Come Sway with me

So, Sway.

It has been positioned as something between PowerPoint (beautiful presentations) and SharePoint pages (easy newsletters). Sway can be found between your Microsoft apps – it is available for both your free Microsoft account and it is included in the Microsoft365 suite.

I like the idea of Sway, but since it has become so easy to work with both PowerPoint and SharePoint, I wonder what it’s use is. So, when I had nothing better to do 😉, I decided to find the benefits of Sway.

In case you are new to Sway, or want to learn how to use it, you may want to watch this video by Kevin Stratvert.

Paid or free – is there a difference?

My first question is if there is any difference between the business (Microsoft365, paid) and the free version?

I created a simple Sway in my Microsoft 365 tenant. I did not use a template. This is what the edit (Storyline) screen looks like:

The storyline page in the paid version (Business Sway)

I then created one in my personal Microsoft account. I used Firefox browser to make sure there is a separation between the two accounts. (Edge has a tendency to mix things up). The Storyline part looked the same, so I clicked on the Design button top left. This was the result:

The Design page in the free version – it is the same as the paid version

Trust me, this is the same as the paid version.

You see there is a warning at the top that from May 15, 2024 you will no longer be able to upload your own videos or audio files, but will have to work with embedded videos, so videos living on “other platforms”. Hope that is not an issue for anyone. I have removed that message from further screenshots.

What can I do about the look and feel?

If you click on the Design tab, and then on “Styles” top right, you will get a number of options:

• You can select whether the direction of your presentation is vertical, horizontal or slide
• You can customize colours, fonts and textures – more about that later
• You can click one of the buttons below and get a surprise look-and-feel (I assume over time you will know what’s under which button). There are some clues, such as background and letter colours, and typeface.
• Or you can remix (top left) for a completely “random” look and feel

I clicked “Remix!” and now my business Sway has suddenly turned into a knitting pattern or recipe 😱

A remix – but this is not very business-like

I have the same set of styles to use for my free Sway. I chose a horizontal style, which looks a bit more compact than the vertical business one.

A design of my free Sway. It has the same options as the business version.

Can I apply my house style?

Communication and Marketing peeps will want to know how how to create all messages consistent in look-and-feel. I asked CoPilot and apparently you can freely choose colours, but you are limited to the existing typefaces. That is a bit of a bummer.

To see what can be done, let’s click on the Customize button in the Design pane.

You can add a colour at the bottom of the white box in the middle

If you click on the colour button you can add a colour of choice; let’s go for #C133FF, a hot pink/purple.

After uploading a colour hex code, the styles change to incorporate that colour

Your available colour palettes will change to the uploaded colour. I chose the most right one and well, that is impressive! (NOT)

Better colours, but it looks like a tea-towel 😁

All appears to be dependent on the selected style button, so you can play around with it to find one that changes the background or the letters into the desired colour.

This style looks much better!

On we go. Below the palette you can select from 22 typeface combinations. And as much as I love all things Charles Rennie Mackintosh, I do not think that many organizations use this for their house style.

Lovely font, but not suitable for all businesses

This one is also very nice, but unsuitable for most businesses, unless you sell gothic novels or create horror movies.

Another style that is not too business-like

Fortunately, there are some good combinations, but still they may not be your company typeface.

This looks more business-like

At the bottom you can change font size and something about animations.

As for the front image, you can of course ask people to use one certain image, but there is no option to make it the default. You can save a Sway as a template, but that is personal.

The free version behaves in exactly the same way.

So, after a long check, the answer to this question is NO. You can not use your corporate or brand style.

What happens when I share?

If you click the Share button top right business and free Sway are really different.

Business

Sharing options in the business version.

This gives you the option to share with 3 audiences (specific people or groups, people in your organization with the link, or everyone with the link).
The URL is generic, it does not show any hint of your tenant name.
You can also allow people to edit.

When you select “everyone”, it will be a public Sway and people will also be able to share to Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.
(Twitter? That has been X for more than a year and a half, right?)

You can create a visual link, which is a picture with the introduction text, that you can paste into an email.

The visual link

You can also embed it on SharePoint. But why you would not create the content directly on SharePoint, is beyond me.

Under “more options” you can set a password and make the share buttons visible. You can also change the Share settings, which means you create a new link.

Free

You can only share your Sway with the whole world. Additionally to the visual link and embed, you can share to social platforms.
Again, you get a very generic link but I expect that with the free version.

The “More options” are the same as for the business version.

Sharing options for the free version

Where do my Sways live?

Your Sways are personal and live online in your Sway app. You can also see them mentioned on your Microsoft365 homepage.

This means that if you want to create a repository of Sways for your organization, e.g. weekly Newsletters, you will need to store them manually in SharePoint for easy distribution. That can be done in document format in a Document Library, or in a Links List.
This also means that any important Sways that are shared in the business need to be handed over before the author leaves the organization. 😱

Can I turn a Sway into a document?

Yes, you can export it to Word or PDF. If you click … top right of your Sway, you can select this from the menu.

Where to start exporting to Word or PDF

However, this does not always export the colour and typeface correctly. Below and example of my business sway as PDF, where the typeface is suddenly italic and the colour blue instead of hot pink.

This does NOT look like the Sway I exported!

It downloads to your PC so you will have to upload it to OneDrive or SharePoint.

You see from the menu above that you can also print (e.g. to PDF – this also changes the design) or save this Sway as a template. But the template is for yourself, not for the organization.

How do I keep a Sway for later?

If you want to revisit a Sway, you should be able to find it under the “Viewed” tab.

The “Viewed” tab shows the Sways you have looked at.

If you expect to have many Sways, you can also make them a favourite on your Microsoft365 homepage. In the paid version of Microsoft365, there’s a new Tag option which might help you keep things together.
By the way, do you see how much the Sway icon (the top 2 in the screenshot below) looks like the SharePoint one? (bottom of the screenshot). Confusing!
(But not if you use the free version, as that does not have SharePoint)

How to favourite a Sway for later usage

How do I hand over a Sway?

When you leave the organization, you may need to handover any important Sways that need to stay in the organization. Otherwise your Sways will be lost after removal of your account. Here’s how – thank you, CoPilot!

1. Share the Edit Link:
   • Open the Sway you want to transfer.
   • Click on the “Share” button (usually located in the top-right corner).
   • Choose the “Edit” link option.
   • Copy the provided edit link.
   • Share this link with the person you want to hand over the Sway to.
2. Recipient’s Actions:
   • The recipient should open the edit link you shared.
   • They’ll be able to edit the Sway as an author.
   • If they only need to view it, they can do so without editing.
3. Remove Yourself (Optional):
   • If you no longer want to be associated with the Sway, you can remove yourself as an author:
     • Open the Sway using the edit link.
     • Click on the “Edit” button.
     • Go to the “Authors” section.
     • Remove your name from the list of authors.

What do I think?

To be perfectly frank, I fail to see the use for business purposes:

• You can not enforce a house style. You can add a colour, but not use your own typeface. I think this is a major issue for organizations where corporate branding is important.
• Sways live in the creator’s Sway app, so any series that needs to be published together (e.g. weekly Newsletters) has to be published through SharePoint.
• You can print or export a Sway, but the colours and typeface may not be the same as your online Sway
• Sways are all stand-alone “things”; there is no “glue” such as a Team- or SharePoint site to hold related Sways together. There are also no company keywords to act as a binding factor.
• Sways are personal, so whenever an important Sway author leaves, they will have to consciously hand over those Sways that need to stay. Do you really think this is going to happen?
• Sharing creates a generic URL with no information scent about your organization. This is like Forms, but Forms are generally a means to an end and temporary, so it is less of an issue there.

All this screams: “USE SHAREPOINT!” I think SharePoint is so much better for sharing content. It has more robust content management and News and Newsletters are SO easy to create these days that I really do not see the added value of Sway. Perhaps for sharing Newsletters externally? No, there are better newsletter tools.
And PowerPoint has so many easy design options, and the possibility of enforcing a template in house style, that Sway is just too weak to compete.

At my last two organizations we removed the app from people’s view.
In my second organization we were afraid that people would start hobbying and producing lots of content that was not “on brand”. Also, we did not have the bandwidth to support it.
In my third organization people were not very computer savvy and did not like functionality that was “optional”. They needed more guidance. (That is one of the reasons why we introduced our News publishing guidelines)

I can imagine Sway may be a nice tool for private purposes if you do not have too many requirements for typefaces etc. But for my private use it had too many limitations. I wanted to create my “Curses for intranet and digital workplace peeps” in Sway, and wanted an image to the left or right of each paragraph. But that cannot be done; you can only select a background image, not a left or right image.

My findings are consistent with Ami Diamond’s recent question on LinkedIn. He asked about the similarity of the SharePoint and Sway icons and many replies were: “I do not know Sway” or “I do not use Sway”.

But then, Dean Martin liked to Sway so it cannot be all wrong! From this video, it even looks as if he used it for the lyrics! 😁😁 Oh no, Sway does not do animations 😉

What do YOU think?

What are your thoughts on Sway? Do you, or your organization, use it? Are you happy with it? If so, let me know what makes this a good tool for you!

SharePoint: the good old intERnet days

Did you know that SharePoint used to have internet sites? If you have been there from the start, or from about 2008 or so, you will know that, but if you started after 2015 you may not realize. So, as part of SharePoint’s 23rd birthday celebration, let’s talk about SharePoint and intERnet. And I am not talking about sharing sites and documents with your customers, suppliers or other business partners, but about real websites.

Brand and product sites

I do not know the exact dates anymore, but around 2009 we had a large project at the organization I worked for at that time. We had a successful intranet based on SharePoint (see My very first SharePoint intranet), and at that time you could use SharePoint also for internet sites.
Management decided that we were going to move all our brand and product websites to SharePoint. We wanted to make the best use of our investment in Microsoft tools, have more control over the hosting and maintenance, and save money.
We had a long-term partnership with a good, but very expensive web and brand design agency. They would still be responsible for the design and branding and action mechanisms.
Everyone in Marketing and Sales was very upset as at that time it was fashionable to hate SharePoint. They were very afraid that “it would look like SharePoint” and that was the worst critique you could give a website. (Some people still have that attitude, but I guess they have not seen SharePoint for years 😉)
The design agency was most dismissive, as “you could not build decent websites on SharePoint”. Of course.
Our SharePoint support team was hesitant because they expected tons of questions from Marketing and Sales about maintenance and new requirements, especially about functionality that SharePoint did not have. (And the “I-told-you-so”s that would be the result)

I would love to tell you a story of successes or horrors, but I left the organization before the project was in full swing, so I am curious if it was ever brought to a conclusion. If they had done it, they would have had to change everything back a couple of years later, when Microsoft phased out the website options in 2015 because they realized that other parties could do a better job on internet and web sites.
Do you have any real-life experiences from websites-on-SharePoint? Please share!

Personal sites in Office 365

When I started with my Office365 subscription in 2011, it came with an external site. As I have a “Small business plan” it was meant to promote my small business and services, but I have never put a lot of work in it.
The site is no longer accessible from the internet, but I can still see and even edit it! It is in Classic SharePoint, so it does not look as nice as modern SharePoint and it is also less easy to manage. This option was discontinued in 2015.

This is the homepage of my former internet site. Please look at the URL. The message in red says “Reminder, this site will be deleted shortly. Click here for more info” and then I get an error message.

In the “Edit mode” (accessible via the gear wheel) you recognize Classic SharePoint.

The site in edit mode.

Libraries and lists, site settings are still there, and I could probably rework this into a Modern site, but it is easier to create a new one. 😁

External sharing

Of course you will know the options to share sites, documents, Forms etc. with your customers, clients, suppliers and other external business contacts. That has been around since around 2005 and has proven to be very useful. But it is not the same as an internet site where everyone can access.

As part of the preparation for this post I asked CoPilot about SharePoint and internet. The answer will be something for my next post. 😉

SharePoint, the good old intranet days

As SharePoint celebrated its 23 year birthday last week, as mentioned by Veronique Palmer and many others, I thought it might be nice to share my personal history with SharePoint.

The beginning: SharePoint 2001

The first version of SharePoint that I worked with, SharePoint 2001, was a document management solution. It was comparable to the current document library, but with very limited functionality and a different design. There were folders and subfolders, you could subscribe, you could set permissions per (sub)folder and that was it.

The picture below has been taken from this post.

A document library from SP2001. Jussi Roine was also already active at that time! 😉

At the company I worked for at that time, we had developed our own “document cabinet” functionality on a different platform. It was just one flat list of documents with permissions on the cabinet level.
We provided the SharePoint solution to “serious” users only: people who had experience with document and records management, such as research departments, quality control functions, finance etc. Everyone else, such as Communications or Marketing, had to make do with the document cabinets, as SharePoint was considered “too complicated” for “normal people”. Can you imagine? 😁

My first intranet: moving to SharePoint 2003

We had built an intranet around the year 2000 using our own document cabinets, a third-party Discussion Forum functionality and Frontpage webs. When we started to develop a new intranet for the organisation, we found out that the next version of SharePoint, SharePoint 2003, was something more than just document management. It was a complete intranet platform, so we could replace everything with SharePoint! It sounds very simple and obvious now, but at that time we were so used to building things ourselves that we were very confused at first. How would this work? How should we replace our Forums? Could we move documents from our cabinets to SharePoint? What would it mean to our developers? How could we inform people about this complicated new functionality?
Despite making a few mistakes (such as wanting to replicate old functionality) we created a rather successful intranet on SharePoint 2003.
I wrote about that here: My very first SharePoint intranet.

My second intranet: moving from SharePoint 2007

After that came SharePoint 2007, which had more functionality. After that, there was a split in SharePoint on-premises (the installed version on an organization’s servers) which has versions SP2010, SP2013, SP2016 and SP2019 (I do not think any versions have been added since) and SharePoint Online, which is the cloud version used by most organizations, I think.

I have worked with SharePoint 2007, struggling with storage space, and moved to SharePoint Online from there. I wrote about that here: My second SharePoint intranet.

My third intranet: moving to SharePoint Online

The third intranet project I was involved in meant moving to SharePoint Online from a very outdated non-Microsoft platform. By that time (2021) most employees were already familiar with SharePoint Online and the complete Microsoft365 suite. Combined with just a few requirements and a very good project manager, this was a model project completed in record time. I wrote about it in this post: My third SharePoint intranet.

So, I have worked with various versions in the years that I worked with SharePoint. And I still love it, it can do so much!

Next time, I will discuss the external capabilities of SharePoint. It used to be more than what you can do now. Did you know?

4 more things to know as a SharePoint News reader

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 “10 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

• Microsoft365 Homepage
• SharePoint Homepage
• SharePoint mobile app
• and more!

You can read all about it in this post: Where do you find news posts saved 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 😁, 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!

SharePoint Holmes and the Missing Message

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! 😁

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”.

💡 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.
💡 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 I’d introduce SharePoint Holmes, SharePoint investigator, who will go through a few cases while working out loud.

Why does my SharePoint News digest not reach my colleagues?

Since a few weeks I am also on Mastodon (@ellenvanaken@mastodon.social) and there I happened upon this question from @almostwitty:

“Does anyone know how to manage the SharePoint “News you might have missed” feature? Some people aren’t getting them and I have no idea why…”

I thought that was a great question, so I started investigating, including the regular News Digest option as well, since issues can occur there too.
I focused on technical/functional reasons, reading “not getting them” as “not receiving them in their mailbox” rather than not understanding what they are about. (But there’s an explanation on how it works from Microsoft in this post as well!)

There are three levels where email newsletters can go wrong: organizational (because of settings or email issues), sender or recipient issues or actions.
In the case of organizational issues, most likely the whole organization, or a specific part of it (e.g. a specific email domain or location), will not have receive the digest.
In case of individuals who have not received it, the issue is harder to identify and solve.

A. Regular News Digest

This is a newsletter with a hand-picked selection of news, sent by a site owner (sender) to an email list or group of colleagues (recipients). You may want to check my earlier post “10 things to know about the SharePoint News digest”
Always think carefully before you decide to send a News digest – not everyone likes to receive “even more stuff to read” from their organization!

In the following cases someone or more people may not receive it:

1. Organization: There has been an email glitch in your organizations Outlook/Exchange

Check with your Microsoft365 admins if this is the case. The glitch can affect all your organization, or parts of it, e.g. with a different email address.

2. Sender: You have exceeded the Outlook sending limitations

Check the sending limitations here. E.g. you have sent your newsletter to more than 500 people, of you have sent too many emails in one day. The limits appear to be lower for people who have been in the organization shortly and have no reliable reputation yet.
Solutions may be to send the newsletter in smaller batches, to use organization-wide groups instead of individuals (any group that is in your Company Directory), or to send the newsletter from a different email address. (e.g. a department mailbox rather than your personal email)

3. Sender: you have more than 256 characters in your subject line

See all Exchange Online limitations (link below) under “Messaging limitations”.
A more complete, but more complicated overview of all Exchange Online limits here.

Please create a shorter subject line.

4. Sender: your digest mail is seen as Junk Mail

This has happened to me when I first sent some digests, because I sent it to a lot of people who had never had any interaction with me.

Please inform colleagues that you are starting an email newsletter, monitor delivery of your first digest, train your colleagues how to add senders of in-company newsletters to their safe senders and ask them to check their Junk Email folder on a regular basis.
It can also help to send the digest not from your personal email, but from an organizational account, e.g. Communications, or Department XYZ.

5. Recipient: Has deliberately blocked your email address, reported earlier newsletters as Junk and/or has set a Rule to send your mails to the Deleted Items

While option 4 is more or less an accident, this one is a deliberate action. There is no “Unsubscribe” option for SharePoint News digests, so every employee who is not happy to receive and read your mail will find ways to avoid it. Your digest will probably be in their Junk Email or Deleted Items.

It may be good to inform colleagues about the benefits of the News digests. Additionally you could train them how to add senders of in-company newsletters to their safe senders and to to check their Junk Email folder on a regular basis.

6. Recipient has accidentally deleted or archived the mail

Sometimes I do that too – I delete something by simply pressing the wrong button, swiping the wrong way, etc. Sometimes it is because I am interrupted while reading email, sometimes I decide too fast that this is not interesting, it can be anything really, and nothing personal! 😊

The email may be in the Deleted Items or in the Archive.

7. Recipient’s mailbox is full

Especially when your organization has many F3-licenses, it may happen that their mailbox (only 2 GB) is full and can no longer receive emails, even though the News digest is a small email in size. Check out the Quirks of the F3 license.

There’s not much you can do there. The recipient will have received one or more warnings to clean up their mailbox.

B. News you might have missed:

This is an automated digest of items that you have access to, may be relevant for you (according to the Microsoft Graph) but have not read yet. More info from Microsoft.

In this case, there are only organizational or recipient issues. People may not receive this for the following reasons:

8. Organization: it has been disabled on organizational level

Microsoft provides information on how to do that. You may want to discuss with the Microsoft365 admins (and others involved) to turn it on again, because there may have been a good reason to disable the functionality.

9. Organization: There has been an email glitch in your organizations Outlook/Exchange

(Similar to 1.) Check with your Microsoft365 admins if this is the case. The glitch can affect all your organization, or parts of it, e.g. with a different email address.

10. Recipient: There is no news that they have missed

They may have read all there is to read. That may be because they have been a colleague for only a short time and does not have access to many sites yet.

11. Recipients have turned off their subscription in the email or on their SharePoint page

This is ON by default. At the bottom of the email there is a link called “Notification settings” that takes you to a page in the SharePoint homepage where you can disable this digest.

You can disable this automated digest here.

You can also do this from the SharePoint home page by clicking the gear wheel > Email notification settings.

On the SharePoint landing page you can also turn off this digest.

In both cases, you will go to the below page where you can toggle off the button at the bottom.

If you do not want to receive “News you might have missed” you can set this button to “Off”

12. Recipient: Has deliberately blocked noreply@sharepointonline.com, reported earlier digests as Junk and/or has set a Rule to send mails from this sender to the Deleted Items

(Similar to 5.) This is a deliberate action. The digest will probably be in their Junk Email or Deleted Items.

You may want to inform users that blocking noreply@sharepointonline.com is not a good idea, as they will also not receive other mails about their SharePoint sites and documents. (e.g. auto-deletion of Teams recordings) Creating awareness about this email may be good idea, as is teaching them how to disable the “News you might have missed” email instead, as explained in 11, if they really do not want it.

13. Recipient has accidentally deleted or archived the mail

(Similar to 6.)

The email may be in the Deleted Items or in the Archive. Again, creating awareness about this email may be a good idea, and you may also want to teach them how to disable it properly if they do not want to receive it.

14. Recipient’s mailbox is full

(Similar to 7). The mailbox of F3-licensed users (only 2 GB) may be full and can no longer receive emails, even though this is a small email in size. Check out the Quirks of the F3 license.

There’s not much you can do there. The recipient will have received one or more warnings to clean up their mailbox.

Conclusion

There are many reasons why someone does not receive a SharePoint News digest or a “News you might have missed” digest. The reasons can be on organization, sender and recipient level, and may be deliberate or accidental. That makes it hard to troubleshoot, but I hope I given you a few ideas to start with. Good luck!

Please let me know if I have forgotten any!

10 more things to know about creating SharePoint News

Some time ago I wrote a post: 15 things to know about creating SharePoint News

By now it is 16 things, because posts with numbers are cursed, as my fellow bloggers will know 😁

In the mean time I have learned a few more things, so it is time for an update.

1. The news publishers in your organization may appreciate guidelines

With all the options SharePoint has to offer, in web parts, columns, fonts and font colours, you may want to provide your News publishers with a few writing and design guidelines. This will help create some consistency across your intranet.
I have shared my last organization’s guidelines in an earlier post: Writing SharePoint news posts (our way). This post was pretty popular so I guess it fills a need.

2. Be aware of when to use which image source

I have tried every option and made an overview in this post: Images in SharePoint news and pages.

In short:

• Using an image from Web Search and Upload will create a new folder and file in your Site Assets library. All other options do not.
• You have most control using Upload or Site, as you will know where the image is stored and you will be able to re-use it easily
• Stock Images and Organizational Assets are the best options when you care about respecting intellectual property, assuming someone is in charge of maintenance of Organizational Assets

3. In some cases the header image is not visible

I have written about troubleshooting images. These are a few common causes:

• The “Plain” page template (no image) is used
• Readers have no permission to view the picture, for instance because it lives in someone’s OneDrive
• The image has been moved or deleted
• On Yammer, in some cases when the post has been promoted to Yammer – see point 4.

Example of a News web part with a news post with a deleted header image (top) and one using a Plain template (with no header image)

4. Promoting a post to Yammer may not show it as nice as you expect

How your News post looks on Yammer is depending on

• Where the header image lives – please read this post for details
• Whether the News is published in a Classic Team site, a Modern Team Site or a Communication site, as explained in this post.

5. The Description field can be used for several purposes

The Description is a field that you can find in the Page Details. It is easily overlooked, and you do not have to use it, but it can be quite powerful.

• Create a summary of your post. This will be displayed under the title of the post and will show your readers quickly what the post is about. You will have to make an effort, as by default the first part of the body text will be displayed.
  The Description will also be shown in the Newsletter and in Search results.
• Hide key words that will be used in Search results. It is best if you add these keywords as far to the bottom of the description as possible, to avoid it showing up in the news overviews.

Read more about it: 7 things to know about the Description field (by now it is 8…sigh 😊)

Example of a summary: To the left, a custom summary of the post. To the right: The default description: the first paragraph which trails off.

6. You can add a publication date on the post or page itself

The publication date of a News article will be visible on the News web part, (if you have that enabled), but when you open a News post you do not see the publishing date. You may want to add the date from the web part settings in the header (1), then toggle on the “show published date” button (2) and then the date will be shown underneath the title and author (3). I have not found a way to enable this by default. Please let me know if there is an easy way to make this the standard.
Adding the publication date is a good practice for intranet pages with a longer lifespan.

The web part settings is where you can make the publication date visible. By default it is off, unfortunately.

You can show the publication date in the News web part, as shown here, but this does not show on the News post by default.

This is the publication date on the published post.

7. You can manage comments on your posts and pages

Your readers can respond to posts by clicking the Like button or adding a comment. Notifications will be sent via email to you. If this gets a little overwhelming or distracting, my post 4 ways to manage comments on SharePoint news or pages may help you.

8. If you are publishing “on behalf of” an Author, here’s some ways to redirect comments to them

By default, Likes and Comments are sent to the person who has published the post. There is no standard option to redirect them to the person who is the intellectual owner (as opposed to the publisher) of the post.
I have come up with a few workarounds in this post: Diverting SharePoint news comments to the Author.

9. In some cases you will NOT see “See All” on the News web part

Sometimes the “See all” link, which you will need to see more news items and in order to create a Newsletter, is not visible:

• When you have less than 5 published News posts
• When you use the Hub News display
• When you have hidden the “Title and Commands” in the web part settings.

You can read more about it in my post SharePoint Holmes and the Disappearing Digest link.

If you toggle the “Show title and commands” off, the items News, See all and Add in the top bar will not be visible on the page.

10. The Carousel display still has usability limitations

Even Microsoft, who are big on inclusive design, have not managed to come up with a good Carousel. It also does not display any indication of the content of the article apart from the title. You can read my rant in this post: Can you get a text preview in a SharePoint News Carousel?

An example of a Carousel.

As SharePoint is evolving, we keep finding out more and more things about it, so please stay tuned and keep asking me questions, so SharePoint Holmes and I can investigate!

Number “10” by publicdomainpictures.net

Can you get a text preview in a SharePoint News Carousel?

I recently got the following question: “Is it possible to get a text preview from News in a Carousel? This would be for those users who want to see more than just the title, but without clicking.”

I love this type of questions, so I decided to find out.

Carousels and me

I am not a big fan of Carousels. I can imagine the large images look nice, but I have read too many negatives. The quick why? This website: https://shouldiuseacarousel.com/

They do not provide good usability, for instance:

• People tend to overlook them.
• Most people do not spend enough time on a page to see all the items in the Carousel, so generally only 1 or 2 posts are being seen by most visitors.
• The buttons to move them forward are too small and not easily clickable for people who have problems with their motoric skills.
• Screenreaders cannot deal with them.

At the bottom of this post I have added a number of articles.

When Microsoft introduced a Carousel for SharePoint News, I honestly thought that they had solved the issue because why would they, who are pretty big on usability and accessibility, introduce functionality that would not have a good usability? But when I saw the product, I noticed that it just looked like all others. I could not find a usability review by anyone. (Please let me know if you know one).

BTW, I really love the below image (from Microsoft’s Inclusive Design pages) to show that inclusivity issues are more common than you might think. Not everyone has a permanent issue, but many people have temporary or situational issues. A small part of the population is blind, but many people have eyesight issues, including myself before my cataract operations – I had problems with colour contrasts and very small print, for instance.

The Microsoft Inclusive design Persona spectrum. I LOVE this.

But I digress! The question was: Is it possible to show a preview of the post, and not just the title, in a Carousel?

I checked a number of items:

1. News web part

I started out with changing my Intranet site’s News web part to Carousel. This is what the Carousel looks like in Edit Mode:

Edit mode for the News web part, when selecting Carousel

• You can determine the number of posts to show (recommended is max. 5, but you can go to 8)
• You can change to the next item automatically (not recommended) and set the interval for change.
• You can show a call to action. We will come back to that later.

So, there is no option in the Carousel itself to make extra information, such as the Description field, visible. On to the next option.

2. News post

The next step was to open one of the posts and see if there is any option for an extra text, image description or anything that could be shown in the Carousel.

In the web part menu, you can add “Text above title” where you can add 40 characters of text, so I did. It is immediately shown. I also added an Alt Text for the image.

Edit mode for the news post, with options

3. Page Details

Then I looked at the Page Details, changed the Description into a snappy summary and added a Call to Action with a link to a Form.
More on the Description field in this post.

Publishing the end result

So, I have 4 possible options to display:

• Description
• Text above title
• Alt text for the image
• Call to Action

I republished the page and looked eagerly which of the items would manifest itself on the News page.

Nothing. Zero. Zilch. It still just showed the title. Hovering over any element (image, title) did not show anything. 😥

The Carousel after adding all the extra’s and republishing. Sadly, none of the additional items are visible.

• The Description is only visible in the web part layouts Top Story, List and Side-by-Side.
• “Text above title” is only visible on the news post itself.
• Alt text for the image is only available on the news post itself, in the Immersive Reader
• The Call-to-Action does not show up, and the text and link in the Page Details are deleted after publication, so I guess this does not work. I added a Call-to-Action web part, hoping that it perhaps needed this nearby, but nothing. I will look into that; I remember a discussion on Twitter but forgot between whom.

Conclusion

I think it is currently NOT possible to show a preview, neither by default, nor by hovering over an element. If any of my readers have found a way to do it, please let me know!

Suggestions

At this moment I can only suggest using another web part layout, such as Top Story, List or Side-by-Side. Use the Description text to provide a good summary of the article. This is better for usability and accessibility and would allow users to see what the story is about, so they know whether it is worth their while to click.

Top Story layout. This shows the post’s Title and Description.

Additionally, you can use the Microsoft feedback portal to make a suggestion to allow a preview.

Articles on Carousels:

• Auto-Forwarding Carousels and Accordions Annoy Users and Reduce Visibility
• Why Image Carousels Are Almost Always A Bad Idea
• Image Carousels and Sliders? Don’t Use Them. (Here’s why.)
• Why Homepage Carousels Are Bad (& 3 Alternatives to Try Instead)

Carousel Photo by Mihai Vlasceanu: https://www.pexels.com/photo/carousel-with-lights-1403653/

7 things to know about the Description field in SharePoint pages and news

My former colleague recently asked me how to add metadata or tags to SharePoint news or pages, in order to be able to make them link to a certain common topic, and be able to find them in Search.

My first thought was to add metadata to the pages in the Pages Library, but I quickly dismissed that thought as it would mean that every publisher would have to go into the library after publication to add their metadata. It would also mean that every Page Library would have to have those fields added and back-filled and oh well, I got tired just by thinking about the implications! 😄

But then we remembered that we had once added something on the page, “somewhere in a popup to the right”. I started investigating.

It turned out that the place to look for is the Description field. You can find it by clicking on the link “Page Details” during or after creating a new post or page.

There are a few things to know about this field.

1. The Description field is almost on top of the popup

It is directly under the thumbnail of the header image.

After clicking on Page Details (1) the popup will open and you will see the Description (2).

However, the popup often opens “in the middle” so you need to scroll up to see it.

If the popup opens like this, please scroll up!

2. The Description field is auto-populated after publishing

It will be populated with the first 255 characters of the body text.

SharePoint will tell you how many characters you have left.

3. You can change or remove the text after publishing

Now why would you want to change the description text manually? Items 4 and 5 will provide the answer!

4. The text in Description is shown in the News web part

Rather than having a text that suddenly ends in the middle of a sentence, you may want to edit the Description to provide a good summary to your readers.

The number of characters displayed is depending on the configuration of the web part, e.g.

• If you have no image, you will see more characters than with an image.
• If your News is in a page-wide column, you will see more characters than when it is one of three columns.
• Hub, Carousel and Tiles layouts do not show descriptions.

In the red-lined example, we can remove all text behind the ! in the Description and have one proper sentence.

This preview is not relevant for pages, as these are not shown on web parts.

5. The text in Description is shown in Search results

When you have executed a search, in all of Microsoft365, SharePoint or your site, the Description text will show in the Search results, at least the text around the keyword.

Please compare this screenshot of a news web part, where the word “peregrine” is only

1. In the title
2. In the body text
3. In the Description
4. In a different text web part

To this screenshot of a search on the word “Peregrine” in the Microsoft365 homepage search box. The numbers correspond to the list above.

The search word ‘peregrine” is in various places in the news posts, but they will all turn up in search.

Please note that I have filtered the search for News, to avoid that the various images that have been auto-uploaded to the Site Assets library during news creation, clutter the list. How was it again with images in SharePoint news? This post will tell you all.

6. The text in Description is searchable

From the screenshots you can see that the keywords can be on various places on the page, but the posts all turn up in Search.
This means that you can add keywords or metadata in the Description, without having to use that text in the title or body of the post or page.

For News, you’d best add the keywords at the bottom of the field after the summary text, so you do not show the keywords alone in the news preview. My news post 3 only has “peregrine” in the Description, and it makes a meagre preview on News.

For pages, you want to make sure that you have a good text for Search, but you do not need to worry about any preview.

Please note that I chose the word “peregrine” in my example because I have not used it before in this tenant. In real-life you will get more search results so you may need to filter.

7. The text in Description is not dynamic

When you are editing your post after publication, the description will not be adjusted. This does not have to be an issue, but you need to be aware, especially when you have edited the first paragraph of your post. My post SharePoint Holmes and the not-so-dynamic Description tells you more.

You can leave the description as is, replace it with the new intro, or even better, replace it with a summary of your post so your readers get the gist immediately!

8. The Description shows up in Newsletter

It will be no surprise, but just to be complete. The Description is also displayed underneath the title in the SharePoint Newsletter.

9. The Description is essential for selecting the correct template

According the comment below by André, the description field is crucial for page templates because the content of this is displayed in the dialog to choose a page template for editors.
I don’t have a lot of experience with templates, so I am taking his word for it.

Conclusion

The Description field in the Page Details can be very useful in the following scenarios:

• Providing a one-sentence summary of your news post on the News page(s) and Newsletters instead of the first words that trail off somew…
• Making sure the post or page can be found in Search results. You can add the relevant keywords without having to add them to the title or the text. For instance, if it is related to a certain project or topic, but you do not want to use that word all the time.

Do you have other scenarios?

Are you using the Description field consciously or do you have another scenario where it comes in useful? Please let me know!

From Stream (Classic) to Stream (on SharePoint) – summary

Redirecting the Stream tile to Stream (on SharePoint) will roll out to standard release tenants from now.

Office365 support folks may ask themselves what to do – enable it now or wait until more is known? Please note Stream will only be decommissioned when the functionality in SharePoint is comparable to Stream now – which is not the case at the moment. I expect you will have a year at the very least.

I have done some experiments in the last few weeks (June 2022), to give you a better idea of the current consequences of this change, and this is my advice:

• Is Stream new for (or not yet used by) your organization?
  Redirect the tile as soon as possible, and instruct everyone in the new ways of working (video creation and storage, web parts etc.) via SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams.
• Is Stream an important app for your organization? E.g. you have created a video portal?
  Wait until more is known. At the moment there are quite some functionality gaps, although these are being addressed as we speak.
  • You may want to do some pre-work such as checking out how many videos you have, which department is the most active, and which sites would be the receptors for videos migrated from Stream. Housekeeping could also be a good idea, if you own many videos.
  • You could also start instructing people where to create new videos and how to embed videos on pages, how to manage video in SharePoint etc.
  • Do you have an idea about how to approach the migration project when it is time? You may want to think about that now as well.
• Do you have a few active pockets of video on Stream, and the number of likes, views and comments are not very important for the owners?
  Suggest a manual migration (download from Stream to PC and upload to SharePoint) to the owners, which will reduce the complexity of your migration project later, by doing a few things now.

I have written a few posts to help you with each of these scenarios:

What experiments have I done?

• I have redirected my Stream tile in Office365 to Stream (on SharePoint).
  I found that this redirects to a new page in SharePoint, comparable to the Office365 homepage, where you can see all videos on OneDrive, Teams and SharePoint you have access to.
  Videos that are in Stream stay there and will eventually be deleted. This means any video on Stream that you want to keep, needs to be migrated by you.
• This means you suddenly have a migration project. Although I expect it will be some time before Stream gets decommissioned, it will take thought, preparation, communication and other work.
  I have a few suggestions for that project.
• Microsoft will provide a Migration tool, which I have not seen yet. I expect this will move videos with all their metadata (including comments, views, likes), but YOU will have to decide where the videos will go.
  If you do not want to wait, and/or if you have a few Stream channels where the metadata are not terribly important, you can reduce complexity by moving those videos manually. I have checked what happens when you download from Stream and upload to SharePoint.
• Do you have Stream videos embedded on your SharePoint intranet and other pages? You will need to change web parts and link to videos in SharePoint.
  I checked which web parts are best:
  • Highlighted Content for videos from one site
  • Quick Links for a hand-picked selection of videos
  • File Viewer for a single video, illustrating a News post
• As video is treated as a document, I have also checked if the Document Library web part would be a good web part to display video, as you can configure it more than the Highlighted Content. However, it is a lot of extra work and it is not better than the Stream or Highlighted Content web parts.
• Do your colleagues use Stream (desktop or app) to create video’s? You may want to wean them off and suggest another app from the Office365 suite. These are my recommendations:
  • the OneDrive mobile app for their impromptu and personal videos
  • a recorded meeting on Teams desktop for more official videos, such as instructions or speeches.

When you have access to the SharePoint Admin and Message centers, you can see some improvements for Stream being planned, e.g. inline playing in the Hero web part.

The SharePoint message center will keep you informed about Stream (on SharePoint) improvements

What’s next?

I hope I have saved you some time by doing and sharing my experiments. If anything new pops up, like further improvements to Stream (on SharePoint) I may create a new post.

Good luck!