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Alerts on Comments in Modern Pages?

Iron Contributor

So now that we are beginning to take advantage of Communications Sites, Modern Pages and News, we are starting to get comments on our pages - which is awesome, but... Nobody knows there are comments on the pages. Is there currently a way to get alerts/notifications (like most other modern Social Collab Tools) that a comment was made on a page? Maybe by email?

49 Replies
These got to be stored on a list somewhere on the site collection. The question is where. Once figured out possible can access and set alerts or setup flow on it if it’s accessible. If I get some time here in a bit I’ll see if I can figure it out.
No, comments are not really stored in a list on the site...those comments are stored on a particular cloud storage created by the team: http://www.vrdmn.com/2017/07/working-with-page-comments-rest-api-in.html

The folder seems to be there in Flow, so maybe you can use that to drive an email to the group.

 

comments.PNG

Scratch that ... tried it and it didn't seem to work.

@Juan Carlos González Martín Thanks, I saw this and it kind of started my line of thinking! I guess in the end, I am still wondering where they are stored. Again, great functionality, but when a News Page or Standard Page is posted for communication, especially trying to transition away from standard files, it would make it great to be able to react to the comments. Really hard to follow up with people if they have questions.

@Deleted Also my first instinct! Glad I am not crazy in thinking that way. Appreciate the input. It looks like adding a comment does not even trigger the "modified" flag. It would be a shame to turn comments off for these.

This is an api call I don’t see why you still couldn’t use flow to monitor the page via the API call and alert when changes it count increases. If I get some time tonight I’ll play with it. Been getting hitched yesterday time limited lol.
Well, I'm waiting for the upcoming push notifications we will have in modern pages...they might solve your requirement!

@Deleted first - trust me on this - "Happy Wife, Happy Life", just say that over and over. :) Next, I love that idea, but really trying to find a simple solution for 9000+ users to get alerts on those comments if they want. I like your idea, but...

It´s easy to setup using Microsoft Flow. You need the id of the "Site Pages" library and the id of the Comments list, you may find out using the SharePoint Client Browser connected to the specific SharePoint Website.

 

Then just setup a flow as displayed in the attached screenshot. Now if a user add a comment on a modern page, a mail is send. The body of the mail you may style with some html for better ux with link to the page for example. 

That’s the problem these aren’t stored in a list :p.
Yeah I messed with it last night and stepped back and thought the same thing. This is going to be a pain for setting up even if you could get it to work lol. This would be easy if it was stored in a list like blog comments used to work!

Yeah I agree, I played with the REST API and instantly thought a user is not going to be able to do this. Which means I will need to maintain it ... and that's not going to happen (too busy).

 

With the drive to modern pages, which I really like, the idea is that anyone can do it, enable enable enable ... free our users from IT of old.

 

 

So here’s a thought. You can easily disable the comments. And it’s a web part page. Maybe something could come up with tapping in a web part onto the page for comments via custom list. Or I guess there is always putting the annocuments on yammer or using that for comments on the page instead. Just thinking outside the box a bit, maybe something like that could work. But then again it’s something the users would have to do each time they create a news article which is no bueno lol.

Or create a list and use  a powerapp embeded on the page, to capture the comments and flow to alert via email.

Yeah, but if the user is created "News" pages, then they have to know how to setup that webpart, think that could be the issue here. If we could setup templates for the pages then it could work :p, but even then that user interface with connector to the powerapp etc. could be ugly.

True

The Comments are stored in a list as you can see here 

It´s a screenshot of the lists in a SharePoint Communication Site. As the comments are stored in a list, I was able to setup a alert flow in new comments.

commentsList.png

 

 

Lol. Well whoever I put trust into the items weren’t stored in list lost cool points with me :grimacing_face::face_with_tears_of_joy:. Yeah if you can trigger flow on new comments and access the other metadata this would be easy to do at that point.
1 best response

Accepted Solutions
best response confirmed by Drew Madelung (MVP)
Solution

Hi Rob,

I had a similar task: send the email notification to the author of the modern page in SharePoint online if the new comment added.

I have done this using MS Flow and MS Graph API because standard SharePoint actions in MS Flow didn't help me. 

 

I've described the solution in step-by-step instruction on the public blog of my company.

 

Hope, it helps you.

 

UPDATE: This solution was implemented for teams site. We found new challenges for brand new communications sites.

 

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