In Office 365, you may notice that there are more new things rolling out right now. This post is all about the new page editing experience and new web parts. Here’s what I’ll cover:
- How to use the new page editing interface
- How to use each of the new web parts
- How to set your new page as the homepage of your site.
First of all, here’s how to get there.
Go to Site Contents, and click the +New button. Choose Page.
(Alternately, you can click the Settings gear at the top right of your site, and click Add Page.)
(If this doesn’t happen for you, check out my other post.)
That’s pretty easy, right? Now here’s the new page authoring experience! As of now, all web parts are simply added above or below each other, and they stack vertically.
Updated 7/5/2017: I made a bunch of updates to this post, including several new web part, and several web part updates. Also, underneath each web part’s section, I added a link to Microsoft’s official documentation on that web part. There are going to be cases where the web part has been changed or updated and their documentation will most likely reflect those changes before this blog post does.
Updated 7/5/2017: You can also change your layout by adding what’s called a Section layout. Notice that when you hover over the page, you have a couple of different lines across the page where you can click the plus. The wider line will have extra options in it, for you to pick a column layout. The shorter line is actually inside of the default single column layout on the page.
Updated 11/27/2017: You can click the little double-arrow at the top right (see above screenshot) to expand the screen full of web parts to make it bigger, and/or use the search box to type the name of the web part you need.
Here’s the list of all the web parts, as of right now.
Text
Type free-form text here, do some simple formatting, and even choose styles like Heading 1, 2, 3.
Microsoft’s documentation on how to use the Text web part
Image
This is SO much better than the old image web part ever was! Check it out, as soon as I decide to add an image, it prompts me to select an image from Recent, Site (this site), or Upload. Whatever size your image is though, that’s the size it will show on the page. There’s no re-sizing it later. I can type a caption under it, and in the web part property toolpane, the only option is to add some alt text.
Microsoft’s documentation on using the Image web part
File Viewer
Updated 11/27/2017: The name has been changed from the “Document” web part to the “File Viewer”. Inserting this web part will immediately bring up a list of recent documents (Office files), with the ability to switch to Site, to browse the site’s libraries, or Upload. There is a space underneath the document to add a description, and in the web part toolpane on the right, it lets you pick the page number or slide number that you want it to start on. It currently only supports doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx.
Microsoft’s documentation on the file viewer web part
Link
(Added 3/8/2017) Add a quick hyperlink to something. It will render nicely on the page, and will automatically show some metadata info and even an image. There are no extra settings. In this screenshot, I added my site http://www.iwmentor.com, and here’s the way it looks:
Reference Link: Use the Link web part
Embed
Use an embed code to display content here. A common example is embedding a YouTube video on your page. When you click the Share button in YouTube, one of the options is embed code. Simply copy and paste that code into this web part’s properties. Pretty much any site/service that provides an embed code, will be able to be used here. Only iframe embed codes are supported, and only from secure websites (HTTPS). Here are some supported sources: Esri ArcGIS Online, GeoGebra, Giphy, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Forms, Google Maps, Infogram, Microsoft Channel 9, Microsoft Docs.com, Microsoft Office Mix, Microsoft OneDrive (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF documents), Microsoft Power BI, Microsoft Pulse, Microsoft Sway, Mixcloud, Poll Everywhere, Sketchfab, SoundCloud, Vimeo, Vine, YouTube. You can also embed a PowerApp, as I wrote about here.
Microsoft’s documentation on how to use the Embed web part
Highlighted Content
This is my favorite one as of now (10/15/2016). This is like the Content Search web part, but MUCH easier! There are a lot of options to configure in the toolpane on the right when you edit the web part. Keep in mind that this uses SharePoint search, so users will inherently only see content that they have permissions to see. Here’s the breakdown:
Content
- Source: The scope of where you want to show content from. This site, this site collection, or all sites. Default = This site
- Type: Documents, Pages, Videos, Images, Events, Issues, Tasks, Links, Contacts, All. Default = Documents
- You can also click Add Content Type, to add another type, so you’re not stuck with just one. From what I can tell, you can add a bunch of them.
- Document Type: If you choose Document in the Type box, you can further narrow it down to a specific type of file. The other content types don’t have this second option. The choices are: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Visio, PDF, or Any. You can add multiple document types. Default = Any
Filter and Sort
- Filter: You can add multiple filters. Here they are:
- Title includes the words – There is another box to enter the search words.
- Content includes the words – There is another box to enter the search words.
- Recently added – Since: choose from Today, Yesterday, Earlier this week, Earlier this month, Last month, Earlier this year, Last year
- Recently changed – Since: choose from Today, Yesterday, Earlier this week, Earlier this month, Last month, Earlier this year, Last year
- Created by – Type someone’s name, or use [Me], if you’d like the logged in user to just see their own stuff.
- Modified By – Type someone’s name, or use [Me], if you’d like the logged in user to just see their own stuff.
- Managed Property – The managed properties are the default site columns and other built in properties.
Since the Managed Property Name field has so many options in the drop-down, you can use the Find a managed property box, to type what you’re looking for. In this screenshot, see that I typed “assigned” and that made it easier to find the AssignedTo field.
- Sort By: Choose from: Most recent, Most viewed, Trending, Managed property ascending, Managed property descending. Default = Most recent
- If you choose Managed property ascending (or descending), then you’ll have another drop-down to pick which managed property you want to sort by.
Notice in this screenshot, this is a highlighted content web part showing only items that I have tagged with “power” (for things pertaining to power users). Hint: I always like to turn on the enterprise keywords feature on libraries, for quick and informal tagging).
Layout
Display the content as cards (those rectangles), a carousel (similar to the image gallery web part setting), as a good old list, Updated 7/5/2017: or as a filmstrip.
Show this many items at a time
Type the number of items you’d like to see in this web part. There is no paging.
Hide this web part if there’s nothing to show
If there’s no content in your web part, the title won’t even show. For example, if you’re rolling up all events, and you have no events, the web part won’t appear until some events exist and have been indexed.
Display Map
(Added here 3/8/2017) This part lets you map each attribute of the items, to specific properties of those items. Here’s a little something I whipped up, to explain what each of these mappings means:
There are a couple of quick things to point out in the above screenshot. For Title, it defaults to UserName and then Title, but doesn’t actually display any of the usernames, so I’m not sure why that’s there. Also, for the Initials, that’s if you want initials to show instead of the person image URL, I think. When I changed it to a different value, it replaced the little circle where my face is, with other text. Also, note that when changing some of these, you can’t just change it to absolutely anything you want, it has to be a certain field type, etc. For example, if I try to change one of the “color” ones to a date field, that doesn’t make much sense.
And finally the web part title…
It defaults to the name of the sort level that you select, plus the type of content. You can just type something else instead. For example, in the screenshot above, it says “Trending documents”, but I can just edit that text directly on the page.
Microsoft’s documentation on how to use the Highlighted content web part
Bing Maps
(Added here 3/8/2017) This web part lets you type in an address, and it will automagically show a map of that location! Give the pin on the map a specific label or change the address that appears on your page.
Microsoft’s documentation on how to use the Bing maps web part
Divider
This will insert a line across your page, to allow you to delineate between different sections of content visually if you’d like.
Document Library
(Added here 5/24/2017) Pick a library from the current site, to display here. Settings let you choose the library, the existing view, and the size (5, 15, or 30 items).
You’ll need to create your view in your library ahead of time, so that you can select it from the View drop-down box. If anyone wants to navigate to the full library to see more files, they can click “See all”. Right now, managed metadata fields don’t work in here. Also, if a user going to the page doesn’t have access to a library that you’re displaying as a web part, the whole page will pop up an access denied error.
Microsoft’s documentation on how to use the Document Library web part
Events
(Added here 7/5/2017) The events web part uses a SharePoint calendar, and has a very nice, modern way of displaying them. Click to Add an event, and here’s the interface:
Notice that when I typed a location, it automatically shows the location on a map! Alternately, if it’s a virtual event, you can input the URL for it, in the Link field. Scroll down to type in a description, and there’s also a section at the bottom to add people. This will end up showing on your Delve profile, as an event you’re attending.
This is what the web part looks like, with multiple events in it. Notice that there is a link on each one, to click to Add to my calendar.
The web part settings let you choose which SharePoint calendar to show, pick a specific category if you’d like, and even pick from a date range such as “next two weeks” or “all upcoming events”.
Microsoft’s documentation: How to Use the Events web part
Group Calendar
Pick an Office 365 Group, to display that group’s calendar on your page. Use the slider to determine how many events you’d like to be displayed at once. This web part is going to be perfect for putting it on the home page of the SharePoint site of your Office 365 groups, so that people don’t have to flip back and forth to Outlook in order to see the shared calendar.
Microsoft Forms
Microsoft Forms are a very simplistic way to gather one-way information from people inside or outside of your organization. This web part lets you put a form right on the page, and choose whether you’d like the results to show as well.
Check out this other post that I wrote about Microsoft Forms
Hero
(Added here 7/5/2017) The hero web part gives a lovely way of presenting news and announcements as tiles, in a couple of different types of layouts. This web part was first introduced as a default part of SharePoint Communication sites, but is also available on any other modern page as a web part. In the web part settings, you can choose either a tiles or a layers layout. Within each of these, you can pick one through five.
In a SharePoint Communication site, your hero web part will already be populated and set up, with a lot of example content. When inserting a new hero web part from scratch, it looks like this:
In the example above, I picked five tiles. For each tile, I then set up what image I want to show, and what URL to navigate to when the image is clicked.
When setting one of these up from scratch, when you click Select link, it makes you select an image. Then, after it’s selected, you’ll have access to the properties for that tile when you hover over it and click the little edit (pencil) icon.
Here are the settings for a tile. Pick a link. Type a title if you’d like, choose whether you want the title to show on the tile, pick an image. When you choose auto-selected, it will show some generic, business-type picture. Choose custom image to pick your own, or color only will just show a solid color. The color it shows is the same as your site’s theme main color. The Options section will let you add a call to action link if you’d like, but not on all sizes of tiles, just the bigger ones. Here is a screenshot of some settings, with a screenshot of the corresponding tile.
You can also just drag tiles around to rearrange their order within the web part.
Microsoft’s documentation: Use the Hero web part
Image Gallery
(Added here 3/8/2017) The image gallery is a nice way to display some images from your site, with two different layouts to choose from. When you add this web part, click the Add button in order to add each image that you would like displayed. You CAN add multiple images at a time once you’re in the image selector. Each time you click Add, you are prompted to pick from Recent, Site, Upload, or From a Link. You can also optionally type in a title and caption for each image.
The web part properties simply let you choose from tiles or carousel. This example uses carousel. I like the fact that all images will show as the same size in either of these layouts, so they’re not awkward looking, they’re uniform.
Select each image and that’s where you can set the title, etc. If an image has a title, it will show underneath the image, like this:
Microsoft’s documentation on how to use the Image Gallery web part
List
(Added here 5/24/2017) Pick a list from the current site, to display here. This is just like the library web part. Settings let you choose the library, the existing view, and the size (5, 15, or 30 items).
You’ll need to create your view in your list ahead of time, so that you can select it from the View drop-down box. If anyone wants to navigate to the full library to see more files, they can click “See all”. Right now, managed metadata fields don’t work in here. Also, if a user going to the page doesn’t have access to a list that you’re displaying as a web part, the whole page will pop up an access denied error.
Microsoft: How to use the List web part
News
Updated 7/5/2017: This is what the news web part looks like when you first insert it on a page.
When you click the Add news button, it’s a little confusing because it puts you on a brand new, empty page. Type a page title, add some web parts like text, images, or anything at all. Then, click Publish at the top right. This creates a new page in your pages library, which automatically rolls up in your news web part. Here, you can see that I added one page about Microsoft Teams, and it is now displayed in the web part. Also I did add one image on the new page I created, but it looks like I really should have used a square image, so that it would look a little nicer in here. As I add pages, it fills them in all four boxes of the web part.
The web part settings let me choose a layout for my news:
Office 365 Video
Embed a video from your organization’s Office 365 Video portal. It doesn’t have an easy video picker like for the documents and images, but it does give you a hyperlink in the web part properties to Go to your organization’s video portal. Then, go to your portal, click on the video you want, and then grab the URL of it from the address bar in the browser. Paste that in the Video address box. In my classes, students can go in here and watch the recording of their training any time for 30 days after they take the class. So, this web part is useful for quickly displaying everything they need on one page, so that they don’t have to separately navigate to the portal. The only setting in the properties is Show title and video info. Notice in this screenshot where it shows on the video, the text “SharePoint Power Users Day 1”, and all of the data under that. You can also type a caption under the video in the web part.
Microsoft: How to use the Office 365 Video web part
People
(Added here 7/5/2017) This web part lets you manually add people. There are no web part settings, just a web part where you can type in people’s names. It resolves each name and displays their photo if they have one in their profile. You can also rename the web part (just like with all web parts), in the gray text that says People profiles, you can type anything you want, like “HR Department Contacts”. Then, when people visit your page and click on a person, the profile info shows in a pretty little pop up box, which is good that it doesn’t navigate them away from your site.
Power BI
(Added here 3/8/2017) This web part lets you embed a Power BI report right on your page! First, you’ll need a Power BI license, then you’ll need a published Power BI report. Here are the steps to take, to get the report URL, to put in the web part:
- Pick which report you want to use. So, so from app.powerbi.com, log in and it will take you to My Workspace. Click the little hamburger (three lines) menu on the left, to expand out the left pane.
- Go to the Reports section, and open the report you want. Click the File menu, and choose Embed in SharePoint Online.
- That gives you the URL that you need, copy it to the clipboard, so that you can use it for the Power BI web part.
See below, there are a few options. You paste in the report link, then pick a page name, and even choose the display size and whether you want the navigation or filter panes.
The navigation pane shows at the bottom and lets you flip between different pages of the report, like this:
Finally, the Filter Pane will let you use any page level filters that have been created in that report:
Microsoft: How to use the Power BI web part
Quick Chart
(Added here 3/8/2017) The quick chart web part is static, and is not connected to any kind of data source. It simply shows a chart or graph based on information that you type into the web part’s settings. You can pick a layout of column or pie, type in the names of the labels, and enter up to 12 data points. Here you can see I typed in some information about class enrollments:
Microsoft: How to use the Quick Chart web part
Quick Links
Updated 7/5/2017: Quick links are not just the old fashioned hyperlinks that you’re used to, where you have to go find the URL and all that. This new web part is much more intuitive. When you add quick links to the page and click the Add button, you are immediately prompted with a list of recent files and pages you’ve been working on. You do also have the option of pasting a link in From a link. When you click to select an item, you are prompted to type the text for the hyperlink. You can edit the web part title directly on the page. In this first screenshot, there are the settings for the web part. The second screenshot shows settings for one individual link that I’ve added to the web part.
Microsoft: How to use the Quick Links web part
Site Activity
Updated 7/5/2017: This web part shows the files that have been worked on recently on your site. The only setting is to enter a number as to how many items to show at one time.
Microsoft: How to use the Site Activity web part
Stream
Microsoft Stream is the new video service as part of Office 365, that is replacing Office 365 Video. The settings let you pick a single video or a whole channel, and you can also pick a specific place within the video to start from.
Microsoft: How to use the Stream web part
Yammer Feed
For the Yammer feed, in the properties, simply paste in the URL of a Yammer group, person, topic, or home. You can choose to display it as small, medium, or large.
Microsoft: How to use the Yammer feed web part
Ready to make the big transition, and set this new page as your site’s homepage? Go to Site Contents, click on your Site Pages library, select the new page you created, click the ellipsis in the toolbar, and choose Make Homepage. There are two things that have to be in place, that you may want to double check first:
- Your Site Pages library needs to be set to the new list experience (in library settings –>advanced settings)
- Your new home page has to be Published. (see the Publish button in the screenshot in the “Documents” section above)
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Watch my SharePoint Power Hour LIVE on 10/19, to see this demo…
Here’s a demo from Microsoft as well: Updates to the SharePoint app, team sites and publishing experience