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
You can roll up and display content from across multiple sites in SharePoint Online using the news, documents, and events web parts. This video will demonstrate that process.
This video is part of my FREE 30+ lesson self-paced online training course called Collaboration in Microsoft 365 (OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams). Enroll today at https://www.NateTheTrainer.com for the full learning experience including lesson discussions, quizzes, exams, and a completion certificate.
The News, Highlighted content, and Events web parts allow you to pull in content from sites other than your current site. So, for example, if you’re building a home page for your site and add a news web part, you can choose to pull in a partner department’s site’s news to your site as well to provide a variety of relevant content to your members.
News in SharePoint Online is a great way to disseminate information to your team and the entire organization. Learn how to create news in this video, then watch the content roll-ups lesson later in this course to see how your news can be pulled into other sites across your organization.
This video is part of my FREE 30+ lesson self-paced online training course called Collaboration in Microsoft 365 (OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams). Enroll today at https://www.NateTheTrainer.com for the full learning experience including lesson discussions, quizzes, exams, and a completion certificate.
You can create and share news within and outside your SharePoint. News is highly visible to your members from the SharePoint start page, SharePoint mobile app, any of your pages that have the news web part, and any pages from other sites in your organization that are including news from your site.
Creating news is nearly identical to creating a page – the main difference is what’s described in the previous paragraph – how it’s distributed, used in web parts, and consumed. The very nature of news is to be temporary – announcements, articles, write-ups, etc. Pages, on the other hand, are meant to be more permanent/evergreen as core resources/landing pages in your site’s navigation.
Note: This article pertains specifically to SharePoint Online (M365).
Audience targeting can be used to surface relevant information and resources to specific groups of people throughout SharePoint. This post will focus specifically on enabling audience targeting on your site’s pages and news so that you can create individualized experiences for users based on their identity or role.
The overall process consists of three steps:
Enable the audience targeting ability for all content in your Site Pages library.
Specify the appropriate audience(s) for specific pages/news items within the library.
Modify any existing web parts (news or highlighted content web parts) to enable audience targeting (simply meaning to utilize any audience targeting configurations that have been specified for the content surfacing in that web part).
Step 3 is not required if you only wish to have audience targeting “seen” on the SharePoint start page, mobile app, or other non-customized areas where news may surface.
How audience targeting works
If you specify an audience for content, it will be shown in relevant areas (SharePoint start page, mobile app, news or highlighted content web parts using audience targeting, etc.) to members of the audiences only. This is not a security feature – the content is still discoverable by other users – just not surfaced upfront conveniently for them.
If you are a member of an audience specified on a news piece, you’ll see that news wherever it’s being called up. If you’re not, you won’t see it but can still search or browse to find it.
If no audience is specified for an item, it will be shown to all users. Or if a web part (such as a news web part) has disabled audience targeting, any specified audiences on individual pieces will be disregarded and the content will be shown to all through that particular web part.
Here are the detailed steps to set up audience targeting:
Enable audience targeting for Site Pages (and news)
1. Go to your Site Contents > Site Pages library
2. Select the settings gear > Library settings
Click to enlarge
3. Choose Audience targeting settings
Click to enlarge
4. Check the box for Enable audience targeting and then click OK.
Click to enlarge
Specify an audience for SharePoint pages or news
1. Now return to your Site Pages library and select a page or news item to which you wish to add audience targeting.
Click to enlarge
2. Open the details pane (i icon) in the upper right
Click to enlarge
3. In the Properties section, enter up to 50 M365 Group names, user names or emails, etc. to whom the selected content should be targeted. Notice it also adds the specified audience in a column in the library. Your additions are saved automatically.
Click to enlarge
Modify web parts to utilize audience targeting where available
1. Edit the page on which you’ve placed a news or highlighted content web part.
2. Click the edit icon (pencil) on the particular web part for which you’re enabling audience targeting.
Click to enlarge
3. In the Filters section, toggle Enable audience targeting on. (Note: News source must be This site or Select sites. Recommended for current user doesn’t have audience targeting settings).
Click to enlarge
4. Republish your page when ready.
This can take some time to fully update in your site, so check back after a while to confirm functionality.
After completing these three sections, you’ve now
allowed content within the pages/news library to be used in audience targeting scenarios,
chosen specific pieces to which you’ll apply audience targeting,
and modified the web parts where content will surface to utilize those pieces’ audience settings when appropriate.
