Sometimes you may have SharePoint news posts edited and ready to go, but have to wait for an official announcement or date to arrive before you can share the news. Rather than wait for that date and manually publish, we can schedule news posts to go live at a date and time we specify.
In order for this to work, we have to turn on a setting for the Site Pages library in which we’re creating the news.
Note
Only site owners can enable page and news publishing for their site. If you’re a site member, ask your site owner to follow the steps in the first section.
How to enable scheduling for your site’s SharePoint pages and news
Go to your Site Contents (settings wheel | Site Contents) and select your Site Pages library (this is where your site’s pages and news are created and stored).
Site Pages library location in SharePoint | Click to enlarge
Select Scheduling at the top
Scheduling option at the top of the Site Pages library | Click to enlarge
Toggle on the Enable scheduling option
Now your site’s members can use the scheduling feature for their pages and news. The next section shares user steps to do so.
How to schedule SharePoint pages and news
Create your page or news post as you normally would (Site’s home page | New | Page or News post)
Location of new page and news post options on a site | Click to enlarge
When you’re ready to schedule the post, click Page details | Enable Scheduling and add the Publish Start Date/time | Schedule (this button changes from Post/Publish to Schedule after you’ve entered the publish start date)
Scheduling steps for SharePoint pages and news | Click to enlarge
Live streaming Teams meetings and webinars to YouTube may expand your audience and allow for more viewers to engage with your event than otherwise might. It’s great for running a virtual conference or event where you need to embed YouTube videos in the platform for a streamlined approach. YouTube also saves your live streams as videos in your channel without the need to do a separate upload after an event. This concept gives users/presenters the ease of just having a normal Teams meeting, but the power of enhanced broadcasting and distribution.
Though I’m focused on YouTube in this blog post, the same setup on the Teams side is required to live stream to social media platforms or otherwise.
Thanks to recent updates to Microsoft Teams, you no longer need OBS Studio or other third-party software installations to live stream your Microsoft Teams events to YouTube. However, this ability launched in disabled state by default, so a Teams Administrator will need to complete the prerequisites prior to someone being able to live stream.
Note
At this time, live streaming only works for meetings and webinars in Microsoft Teams – not live events.
Admin prerequisites to live streaming with Microsoft Teams
Before users can broadcast their live stream from Microsoft Teams, a Teams administrator needs to create or modify a Meeting policy and:
Enable Live Streaming Mode (General section)
Turn on Local Broadcasting (Audio & video section)
You can modify the Global (Org-wide) default Meeting policy which would allow everyone to broadcast and live stream, or you can create/modify a separate Meeting policy and apply it only to specific users who should be allowed to live stream.
Here’s how to modify the Global (Org-wide) default meeting policy to allow everyone in your org to live stream:
Select the name of the policy you wish to modify. In this example, Global (Org-wide) default).
Location of the global/default meeting policy in the Microsoft Teams Admin Center | Click to enlarge
Enable Live streaming mode, and turn on Local broadcasting as seen in the following screenshot.
Live streaming settings in a Meeting policy | Click to enlarge
Technically, you could just enable Live streaming mode for this post. But by also turning on Local broadcasting (NDI), your users will have greater flexibility to produce their Microsoft Teams events with broadcasting software like OBS Studio, XSplit, etc. which gives additional capabilities like setting up scenes and such.
Click Save
Note
The changes may take an hour or so to take effect after saving your policy changes.
Your users will now be able to live stream their Teams events. Now let’s go through those steps.
Producer prerequisites to live streaming with Microsoft Teams
If you are going to be the producer of an upcoming event, you’ll need to make a change to your individual Teams client settings before you’re able to proceed.
Simply open your settings in Teams (ellipsis/three dots by your profile picture | Settings) and then select App permissions. Here you can enable NDI capabilities.
NDI capabilities enabled in the Teams client settings | Click to enlarge
How to live stream a Microsoft Teams meeting or webinar to YouTube
Users assigned the policy created or modified in the admin prerequisite section can follow these steps to live stream directly to YouTube from Microsoft Teams.
First we need to set up the live event on the YouTube side. Go to YouTube Studio (https://studio.youtube.com) and sign in with the account you wish to broadcast to.
Click Create | Go live in the upper right
YouTube steps to Go live | Click to enlarge
Choose whether you’re going live Right now, or whether you’re just setting up for a Later date. Either way, you’ll have additional steps that may vary from this post – follow the prompts to complete setup.
Go live options in YouTube | Click to enlarge
Continue through your YouTube prompts but do not go live yet. When you get out of the wizard, be sure you’re on the Stream tab on the left-hand navigation and locate the Stream key and Stream URL. You’ll need to copy both of these and use them later in step 9.
YouTube stream key and stream URL locations | Click to enlarge
Now we need to switch to Microsoft Teams. Join the meeting or webinar you wish to live stream.
Add the Custom Streaming app to the meeting
Steps to add the Custom Streaming app to a Teams meeting | Click to enlarge
Click Add
Custom Streaming app info and confirmation screen | Click to enlarge
Click Save
Custom Streaming app welcome screen | Click to enlarge
In the right-hand panel that opens, paste the Stream key and Stream URL you copied in step 4.
Copy/paste paths for stream key and URL | Click to enlarge
Click Start streaming in the lower right, then select Allow in the dialog box when it appears.
Streaming meeting confirmation dialog | Click to enlarge
You’re now live streaming! Share your screen and/or use your cameras and microphones to run your event as you would any normal Microsoft Teams meeting.
A screenshare from Microsoft Teams being live streamed to YouTube | Click to enlarge
When you’re finished with the event, you can stop streaming via Teams and YouTube.
Stop streaming button in the Custom Streaming app panel | Click to enlargeEnd stream button in YouTube | Click to enlarge
In Power Automate, setting an already-populated SharePoint list or library field to blank isn’t as simple as leaving the field blank in your flow. Luckily, it’s just a couple extra steps to make it possible.
In this post I’ll cover multiple column types as they’re a bit different.
How to set text, date, number, and yes/no column values to blank
How to set single choice column values to blank
How to reset multi-choice column values to blank
How to reset person column values to blank
How to set SharePoint text, date, number, and yes/no column values to blank
The steps in this section will work for these column types:
Single line of text
Multiline text
Date
Number
Yes/No
Click into the field you want to reset to blank
Select Expression
Type Null in the expression box (not case-sensitive)
Click OK
Adding a Null expression in Power Automate | Click to enlarge
Test your flow and it should reset the field value(s) to blank wherever you used the Null expression.
Showing the fields that were reset using Power Automate | Click to enlarge
How to set SharePoint single choice field values to blank
To set a choice field back to blank (no selection) follow these steps:
Add a step before updating the item that initializes a variable. The step is called Initialize Variable.
Set the variable name to Blank, and the type to String. Do not set a value.
In your update action, set the choice field value to the new variable from dynamic content.
Creating a blank variable in Power Automate | Click to enlarge
Test your flow, and you should see your single choice field reset to no choice.
Result of a Power Automate flow resetting a choice field | Click to enlarge
How to reset SharePoint multi-choice column values to blank
A normal choice column in SharePoint has more options that allow it to be set to multiple choice.
Multiple selection option for a choice field in SharePoint | Click to enlarge
Changing a single-select choice column to a multi-choice field alters how Power Automate resets the field, but it’s still similar to the steps involved for a single choice field.
To set a multiple-choice field back to blank (no selections) follow these steps:
Add a step before updating the item that initializes a variable. The step is called Initialize Variable.
Set the variable name to BlankArray, and the type to Array. Do not set a value.
In your update action, select the T icon next to your multiple-choice field.
Set the multi-choice field value to the new variable from dynamic content.
Power Automate actions resetting a multiple-choice field to blank | Click to enlarge
Test your flow and your multi-choice fields should now reset to blank.
Result of a Power Automate flow resetting multiple-choice fields to blank | Click to enlarge
How to reset SharePoint person column values to blank
Perhaps one of the more complicated column types to reset, a person field takes a bit more work to reset. To accomplish this, we can use an HTTP request. Follow these steps to empty a SharePoint person column’s value.
Add the Send an HTTP request to SharePoint step
Following the screenshot below, set the fields as follows (you must replace all red items with your own values):
Site Address (select your site)
Method: POST
Uri: _api/web/lists/getbytitle(‘YOUR LIST TITLE‘)/items(YOUR ITEM ID FROM DYNAMIC CONTENT)
If your list name has a space, replace it with _x0020_ such as Null_x0020_demo.
Field names are different than display names. Even if your field displays with a space (Person field) it is likely Personfield on the backend. You can verify your column’s actual name by going to List settings (gear icon) and selecting your column from the Columns section. Your field’s actual name will be displayed in your browser’s URL.
How your HTTP request should look when finished | Click to enlarge
Test your flow and you’ll find that your person column has been reset.
