It appears that if you click the "+ Add" button on the News web part that the subsequently created article then gets added to the News widget. (red highlight) If I create a new Modern Page by using the "Add a Page" or clicking into the Pages library and creating a page, then those pages DO NOT get added to news - even though those pages sit in the same library as the pages created from the News widget. (yellow highlights). Is there any way to force a Modern Page into the News feed, even if I don't use the "+ Add" link? This feels like something that a lot of users will find counterintuitive.

Hi Kevin, Thanks for reaching out. We build the news feature as a content distribution system, while the founding piece (each news page) is just a modern site page. The promise of news feature is that we provide a rollup experience, and in the future notification service to deliver news-worthy contents to desired audiences. Meanwhile, there are other usages of pages - a user can create a site page for any purpose (say, create a page to list out all the team members) and put it anywhere she desires (say, pin to the left nav, link from the site home page using the link web part). This page is not necessarily news-worthy and need to be presented at a prominent place of a site, or delivered to every site memeber via notification service. However, we do envision it will be really easy for one to switch/flip a page to a news page in the near future. That said, you have a fair point on users getting confused as different +add button delivers the page to different places. Is it a matter of how we name these entry points? If we are more specific than calling it "Add a page", will that help with the case? I just don't think every site page a user created should be pushed to News - which itself might be a surprise to one if her intention is not to add a news page. Thoughts? Happy to discuss more. FYI - Alina Skarbovsky

You are right, Kevin and there is indeed a property that defines a page to be news post. That property is however currnetly hidden, but we are working on UX that will allow users to publish any modern page to News, even if it was created from a different entry point.

Thanks Kevin. Let me summarize: Problem: So the confusion is really around the naming mapping and where things showing up: Fundamentally: "Pages" (page library) includes all kinds of pages, including modern site page, wiki page, news page, ... ; In the view of a page library, there is no easy way to tell the what kind of page one is. On the entry-point front: "Add a page" entry point is specifically adding a modern site page; When add a page from news web part, it goes into the "Pages" library, and also shows up in the "News" web part; Solution: I don't know how much we can change the fundamental level how we store pages at this point: We put news page in the same library, and using the "site page" content type with the vision in mind that we are going to enable quick switch between a non-news modern site page and a news page, without copying/moving the file. We used not-so-user-friendly columns to indicate if a page is a news page or a normal site page: "Promoted State" and "First published date". You can find it by showing more columns in the page library. When the value of "Promoted State" is 2, it is a published news page; if it is 1, it is a not-yet-published news page (draft). What we could probably do to alleviate the confusion: In the default page library view, provide a section for News pages based on the above columns' value. At the entry-point, be more specific on the "add a page" option to indicate it is a site page, not news page.

This fix is rolling out now. You should see an option to "Promote to news" showing up in your pages experience in a few weeks.

I'm curious about the opposite problem: prior to hub sites and news rollups being rolled out, a few pages were created by our consultant as news pages, but they should be site pages. When I turn on the hub news, these pages appear in the news but shouldn't be there.

Move Modern Page to News feed??? | Microsoft Community Hub

11 Replies

Emma Dong
Former Employee
Dec 10, 2016
Hi Kevin,

Thanks for reaching out.

We build the news feature as a content distribution system, while the founding piece (each news page) is just a modern site page. The promise of news feature is that we provide a rollup experience, and in the future notification service to deliver news-worthy contents to desired audiences.

Meanwhile, there are other usages of pages - a user can create a site page for any purpose (say, create a page to list out all the team members) and put it anywhere she desires (say, pin to the left nav, link from the site home page using the link web part). This page is not necessarily news-worthy and need to be presented at a prominent place of a site, or delivered to every site memeber via notification service. However, we do envision it will be really easy for one to switch/flip a page to a news page in the near future.

That said, you have a fair point on users getting confused as different +add button delivers the page to different places. Is it a matter of how we name these entry points? If we are more specific than calling it "Add a page", will that help with the case? I just don't think every site page a user created should be pushed to News - which itself might be a surprise to one if her intention is not to add a news page.

Thoughts? Happy to discuss more.

FYI - Alina Skarbovsky
- KevinCrossman
  MVP
  Dec 10, 2016
  Alternatively, some property you could set on the page to have it roll up into news. Sort of like how you can have:
  
  Web Part Page
  Wiki Page
  Site Page (modern page)
  and...
  News Page
  - Alina Skarbovsky
    Former Employee
    Dec 10, 2016
    You are right, Kevin and there is indeed a property that defines a page to be news post. That property is however currnetly hidden, but we are working on UX that will allow users to publish any modern page to News, even if it was created from a different entry point.
- KevinCrossman
  MVP
  Dec 10, 2016
  Yes, that was exactly where I was headed.
  
  If +Add for News ended up in a library called NewsPages (or something similar) then it would make clear sense why an added "Page" wasn't showing up. It presumably would also facilitate the moving of "pages" into that library where they could be then subsequently picked up for display in the News widget.
  
  It's extraordinarily confusing if both page types end up in the same library and then are treated differently in the News web part.
  
  Agree you wouldn't want to pull all SitePages into the News Feed.

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Move Modern Page to News feed???

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