Finally Microsoft is releasing much anticipated feature in SharePoint online – Collapsible sections on modern pages. This new feature will allow users to create rich, information-dense SharePoint pages with sections that can expand and collapse. As part of this release, Microsoft will enable the page authors to configure sections within the modern SharePoint page to be able to expand, collapse and set the default page-load state for the section.

Users will have the ability to show collapsible page sections in an accordion view (collapsed or expanded) or as tabs (future release). The accordion view will be collapsed by default, but can be set to show expanded. This feature will help users to quickly navigate between the page sections and consume the page content more easily.

Release Timeline

Microsoft will begin rolling out this feature to Targeted release tenants (selected users and organization) in early July (complete) and expect to be complete for Standard release in late September (previously late July).

How this will affect your organization

This feature will give page authors new ways to build rich and interesting SharePoint pages with collapsible sections – accordion or tabs.

When you will edit a section on modern page, you will see collapsible group options like below:

Note: Tabs layout will be rolled out with future releases.

Set Expand/Collapse icon alignment & show divider line between sections

Starting from September 2021, you have two more settings on Edit section panel as shown below:

• You can set Expand/Collapse icon alignment to Left or Right
• You can show divider line between two sections

Anchor links on collapsible section heading

On SharePoint online modern pages, anchor links are automatically added to H1, H2, and H3 headings when you add those in Text web part. Similar anchor links are now available on collapsible section headings as shown in below image. When you hover over collapsible section heading, you will see a link symbol. Clicking this link will give you the full URL of modern page, including the anchor in browser URL bar. You can also right-click on the link to copy it.

What you need to do to prepare

You might want to notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate.

Learn More

• Add sections and columns on a SharePoint modern page

Update from Microsoft

We have updated the rollout timeline. While in Targeted Release we received valuable feedback around the behavior of anchor links when used in collapsible sections as well as some formatting issues experienced by users of right-to-left languages. We feel that both of these issues are important for us to address prior to making the feature generally available. We are actively addressing these issues now and expect the solution to reach General Availability with all fixes in place by the end of September 2021. Thank you for your patience.

Updated September 30, 2021: As shared previously, the new collapsible Sections was deployed to 100% of Targeted Release customers. We held the solution at the Targeted Release phase while we addressed some issues that were reported with the solution. The issues have now been addressed and we will be resuming the global rollout to all customers. It is now our expectation that we’ll complete the rollout of the feature by the end of October 2021. Thank you for your patience.

When you add a List web part or Document Library web part on modern pages to show the (filtered) list items or documents, it shows See all link at the top right corner of web part as shown in below image. By clicking this See all link, users can navigate to the full list/library page.

But sometimes when you are showing the filtered list views or custom created list views on modern pages, you don’t want other users to access the original list/library and switch between views or modify existing list views. Previously there was no SharePoint out of the box way to hide the See all link from web parts. But, recently Microsoft has added a new option to Show/Hide “See all” button in list/library web part property pane settings.

Show/Hide See All link from SharePoint list/library web parts

Follow below steps to show/hide See all button from list web part in SharePoint online:

1. Go to SharePoint modern page where you have added the list/library web part.

2. Open the page in Edit mode by clicking Edit button from top right corner.

3. Click on the Edit web part button against your list/library web part.

4. Toggle Show “See all” button option and change it to Hide “See all” Button as shown in below image.

5. Click Apply button.

6. Click on Publish/Republish button to save the changes to the modern page.

Here’s how the list/library web part will look after you hide the “See all” link from web part settings:

Using pages in SharePoint is a great way to share information or any news/announcement in your organization to SharePoint site users. SharePoint site pages can be improved by utilizing banner images in the page title area. Adding banner images to the page title area not only makes the page more visually appealing but also helps to convey the page’s purpose to the user more quickly and effectively.

In this blog post, we will see how to change the SharePoint Page Banner Image using PnP PowerShell.

First of all upload a high quality image in one of the document libraries in your SharePoint site. SharePoint site page banner images in title area look best when they are landscape or 16:9 or greater in aspect ratio, and when they are at least 1 MB in size. Check this Microsoft official documentation for recommended specifications for banner images: Image sizing and scaling in SharePoint modern pages

Then you can use below PnP PowerShell script to update the banner image at the top of the SharePoint online modern page:

# SharePoint online site URL
$siteUrl = "https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/wlive"	

# Connect to SharePoint online site  
Connect-PnPOnline -Url $siteUrl -Interactive

# Update SharePoint site page banner image
Set-PnPPage -Identity "Open-Door-Policy" -HeaderType Custom -ServerRelativeImageUrl "/sites/wlive/SiteAssets/work-remotely.jpeg"

Once you run above script successfully, you will find that banner image for your SharePoint site page is updated successfully:

Learn more

• SharePoint Online: Create a blank page without header & title
• Add/Update image columns in SharePoint/Microsoft Lists using PnP PowerShell
• SharePoint Online: How to change the placeholder text in the search box
• Enable/Disable SharePoint Online List Comments using PnP PowerShell

Tech giant Microsoft is introducing yet another feature to the Microsoft Teams that will allow meeting organizers to create a custom registration page for any meeting (although the feature is designed for webinars). This feature will be available for meeting organizers using Microsoft Teams desktop applications (Windows/Mac) as well as Teams on the web.

Adding a custom attendee registration page to any meeting will help to manage attendance before and after any meeting. After registration, attendees will receive an email confirmation with calendar invite.

How this will affect your organization

By default, this new meeting registration feature will be available to all users in tenant.

The meeting organizer can set up a custom registration page from the Meeting scheduling form. The organizer will then customize and save the registration page in a pop up window.

When a meeting organizer uses the custom registration option, those who are invited will receive an email with the registration link.

Considerations when using this feature

• By default the registration page will be accessible only to the users from the same tenant.
• Meeting organizers who want to schedule a public webinar which allows anyone to register will need to contact an admin. Admin will grant you the ability to create custom registration forms for public webinars. This ability is specific to the meeting organizer, and not the meeting.
• Once permissions granted, meeting organizers can use the registration page for any public meeting, until the permission is revoked by Admin.

Monitor registration activity

The meeting organizer can monitor registration activity via the registration report download that is provided on the Meetings Details tab before, during and after meeting.

What admin need to do to prepare

Admin need to assess and determine the proper settings for their tenant. Admin need to manage meeting organizer access to the registration feature and whether this registration page is available only to internal attendees:

• The policy AllowMeetingRegistration parameter is Enabled by default (Enabled/Disabled).
• The policy WhoCanRegister parameter is Everyone in your organization by default (Everyone or Everyone in your organization). This is user-level policy that can be assigned to a specific user or a group.

These policies can also be managed via PowerShell.

• Edit an existing Teams meeting policy by using the Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy cmdlet.
• Create a new Teams meeting policy by using the New-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy cmdlet and assign it to users. 

Current Limitations

Currently Recurring and channel meetings do not support the registration functionality.

Release Timeline

Microsoft will roll out this feature in early April and it is expected to be complete by early May 2021.

The new power pages styling is really nice and easy to use but i have tried every option and I could not figure out how to change the font Colour of the label of a field on my form and the magic way to do this is using a custom CSS and F12.

So follow the below steps to achieve this:

1. Login to make.powerpages.com , Select your environment and then Select your site from Active sites and click Edit

2. In the left navigation -> Navigate to Styling.

3. You can customise your Theme by adding colours to the colour and modifying in the theme and everything gets reflected as you change the colours which is very nice and very handy as you can see how things looks like.

4. Now to add a custom CSS file , Click the 3 horizontal dots on your selected them and click Manage CSS.

5. Navigate down and click Upload Custom CSS.

6. Upload your custom CSS and then Click Edit Code this opens the file in Visual studio Code, you can edit your CSS file there easily and once you save and click Sync Configuration.

7. Now comes the tricky part where you will need to have the discovery yourself which is trying to figure out the class name that you need to override. So to do so you need to use the preview on your portal so you can browse and then click F12 which opens your developer tools.

8. Using the developer tools you can navigate to the html component using the Ctrl+Shift+C , in my example I was trying to change the colour of the field label on the form, so i have picked the class name which is field_label

9. In Visual studio code , edit the class field_label, save and sync configuration and your changes will be reflected automatically

I will add here some of the class names I have used:

References:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-pages/getting-started/tutorial-add-custom-style?WT.mc_id=DX-MVP-5004221

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-pages/configure/manage-css?WT.mc_id=DX-MVP-5004221

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-apps/maker/portals/edit-css?WT.mc_id=DX-MVP-5004221

In my previous blog, we saw how to enable or disable the Social Bar (Like, Views, Save for later) in SharePoint Online at tenant level using SharePoint Online PowerShell, PnP PowerShell and CLI for Microsoft 365. In this blog we will explore how to enable or disable the Social Bar for individual SharePoint online site collections.

You can use any one of the approaches given below for enabling or disabling the Social Bar (Like, No. of Comments, Views, Save for later) for individual SharePoint online sites.

Using SharePoint Online PowerShell

Use below SharePoint Online PowerShell script to enable or disable the social bar from site pages for specific SharePoint online modern experience site:

# SharePoint online admin center URL
$adminCenterUrl = Read-Host -Prompt "Enter your SharePoint online admin center URL (e.g https://contoso-admin.sharepoint.com/)"

# Connect to SharePoint online admin center
Connect-SPOService -Url $adminCenterUrl

# SharePoint online site URL
$siteUrl = Read-Host -Prompt "Enter your SharePoint site URL (e.g https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/work)"

# Disable the social bar from SharePoint online site pages
Set-SPOSite -Identity $siteUrl -SocialBarOnSitePagesDisabled $true

# Enable the social bar on SharePoint online site pages
Set-SPOSite -Identity $siteUrl -SocialBarOnSitePagesDisabled $false

# Disconnect SharePoint online connection
Disconnect-SPOService

Using PnP PowerShell

You can use below PnP PowerShell script to show or hide the social bar from SharePoint online modern experience site pages for individual SharePoint site:

# SharePoint online site URL
$siteUrl = Read-Host -Prompt "Enter your SharePoint site URL (e.g https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/work)"

# Connect to SharePoint online site
Connect-PnPOnline -Url $siteUrl -Interactive

# Hide the social bar from SharePoint online modern site pages
Set-PnPSite -SocialBarOnSitePagesDisabled $true

# Show the social bar on SharePoint online modern site pages
Set-PnPSite -SocialBarOnSitePagesDisabled $false

# Disconnect SharePoint online connection
Disconnect-PnPOnline

Using CLI for Microsoft 365

Use below CLI for Microsoft script to show or hide the social bar from SharePoint online modern experience site pages for individual SharePoint site:

# SharePoint online site URL
$siteUrl = Read-Host -Prompt "Enter your SharePoint site URL (e.g https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/work)"

# Connect to SharePoint online tenant
$m365Status = m365 status
if ($m365Status -match "Logged Out") {
    m365 login
}

# Hide the social bar from SharePoint online modern site pages
m365 spo site set --url $siteUrl --socialBarOnSitePagesDisabled true

# Show the social bar on SharePoint online modern site pages
m365 spo site set --url $siteUrl --socialBarOnSitePagesDisabled false

# Disconnect SharePoint online connection
m365 logout

Conclusion

By using the PowerShell scripts given in this blog post, you can enable or disable social bar features from SharePoint online modern site pages for specific SharePoint online sites.

Learn more

• How to Enable/Disable the commenting in SharePoint Online/Microsoft Lists
• Set a page template as default page template in SharePoint Online
• Enable or Disable the Return to Classic SharePoint link in SharePoint Online
• SharePoint Online: Apply JSON View formatting using PnP PowerShell
• Set up a home site in SharePoint Online using PowerShell
• Add/Update image columns in SharePoint lists using CLI for Microsoft 365

SharePoint Online provides various social features in modern experience SharePoint sites. One of the features available for SharePoint site pages is the social bar (Like, No. of Comments, Views, Save for later), which is situated at the bottom of site pages. Social bar allows users to engage with page content by liking and saving pages for later reference. Social bar also shows the number of page views and comments on modern site pages.

However, organizations may have specific requirements that necessitate enabling or disabling the social bar on SharePoint site pages. Unfortunately, there are no settings available for enabling/disabling social bar using SharePoint user interface. In this blog post, we will explore how to achieve this at SharePoint tenant level using SharePoint Online PowerShell, PnP PowerShell and CLI for Microsoft 365 scripts.

Using SharePoint Online PowerShell

Use below SharePoint Online PowerShell script to enable or disable the social bar from site pages for all SharePoint sites in the tenant:

# SharePoint online admin center URL
$adminCenterUrl = "https://contoso-admin.sharepoint.com/"

# Connect to SharePoint online admin center
Connect-SPOService -Url $adminCenterUrl

# Disable the social bar from SharePoint online site pages
Set-SPOTenant -SocialBarOnSitePagesDisabled $true

# Enable the social bar on SharePoint online site pages
Set-SPOTenant -SocialBarOnSitePagesDisabled $false

Using PnP PowerShell

You can use below PnP PowerShell script to show or hide the social bar from SharePoint online modern experience site pages:

# SharePoint online admin center URL
$adminCenterUrl = "https://contoso-admin.sharepoint.com/"

# Connect to SharePoint online admin center
Connect-PnPOnline -Url $adminCenterUrl -Interactive

# Show the social bar on SharePoint online modern site pages
Set-PnPTenant -SocialBarOnSitePagesDisabled $false

# Hide the social bar from SharePoint online modern site pages
Set-PnPTenant -SocialBarOnSitePagesDisabled $true

Using CLI for Microsoft 365

Use below CLI for Microsoft 365 script to enable or disable the Social Bar (like, No. of comments, views, Save for later) in SharePoint online at tenant level:

# Get Credentials to connect
$m365Status = m365 status
if ($m365Status -match "Logged Out") {
    m365 login
}

# Disable the social bar from SharePoint online site pages
m365 spo tenant settings set --SocialBarOnSitePagesDisabled true

# Enable the social bar on SharePoint online site pages
m365 spo tenant settings set --SocialBarOnSitePagesDisabled false

Conclusion

Enabling or disabling the social bar on site pages in SharePoint Online can be achieved using SharePoint Online PowerShell, PnP PowerShell or CLI for Microsoft 365 scripts. By following the steps outlined in this blog post, you can customize the user experience and align it with your organization’s specific requirements. Whether you want to encourage user engagement or disable social features for certain scenarios, these PowerShell scripts provide the flexibility to control the social bar’s presence on SharePoint online modern site pages.

Learn more

• Enable or Disable the Social Bar (Like, Views, Save for later) for individual SharePoint sites
• Enable or Disable the Return to Classic SharePoint link in SharePoint Online
• SharePoint Online: Create a blank page without header & title
• Create a SharePoint online site using Power Automate flow
• Allow use of custom scripts in SharePoint Online using PowerShell
• Delete custom site scripts in SharePoint online using PowerShell
• Change SharePoint Online List URL using PnP PowerShell

SharePoint online is a powerful platform that allows users to create and manage websites and content, collaborate with others, and more. However, SharePoint out-of-the-box features may not always meet the specific needs of your organization.

Fortunately, SharePoint online allows the use of custom scripts, which can be used to enhance the platform’s functionality and customize it to your specific needs.

When you allow the use of custom scripts in SharePoint online sites, users gain access to a wide range of features and functionalities. Here are some of the key capabilities that become available:

• Web Parts: Users can use classic experience web parts like Script Editor, Content Editor (and lot more) using which they can create custom web parts using client-side scripting languages like JavaScript or TypeScript.
• Use of Save Site as Template, Save document library as template, etc. features in SharePoint.
• Use of Solution Gallery, Theme Gallery, Sandbox solutions, HTML Field Security, etc. settings in SharePoint sites.
• Uploading files types that are blocked by default like .asmx .ascx .aspx .htc .jar .master .swf .xap .xsf

Let’s see how you can allow or prevent use of custom scripts in SharePoint Online sites using different PowerShell tools:

Using SharePoint Online PowerShell

Use below SharePoint Online PowerShell script to check if custom scripts are enabled or disabled for a SharePoint online site and then to allow use of custom scripts for specified SharePoint online site:

# SharePoint online admin center URL
$adminCenterUrl = "https://contoso-admin.sharepoint.com/"

# SharePoint online site URL
$siteUrl = "https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/SPConnect"

# Connect to SharePoint online admin center
Connect-SPOService -Url $adminCenterUrl

# Allow custom scripts on SharePoint online site
Set-SPOSite $siteUrl -DenyAddAndCustomizePages 0

# Verify that custom scripts are enabled on SharePoint online site
Get-SPOSite $siteUrl | select DenyAddAndCustomizePages

Using PnP PowerShell

You can use below PnP PowerShell script to allow or prevent use of custom scripts in SharePoint online site:

# SharePoint online site URL
$siteUrl = "https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/SPConnect"

# Connect to SharePoint online site
Connect-PnPOnline -Url $siteUrl -Interactive

# Allow custom scripts on SharePoint online site
Set-PnPSite -NoScriptSite $false

# Prevent custom scripts on SharePoint online site
Set-PnPSite -NoScriptSite $true

Using CLI For Microsoft 365

Use below CLI for Microsoft 365 script to allow use of custom scripts in SharePoint online site collection:

# SharePoint online site URL
$siteUrl = "https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/SPConnect"

# Connect to SharePoint online tenant
$m365Status = m365 status
if ($m365Status -match "Logged Out") {
    m365 login
}

# Allow custom scripts on SharePoint online site collection
m365 spo site set --url $siteUrl --noScriptSite $false

Conclusion

Enabling custom script support for SharePoint online sites can enhance the platform’s functionality and enable users to customize site to their specific needs. However, it’s important to carefully consider the potential security risks before enabling this feature, check: security considerations of allowing custom scripts in SharePoint.

Learn more

• Delete custom site scripts in SharePoint online
• Activate a site feature in SharePoint Online using PnP PowerShell
• SharePoint Online: How to change the placeholder text in the search box
• Change SharePoint Online List URL using PnP PowerShell
• Update SharePoint Page Banner Image using PnP PowerShell

SharePoint site home page provides a centralized location where users can access important information such as news, announcements, quick links and documents. This can help users stay informed and up-to-date on the latest company news and updates.

SharePoint site home page can be customized to include quick links to commonly used tools and applications, which can help users save time and increase productivity.

In this blog, we will look at how to use PnP PowerShell and CLI for Microsoft 365 to set a SharePoint modern page as the home page for SharePoint online site. You can use either of below scripts to make a newly created site page or an existing site page as the homepage for your SharePoint site.

Using PnP PowerShell

Once you have a modern site page ready in Site Pages library of your SharePoint site, you can use below PnP PowerShell script to make your site page as the homepage of your SharePoint site:

# SharePoint online site URL
$siteUrl = "https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/SPConnect"

# Name of your SharePoint site page
$sitePageName = "NewHome.aspx"

# Connect to SharePoint online site
Connect-PnPOnline -Url $siteUrl -Interactive

# Set SharePoint site home page using PnP PowerShell
Set-PnPHomePage -RootFolderRelativeUrl SitePages/$sitePageName

Using CLI for Microsoft 365

You can use below CLI for Microsoft script to set your site page as the homepage of your SharePoint online site:

# SharePoint online site URL
$siteUrl = "https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/SPConnect"

# Name of your SharePoint site page
$sitePageName = "NewHome.aspx"

#Get Credentials to connect
$m365Status = m365 status
if ($m365Status -match "Logged Out") {
    m365 login
}

# Set SharePoint site home page using CLI for Microsoft 365
m365 spo web set --url $siteUrl --welcomePage "SitePages/$sitePageName"

Note

You have to install latest versions of PnP PowerShell and CLI for Microsoft 365 before running above scripts. Follow below documentations for installing PnP PowerShell and CLI for Microsoft 365:

• Installing PnP PowerShell
• CLI for Microsoft 365 – Installation

Once you run either of above scripts successfully and navigate to SharePoint online site, you will see that new home page is set for your SharePoint online site:

Learn more

• Set up a home site in SharePoint Online using PowerShell
• SharePoint Online: Apply JSON View formatting using PnP PowerShell
• SharePoint Online: Apply JSON View formatting using CLI for Microsoft 365
• SharePoint Online: Empty Recycle Bin using PnP PowerShell
• Change SharePoint Online List URL using PnP PowerShell
• Update SharePoint Page Banner Image using PnP PowerShell
• Add/Update image columns in SharePoint/Microsoft Lists using PnP PowerShell

If you are a Site Owner and edit the pages, I am sure you noticed a new tab appearing within the page editing screen called Section Templates. In this post, I would like to explain to you what these are and how you can use them to help build and expedite the buildout of your SharePoint pages.

What are Pages?

Let’s start with the basics. If you are wondering what SharePoint pages are, here is a great article to check out.

Page Sections

Let’s also understand page structure as well. The Page is broken into sections and columns. Sections are areas on a page where you can add SharePoint Web Parts to. In addition, sections allow you to apply some color to that portion of a page + make them collapsible.

Section Columns

Sections are further broken into columns. Think of them as ways to split the screen into smaller chunks to help organize your web parts and spread or stuff as many web parts as possible. Below is a screenshot of all available section/column layouts.

Section Templates

Page Section Templates are essentially pre-built sections that are already broken into columns for you and already contain certain web parts. Below is a screenshot of available section templates containing the Image and Text Web parts. So if you need to quickly add a few images to your pages and carefully align them, you do not need to build stuff manually and can just choose one of the available layouts and add them to a page rather quickly, saving you time. So the only thing you would need to supply are images, add some text, and viola, your Page is ready!

The post SharePoint Page Section Templates explained appeared first on SharePoint Maven.

Microsoft released the preview version of the Loop app on March 22. The app works well for collaboration with people from the same Microsoft 365 tenant but fails utterly once external people are involved. Some other teething problems are evident, but there's enough in the Loop app for people to make their minds up if this will make collaboration smarter within their organization.

The post Using the Preview Version of the Loop App appeared first on Practical 365.

Using pages in SharePoint is a great way to share information or any news/announcement in your organization to SharePoint site users. SharePoint site pages can be improved by utilizing banner images in the page title area. Adding banner images to the page title area not only makes the page more visually appealing but also helps to convey the page’s purpose to the user more quickly and effectively.

In this blog post, we will see how to change the SharePoint Page Banner Image using PnP PowerShell.

First of all upload a high quality image in one of the document libraries in your SharePoint site. SharePoint site page banner images in title area look best when they are landscape or 16:9 or greater in aspect ratio, and when they are at least 1 MB in size. Check this Microsoft official documentation for recommended specifications for banner images: Image sizing and scaling in SharePoint modern pages

Then you can use below PnP PowerShell script to update the banner image at the top of the SharePoint online modern page:

# SharePoint online site URL
$siteUrl = "https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/wlive"	

# Connect to SharePoint online site  
Connect-PnPOnline -Url $siteUrl -Interactive

# Update SharePoint site page banner image
Set-PnPPage -Identity "Open-Door-Policy" -HeaderType Custom -ServerRelativeImageUrl "/sites/wlive/SiteAssets/work-remotely.jpeg"

Once you run above script successfully, you will find that banner image for your SharePoint site page is updated successfully:

Learn more

• SharePoint Online: Create a blank page without header & title
• Add/Update image columns in SharePoint/Microsoft Lists using PnP PowerShell
• SharePoint Online: How to change the placeholder text in the search box
• Enable/Disable SharePoint Online List Comments using PnP PowerShell

A frequent request for company intranets is to display and share information about the Team Members. This could be a Welcome New Team Members Page on a Human Resources site, welcoming new employees, or a page to display a roster of external users, say a list of Board Members for a nonprofit organization. So in this article, I want to show you a few ways to display department or team Members on a SharePoint Site.

Option 1: People Web Part

The first option involves the use of the People Web Part. I blogged about it previously. The idea is that it automatically displays information from your Active Directory and shows you the user’s name, photo, role, contact information, etc. In addition, you can switch the layout to large and add additional information about the user. Once again, I covered it all in this post.

Pros

• Nice and easy to set up

Cons

• It only works for users in your Active Directory (internal users, it does not work for external users)
• This option assumes that Active Directory is maintained by IT and contains user photos and other relevant information
• Limited area to add a description about the user (255 characters max)
• Limited display options

Option 2: Image Gallery Web Part

If you want more control over the layout, you may try using the Image Gallery web part. This way, you are getting a nice visual photo of each employee and an area to add some text below the photo.

Pros

• Nice and easy to set up, visually appealing
• Multiple layouts available
• Ability to manually upload user photos or dynamically display them from the document library
• Works for both internal and external team members (since we are not relying on Active Directory)

Cons

• The Name and additional information (Title and Caption, respectively) do not appear under the photo unless you choose the Carousel layout. With the other two layouts, they will only appear after you click on a photo/image.

Option 3: SharePoint Pages and Quick Links

OK, this is my favorite option, because it delivers the best experience for you and the users. It does take a bit more time to set it up, but, hey, at least you will not need to pretend in front of your boss that you are doing some actual work 😊. Plus, your boss will think you are smart. Let me walk you through this option.

The idea behind this option is that every member gets their own page containing a photo and text/description of them. On the homepage, there will be a Quick Links Web Part to link to each and every team member’s page. I documented step-by-step instructions on how to set it all up in this article.

Pros

• Looks amazing. Visually appealing.
• Works for both internal and external team members (since we are not relying on Active Directory)

Cons

• It takes a bit of time to set up, but totally worth it

Option 4: Gallery View on a List

Believe it or not, there is another cool option that exists to display department/team members, and this one involves Microsoft Lists. The idea is that you would maintain the users in the Custom List and then present the data using the Gallery view. The setup is pretty simple, and I actually documented how to create a Gallery View in this article.

List View

Gallery View

Pros

• Looks amazing as well
• Works for both internal and external team members. If you just have internal members, you can rely on the People Column to draw the name of the members from the Active Directory. If you have external members, you can create a Text Column to capture their names.
• Ability to add additional information/metadata to a user “card” (by adding extra columns to a list). For example, you can add the date of birth or city/town they are from.
• Good options in terms of changing the order of the fields/format via the Gallery Card Designer

Cons

• It takes a bit of time to set up
• Limited area for the text on the cards; you have to click on the photo to get more information

The post 4 ways to display Department or Team Members on a SharePoint Site appeared first on SharePoint Maven.

I got an interesting question from one of my clients the other day. The client created a SharePoint site for their Quality Department and wanted to display specific information in the browser tab. They wanted to display QMS by Company ABC in the browser. To ensure we are on the same page as to what we are talking about here – the image below captures the Title displayed in the Browser Tab for a SharePoint Page.

To understand how to change the Title displayed in the Browser Tab for a SharePoint Page, it is important to understand where the information is coming from.

The information in the browser tab in SharePoint has the following naming convention:

• For Home.aspx page (default homepage created when you create a site): Site Name – Page Title
• For any other pages created: Page Title

Since all sites by default have Home.aspx already set as the homepage, most of the time, you get to see Site name – Home in the browser tab (where Home happens to be the default Title of the Home.aspx page)

For example, if I create a new site called QMS, I am going to see QMS – Home in the browser tab

Sticking with Home.aspx

So if you are OK sticking to that naming convention (Site Name – Page Title), you can change the site name and Home.aspx page title. To do so:

1. Change the Site Name by navigating to Gear Icon > Site Information
2. Next, change the Site Name as necessary and click Save
3. You will now see the name reflected in the Browser Tab
   
4. To change the Page Title from Home to something else, you will need to click on Gear Icon > Site Contents
5. Click on the Site Pages Library
6. Next, click the checkbox next to Home.aspx, then “i” in a circle. This will open up a Document Information Panel on the right-hand side. One of the metadata properties of the page will be Title. You can change to something else.
7. After making the change, you will see a warning message asking you to republish the page (since a change was made)
8. To Republish the page, right-click on the Home.aspx page, then choose More > Publish
9. On the pop-up window, click Publish
10. You will now see the change reflected in the Browser Tab
11. By the way, if you erase the Page Title and leave it blank…
12. …It won’t display anything in the Browser Tab, so you are locked into this naming convention.

Custom Naming Convention

However, what if you do not want to stick to that naming convention? Like my client, I want to say “QMS by Company ABC” in the Browser Tab for a SharePoint page. In this case, you can’t use the default Home.aspx page, since it will lock you into the naming convention above. Instead, you will need to create a new Page and then make that page the Homepage. Here is how:

1. Create the new SharePoint Page by clicking New > Page
2. Give it a name you want to appear in the Browser Tab, click Publish
3. If you want to change that Title to something else, you can do so just as we did with the Home.aspx above
4. Next, make this new page the Homepage, by right-clicking on it and choosing Make homepage
5. You will now see the proper Title appear in the Browser Tab

The post How to change the Title displayed in the Browser Tab for a SharePoint Page appeared first on SharePoint Maven.

Thanks to the workflow that notifies me of updates to the Microsoft Graph API, I saw a new addition to the list: the sitePage resource type.

This is exciting for me, as I currently have some workflows that distribute SharePoint pages to various sites both within our own tenant, as well as client tenants. Currently these are triggered by a page being published in a central location, with specific information used as trigger conditions.

What’s annoying about this scenario is that I need to create connectors in Power Automate to the client tenant using an account in their environment. It also means I need a workflow per client (to keep it clean).

Now with the addition of the sitePage resource type in Microsoft Graph, I can make this work programmatically across any number of clients — all from a single workflow.

WARNING: This is a beta feature at present, so don’t use it for production systems unless you’re find to accept the risks.

Requirements

The requirements of this are fairly simple. We need:

• An app registration in Azure AD that has the “Sites.ReadWrite.All” application permission added
• A repository where the details are stored, including:
• Client name
• Tenant ID
• App/Client ID
• Secret
• SharePoint site ID

Now, we could use a different way to authenticate, and we could also use an action to perform a search in the tenant to find the relevant site by name or URL, but if we’ve got that — then it’s not exactly difficult to get the SharePoint site ID and store it in our repository.

For the purposes of this, I’m going to store it in a SharePoint list:

Workflow

At a high-level, my workflow is quite simple:

In my specific scenario, all the workflow is doing is publishing a page with an embedded video, as part of a program of regular content I create for clients. So all I need to provide is a page title and the URL suffix from the embed code.

The next step of the workflow takes my page title, and turns it into a file name:

The code used here is:

concat(replace(triggerBody()['text'],' ','-'),'.aspx')

From here, we’re now ready to retrieve all the sites we want to apply this to:

Within our Apply to Each, we have three steps:

1. Create the page
2. Parse the JSON of the page creation
3. Publish the page, using the ID from step 2

(If you’re comfortable with extracting the page ID value directly from the results of step 1, then you don’t need the Parse JSON action.)

In the page creation action, I’m creating a very simple page that only has a single embed web part on it, and I’m passing variables from both the trigger as well as the Get Items action.

The Parse JSON is relatively straightforward:

And for the final step we hit publish on the page:

And that’s it! We have a simple page published in each tenant listed, with the same content.

If you want something more glamorous, refer to the sitePage resource type page to get a breakdown of the structure of the body of the content.

Appendix

Here’s the full details of the body of the page creation and Parse JSON actions.

Create page

{
  "name": "@{outputs('Compose_-_replace_spaces_with_hyphens_and_add_file_extension')}",
  "title": "@{triggerBody()['text']}",
  "pageLayout": "article",
  "promotionKind": "newsPost",
  "showComments": false,
  "showRecommendedPages": false,
  "titleArea": {
    "enableGradientEffect": true,
    "imageWebUrl": "/_layouts/15/images/sleektemplateimagetile.jpg",
    "layout": "plain",
    "showAuthor": false,
    "showPublishedDate": true,
    "showTextBlockAboveTitle": false,
    "textAboveTitle": "",
    "textAlignment": "left",
    "imageSourceType": 2,
    "title": "@{triggerBody()['text']}"
  },
  "canvasLayout": {
    "horizontalSections": [
      {
        "layout": "oneColumn",
        "id": "1",
        "emphasis": "none",
        "columns": [
          {
            "id": "1",
            "webparts": [
              {
                "id": "669d4d75-eca0-4e8b-95d7-2e765dd4859a",
                "webPartType": "490d7c76-1824-45b2-9de3-676421c997fa",
                "data": {
                  "audiences": [],
                  "dataVersion": "1.2",
                  "description": "Embed content from other sites such as Sway, YouTube, Vimeo, and more",
                  "title": "Embed",
                  "properties": {
                    "embedCode": "<iframe src=\"https://player.vimeo.com/video/@{triggerBody()['text_2']}\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"></iframe>",
                    "cachedEmbedCode": "<iframe src=\"https://player.vimeo.com/video/@{triggerBody()['text_2']}\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"></iframe>",
                    "shouldScaleWidth": true,
                    "thumbnailUrl": "",
                    "cachedEmbedCodeThumbnail": ""
                  },
                  "serverProcessedContent": {
                    "imageSources": [
                      {
                        "key": "imageSource",
                        "value": "/_LAYOUTS/IMAGES/VISUALTEMPLATEIMAGE1.JPG"
                      }
                    ]
                  }
                }
              }
            ]
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
}

Parse JSON

{
    "type": "object",
    "properties": {
        "@@odata.context": {
            "type": "string"
        },
        "@@odata.etag": {
            "type": "string"
        },
        "eTag": {
            "type": "string"
        },
        "id": {
            "type": "string"
        },
        "lastModifiedDateTime": {
            "type": "string"
        },
        "name": {
            "type": "string"
        },
        "webUrl": {
            "type": "string"
        },
        "title": {
            "type": "string"
        },
        "pageLayout": {
            "type": "string"
        },
        "thumbnailWebUrl": {
            "type": "string"
        },
        "promotionKind": {
            "type": "string"
        },
        "showComments": {
            "type": "boolean"
        },
        "showRecommendedPages": {
            "type": "boolean"
        },
        "createdBy": {
            "type": "object",
            "properties": {
                "user": {
                    "type": "object",
                    "properties": {
                        "displayName": {
                            "type": "string"
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        },
        "lastModifiedBy": {
            "type": "object",
            "properties": {
                "user": {
                    "type": "object",
                    "properties": {
                        "displayName": {
                            "type": "string"
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        },
        "parentReference": {
            "type": "object",
            "properties": {
                "siteId": {
                    "type": "string"
                }
            }
        },
        "contentType": {
            "type": "object",
            "properties": {
                "id": {
                    "type": "string"
                },
                "name": {
                    "type": "string"
                }
            }
        },
        "publishingState": {
            "type": "object",
            "properties": {
                "level": {
                    "type": "string"
                },
                "versionId": {
                    "type": "string"
                }
            }
        },
        "reactions": {
            "type": "object",
            "properties": {}
        },
        "titleArea": {
            "type": "object",
            "properties": {
                "enableGradientEffect": {
                    "type": "boolean"
                },
                "imageWebUrl": {
                    "type": "string"
                },
                "layout": {
                    "type": "string"
                },
                "showAuthor": {
                    "type": "boolean"
                },
                "showPublishedDate": {
                    "type": "boolean"
                },
                "showTextBlockAboveTitle": {
                    "type": "boolean"
                },
                "textAboveTitle": {
                    "type": "string"
                },
                "textAlignment": {
                    "type": "string"
                },
                "title": {
                    "type": "string"
                },
                "authors@odata.type": {
                    "type": "string"
                },
                "authors": {
                    "type": "array"
                },
                "authorByline@odata.type": {
                    "type": "string"
                },
                "authorByline": {
                    "type": "array"
                },
                "imageSourceType": {
                    "type": "integer"
                },
                "serverProcessedContent": {
                    "type": "object",
                    "properties": {
                        "imageSources": {
                            "type": "array",
                            "items": {
                                "type": "object",
                                "properties": {
                                    "key": {
                                        "type": "string"
                                    },
                                    "value": {
                                        "type": "string"
                                    }
                                },
                                "required": [
                                    "key",
                                    "value"
                                ]
                            }
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Originally published at Loryan Strant, Microsoft 365 MVP.

Creating a SharePoint page using Microsoft Graph API and Power Automate was originally published in REgarding 365 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In a modern SharePoint site, we only get one Site Pages library. We can’t create additional libraries which contain aspx pages which act like that special Site Pages library. If we could, we could meet a whole lot of interesting use cases, but it’s not an option.

One thing we *can* do is add additional Content Types to the Site Pages library. In many cases, I’ve seen people add a new column or two to the Site Pages library, but I don’t often see them adding additional Content Types. By using Content Types, you can take advantage of a richer information architecture which can span multiple sites, if needed.

Content Types are one of the primary building blocks for SharePoint, and I can’t gush about them enough. I do entire conference sessions just about Content Types! If you’re not using Content Types, you’re not holding SharePoint right, if you ask me.

I won’t go into how to create Content Types in general, but in this case, you’ll want to follow steps similar to this:

• If the Content Type will be used only in the specific site (maybe a Benefits Overview in the HR site), then create the Content Type in the site. If there’s even a remote chance you’ll use the Content Type across sites (maybe Team Member Intro), then build it in the Content Type Hub in the SharePoint Admin Center.
• To add a Content Type to the Site Pages library, you’ll most likely want to inherit from the out of the box Content Type called Site Page. This is the Content Type which is available in the Site Pages library by default.

In the example below, we’ve got three custom Content Types enabled on the Site Pages library: Productivity Tip, How To Guide, and Troubleshooting Guide. We’ve defined those Content Types at the tenant level: in the Content Type Gallery in the SharePoint Admin Center. Each of these Content Types inherits from an interstitial Content Type called Base [ClientName] Site Page, which inherits from Site Page. The reason we have the interstitial Content Type is so that we can say “show me all of the content which inherits from this Content Type”. That way, we can add additional peers to Productivity Tip, etc. without reconfiguring our result locations. We also have several Site Columns added to each of these Content Types so we can categorize the pages to improve findability.

Here’s what the Site Pages library looks like in one of our sites:

As you can see, the three custom Content Types are available there, and we can declare any Site Page as one of these special Content Types.

From here, we can use the PnP Modern Search Web Parts (my favorites!) to build powerful and sophisticated “slicing and dicing” for the content here or across multiple Site Pages libraries. But that’s a post for another day…

Caveats

• If you change the Content Type of a page or set a column value, you’ve tacitly edited the page. That means you need to republish the page in order to make the change(s) visible – and even more importantly, to get the search crawler to pick up the change.
• Because you’re adding Content Types into the Site Pages library, you may need to get creative with views in the library. At the very least, I generally change the default view from By Author (which is rarely helpful, anyway) to By Content Type. But build views which represent the tasks you want to complete: Pages which haven’t been reviewed, By Hardware Type, etc.

As your users create teams, sites, lists, and libraries in your Microsoft 365 environment, the content becomes somewhat decentralized. There is nothing wrong with this model; it is just a fact and a byproduct of modern flat architecture. That said, there are use cases where you must display content from one site (i.e., a specific list or document library) on another site. In today’s post, I want to share a trick allowing you to display lists and libraries from other SharePoint sites.

To make this happen, we will rely on the mighty Embed Web Part I blogged about a while back. The web part allows you to embed content from other websites, that are not part of Microsoft 365 (i.e., CRM dashboard, videos from video hosting platforms, etc.). However, today we will use the same web part to embed content from another SharePoint site.

Here is a use case. I have a document library of company policies residing on one of my SharePoint sites, and I would like to embed it on the Quality Site as well.

Policies Library on a Policies Site

How to display lists and libraries from other SharePoint sites

1. Navigate to another site where you want to embed a list or library, and click the Edit button to edit the page
2. Click the plus sign to add web parts and choose Embed Web Part
3. Paste the URL of the Document Library inside the Embed window
4. In the step above, make sure to enter the full URL of the actual view of a list or library you want to embed. Otherwise, it will give you an error message when you try to display lists and libraries from other SharePoint sites.
5. Click Republish to publish the changes to the page
6. The library will now be displayed on another site
7. You can use the above technique to display lists from one site on another as well.

The post How to display lists and libraries from other SharePoint sites using the Embed widget appeared first on SharePoint Maven.

One of the frequent requirements on Intranet sites is to display some sort of charts/graphs. In addition to spicing up the look and feel of a page, the charts provide some valuable insight and information. Usually, the data and corresponding graphs/reports reside in Power BI or 3^rd party databases. However, sometimes you just need to display a really simple graph, based on just a few data points. Moreover, with the revamp of the Microsoft Lists app, lists have become a popular choice for data storage among SharePoint and Teams users. So in case your data resides in a list, there is a hidden gem in SharePoint called Quick Chart Web Part, which will allow you to build and display a graph on a SharePoint page. Let me explain.

What is a List?

Before I explain how to create a chart, it is important to understand the components that are necessary to make this happen. In case you are wondering what a Microsoft List is – check out this post first.

What is a Chart?

If you are wondering what a chart is, I suggest you return to the third grade of elementary school. 😀. Yep, you probably should not have stared out the window, when the teacher explained those concepts. Thank God for Wikipedia.

What is a Quick Chart Web Part?

A Quick Chart Web Part is an out-of-the-box Web Part that exists in SharePoint and allows us to either build simple charts “on the fly” or display them based on data in the SharePoint list (the topic of this post). I introduced the Quick Chart Web Part in one of my previous blog posts.

Use Case

I have a list of Projects stored in a custom list, as shown below. In addition to project names, I have start and end dates, budget, and project status columns.

How to create a Chart from a list in SharePoint Online

1. On the site where the list was created, click the Edit button in the upper-right-hand-corner to edit the page
2. Add a new section and choose the column layout you would like to have (I suggest 1 column, so there is plenty of real estate on a screen for the chart)
3. Click the plus sign, then choose Quick Chart from the list of available web parts
4. You will see the web part added to the page. Click the pencil icon to configure its settings.
5. On the right-hand side that opens up, choose the chart type. Two choices are available: Column (Bar) Chart and Pie Chart.
6. Next, choose the source of data. In our case, select the radio button next to “Get data from a list or library on the site.” Then, choose the column from a list that will represent values (Y-Axis) and the column that will represent X-Axis. In my case, the Title (Project Name) is X-Axis, and the Budget is Y-Axis). In case you get an error: No list available on this site, read the Notes section at the bottom of this article.
7. Next, type in the labels for the Axis above. You may type any text that makes sense to you/chart you have.
8. Finally, give your chart a name (in my case, I called it Project Dashboard)
9. Click Republish in the upper-right-hand corner to republish the page.

Important Notes about Quick Chart Web Part in SharePoint Online

Below, I would like to summarize a few important notes and limits when it comes to using list data with Quick Chart Web Part in SharePoint Online.

Data from Document Libraries

Quick Chart Web Part is not limited to getting data from just the list. You can also get data from document libraries as well! Here is an example/use case. I have a Document Library called Invoices, where I track the amounts and statuses of project invoices.

If I choose the Invoices library as a source and select a File name for X-Axis and Amount for Y-Axis…

…it will produce a nice graph/chart as well.

Limit of 50 data points on a list

If your list or library contains more than 50 items, you will get the following warning when connecting them via the Quick Chart Web Part: Only 50 items in this list will be displayed. Sorting options may affect which items are displayed. Essentially what that means is that Quick Chart Web Part only allows a max of 50 data points to be displayed.

“No list available on this site” error message

You might see the following error message when trying to connect your chart with the List: No list available on this site. Alternatively, it will allow you to get data from other lists and libraries but won’t display your list on a site in a source of data drop-down column.

The reason for this is that in order for the list or library to be a valid source of data for Quick Chart Web Part, it must have at least 1 (one) text column (for X-Axis), and either 1 (one) number or currency column (for Y-Axis). Unless both of the above conditions are satisfied, you will get the above error message/scenario.

The post How to create a Chart from a list in SharePoint Online appeared first on SharePoint Maven.