft 365 freelance communications site, New Employee Onboarding Hub
Schools: School home page, Class home page and Staff home page
We will look into the new “New Employee Onboarding Hub” template in detail.
How to create “New Employee Onboarding Hub” sites using the template?
Interestingly Microsoft has made it very easy to try out any templates, you just to have visit the page of the template and go through an online form to install it.
Click on the “Add to your tenant” button to start the process but make sure that account you are using is a “Tenant Administrator”.
Look book add to your tenant
This will take you to page in which site urls needs to be decided, it will automatically pick name and URL but you can modify it, it will also validate if those URLs are valid or not.
An email is sent once the provisioning finishes so make sure email address given is correct.
This should start the process and usually will take 15-20 minutes to finish.
SharePoint look book pageLook book provisioning confirmation
It’s important that till all 4 sites are created and you get an email you don’t access the sites else it create issues, first time when I did this I did not read the message properly and it actually created the issue and I never got an email.
If all goes well you should get an email like below
Email confirmation for look book provisioning
Here is a video of the process applying the template “New Employee Onboarding Hub” in your tenant.
What do you get once installation is finished?
So once this is done, it creates 4 site collections and 1 site is set a hub site.
Pre-Onboarding site: A start up site for new hires which can be accessed before starting with the company.
OnBoarding site: Main site which provides access to information related to onboarding.
Department based Onboarding sites: As a sample Engineering and Sales departmental OnBoarding sites are created which will hold departmemt level onboarding information.
New Employee OnBoarding sites in SharePoint Admin Center
Look at these videos to get an overview of what we have.
New Employee OnBoarding Hub – Pre OnBoarding site demo
New Employee OnBoarding Hub – Corporate OnBoarding Site demo
New Employee OnBoarding Hub – Departmental site (Sales) Demo
New Employee OnBoarding Hub – Departmental site (Engineering) Demo
What can we do after installation?
As you can understand from the videos the sites created are like sample sites, the content needs to be added, replaced to make it work in your environment but it is a great inspiration for creating such sites as it has covered all the basics needed to create sites such like this. The sites have been created based on research done. You can read more here on how to customize sites but if you know how to handle a SharePoint sites it is not that difficult.
Once you have created and customized sites you can always use Site Usage features for SharePoint how it has been doing it.
How to use PowerShell to install New Employee OnBoarding Hub Template?
You will be happy to know that you can use PowerShell to install the sites which were described if you do not want to use the user interface based Provisioning.
These steps will do the same as User Interface that is create four sites as described.
PowerShell to install New Employee OnBoarding Hub Template
You can also look at this video to view complete process
How to extend this further?
Since we the source code we should be able to make changes to NEO.XML file from the path “yourpath\provisioningtemp\sp-dev-provisioning-templates-master\tenant\NEO\source”.
I did a small change that added an extra navigation on Pre-Boarding site, similar to that you should be able to add new pages, change existing pages, update with your own images or create more sites etc.
Once you have done changes to NEO.XML file use below command to create a new PNP file which will provision the site according to changes you have made.
But before you run commands make sure you change your working folder in PowerShell and go to “YOURPATH\provisioningtemp\sp-dev-provisioning-templates-master\tenant\NEO\source” else the Save.PnPTemplate command will fail with below error as it looks for the SiteAssets folder just under the working folder
Once the New PnP File is created use Apply-PnPTenantTemplate -Path .\NEONew.pnp to install the sites.
If you are interested in understanding how the User Interface provisioning service works, source code for that is also available but I am will not go into details as I will save it for another blog but you can refer this link https://github.com/SharePoint/sp-provisioning-service
This is the source code used for lookbook.micrsoft.com.
So that is all about New Employee OnBoarding Hub from Microsoft SharePoint look book.
Summary: The templates provided by Microsoft as part of look book are quite useful and also the source code is available to extend it further. It has also been announced in Microsoft Ignite 2020 that new Site Templates will be available from End of 2020 which are based on look book but has been polished and more value has been added by Product team.
Connect with me on Twitter or Linked In if you need more information.
Finally on 28th July 2020 Microsoft Lists have arrived in our tenants (10% targeted release), here is the icon and just click on it to access the Lists page.
Microsoft Lists iconMicrosoft Lists home page
What are the ways to create lists?
You can create a blank list as we use to do like custom list in SharePoint.
You can start with an existing excel which means that if you have excel you can use that create a list with same set of columns etc
You can pick any one of the templates to create a list.
You can also use an existing list of create a list which means you don’t have to start from scratch and any existing list can be used as template.
We will have a look at all these one by one but first let’s discuss templates.
What are the templates available and their usages?
Issue Tracker: This to track issues, similar template is available in SharePoint as well, look at the video below how to create and what are the columns etc. You will notice that the interface is same as SharePoint Lists and also settings page is same so the learning curve is pretty small.
Microsoft Lists Issue Tracker Demo
2. Employee OnBoarding Template: Look at the video to understand what columns it has, this can be used for onboarding new employees or onboarding emoloyee transfers from one location to another or department
Microsoft Lists Onboarding template demo
3. Event Itinerary template demo: A lists to track series of events such as who is the speaker, location, number of people allowed etc, look at the video for more details
Microsoft Lists itinerary template demo
4. Asset Manager Template: This template can be used to manage assets if new assets needs to be assigned, transferred or an inventory of existing assets. All required columns like Serial number, manufacturer etc are already available, look at the video for more details
Microsoft Lists Asset Manager template demo
5. Recruitment Tracker: This template can be used to track recruitment candidates, has all options to store candidate information, who is the requester, for what role etc., look at the video to understand more.
Microsoft Lists Recruitment Tracker template demo
6. Travel Request Tracker: This can be used to track travel requests, it has all the columns you need, workflow of course can be created using Power Automate, good use of the “Location” column as users can enter location where they are travelling so you don’t need to maintain a list, flight cost, hotel cost etc, look at the video for details
Microsoft Lists Travel Tracker template demo
7. Work Progress Tracker: This template can be handy if you are managing a team or you are tracking different tasks, this template has all the columns you need such categorization, priority, start date , end date etc, look at the video for more details
Microsoft Lists Work Progress Tracker demo
8. Content Scheduler: This template can be used to track launch of content in your organization, it has all the columns you need such as Content type, author, publish date, content link etc, view the video to get more details
Microsoft Lists Content Scheduler template demo
Create a blank list: Use the same steps as before just use the option, blank list, it is more like a custom list we have in SharePoint and we can create columns as we wish. View the video for more details.
As you can see the experience is very similar as before and we have both modern way of creating ways also classic experience available with us, if you want to use metadata type it is also available.
Microsoft Lists Blank List demo
Create a List using an existing list: Use the same options as before just use the option existing list and you will be able to create a list out of an existing list. Benefit of this is that whatever customization with respect to columns, formatting and views you have done will be copied over. View the video for more details.
Create Microsoft Lists using an existing List
Create a List using an excel: If you have data in existing excel and you would like to turn it into Microsoft Lists then it can be easily done, view the video below.
Some points before you do this:
There is a limit of number of rows for which data can be uploaded
Your excel sheet needs to have data in “Table” format else it will not work and will give a message for the same.
You can select multiple type of column type while uploading such as Single text, Multi text, Choice , Date time, Number , Currency depending on what data resides in the column or you can select not to upload data
When you upload the excel it will be first uploaded to OneDrive and then list will be created, later it can be found in OneDrive.
You have the ability to upload an excel from OneDrive as well.
I also encountered an issue while uploading, I was not abe to save List under “My Lists” as it gave me this error “The Site does now allow Site Designs” so I had to share it in one of the SharePoint sites and then it worked.
Your data along with columns will also be uploaded.
What happens when you create a list and how to create under SharePoint Site ?
If you will notice the List URL you will understand that the List App is actually running from your SharePoint My Site as we have our “OneDrive” running, a sample URL below so I believe all Lists are being created under your My Site. Check below URLs and you will understand. Anyhow our my sites are nothing but a SharePoint site so it makes sense to utilize them.
You have the ability to save list under a SharePoint site when you create a list, instead of My Lists select SharePoint Site this will create the List under SharePoint site, a link will be added in menu automatically and also you can find under the Site Contents.
Create Microsoft Lists Under SharePoint Site
Create a List from existing SharePoint List: Yes this is true you can create Microsoft Lists using existing SharePoint List, check the below video for details. Basically you will have to use “From existing list” option and you can select SharePoint sites and it will show compatible Lists whuch can be used.
Create Microsoft Lists using SharePoint existing Lists
How to create a Rule in Microsoft Lists: Rule is a great idea introduced by Microsoft which works similar to List formatting but has much more, check the video below in which I highlight a column and also add an exclaimation icon based on specific condition and that too only via few clicks.
Create Rule for Microsoft Lists demo
How to access Microsoft Lists via PowerShell?
You can access Microsoft Lists just like any other list and I hope all kind of commands work, check below the screenshot to believe it
Microsoft Lists access via PowerShell
Sharing options in Microsoft Lists: When you create Microsoft Lists under My Lists it is accessible only by you so if you want to share with others you need to share with other persons. When you create under a SharePoint site then it will be accessible by SharePoint site users as well.
Share options in Microsoft Lists
You can also share individual items as well.
Integration options: This is a big topic so I just want to say few lines as it has all the abilities for extending the functionality using Microsoft Graph, Power Automate, PowerApps
How to access normal SharePoint List in Microsoft Lists way:
If you want to see the new Microsoft Lists experience in any modern SharePoint list, go to the URL and append this query string after AllItems.aspx like this. AllItems.aspx?env=WebViewList
Credit goes to this tweet:
If you want to see the new Microsoft Lists experience in any modern @SharePoint list, go to the URL and append this query string after AllItems.aspx
Summary: This is a great decision from Microsoft to introduce Lists as a standalone App, it will provide a great value. It has huge capabilities which I have not been able to cover all things but I will do this in subsequent blogs.
Connect with me on Twitter or Linked In if you need more information.
A comprehensive solution showcasing packaging, solution deployment, provisioning and SPFx web parts to inspire and guide developers, business users and SharePoint Admins to create solutions on similar lines.
Why you should have a look at this?
This has been created by best people in this field (SharePoint, Microsoft 365) which means that code, design and relevance of the web parts are extremely good, all the web parts can be used in your tenant as is. You can learn and create your own ways to
Package solutions
Provisioning mechanism
Coding guidelines, standards
Build modern portals
How to get started?
If you want to install everything at one shot the steps are simple. I suggest to have a look first install it on development tenant and not the Production tenant, as it will upload lot of SPFx solutions and make changes so best is that you review it in a developer tenant. Based on your understanding you can plan to deploy it in Production.
Prerequisites: There are some preparation steps which you need to before you install it as follows
Account used to deploy this solution should be a tenant administrator
Works with English tenants, all solutions are in English
An App Catalog is present in SharePoint with Apps option
Account used to deploy this that is tenant admin should also be termstore admin, in general it is but please verify
if you have created a new tenant just now or set targeted relase now or just now created App Catalog then it is advised to wait for 1 day before you install this.
This will ask your User Id and Password, please use tenant administrator for this as it will be used to install the Starter Kit.
Then go to Provisioning folder in the source code you have downloaded from GitHub.
cd <<location>>
Then execute following command in PowerShell
Apply-PnPTenantTemplate -Path .\starterkit.pnp
The command might take 10-15 mins to execute and if all goes well three sites will be created.
You can watch a video to view complete process
Issues you might face
Exception while invoking endpoint: I encounter this issue while installing almost half way through the installation. Error message you might get is this Apply-PnPTenantTemplate : Exception while invoking endpoint https://login.microsoftonline.com/fffff-4121-ae51-71e06b5edc04/oauth2/token.
If you get this it follow below steps rather than the normal steps
Remove earlier version of SharePointPnpPowerShellOnline
Connect-PnPOnline -Url https://tenant-admin.sharepoint.com/ -PnPO365ManagementShell , this will open a window in browser for device login in which you should enter a code specified, make it is succcessful.
Till then you can deploy individual apps in SharePoint 2019 farm and use the apps. Following apps will work in SharePoint 2019 as well
Banner
Followed sites
Links
People directory
Site information
Tiles
Weather
World clock
To deploy the apps you can copy the package from source code you downloaded before from this location “sp-starter-kit-master\source\<<solution-name>>\sharepoint\solution” and upload it to App Catalog of your farm.
There is no need to build the solution and can be directly deployed but in case you face issues you can build it using
gulp bundle --ship
gulp package-solution --ship
SP Starter Kit v2 SP 2019
Once deployed you can add it on a page, in this case I am showing Tiles app.
Tiles App SharePoint 2019Tiles App in SharePoint 2019
I also did a demo of SharePoint Starter Kit V2 on PnP Community SharePoint Framework and JavaScript Special Interest Group (SIG) – Bi-weekly sync call recorded on September 10, 2020.
Let’s start with a question, can megamenu be enabled on all site templates?
Well answer is No, it is available only on SharePoint Hub sites which are associated with Microsoft teams or on Communication sites.
What is a megamenu in SharePoint Online?
In the traditional navigration structure you could only have two levels of navigation but now in MegaMenu you can have multiple levels spanning horizontally and vertically.
How it works?
You can create MegaMenu from Site Settings –> Change the look –> Navigation. Note that MegaMenu is default type in Communication sites but if you need to change it follow below steps
MegaMenu can be used to create multi-level horizontal and vertical menus as shown below.
Megamenu example
To start with you need to click Edit on right side and Under any heading, when you hover you will see a line with plus symbol to add a menu. Use that to add headers or links depending on what you need.
SharePoint MegaMenu
Once done you can “Make sub link” to make it appear under it
Sample final outcome
MegaMenu example
How about Security trimming and Audience targeting in MegaMenu in Hub Site Navigation?
There is no security trimming in MegaMenu in Hub Site Navigation, I will say that purpose of Hub site really does not make sense to have MegaMenu security trimmed but at same time it can be debatable.
Audience targeting can be a good thing and it is under work as of May 2019, you can refer here
So that’s about MegaMenu in Hub site, if you have any questions or remarks please contact us via our Contact Us page or via our Facebook page or via Twitter
I think I must have missed the Hub Sites in SharePoint buzz but a blog from my side anyhow.
What is a Hub Site?
Firstly, it is not a template like Communication or Team site, you can register an existing team site or communication site as a Hub Site so if you want to create a Hub site from scratch please create a site preferably a modern one and then register it as Hub Site which can only be done SharePoint Admin in Central Admin link.
Hub site is used to facilitate Intranet in organizations which can have other sites as “Association” or “Navigation” links. You can roll up information from associated and linked sites to the main Hub site by using Apps available.
You can think this of a container site but physically it does not contain any sites but can only be associated.
What makes it unique?
Something like this was not available before but I believe everyone wanted something like this as working with Site Collections and the Sub sites structure is rigid and difficult to change later on.
Hub sites introduce us a flat structure which can be moved easily as sites are just associated and not created under them.
So, uniqueness is in the flat structure which can be implemented easily.
Difference between the Hub site-based structure and the traditional structure is as below
Hub sites vs Sub sites
Hub site based
Traditional – Site collections – sub sites
Flat structure
Hierarchy based structure
Sites are associated and not created under it
Sites are created under a main site
Access permissions do not have any impact in
Access permissions are inherited by default or needs to be managed separately
Easy to move around sites and change structure or associations
No easy ways to change the structure
How to utilize or use Hub Sites?
Hub site should be used to bunch sites together, create an intranet or roll up information together. Bunching or associating sites together should be done based on departments, organizations, key features, team or based on keywords or location etc. or if you want to roll up specific information from different sources.
Hub site can only be really useful if you will be rolling up information and two most easy ways to use OOB of Apps called “Highlighted Content” and “Sites” which can fetch different information from associated sites and show them beautifully.
On modern pages just add a section layout and then select add App using “+” symbol and select Highlighted Content or Sites depending on your needs, I would recommend Highlighted Content as it is really powerful and can roll up almost all data. Refer to screenshots below
As you can view you have following options
Select a source: can select all hub sites or some or specific one
Type of source: can be document, news, lists etc.
Filter and sort to organize your content
Different options for a Layout to support your needs
Other things you should consider while creating and managing Hub sites:
Naming convention of Hub sites so that it can be easily recognized
Name information which needs to roll up also properly so that easy to roll up later
Consider the audience before you start creating hub sites
Consider search scopes while deciding on the association of Hub sites
Also note that you can put a link to non-associated site
How to create Hub sites?
As pointed out earlier there is no template like Hub Site, you have to create a site collection using template either team site or communication. Communication template is recommended one from Microsoft.
Create a site a then select option mark it is a Hub site, you need to SharePoint admin to do all this
After the site is created you can register this as Hub site
Once this is done you can view extra navigation at the top
So that’s about Hub site, if you have any questions or remarks please contact us via our Contact Us page or via our Facebook page or via Twitter
As of 22nd feb 2017 GA version of SPFX SharePoint Framework has been released. SharePoint Framework SPFX that is client side web part is a new framework introduced to provide one more option for client-side development other than Script Editor based and Add-in model.
The new framework is based on both of the existing solutions but in most of the scenarios SPFX is a preferred way to develop, two major plus points
Responsive controls
Can be deployed on modern pages and classic web part pages as well
Building your environment for doing development using SPFX is very welll documented on this article but while doing the same for me I got few issues so I am just going to highlight few points which I thought was confusing or should be highlighted
There are four major things you need to do to set up your development environment
Set up your Office 365 tenant: You need at least Developer tenant which you can get from Office Developer Program, set an App catalog site and create a developer site. More details here . Once the site is ready please access SharePoint Workbench here https://replace-with-your-sharepoint-site/_layouts/workbench.aspx
SharePoint Workbench
Install Node JS : You need to install Node JS, make sure you do install LTS version from here https://nodejs.org/en/ . Unfortunately I installed it from here first time and it did not workout good https://nodejs.org/en/download/ . Refer more details here
Install Yeoman and gulp : Once Node JS installation is done you should run below commands to install Yeoman and gulp, make sure you run these commands in Windows PowerShell, I have assumed that you are using a Windows 10 machine. Also I tried using CMD prompt but it did not work out good. Also make sure you create a separated folder under C Drive and then perform all the steps
npm install -g npm
npm install -g yo gulp
npm install -g @microsoft/generator-sharepoint
Install Visual studio code : Install Visual Studio code from here
If all steps are successful then your development environment is set up and you are ready to develop your first client side web part.
In case you need more help on this or other SharePoint issues please contact us via our Contact Us page or via our Facebook page or via Twitter
Kislay Sinha 