Communication is key for practically every industry and organization. For organizations beyond a certain size, communicating news or achievements in person is not feasible. This makes having a centralized content management technology and policy of critical importance, to create the right context for content creators and managers to produce content that flows smoothly and reaches its target audience.
SharePoint is one of the many Content-Management-Systems (CMS) available that allow organizations to ensure employees have a centralized place to stay up to date on news from different departments and teams, limiting excessive emailing within the company and enhancing corporate identification.
With the Online SharePoint Modern Experience, the process of creating content became easier and richer, with 3 different possibilities for creating news in SharePoint:
- Adding a News post from the SharePoint start page
- Adding a News post on a team site or communication site
- Adding a News post by using a link to an external website or other content within your site
Read more on the 3 different ways for creating news in SharePoint.
Publishing creative News posts
If you choose Option 1 or Option 2 above, you will be able to select a news page template or start building one of your own with web parts such as text, images, or video.
Tip! You can also add BindTuning Accordion to build a list of follow up Q&A for each article, BindTuning Maps to illustrate event or conferences locations or any of the other BindTuning Web Parts that allow editors to present content more dynamically.
If you choose Option 3 above, and insert a link, the news post will automatically be generated with information from the site/page/link content.
In all options, a Site Page will be created and hosted at Site Contents » Site Pages.
News categorization made easy
An important aspect to keep in mind when creating any kind of news policy or strategy is that employees look for news primarily by topic, not by channel or date. News categorization is therefore critical when building a system capable of guiding decision-making and time management, supporting better information architecture and smart management of resources. It also allows news editors or content managers to target news depending on the audience and its topics of interest.
Using BindTuning News Web Part, content editors are able to create and customize News categories with colors and icons.
- Access Site Contents » Site Pages.
- Add a new column “Choice” column by clicking on “+ Add Column” and selecting the option “Choice” from the dropdown menu.
- Insert your categories as “Choices”
- From Site Contents » Site Pages open the link to one piece of news of your choice.
- Click to “Edit” the page
- Select “Page details” and fill the “Category” field with the options from the dropdown menu
- Add BindTuning News to your page
- Configure BindTuning News to display Modern SharePoint News (both News links and News posts)
- Define “News List” as the Site Collection “Site Pages”
- Choose “Filtering Options: CAML Query”
- Add the following CAML Query, as mentioned in Display news from classic and modern SharePoint using the same web part - HANDS ON SharePoint (handsontek.net) to filter the last 10 modern news from the entire Site Pages library
- Tip! Copy paste from the attached file.
- Map fields per the below
- Hit the floppy disk icon to Save list configurations
- Define Item Sorting Options if relevant, using the column name of the Site Pages library – eg.: “Created” » Ascending
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- Click “Publish” – your news item will appear labeled with Category
- Click “Publish” – your news item will appear labeled with Category
- Customize categories with Colors and Icons
- Click the pencil icon on the web part to “Edit Web Part”
- Select “Category Settings” from the configuration panel that opens on the right
- Toggle “Color coding” and “Custom Icons”
- Add each category, split by semicolon (;) to the
- Color coding settings field: Insert the color name or hex code next to each category within square brackets – Eg.: Product[orange] or Product[#ff5349
- Custom icon settings: Insert the icon name next to each category within square brackets – Eg.: Product[fa-rocket]
- Tip! For a wide list of icons access https://fontawesome.com/v4.7/ (Font Awesome – Version 4 only)
- Republish the page – each news category will be easily identified through its custom icon and custom color.
Tip! Using BindTuning News you can also define how you want content to be shown to users, when they click a news entry, making it possible to preview the news article content or the actual SharePoint News page in a modal, without leaving context.
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