SharePoint site templates come in all shapes and sizes, save time and address numerous scenarios, and provide an opportunity to programmatically adhere to your organization’s preferred custom site creation policies.

Using a template when creating SharePoint sites improves efficiency and helps standardize site creation. While templates provide a starting point, they are customizable to adapt them to specific needs of a project or team. As your organization grows, templates make it easier to deploy new sites quickly and efficiently, with governance to ensure features and settings comply with organizational policies or industry regulations.

Select “+ Create site” on the SharePoint start page and choose between a Team site or a Communication site (pictured). Then, select the template that you want to use to create your new site – out-of-the-box or custom.

At their core, SharePoint site templates contain pre-populated pages, page templates, news post templates, themes, and web parts. When you create a site, you choose from either a Communication site or a Team site, and then select the site template that matches your desired outcome. You will find numerous site templates available directly within the service, ready to use. You can create and deploy your own custom site templates – for reuse within your tenant. And take advantage of custom PnP site templates from GitHub – implemented via PowerShell. 

This article aims to highlight what’s possible, share what’s new, and clarify where and how you get, deploy, and use SharePoint site templates in Microsoft 365. 

Use and adopt SharePoint site templates directly from SharePoint service within Microsoft 365. 

Much of what we’ve learned about SharePoint site templates, and developed for use in production, now resides within the Microsoft 365 commercial service – meaning many of the deployable site templates are now available to choose from during the standard, out-of-the-box + Create site process – in SharePoint. These templates make it easy to create a SharePoint site. They demonstrate the art of what’s possible with design-focused layouts and content to save you time (and heartache 😉). 

To get a broad overview of what’s available, review the SharePoint Look Book page – now hosted on adoption.microsoft.com (recently updated; more on the original look book website below). This page highlights the value of each site and breaks down what gets created for you when applying the various templates. And we published an important related Help article to learn how to apply and customize SharePoint site templates, including several guided walkthroughs to familiarize yourself with how to create sites for your organization. Below are two site template examples:  

IT help desk (Team site template) 

The ‘IT help desk’ template helps manage technical requests, track devices, and share training materials.

Learning central (Communication site template) 

The ‘Learning central’ template provides a landing experience for your organization’s learning opportunities.

As with all our other Microsoft-provided site templates, these are automatically available in SharePoint tenants and can be applied by users with site owner permissions or higher. When you create a new site, you will be asked if you’d like to use a template. Select Browse templates to see Microsoft templates and templates from your organization. Additionally, we’ve released the site template history panel. Site owners will be able to access the Site information panel from within Settings, and then select View template history. A history of all site templates previously applied to the site will then be displayed. Selecting an entry will display all site script actions and if they ran successfully or encountered errors. Whether you’re creating a new site or applying a template to an existing site, navigate to Settings and then select Apply a site template. 

Learn how to create SharePoint sites in Microsoft 365 and apply and customize SharePoint site templates. 

Create your own custom site templates. 

Custom templates made by your organization using site scripts will display in the site template gallery based on the type of site a user chose to start with – either a communication site or team site. Therefore, it is likely that all the custom site templates will not appear in the site template gallery at once. Soon, users will have the ability to choose to view all custom site templates in the From your organization tab regardless of the type of site chosen.  

Site templates provided by your organization will appear in the From your organization tab when selecting a template type. Customization instructions will vary depending on the site template design. Review customization resources below to learn more about site personalization options. 

You can create site templates to provide reusable lists, themes, layouts, pages, or custom actions so that your users can quickly build new SharePoint sites with the features they need. Learn more about how to create custom site templates for your organization. 

Learn more about configuring and deploying SharePoint site template and site scripts. 

Deploying scenario-based solutions with custom PnP site templates from the GitHub repository.  

Explore additional scenario-based solutions with custom PnP* site templates found in the GitHub repository. Several custom site templates exist for you to utilize and are standardized for how to implement into your own environment using PowerShell.

*PnP stands for Patterns & Practices. 

View available custom PnP SharePoint site templates in GitHub. 

Learn how to apply custom PnP SharePoint site templates. 

The following video by Microsoft MVP, Paolo Pialorsi, shows you how to provision custom PnP site templates from the GitHub repository, in this instance using the example of the ‘Learning Pathways’ site template. Watch now:  

The move away from the original lookbook.microsoft.com website.

Previously, Microsoft maintained a website at lookbook.microsoft.com – where tenant admins could select scenario-based templates and deploy them – from this website directly into their own tenant. The website’s DNS registration has expired and no longer resolves. We understand this is not ideal. Going forward, Microsoft is investing in the SharePoint Look Book page on adoption.microsoft.com; we created a new aka.ms link: aka.ms/SharePointLookBook to take you directly to this page. 

The SharePoint Look Book page on adoption.microsoft.com is our primary destination to display SharePoint site templates, including ones you can find in GitHub and provision using PowerShell.  

I would like to thank two Microsoft MVPs and community members, Tracy van der Schyff and Marc Anderson – for sharing their thoughts and insights with everyone during this change. We aim to highlight the value of SharePoint site templates and improve Microsoft change management communications. Here are what Tracy and Marc published in support of adding clarity during this update:  

 “Recent changes to the #SharePoint Look Book” by Tracy van der Schyff.  

“SharePoint Lookbook: What’s happened to it?” by Marc Anderson. 

In the end… 

In summary, templates serve as a blueprint for creating new SharePoint sites, ensuring that they are set up quickly, consistently, and with best practices in mind. They offer a balance between uniformity and customization, making it easier to manage and scale SharePoint environments within an organization. 

We hope the above helps you get informed in all the ways SharePoint site templates help you save time and ground what SharePoint can do for you and your organization – be it through use site templates from within the service, custom site templates you create and deploy, or if you benefit from custom site templates from the GitHub repository.  

Discover what’s possible, save time, and remember: Make it your own. SharePoint site templates are a map; you are the trailblazing guide! 

Thanks, Mark Kashman, Senior Product Manager – Microsoft  

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