Structure your intranet – page metadata coming to SharePoint in Office 365
Published Jul 09 2018 09:00 AM 48.1K Views
Microsoft

Ensure your content reaches your intended audience. Now you can tag SharePoint pages with properties (metadata) to help best describe them. Plus, use custom Pages library columns to filter and target pages. This allows you to reach the right audience ensuring the right content gets viewed by the right people.

 

The Page details pane opens when clicking the Page details button while in edit mode of a SharePoint page.The Page details pane opens when clicking the Page details button while in edit mode of a SharePoint page.

 

Structure your intranet by leveraging the power of page metadata. The balance of a modern intranet rests in between the dynamic display of information and the ability to better curate and target who sees what.

 

Let’s dive into the details…

 

Add custom metadata to your SharePoint pages

You can easily tag pages with metadata to ensure your content reaches your intended audiences in the way you intended. And it’s easy to adjust inline by using the Page details edit pane. Simply create custom columns within the Pages library of your site, and then use them to organize, target and filter pages by this metadata using web parts like Highlighted Content and News (more on this below).

 

Add custom columns to the Pages library of each SharePoint site.Add custom columns to the Pages library of each SharePoint site.

 

To add a new custom property to a page, create a column for that property in the Pages library. The column stores the property (metadata) and is then available in the Page details edit pane for each page in that site. Once you're in edit mode on a page, click Page details to open the edit pane. As an author, you can add/edit values of any metadata columns that exist in the corresponding pages library.

 

Learn more how to view, edit, and add page properties.

 

Use the Highlighted Content and News web parts to better organize, target and filter your SharePoint pages

You can use the properties set for individual pages to organize and group them effectively. While editing the Highlighted Content or News web part, change the source to "The page library on this site" and you'll see "Page properties" as a filter option. Set your parameters and watch the web parts and your pages dynamically display as you intended.

 

Use the filtering capabilities on page properties to refine and present your SharePoint pages as you intended.Use the filtering capabilities on page properties to refine and present your SharePoint pages as you intended.

 

Learn more how to use the Highlighted Content and News web parts.

 

Display page metadata for your readers to see

You can expose some of the metadata directly on the page by using the Page Properties web part to provide greater context for your readers. Add the Page properties web part to your page, and then add the page properties you wish to display. You can choose different information to display across your different pages. The web part supports managed metadata columns – you can either type the term manually or click the tag icon to select from the available terms. 

 

Select which custom page properties you wish to show to your readers via the Page properties web part.Select which custom page properties you wish to show to your readers via the Page properties web part.

Learn more how to use the Page properties web part.

 

Get started adding structure to your intranet

Better organize your pages and influence how they are viewed based on specific criteria (metadata). You can program things like region or role, what page type or page status – and then present views that make it possible for people to see, or not see, the page based on how they meet that criteria.

 

We want to empower you and every person on your team to achieve more. Let us know what you need next. We are always open to feedback via UserVoice and continued dialog in the SharePoint community in the Microsoft Tech Community —and we always have an eye on tweets to @SharePoint. Let us know.

 

Thanks,

Mark Kashman, senior product manager – SharePoint / Microsoft

 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

 

Q: How can I expect the new page metadata features to roll out to Office 365 customers?

A: These page metadata features will begin to roll out to all Targeted Release customers this week, and will be completed within 2–3 weeks. We then are targeting end of July 2018 for complete worldwide roll out into production.

 

49 Comments
Bronze Contributor

That's a great welcome to the Modern SharePoint news pages @Mark Kashman! Looking forward to seeing this page metadata functionality coming the upcoming weeks.

Silver Contributor
Great to see the SharePoint Conference announcements come to life!
Brass Contributor

You can program things like region or role, what page type or page status – and then present views that make it possible for people to see, or not see, the page based on how they meet that criteria”

 

How? Filter on user profile properties? Custom code or ootb?

 

Any way to build navigation based on metadata?

 

p.s this is great, been waiting for a while now!

Iron Contributor

Works great!  I like being able to add the Page Properties to pages in a webpart, looks crisp!

Brass Contributor

I've had a play and it troubles me that I can't filter by property across all the sites under my hub site. Previously news was rolling up to the hub site homepage. Now, in order to deploy metadata I have to select "This site". Not sure how I'm going to achieve what I want now - all of the sites news rolling up to the hub site, displaying certain content based on certain properties. Bah!

Iron Contributor

This is really nice, now hopefully they will introduce a feature to use the URL parameter as your filter. Like in the good old days. That way I can show pages dynamic based on the URL. Thanks.

Deleted
Not applicable

Great! I have been waiting for that already very long time. Thank you!

Iron Contributor

I believe we have a bug.  We created 2 news web parts on our home page. one filters where Page Properties Category (site column added to Page library) = Tech and the other where Category = Social, but as we reload the home page, many times, the News filters correctly, others, it does not.  Both in IE11 and Chrome.

 

Update:  i am able to reproduce.  if we have 3 news webparts on the same page, the top one filters correctly, the rest do not.

Brass Contributor

Awesome to see this coming! Very excited to actually use it. One question, does this work with custom content types? I created a child content type of Site Page (calling it News Page) and adding an MM field to it. Will I be able to use that page property to filter and sort?

Iron Contributor

Just as promised. Information architects rejoice!

Copper Contributor

Great news! Can't wait to see it in action.

Bronze Contributor

Can existing columns in the SitePages library be used for metadata, or do we have to recreate those columns?

I see the page details button while in Edit mode of a site, but I don't see my new columns, neither old nor new ones.

 

*edit* 

figured out why. None of my columns get added to the "Site Page" content type. Will this behavior change? Will existing columns retroactively be added to this Content Type?

Also, there is a new content type in the Site Pages library called "Repost Page" (In German "Neubereitstellungsseite" - whatever that means), what is this supposed to do?. When I manually switch to this content type for an existing page, my new columns appear in the PageDetails. Old ones have to be added manually.

Further, you can't edit the PageDetails directly after creating a new site, as it doesn't have a name yet is not saved to the library yet.

Iron Contributor

Identified a bug when editing meta data of site pages having taxonomy column

Steps to reproduce the problem :

 

1. Create two taxonomy columns in Site Pages

2.  Now click on the icon to select taxonomy as shown below , after click on the icon you now cant change taxonomy column values

 1.png 

But if you directly click on cross and then change taxonomy data , it works 

 

page2.PNG 

Iron Contributor

First of all, great new features. The page details panel works good.

 

I do have a question about the new page properties web part. Does it support all type of properties?

I just ran some quick tests with different kind of columns. I actually don't see properties of type multiple lines of text, yes/no, hyperlink, picture & currency in the dropdown list in the configuration of that web part. 

 

The type of properties I see in the config are

pagepropertieswebpart.png

The type of properties I have added in the pages library

customcolumnspageslibrary.png

Brass Contributor

Thanks for this new feature, we will definitely build things from this !!

 

Would be nice being able to filter metadata from differents sources... (like with a news webpart on the hub site...)

 

Iron Contributor

Thanks for the update!

 

Also seeing a minor issue with the News web part when filtering by Page Property using a column we created.  It works when I setup the filter and publish the page.  Then when I refresh the page it goes back to showing all news without the filter.

Deleted
Not applicable

When dealing with Pages and News Posts in the Highlighted content web part, can't filter on page properties by anything other than the page library. For aggregating this content to our Hub or other sites, it would be great if the filter included page properties when the source is changed to look at the current, specific, or all sites.

My desired use case is to create Tags as page properties to filter both Pages and News Posts via either Highlighted content or News web parts. Highlighted content works, but only if the page library is selected as the source. On the flipside, the News web part does allow for the selection of one or more sites but only on News Posts (still trying to figure out the difference between a page and a post). Either way, this presents a challenge that could be remedied simply by allowing the filter to include page properties when the source is changed to look at the current, specific, or all sites.

Page Library works...Page Library works...

..by site, not so much..by site, not so much
Bonus points for helping me understand the difference between a page and a post.


Bronze Contributor

@Deleted the infrastructure is still rolling out. I received my page details just today, but am missing the PageDetails filter in the highlighted content webpart as well. I'll just check back next week ;)

Brass Contributor

Fantastic news! We've been waiting for these enhancements for months.

 

@Mark Kashman - I've added custom columns to my modern site pages and have made them required. However, when users 'publish' their site pages, they are not prompted to enter metadata for the custom columns. Do you know if there are any plans to implement this functionality?

 

It's worth noting that users are prompted to enter metadata when publishing classic sites and pages (if there are required columns that need to be filled in).

Brass Contributor

@Expiscornovus - I am also unable to select Yes/No fields in the Page Properties web part.

Copper Contributor

I have no button (Page details). Why?

 

PageDetailsButtonMissing.png

Iron Contributor

@Lars Nolmans, are you on targeted release?  My guess is that the functionality is still being pushed out/down.  We still have a few bugs such as having 2 filtered News webparts on the same page, only the top one filters correctly, so as @Ivan Unger suggested, might take a week to start/complete rolling out...

Copper Contributor

@JHerschel Thxs for the info, I change the Release preference from Standard Release to Targeted Release.

So now I'm going whait copple days.

Iron Contributor

Great news @Mark Kashman :)

I have a couple of questions.

I have created a few extra columns in my page library.  If I add a new page (like an ordinary user, just pressing Add a page) and then press the page properties on the page I don't get to see the new columns. for them to show up the page needs to be published, then change the content type to Repost page, then save the changes. After that I can now see the columns that I created in the Page details when I edit the page and I can see them in the Page properties web part - they were not visible before as @Ivan Unger pointed out as well.

So will it be standard functionallity that we have to manually change the contetn type to Repost page for the new columns to show up? Or will I have to create a new content type including the columns and then making that one the Standard content type?

Thanks in advance :)

Bronze Contributor

@Malene Friborg: this issue has been resolved automatically for me. It just took a while for the infrastructure to toll out.

What is important though, is that the page is saved (not necessarily published) to the library. When creating a new page, it usually takes a few seconds to save the page after you've entered the title.

Iron Contributor

@Ivan Unger thanks a lot :) I just need to be patient.... Hard for me ;)

Iron Contributor

Can anyone confirm the roll out to targeted release is completed?  I have 2 News web parts on a page and the filters for page properties are not consistently working.  Thanks for any feedback.

Iron Contributor

@Mark Kashmanonce the nits & nats are worked-out with the new meta feature-set, are there plans to roll-out this functionality to the Calendar/Event service? 

please please please...please please please...

The Calendar/Event service has been updated a lot, but it seems to still be a bit behind in our ability to personalize.  It would be high-value to open-up calendar functionality to allow us to:

  • Add multiple "category" fields
  • Select more than one category for an event
  • Tag events with managed metadata & Folksonomy
  • Add web-part to an event, to reveal related News Articles (based on common meta)

If you like these suggestions, please vote for them on User Voice

Copper Contributor

Is this available for GCC Moderate customers?  If not, any ideas when?  Thanks

Microsoft

Thanks all for the great feedback! I'm a PM for this area and appreciate everyone taking the time to share their thoughts. These features are available in production worldwide.

 

@Matthew Barker and @Deleted - We are reviewing our next steps in the hub metadata and web part filtering experience, and understand this is commonly requested. Thanks for sharing your scenarios!

@Alexander Broere - Thanks for the feedback!

@JHerschel and @Joe McGowan - Thanks for mentioning the issue! We are investigating the inconsistent filter on the news web part.

@Harsh Damania - This should now be fixed. Thanks for giving us a heads-up!

@Expiscornovus and @Mohammad Housaini- Currently the page properties web part supports Single Line of Text, Choice, Number, Date and Time, Person or Group, and Managed Metadata. There is additional behind-the-scenes work that needs to happen for us to render the other column types and we have this down as an area to investigate.

@Mohammad Housaini - We are reviewing our next steps with the required column functionality. Thanks for the feedback!

@Beth Hall - Thanks for the feedback and for making a User Voice entry! We are reviewing our next steps in this space.

Deleted
Not applicable

It's been mentioned in this thread without a follow-up.

Is anyone else having issues putting a filter in place for the New web part (based on page properties) only for it to work in preview mode but not in published view? If I refresh the published page, it filters properly, but I have to refresh the page EVERY time I come back to it. In addition, sometimes when I refresh, I get nothing in the web part at all. And finally, when I go back in to edit mode, the filter appears not to be working (even thought it is setup correctly) until I reapply the filter.

Iron Contributor

@Deleted, We saw similar 'issue' when setting the filter, applying, then publishing.  It worked, then it didn't, and after publishing, we would have to refresh the page many times.  Do you have more than one news web part on the page?  That was the problem with us.  The top one worked fine, the second would act 'wacky' and did not work.

Iron Contributor

I  have been testing this feature out in a couple of hub site families plus using the default content type hub to supply site columns and content types to every site as desired.

 

- As others might have mentioned, there is no filtering on custom content types in the highlighted content wp - site columns work fine (RefinableStringsnn)

- If  I want to add an end date (from existing site columns,) to a news post to in  site page library, the first thing I notice that it doesn't appear in page details, under any managed properties.

new post more details.PNG

 

This presents a problem to my users who want to set an expiry date on a news post. This is before I start looking at views or Flows to handle the unpublishing / archiving of a news post

Iron Contributor

@Daniel Westerdale , does this thread help?  if you end up using Flow, it discusses the columns to set/change

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/SharePoint/Remove-items-from-News-on-SharePoint-Communication...

Iron Contributor

@JHerschelthanks.  yes it does.  As an aside I was able to add an end date field to a page . The trick is to add either to a content type or simply add to a library (no custom content type) .  Looks like I couldn't combine both.   I will see if I can't use a filter against [Today] + 1 and also try setting  Promoted Sate to 0 with Flow  which I understand turns a news post to an standard site page. 

 

 

 

Iron Contributor

I've expanded on @Deleted recommendations and created a UserVoice suggestion to enhance how the Highlighted Content web part could support aggregating and filtering "related" items from throughout the Hub ecosystem.

 

The approach is to have a consistent Metadata field model across all categories of content (Pages, Articles, Events, Documents).

Tell the highlighted content web part what fields to use and what locations to source from.

Have the web part reveal all related items grouped by Pages, Articles, Events, Docs.

 

Please add any suggestions you have for additional flexibility and vote for this important enhancement!

Iron Contributor

As I set-up a new demo intranet that is only using the new metadata functionality to link related pages (rather than links being manually created), I am using Managed Metadata Site Columns for different purposes in different parts of the Intranet. This drives a need to tweak their displayed titles when revealing in the Page Properties web part.  Additionally, some of our column names are shortened or cryptic, and often times the true purpose of a column changes slightly over the course of time.

The column name is displayed in the web part and cannot be changed.

It is important to have the ability to change the displayed column name in the web part set-up. 

3ecfc15c-1c6d-424f-a6dd-05199ab1fd18.png

Iron Contributor

@DeletedRE: Bonus points for helping me understand the difference between a page and a post.

@Susan Hanleyexplains the difference in her response to this discussion chain.

A News Post is a Site Page with the "Promoted" state changed from 0 to 2.

Copper Contributor

Good Feature!

Brass Contributor

We are looking to use this feature and it works for all newly created Communication Sites, however it does not seem to work with sites created prior to this functionality being release.

 

When I add columns they do not get added to the "Site Page" content type even though "Add to all content types" is set to Yes. It also appears the contact type is sealed so I cannot manually add the column to the content type.

 

Is this expected? Is there anyone else experiencing similar results?

 

Thanks!

Tim

Deleted
Not applicable

I'm also looking to use this feature for a new requirement. I'm facing the same issue as @Tim Gagne, new column added cannot be used for Site Page. Please advice.

 

I've also tried another approaches:

- by create custom content type inherit SitePage with additional column.

- by create custom column

 

But when I use news WP, I'm not able to select the custom column under page properties, it doesn't show up under page properties. 

 

 

Iron Contributor

@Tim Gagne , @Deleted

 

 

I have just check our First Release Dev tenant which we use for demos to the business and I 've just verified you can use page properties ( meta data ) to filter your news posts.

 

Here are our details:

 

  1. Tenant created in July 2018
  2. All content types including the ones that inherit from the Site Page are provisioned  in the default Content Type Hub: https://<tenant>.sharepoint.com/sites/contenttypehub/   . Be warned that MS intend to 'sunset' CTHs but they have yet to say what this being replaced by!
  3. I have previously seen the behaviour you describe so you may not have a FR tenant

 

 

 

 

ENWL Page properites.png

Copper Contributor

@Tim Gagne, I just created a new communication site, but still unable to use meta data to filter in highlighted content

 

@Daniel Westerdale, What's is FR tenant?

 

 

Brass Contributor

@JOE HOFR is "First Release" tenant. Basically you get new features faster: 
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/admin/manage/release-options-in-office-365?redirectSource...

 

 

@Daniel Westerdalethanks for the info. In my tenant I am still only seeing the properties in new sites and not sites created prior to the feature being rolled out. One thing to note about my tenant is that we are running selective FR and do not have it on for the entire org.

 

snip_20181106084718.pngsnip_20181106084902.png

 

As you can see, even though the columns are added to the page, they are not available in the content type (sealed) and cannot add on page interface. Again, this does work for newly created sites.

Copper Contributor

Interesting, i can edit page details while editing the page, but cannot filter by meta data..

Deleted
Not applicable

hi @Daniel Westerdale , I'm able to test this in another test tenant created Aug 2018, but no luck in my production tenant. Open ticket in Microsoft Support but still not getting the confirmation if this new feature rolled out to my tenant and still going around all kind to troubleshooting steps.

Iron Contributor

@Deleted

 

 

I think you've raised an important issue. As IT consultants or business users, we all need to know what services are going to be ready in a given tenant.  Perhaps one of us should raise a UserVoice entry ( or nudge @Mark Kashman) for implementing a call in PowerShell or REST, that returns  for a given date the last lot of services rolled to the tenant.  It would  make deployments more predictable  and make the conversation you are having with Microsoft Support a little more meaningful. 

Brass Contributor

@Daniel WesterdaleI very much agree with you. In addition I think the community communication overall (all products/services) needs to be tightened up a bit as well. This are better than the past, however when authoritative "posts" state dates, then have no updates when those stated dates pass people assume things should be done. For example, on this page:

 

Q: How can I expect the new page metadata features to roll out to Office 365 customers?

A: These page metadata features will begin to roll out to all Targeted Release customers this week, and will be completed within 2–3 weeks. We then are targeting end of July 2018 for complete worldwide roll out into production.

I understand dates are missed, but we are a quarter on and I have not seen any update stating this was not fully rolled out. Consultants and Enterprise IT alike are making business impacting decisions on this information and if it is not actually fully rolled out as expected, we need to know. it is getting harder and harder to make sound decisions. 

 

To be fair the Roadmap site shows the status as rolling out (with a target of Q3, which is past), however the "More info" link, links to this post which as I have mentioned, implies it should already be rolled out.

 

I apricate the work the teams are doing (and am admittedly venting a bit), but do really believe these are issues that are avoidable and could not only help consultants and IT, but also will make end-users happier and more accepting of the products and solutions we are building. 

 

Iron Contributor

@Tim Gagne

 

Totally agree  as this will  help Microsoft and community alike.   All we need returned is each FeatureID for the relevant rolled out features or services - would really take the guess work out of it

 

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SharePoint pages and news: custom metadata columns

Allow customers to add custom metadata to modern SharePoint pages and news articles. This gives you the ability to create prescriptive information architecture and solutions that use the pages/news' metadata for dynamic grouping and organization. It, too, ships with a new Page properties web part used to display select metadata on the page itself.

More info

  • Featured ID: 27251
  • Added to Roadmap: 3/27/2018
  • Last Modified: 11/7/2018
  • Tags: O365, SharePoint
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Last update:
‎Jul 16 2018 11:27 AM
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