SharePoint Online News Posts offer a powerful way to communicate updates, announcements, and engaging content within an organization. Here are the key benefits based on available information:
- Centralized Communication: News Posts provide a single, accessible hub for company updates, reducing the risk of information getting lost in email threads or chat messages. Employees can easily find and review news on SharePoint, ensuring consistent access to critical information.
- Increased Visibility and Engagement: Unlike emails that may be overlooked, News Posts are prominently displayed on the SharePoint start page, team sites, communication sites, hub sites, or even Microsoft Teams channels.
- Rich Formatting and Multimedia: News Posts support dynamic content with rich formatting, images, videos, and web parts, allowing for visually appealing and engaging posts.
- Personalized News Feed: Using Microsoft Graph, SharePoint curates a personalized feed based on user interactions, followed sites, and frequent visits, ensuring relevant content reaches the right audience.
- Cross-Platform Distribution: News Posts are distributed across multiple channels, including the SharePoint start page, mobile app, Teams, and Viva Connections. They can also be shared via email.
- Organization News Sites: Posts from designated "official" or "authoritative" sites are visually distinguished with a color block on the title, making them stand out as critical company updates. This is useful for multi-geo organizations to highlight region-specific or company-wide news.
- Version Control and Scheduling: News Posts support draft vs. published states, allowing authors to work on content without premature visibility. Scheduling features enable posts to go live at specific times.
- Audience Targeting and Filtering: News Posts can be targeted to specific audiences, pinned, or filtered by properties like title or category, ensuring the right content reaches the intended users.
- Approval Workflows: Integration with Power Automate allows for approval processes, ensuring news posts are reviewed before publishing.
- Mobile Accessibility: News Posts are accessible via the SharePoint mobile app, enabling on-the-go access and interaction.
How to Create and Publish News Posts in SharePoint Online. Creating and publishing News Posts in SharePoint Online is straightforward.
- From the SharePoint Start Page:
- Navigate to the SharePoint start page via the Microsoft 365 App Launcher.
- Click + Create news post at the top.
- Select the site where you want to publish the post (e.g., team site or communication site).
- A blank news post page opens on the chosen site.
- From a Team or Communication Site:
- Go to the site’s homepage.
- If the News web part is present, click + Add in the News section.
- Alternatively, click + New at the top of the site, then select News post.
- Choose a template (Blank, Visual, or Basic Text) and click Create post.
- Using an Existing Post as a Template:
- Navigate to an existing news post.
- Click + New and select Copy of this news post to create a new post based on the original, preserving its structure but allowing edits. Note: Avoid using the generic "Copy to" function in the Site Pages library, as it doesn’t retain necessary metadata.
- Adding a News Post via Link:
- On the site, click + New > News link.
- Paste a web address to an existing news item or external content.
- Add a title (required), thumbnail (optional), and description (optional).
- Click Post to add the linked content as a news post. Note: Users may need to allow pop-ups in browsers like Safari for redirection.
Building the News Post
- Add a Headline:
- Enter a name for the post, which serves as the headline.
- Use the toolbar to add or change a header image.
- Add Content:
- If the content pane is enabled, use the Toolbox to add text, images, videos, documents, or other web parts.
- If not, click + to add web parts like text, images, or videos.
- Customize with Web Parts:
- Use web parts to embed multimedia, links, or calls to action (e.g., Button or People web parts for event registration or contact info).
- Save as Draft:
- News Posts are saved as drafts by default, visible only to the author or users with edit permissions until published.
- Publishing a News Post
- Manual Publishing:
- When ready, click Post news at the top right of the page.
- The post will sync with the SharePoint News feed and appear in the News section of the site, the SharePoint start page, and other configured locations (e.g., Teams or mobile app).
- Scheduling a Post:
- Enable scheduling in the Site Pages library (Site Content > Site Pages > Scheduling option).
- On the draft post, go to Page details, enable scheduling, and set the desired date and time.
- The post will publish automatically at the specified time.
- Approval Workflow (Optional):
- Set up a page approval flow using Power Automate in the Site Pages library.
- Submit the post for approval by clicking Submit for approval. The designated approver will receive an email, and the post will publish only after approval.
- Manual Publishing:
- Best Practices
- Use Categories: Create separate sites for news categories (e.g., Safety, HR) or tag posts with categories in the Pages library for better filtering.
- Keep Content Concise: Avoid fluff and use clear, direct messaging with calls to action for engagement.
- Store Images in SharePoint: Host images in SharePoint to ensure accessibility and prevent broken links. Use stock images or clean, thematic visuals for mobile compatibility.
- Use Page Templates: Save frequently used layouts as templates in the Pages library for consistency across posts.
- Test and Preview: Ensure the post displays well on all devices, especially mobile, and check for pop-up blocker issues with news links.