Today I have a mysterious SharePoint issue myself. Fortunately, I know where to reach SharePoint Holmes so I can ask for help! š
< takes cloak, puts on detective cap >
The case
Over the years I have created lots of new sites in my tenant, in order to learn, to test stuff and to make screenshots for my posts. As my list of sites was pretty long, and as I am no longer using most of those sites, I decided to do some spring cleaning.
What better place to start than the SharePoint Admin center? So there I headed, to the list of Active sites. This includes the root site, an App Catalog, a site called “Group for answers in Viva Engage (I never created that myself!) and my External site, which should no longer exist but still is around. (More about that in another blog)
I checked each site and deleted it when possible. Oh, the joy of being alone in your tenant and not having to ask if an unused site can go! š (Mind you, at other times it is not very practical to be the only user in your tenant.) I ended up with this manageable list of 13 sites:
My Active sites. The ones that are sort of “system-related” are highlighted.
To check all sites had really gone, I looked at my SharePoint landing page, under Followed sites. I noticed a few sites that were not in my list of Active Sites, such as 3 varieties of “Team site”. They are all highlighted in the screenshot. What is happening here?
The investigation
I clicked on each of the highlighted sites to see what was the matter.
Sites I follow. The highlighted ones do not appear in my list of Active sites.
“Espana-Management Only” and the “Team site” on the same row appeared to have been deleted. Deletion of a site apparently does not delete the Follow, which is unpleasant. I unfollowed those sites to keep my list clean.
This is what you see when you click a Followed site that has been deleted.
I opened the other sites. Hey, this was interesting. “Quick Links”, “Project site” and “Sales Reporting” looked like subsites, judging from their URL. According to the information link in the SharePoint admin Active site list subsites are not listed in the Active sites, as are some other system sites. OK, that is a little annoying, but as we are not supposed to use subsites anymore, it also makes sense.
That leaves a few other sites. I had already noticed that the 3 subsites are Classic sites. The “Team Site” and “ellenvanaken-teamsite” are also Classic sites. But they are not in my list of Active sites!
I went back to the SharePoint Admin Center and filtered on “Classic sites”. Nope, they were not in the overview.
Filtering on “Classic sites” showed only three “system” sites
I was not exactly happy about this, as I want to be able to know which sites are in my tenant. Which other sites was I missing?
I checked the “Recent” in my SharePoint Landing page and noticed another Classic site that was not in my list – “Drinks business”. The URL did not look as if this was a subsite.
My list of recently visited sites contained another Classic site not in the list
I traced back all the subsites except the “Drinks business” to their parent sites: “Team Site” and “ellenvanaken-teamsite”. But those two parent sites were not in the list of Active sites! I looked again at my list of Classic sites in the Active sites. There are two sites that start with “ellenvanaken” so might that be a clue that those were the original sites created when I set up my tenant? And that all sites were created from there?
I clicked on the link of the root site but got an error message.
My root site has an error, it does not have a homepage
But when I added “_layouts/15/viewlsts.aspx?view=15” to the root I could access the list of subsites. BINGO!
The solution
All my mysterious subsites were there.
The mysterious sites are subsites of the root site.
I had never realized that these were all subsites and therefore not displayed in the list of Active sites. In the early days (my tenant is from 2011, well before Modern SharePoint) I created each subsite from the ellenvanaken-teamsite. Later I created sites from the SharePoint landing page, which creates sites on the top level.
Well, I am not exactly happy with these messy results but at least I understand and know where all my sites are. I need to think about streamlining this clutter!
Conclusion
If you have an older tenant you may still have Classic subsites hanging around, which are not visible in your list of Active sites in the SharePoint admin center. This is a potential risk, as they may live on forever, may contain outdated or incorrect content or people may still be working in an outdated environment. Although Classic sites still work, they are a tad cumbersome to work with, once you have become accustomed to current SharePoint! So you (or your Microsoft365 admin) may want to take a look at your root site and see what you can find underneath.
You may want to inform your colleagues that deleted sites will still be shown in their Followed sites. A periodic reminder to go through all Followed sites (and to unfavourite all that have been deleted or they are no longer interested in) may help them to keep their lists manageable.
About SharePoint Holmes: Part of my role was solving user issues. Sometimes they are so common that I had a standard response, but sometimes I needed to do some sleuthing to understand and solve it. As many of my readers are in a similar position, I thought Iād introduceĀ SharePoint Holmes, SharePointĀ investigator, who will go through a few cases while working out loud.
Please note: Due to an exciting, but rather time-consuming private project I am currently posting a bit less frequently than normally.
Microsoft365 may be introducing all kinds of shiny new functionality, your good old OneDrive is as important as ever. More and more information is being stored on OneDrive automatically and by default, so it may grow even without you consciously adding and uploading Word, Excel and PowerPoint files.
This could be an issue especially for users with an F3-license as they have only 2 GB of storage space at their disposal. Their OneDrive may get full quickly and that is rather a nuisance.
But also the 1 or 5 TB of E-licensed users will fill quickly if they have a long career in this organization and never a clean-up moment.
So, the following may be of interest for all:
1. Understand what is “private” and what is “shared” (and what is in between)
Although information on your organization’s OneDrive is never truly private, we consider files and documents that are only for you, private. This can be drafts of documents you are writing, your yearly objectives and evaluation, correspondence with your manager, etc.
Documents or files that you work on with others, are shared and should therefore live in a shared environment such as Teams or SharePoint. Or Viva Engage (the application formerly known as Yammer).
That said, there are still many items stored on your OneDrive that may be shared, but are still added to your OneDrive by default, such as Recordings and Whiteboards of Team Meetings and Files and Loops that you have shared in private Teams chats, and attachments from Forms.
Suggestion: instead of creating a new draft document in your OneDrive, create it in SharePoint, if it will be shared at the end. You may want to set up a document library especially for drafts. You can move it to its final place once it has been reviewed and made official. This way you will not have any old and forgotten drafts in your OneDrive.
2. Understand what is stored on your OneDrive
OneDrive has the habit of creating new Folders by itself when you do certain things in Microsoft365. The most well-known may be the folder Attachments, for files you have received as attachments to Outlook. Microsoft Teams is also a good source of automatically created folders, as Recordings, Microsoft Teams Data, Microsoft Teams Chat files, Transcribed Files are all added from your work with Teams.
Again, content you share with others in private Teams chats, will be stored in your OneDrive. It makes perfect sense, but it is annoying if your OneDrive is prone to overflowing.
Some time ago I wrote about the folders that are automagically created in your OneDrive:
These folders have all been created by my use of Microsoft365. I have not created any of them myself.
Suggestion: Avoid private Teams chats and work in Teams Channels where possible. Create Channel meetings (when you know they will be recorded), chat and share files and Loops etc. in Channels so they will be stored on SharePoint rather than your OneDrive.
3. Understand the new Syncing
A new way to sync documents is on its way. I do not know the details yet, but keep an eye out, please! I learned this from Paul Keijzers’s video. Synced SharePoint folders will then be stored in your OneDrive on your PC, if I have understood correctly. This may mean that your OneDrive also gets clogged up with SharePoint files. It may also mean that just the links will be shared, so I am curious to learn more.
How will SharePoint sync behave in future?
4. Understand what happens when you leave
Your next career move may not be top of mind right now, but it is good to know what will happen to your content when you leave the organization and your account is deleted. This may help you create new habits now.
Suggestion: check on a regular basis if there is any content that would need to be in a SharePoint site or Teams, in case you would leave. It will save you time when you actually leave.
5. Clean up your OneDrive on a regular basis
Yeah, I know this is not exactly a fun task, but if you do this regularly, let’s say once a month on a quiet time of the week, it will be less work and will save you from the panic that will engulf you when you get a message that your OneDrive is full and you can no longer add new info.
It always makes me sad when some of the videos in my collection disappear because the owner deletes them or makes them private. Of course I appreciate that they have to keep their channels up-to-date, but for my collection it is not ideal.
And while toying with the idea for a post on this “problem”, I came across many more things that video owners on YouTube and Vimeo could do to help me with my collection. If they want to, and if it fits with their organization’s procedures, of course!
So I decided to write an instructional post about uploading and maintaining “my kind of” video, aimed at
Communications or intranet managers who have been so kind to share their intranet launch or promotion video on a public platform
Employees of creative agencies, who share their created intranet promotion videos as part of their portfolio
And everyone else who manages videos on YouTube, Vimeo or another platform, and would like to be in any collection
So, please share this with other video owners that you know.
Thank you!
First of all, a big thank you to all owners! Your video will help the intranet and digital workplace world to learn about other organization’s approaches and focal points. Your example is not only entertaining, but it can inspire other organizations, for instance help them express their thoughts on the intranet, visualize their concepts or give them fresh ideas!
For instance, below video from Kelloggs has a voice-over from people with different accents from around the world. This makes it clear they are an international company without explicitly saying so. I think it is much nicer than when an American or British manager from the corporate office provides the voice-over. And it is not that difficult to implement. Nice tip, right?
Multiple accents from across the world show that you really are a global organization!
Secondly, there are a few settings and processes in YouTube and Vimeo that help or hinder adding them to my collection. Of course I respect your governance processes around video. But in case you do not have a confirmed process, or you and your organization are open to suggestions, please find here some suggestions that help me adding to and maintaining my collection. And therefore help other intranet people.
Some tips are suitable for any video platform, but as the majority of my videos lives on YouTube or Vimeo, I will focus on those platforms.
Please click on any of the titles below and you will jump to the corresponding paragraph. If you want to read them all, just scroll on!
By the way, I have got 600 videos in my collection now!
Give or take a few.
Tips full-length:
1. Share your videos publicly
I will be unable to find your video if they are hidden, or behind a password, obviously.
For YouTube, that means this setting:
Please make your videos public!
For Vimeo, it looks like this:
This is the preferred option in Vimeo.
If you really want to hide your video, but you are OK to share it with people who are interested in intranet videos, you can also make it “Unlisted” and send me the link. I can then add it to my collection, provided you allow that. (see items 7 and 8)
2. Give your videos a good title
I see many videos called “Company_Intranet_IT_something else_PEP_V.06_final.mp4” or similar unpleasantness. A better name is something like “[Company name] Intranet Launch” or “[Company name] new intranet teaser”. Here’s how to do this a little better:
Save the video you want to upload with a pleasant file name, without underscores, version numbers or other things that are not relevant for your audience. Keep a separate copy with the technical information, such as version, if you want.
Alternatively, you can edit the title after uploading to YouTube or Vimeo.
A good example from Eindhoven University (screenshot):
Technical University Eindhoven uses a good title for their intranet video.
3. Use the word “intranet” in the title, description and/or tags
“intranet” is my main search keyword, so if you can add this to the title (preferably) or in another place, please do. I sometimes also use “Digital Workplace” but that generally gives a different type of video, e.g., an expert’s lecture on digital transformation, or an introduction to an organization’s office suite overview, such as Microsoft365. It is also helpful when you add information about the video and the intranet in the description, e.g. purpose, launch date, if there are any more videos, etc.
4. For people videos, add the name and role of the speaker
It helps viewers if they know who is addressing the organization. It can be the CEO, HR Director, someone from the IT helpdesk, a factory employee. Please mention their name and their role in the video itself, or in the description of the video.
Good example:
Good example: we know who this person is. (The video title is less good though š)
Not so good example:
This is a really nice video I think, but why do we not know who this person is?
5. Provide a transcript or subtitles (and in English if possible)
YouTube can provide automatic live captions in the language spoken in the video (provided you have set the correct language while uploading), and do a live translation as well, although it is not always perfect. This will be very helpful for people who can’t hear, but also for people who are watching the video in a noisy environment or with the sound off. Or for people who are learning another language. However, if the video is not in English it would be nice if you were able to provide English subtitles as well, or an English translation in the description. Hey, a girl can ask, right? š
Don’t worry, I am working on good instructions on how to extract an English transcript from a video.
6. Select the correct audience
Intranet promotion videos are meant for the general public. They are not specifically meant for children, even when the organization is a children’s hospital or a primary school.
Recently, both YouTube and Vimeo have added an audience check for your video. You will be prompted during upload. It is important that you check the correct audience. And for older videos, please may I ask you to retrofit the audience? Not having an audience assigned has various drawbacks for my collection.
For YouTube, please select that this video is “No, it’s not ‘Made for Kids'”.
If you select the other audience, I will be unable to add the video to my “Watch later” list (which serves as my backlog) so I have to do extra things to keep it in sight.
Below you find an example of an intranet video, rated as For Kids. This means I cannot download the video, which is OK, but I can also not add it to a watchlist. As this is a video targeted at employees of an insurance company, this rating appears not to be correct. I can share it, however. You can watch it here.
This video should not be rated as “Made for kids”.
For Vimeo, you are requested to select a rating, and then specify this video is for “All audiences”. All unrated videos are currently waiting for a rating, and if it has not been specified, you have to be logged in to Vimeo to view the video. This is most annoying! Fortunately, a Vimeo account is free, but it does not help a good experience for viewers of my collection.
Video owners on Vimeo, please check your videos and rate them as “for all audiences” so people do not need to log in to watch.
7. Allow adding to collections
If you have earmarked the video on YouTube as “Made for Kids” I will be unable to add it to my “Watch Later” List (which is my backlog) but I also will be unable to add it to any other playlist. I am currently working on a YouTube playlist so it would be nice if I could add your video to it.
For Vimeo, there is a separate setting. I can always use “Watch later” for the backlog but please allow “people can add to showcases” (6 in the screenshot below). A Vimeo showcase is similar to a YouTube playlist.
The video settings in Vimeo.
8. Allow embedding
Embedding is showing the video as a whole on a page, for instance the videos in this post, but adding the video to my collection is also done by embedding. If you do not allow it, I need to create all kinds of workarounds with thumbnails and links to add the video.
On YouTube I cannot embed Shorts videos, and on Vimeo it is a specific setting as shown in the screenshot above, number 7. Please enable it.
9. Let me know about them!
Did you recently create a video that you are proud of? Do you think it could help other intranets? Would you like feedback? Do you want to have some control over the description in my collection? š If you do not want to wait until I have found your video, please send me the link and anything you would like me to share, and I can add it asap. That will also make things easier for me. In most cases I have to look up the type of organization and country, and I sometimes have to guess about aspects of the intranet or video, so if you want to keep me from making incorrect assumptions, please contact me via LinkedIn or Twitter.
10. Hide video instead of deleting it when the video is past its date
All videos have a lifecycle, and I totally understand if you want to keep your video platform free of outdated stuff. I am that person who is always nagging about housekeeping, remember? š But in the case of an intranet promotion video, may I ask you to make the video Unlisted instead of making it private or deleting it altogether?
An unlisted video can only be seen by people who have the link (or when it is embedded). It will no longer be visible on your page or in search results, so it will only be visible for those people who are really interested in my collection. I hope you do want to keep sharing with us!
Two of my own videos. I do not want to make the intranet video from a former employer too visible, so I have made it Unlisted.
Conclusion
There are a number of settings in YouTube and Vimeo that influence my ability to add your intranet promotion video to my collection. As mentioned in the beginning, I totally understand if you must adhere to your organization’s guidelines for managing your video presence. But in case you do not have guidelines yet, or you are open to review your procedures, you may want to start doing the above so we can all benefit maximally from your work!
The other day I received a comment on my post about the Description field. The writer wanted to know how many characters of the Description you can expect to be visible on the web part in their specific page layout. To be honest, I have no clue so I thought I’d do some tests so you do not have to!
Test set-up
a. Texts
For testing purposes, I am using this text of 270 characters:
These are portions of 27 characters. The last number shown will show quickly approximately how many characters are displayed and if there is a difference between various web part and page layouts.Ā The full Description (255 characters) will show the 9 and the letter l (from Letitia) as the last letter. I will repeat this for the longest and shortest Description with 26 i’s and 26 w’s plus the number, as I expect the i is the narrowest and the w the widest letter, and it may make a difference. I found this when doing a similar test for the site navigation.
I also thought about varying typeface and font, but the Description text is a system text so a different typeface or font will make no difference, unless you have a custom font set up in your tenant.
b. Page layout
I have used one and the same page with the same News web part, and changed the Section and Web Part layouts for the experiments.
There are 5 options for the Section layout, but I will use 4 (one, two three columns and the one-third right) as these have all different widths.
There are 6 options to display the News web part, but as the Hub News, Carousel and Tiles do not show the Description (check out my post about the Carousel), I will only test with Top Story, List and Side-by-side.
I will first test with Author, Views and Publish date visible, and then remove this info for the items with the longest and shortest description.
The first experiments are done with this ON, later I will test with these OFF
c. Computer and screen settings
My browser is Edge, zoom 100%. I have a small Edge side bar to the right.
My computer settings are: Scale 125 % and Display resolution 1920 x 1080
Now, there are lots of screenshots to wade through, so if you are impatient, please jump to the Conclusions and Recommendations.
Results
1. One column
Top story: 73 characters
Top story
List: 111
List layout, here the Description text is much longer
Side-by-side: 51
Side-by-side, there is less space than in the List or Top Story so fewer characters are visible
2. Two columns
Top story: 33
Top Story
List: 51
The List option has less space, so fewer characters than in the single column
Side-by-side: 51
Side-by-side behaves the same as the List in this setup
3. Three columns
Top Story: 46. This is more than with the two columns but please notice that the Description is now below the image, instead of to the right.
Top Story. Please note the text is now under the image instead of next to it.
List: 31
List – quite narrow so only a small part of the Description is visible
Side-by-side: 31
Side-by-side-just like the List
4. One-third right
I have added the News web part to the left hand column. Top Story: 47
Top Story
List: 60
List
Side by side: 81
Side-by-side shows more characters than the List in this layout, as the image is smaller
Well, that is interesting!
5. Hiding the Author, Publishing date and Views in the web part
I have the Author, Publishing date and number of views visible in the above experiments. So, as the next step, let’s take the two extremes and see what happens if I hide those options.
One column – List (111 characters shown in the first experiment): 255 characters. That is the full Description.
One column with List view, and no publishing details, shows the full Description
Three columns – List: (was 31): Now 96 characters
Three columns – List view now shows more characters than with publishing details.
So, that does make a difference! Assuming you want to show as much of the Description as possible, you may think whether removing the publishing info is an option. (Please note making one of these visible has the same effect as making two or all visible – it means fewer characters of the Description text)
6. Which letters does your Description text contain?
I also expect that you will see more or fewer characters depending on your actual text. I have been testing with the alphabet, that is an equal distribution of letters. Let’s see what happens if we repeat the extremes with Description text containing only i’s (narrow) or w’s (wide).
One column – List:
The Description with w’s has fewer characters than the alphabet one, and much fewer than the one with i’s:
w: 77
i: 219
alphabet: 111
One column, List view, there is a big difference in number of characters shown
Three columns – List:
Similar as above, w < alphabet < i
w: 21
i: 64
alphabet: 31
And also in the Three columns – List view the differences are obvious
Interestingly, it appears that the actual letters in your text determine how many you will see in the Description!
Conclusions
Although the Description text in SharePoint News can contain 255 characters, you will rarely see the full text on your News web part
The influencing factors appear to be: Column width, Web part layout, visibility of publishing details, actual words used
Different Section layouts, meaning differences in column width, affect the number of Characters shown
Different News web part layouts show a different amount of Description text
In smaller column widths, the List layout behaves similar to the Side-by-side layout
Displaying the publishing details, such as Author, Date and Views, goes at the expense of the number of Description text characters
The actual letters you use will influence the number of characters shown, with wide letters (such as m and w) showing fewer characters than narrow letters (such as i and l)
From earlier tests I also know that making your window smaller, or increase the zoom of your browser, will result in fewer characters
The available space in the column appears to be the driving factor, not a number of characters. We have seen that before in my tests with the Site Navigation, but also when checking the number of characters in the title of a News post
Recommendations
Relax!
My first recommendation would be to relax, as there are many factors influencing this behaviour and there is not that much you can do. And when your readers use a 150% zoom in their browser or check their News mainly from their smartphone, it is completely out of your control.
But there are a few things you can do to make sure your readers see as much from your carefully crafted Description as possible:
Use the One-column layout, with the List view, and remove the publishing details if that works for your purpose
Keep descriptions as short as possible. Your readers will be grateful if they have to read less anyway
Use front-loading, i.e. make sure that the most important words are in the beginning of your title
Do not use your company name if it is not essential I often see the company name in front of everything, but News is for your own audience mostly.
Recently I was invited by Intranet Management (Italy) to talk about my video collection. I decided to choose “The Intranet Demo video” as my topic. This video type may be not as spectacular as some of the teaser videos in my collection, but the Intranet Demo video (where someone shows what the new intranet looks like, what content you can find and how to use it) is much more valuable, in my opinion.
Some reasons to create a Demo video for your new intranet
There are more benefits to the Demo Video. Not only does it create awareness (as does a teaser) for the new intranet, but it will also help people with actually using the intranet. When someone shows them how to work with the new intranet, it may help to lower the threshold to try it. Remember, not everyone is as computer literate as yourself! A good demo can therefore save the training departments (often HR, Communications and/or IT) some support time and effort. And its lifespan is much longer than that of the teaser, because it can also be used to introduce new employees to the intranet. A teaser is fun, and often very entertaining, but it is obsolete once the intranet has been launched. The teaser certainly has its uses, but as I have been at the IT-side of things, I think the Demo is more value for money.
If you have time or budget for only one intranet launch video, make it a Demo!
Do you really have to create a Demo video?
Someone asked whether an intranet should not be so intuitive that a demo is not needed? Well, a new intranet may be intuitive for some people, but you can not expect it to be intuitive for all. Some people simply need more help, or are coming in as a new employee who has been used to a different intranet platform. And especially when you have changed the design, layout, navigation and/or the platform all colleagues may benefit from an instruction on what has changed, and why and how. And where they can find their relevant content.
The Demo video is just ONE adoption tool
I think a Demo video should not be the only way to increase trial and adoption of your intranet. For some colleagues having a demo that explains the whereabouts of important content and the benefits of completing your profile will be sufficient, others will still need more help. This also depends on your organization: when I was working for multinational marketing & production companies, most people were pretty computer literate. In my last job however, which was in a mental health care organization, colleagues were “working with people, not with computers”. Some of them panicked when they had to store documents on their OneDrive instead of on the Downloads drive. So we had to spend more time and effort making things easy for them.
So, you will always need more tools: webinars or other online sessions as well as classroom training or personal help.
Please share your Demo video
I have seen many nice Demo videos, but have not seen the perfect one yet. Have you created a Demo video when your intranet was (re)launched? Please let me know where it can be seen…or upload it to YouTube or Vimeo.
After the recent updates for publishing SharePoint News and creating a Digest, I also wanted to create an update for readers. This post follows on my post ā10 things to know as a SharePoint News reader“. We keep on learning!
1. There are various places where you can find your saved-for-later posts.
When you do not have the time to read a news post right now, or when you want to keep it for later, you can save it for later. Click the icon. But where to find those saved items, when you are finally in bus or train or on your sofa? There are at least 5 places where you can find it:
Click the “tab” icon to save a news post for later
2. You can filter for News posts in the Search results
Type in a search word in the box on top (make sure you are in the correct “scope”: all M365, this site, this hub, this library).
On the results page you will see a number of “verticals”, or content types, such as Files, Sites and News. You will easily recognize the News posts in the overview by their icon: a folded newspaper, but you can also click on the News tab and see only News.
Clicking on the News “vertical” will show you just the News posts from the search results
3. Please warn the author when you see a post with a greyish thumbnail and no header image
It will probably look like this:
If a News item looks like this, there’s something wrong.
The header image may be deleted, moved or you do not have access to it. This can also be a Linked Post that has been deleted. The image will disappear after a few days. This will be the case when, after clicking on the post, you get a message “Hmmm…can’t reach this page”. See my post “SharePoint Holmes and the Missing Message“. You may want to warn the author that there is no thumbnail visible and ask them to check.
A grey image is always an error. If they have deliberately not used an image, the post will look different on the News page:
If a News post looks like this, the publisher has chosen to use the Plain template (without image)
4. You can unsubscribe from News you may have missed
“News you may have missed” is an email that shows you News that may be interesting for you, based on the Microsoft Graph, but that you have not read yet. This is a controversial functionality and I wrote about it earlier. This is an organizational setting that we could not turn off fast enough in my last role š, but in case you do not like it and your Microsoft365 administrator has not disabled it, you can do so yourself.
Go to the SharePoint landing page, click the gear wheel top right and select “Email notification settings”. On the next page, uncheck the button at the bottom of the list. It should look like the screenshot below. You setting will be saved automatically.
Turn this button off if you do not want to receive the “News you may have missed” emails
Please let me know if you know more “gotcha’s” for SharePoint News readers!
The Site owner has used the Hub layout for News (I could not reproduce this anymore, so this may have been a bug that has been fixed)
The Site Owner has deselected “Show title and commands” in the web part
If “Show title and commands” are OFF, you will not see the “See All” link, regardless of the number of posts.
No “See all” after publishing a News web part with the “Show title and commands” OFF.
And then there is the “number of posts” issue. This is the explanation from Microsoft: If you don’t see the See all link, it could be that you don’t have enough news posts published for the option to be available. See all shows only when the number of news posts you have published is greater than the number of posts set to show in the Number of news posts to show option of the News web part. For example, if you have only 2 news posts published, and you set the option to display 4, you won’t have a See all link in the news section.
3. Make it a habit to use the Description field for a good summary of the post
Your audience will appreciate a Newsletter that provides them with useful info and does not waste their time. A good summary in the Description can help, as this will help them determine if title and summary are sufficient information, or if they want to read the full post. The Description from the News page will also be displayed in the Digest. If you do not publish News posts yourself, you may want to teach your publishers about the use of the Description field.
In the example below, item 1 has a short summary that tells you exactly what Project Peony is about, item 2 blabs on about the project itself and tells you nothing about the purpose.
Item 1 has an optimized Description, with a nice summary, while Item 2 has the default first lines of the body text.
4. You can send one Digest from various news sites
Suppose you normally publish in and send a Digest from the Intranet site. Now you want to send one Digest from your Intranet News posts, with one or more items from one or more different sites. This can be done by adding a link to news that lives in another site, or even on the internet, or by including all News from one or more other sites permanently.
Add a News Link (to one News post from another location) is best for a one-off News post
Use News posts from one or more other sites if you want to permanently include News from one or more other sites in your News
Use News posts from all sites in the Hub if your site is a Hub site
For a one-time addition of a post from another location, you can use the Add News link option.
If you want to show all News from one or more sites, you can add more sources permanently.
If the site is a Hub Site, you can show News from all sites in the Hub
Please remember that links in the Digest will go to the original posts when clicked from the site or the Digest. Make sure that everyone has access to all sites featuring in the Digest!
5. š„³š„³š„³There ARE options to format the Digest email! š„³š„³š„³
In short, you can reformat while you forward the digest. This is a good way to change the colour scheme and perhaps add different logo’s (I could not make that work but that may be just me or a limitation of Outlook-on-the-web)
So, this is the Digest email that I receive in Outlook on-the-web.
The original Digest email, it is a bit boring and has a lot of Microsoft branding
When I forward it (and perhaps change the sender from myself to an organizational mailbox such as “Communications” to make it more formal) I can edit the header. In this case I removed the Microsoft and SharePoint logo’s, edited the text and added a background colour.
I can do some formatting, even in Outlook for the web!
This is the reformatted email after sending:
The reformatted email. It looks a bit less bland!
6. The Digest will always be sent from your personal email address
SharePoint is personal, and any Digest will be sent from your email address. (Unless your Communications Department has a separate Microsoft365 license, but I think that is not good practice). If you want to send a Digest on behalf of the Communications Department for instance, please first send the Digest to the Communications Department mailbox. From there, you can forward it to the intended audience. This procedure will allow you to:
Shorten the title. By default the Digest title will be “[Creator] shared [Digest Title] with you”. By forwarding you can shorten that to just the Digest title.
Add the audience to the BCC field. This will keep the damage of any “Reply All” actions limited. There is no option to send as CC or BCC from SharePoint.
Format the email, see item 5!
Treat all emails from the Communications Department consistently (e.g. filing, archiving, etc.)
There is only a TO field in the Digest, and it will always be sent from the person who creates the Digest.
But make sure to remove any earlier sending info!
When forwarding, please edit the title (1) and remove the sending into from the mail (2).
7. Be aware that not everyone may receive your News digest
That may be because of a problem with your email server, it may end up in Junk Mail, it may be an accident and some readers may have intentionally blocked you because they do not want to receive “more organizational stuff to read”. I have listed a number of possible reasons and troubleshooting in this post: “Why does my SharePoint News digest not reach my colleagues?“
If you are starting with a regular newsletter, I would suggest you inform your audience about the reason and value, and show them how to check their Junk Mail or Archive. It can also be helpful to run a survey now and then, so you can finetune your Digest.
What have I missed?
So, have you found any other “things to know” about the SharePoint News Digest? Please let me know!
Sharing News posts from different sites in your site can help you create a good News experience for your audience, as you can share other people’s News without having to publish it yourself. It will also help other publishers by increasing their audience.
We used this extensively in my last role. Communications picked up interesting News posts from other parts in the organization to share that on the intranet Homepage. Reversely, local News publishers sometimes added corporate News posts to their own News.
It is easy to do but there are some things you may want to know.
1. There are three ways to add news posts from other sites to your News
a. One-time only: use the Add News Link
This way you will add one post to your News feed. The item will be displayed on the News web part as if it has been published in your site, it will have the name of your site on top of it. This link will create a new page in your Site Pages Library, but upon clicking the title or image from the News web part, you will be taken to the original post in the original site. So, you are NOT making a copy, just a reference.
How to do this:
Go to the News web part, click New and select “News link” instead of News post
How to add a link to another News post – use the highlighted option
Enter the link to the News post in the popup. The popup will automatically populate with image, title and description from the News post. You can adjust this where needed. Click “Post” at the bottom of the popup to publish.
You will see the current Page Details and can adjust them when needed.
After you click Post, the post will be added to your News web part as if it has been created by yourself.
The linked post is added like a regular News item
In the Site Pages Library, a new page will be added that contains only the Page Details, but not the complete item. That still lives in the original site.
In the Site Pages library you will get a new page with just the Page Details.
You can imagine that this works well for the occasional post that you want to add. Keep in mind that, when the original publisher deletes the post, your linked news item will give an error message. You may want to check out my post “SharePoint Holmes and the Missing Message” for the details.
TIP: This is a good way to republish an older post from your site. By adding the News Link it will show up as a new item, on top of the feed. This is much easier than fixing the position in the web part which is rather cumbersome.
b. Permanent: Add one or more News sources
In the News web part, by default the News from “this site” will show, but you can select other sites to show their News.
Go to the page with the News web part and click the Edit button. In the web part settings, you can choose “Select sites” and then check the sites you want to add to your News web part. Generally the sites you use frequently will be visible, but you can also search for them.
When you have selected the site you will immediately see their News mingled with your own, depending on Publish date.
Upon selecting the sites you will see their News posts mixed with your own. They will have the name of their original site on top.
Unlike the “News Link” options, posts will show the name of their original site above the title, and no reference page will be created in your Site Pages Library.
This is the News feed of the Intranet site and two others
c. Permanent: all sites in the Hub
In case you have a number of sites that belong together, e.g. together they form the Intranet or the global HR information, you can create a Hub site to bring them all together with navigation, design, search, News etc. Gregory Zelfond has a good explanation in this post, so please give that a read if Hubs are new to you: How to create Hub sites in SharePoint online.
In this case, I have turned the Intranet site into a Hub site and associated 2 other sites with it. You see that each News post has the name of the site where it lives, on top. Again, no reference page is created. (By the way, you also see that the post I used in my earlier blog now has lost its image, a clear sign that something is wrong!)
When you have created a Hub site and associated sites with the Hub, you will get the option to include all Hub sites in the News web part.
You see the most recent News from the three sites that are part of the Hub.
2. You can add Team sites to the mix
All three options above can be done with both Team sites and Communication sites. In the screenshot below, I added a Team site to the Hub and the News post I created is incorporated.
Top left is the latest News post from a Team Site, that I associated with the Hub.
3. Mind permissions!
Make sure that any posts or sites that you include in your News web part or News Digest, is accessible for your audience. You may want to check with the site owners about the site’s permissions.
This is especially the case with Team sites which are likely to have more strict permissions than an organization-wide Communication site. Team sites may contain updates from important projects, that you may want to share, but make sure everyone can read them, otherwise you will have to create your own post.
4. You can create a digest from combined News
Regardless of where the News lives, you can turn all News posts that are in your web part into a News digest. In the screenshot below I left out the ERP item, where the original has been deleted, but you see that all others can be included in the News digest. But…please verify that everyone has access to all sites! (see 3.)
All posts in your site can be included in your News Digest
5. You can add a News web part to more pages than one
You will most likely have the News web part on the Home page of your site, and you want that to be as interesting as possible. But you can create as many News web parts in your site as you want or need, and configure them separately using option 1b. This allows you to keep track of other posts and pick out any interesting ones.
EXAMPLE 1: Suppose you are a multi-national organization, and each country has a News site for that country. You can create an extra (hidden) page with a Web part, select all the country sites as your Source, so you can keep track of what is going on in each country. You can then use the info from that web part to add News to your own site, or send a News Digest about what is happening in the various countries. EXAMPLE 2: You can combine the News of different Project sites to keep track of their News (assuming you have permissions) and then make a selection as a Project Update digest.
These are just examples to give you an idea about “keeping track of News” without having to add it to your Homepage.
Below you will see a screenshot of how I added an extra page in the Intranet site, where I added News from two completely different sites than used earlier.
A new page in the Intranet site with completely different News items. This can come in useful to keep track of other News.
Do you have any tips or experiences to add about Combining News? Please let me know!
SharePoint News is easy to create and manage, but that does not mean things can not “go wrong”. This is often due to unexpected or unknown behaviour. So, you can imagine that our hero SharePoint Holmes likes the functionality! š
The situation
I received an issue in our support system from a News reader who saw an interesting News post on a SharePoint site. However, when he clicked on it, he got an error message. He had refreshed the page, closed SharePoint and reopened, and even logged out and back in, but he could not open it. (What a model employee, by the way, doing the most obvious troubleshooting actions before logging an issue. I have seen many people get into a complete panic when they get an error message, while a simple “did you turn it off and on again” could have solved the problem)
But how could that be? He saw the item, it had recently been posted in the site!
An obvious case for SharePoint Holmes. I grabbed my problem-solving cap and set to work.
The investigation
I logged in as admin into the site and checked his permissions. This was a site accessible for all employees. Good.
Then I looked with him at the site’s homepage. The red-lined item was the problem post.
The site in question. Everything looks normal, but the red-lined post gives an error message.
When he clicked the post, this was the error message. Do you see what SharePoint Holmes sees?
This is the error message.
Right, the site above says “Intranet” while the error message refers to a link in “Communicationsite”.
I got the same error message upon clicking the News post, (confirming once more this was NOT a permissions issue), and checked the URL of the site where the item had been posted. There was “Intranet” in the URL of the site with the issue, but the error message was for an item in a “Communicationsite”.
š” Aha, this looked like a News post that had been created with the “News Link” option. This is an easy way to share News from one site to another. Instead of creating your own post, you can click on Add > News Link and add the URL in a popup. SharePoint will then add thumbnail, title and description, and you can keep that as is, or edit when needed. When someone clicks on the post, they will be redirected to the post in the site where it was created, in this case the “Communicationsite”.
An easy way to share News from other sites or even the internet
First I checked whether my hypothesis was correct. I opened the Site Pages Library in the Intranet site and looked for the post. When I opened it it looked indeed like a “News Link” page: a page with the link and the Page Details, nothing more. š” Normally the image from the Source site would also be shown, but in this case it was missing, and this was a reason to suspect that the original News post had been deleted.
This is what you get when you add News as a link to another site (or the internet). Normally you would also see the image, but this time it is empty, another clue.
I then opened the “Communicationsite” and checked the Site Pages Library (just to be on the safe side) and when I could not see the post, I went to the Recycle Bin. And yes, there it was.
The News post from the link has been deleted in the site where it has been posted. Links to this post will now be inaccessible.
I contacted the person who had deleted the News post and enquired about the deletion. It turned out that the deletion was done accidentally in haste, and only a short time ago, as the image was still visible. (After a few days, the image will disappear as it is no longer stored in a Site Assets Library)
The solution
In this case, the “deleter” restored the post in the Communication site and that action restored access to the News post in the Intranet site.
Of course, it will not always be as straightforward. Sometimes it can be necessary to delete a post because it is outdated and potentially harmful to keep.
It may make sense to agree on a form of Life Cycle Management for News posts within your organization, and only delete something when a post is older than 1 year, for instance, if it does not need to be deleted earlier. You may want to read “Writing SharePoint News posts – our way” for more agreements you can make with your fellow News publishers.
As News Publishers will not be able to see easily where their News items are being shared, you will never be able to completely prevent issues like the above. But it will help to inform your News Publishers about this potential issue when using the “News Link” option.
Tip: you can check if your News post has been used in another site as follows:
Copy the title of the post and enter this in the Microsoft365 homepage Search box (so you search all through Microsoft365)
Alternatively, use some keywords from the title that are less common
Click the News tab in the Search results
Check if there are more entries than yours
If you want to delete the item you may want to warn the Publishers who have added your News post to their site.
This will not really help if someone has posted it to a restricted site that you have no access to, or when they have changed the title, but it is an option to reduce any “damage”.
Another News post that has been added as News Link: two posts with the same name in Search, in different sites.
About SharePoint Holmes: Part of my role was solving user issues. Sometimes they are so common that I had a standard response, but sometimes I needed to do some sleuthing to understand and solve it. As many of my readers are in a similar position, I thought Iād introduce SharePoint Holmes, SharePoint investigator, who will go through a few cases while working out loud.
As this time of year is grey and boring, in any case in my Northern part of the world, I thought I’d brighten things up with some extravagant intranet promotion videos, where the design appears to be more important than the content. š
You can find them all by searching on “z-ott” (which is my code for Over The Top) in my collection but I have made a selection in this post.
You can look for the tag “z-ott” in the filter, but it is easier to search for it.
Make sure to log in to Vimeo so you can see the ones that are “not rated yet” as well! More on this phenomenon in a later post.
1. The Cube, from Singapore government
This video is 10 years old but has not aged a bit. The quest through the jungle and the old cellar is still a nice metaphor for finding information within a large organization. They need an intranet!
There is another, related, video from this organization in my collection.
2. Velux One, from a manufacturer of special windows
There were a number of similar videos around some 7 years ago, but only this one and the one from a British insurance company have survived on public media. (But please let me know if I am mistaken)
They all feature a rather hysterical voice-over, cats, a saurus of some kind, and lots of funny statistics.
3. The Loop, from a healthcare organization
The birth of a new intranet, taken literally!
4. Leroy Merlin, European DIY retailer
It is a bit long, but very interesting. It is a video game between a regular person and someone with “intranet glasses”. I have never seen this for a real intranet, it would be interesting though if you could see the serial number or available stock on screen while you walk the store. Is someone working on this?
5. Fred, from a German producer of medical products and medicines.
There is a LOT going on in this delightful teaser video. There’s Roy Liechtenstein, Andy Warhol, Superman, other references to comics, accompanied by American jazz age background music. The video is available in English, German, French and Spanish.
In my collection you will also find another one from this company, with even more arts & culture!
This is only a selection so please make sure you watch all of them!
Ellen's Digital Workplace 