I am working on the root site collection which is of type Classic Team Site. I have added a custom column named "Category" of type "Managed Metadata" to our "Site Pages" library through a custom content type, so when we create a new site page we can associate it with the custom property (Category), as follow:- now my question if we can show a notification to all users, inside the notification section, when a News page with certain category is added/edited. this is the notification section i am talking about:- second question, in general how does this Notification section show notifications to users? as seems it is emty for all/most users in our case.Thanks

You can’t really use that as it’s alerts for mostly new email coming in to o365 for the user. Microsoft really needs to add Microsoft Teams activity tab to that tab then open it up so other services can use it such as planner, SharePoint etc. and it sync to teams. This way we get a unified alert system and it would also solve having to get email for every alert and get them into teams / activity bell on pages in 365.

I was just going on a rant to how that notification bell should work, nothing you do is going to change how that bell / notification icon works.You to my knowledge cannot add custom notifications to that icon. Your only options would be to send e-mail / push notification to your users. Your best bet is to just use the default SharePoint app which will send users push notifications when new news arrives.

When SharePoint talks about alerts, it means it fires off emails--there is no such thing, as far as I'm aware, of any other kind of notification in SharePoint out-of-the-box. Assuming email notification works for your organization's needs, your process is easy--you can use the List's Alert Me function to do that (make emails go to a DL, not just you) if you want people to be informed when anything is created in that list, or you can use a Flow to send emails only when certain conditions with the item you've created are met (i.e., when item (page) is created, if attribute = value, then send email, else do nothing). It may also be possible to do this via Teams if your organization is using it--Flow would let you post a message in a channel with attributes of the item somebody's just created, so if your organization is used to getting pinged by Teams notifications, that is another way to do it.

SharePoint modern will send push notifications to the SharePoint app when a news story is published in a site you are following.

Just reading over this thread there are a number of mis-communications going on I think. So maybe its worth summarising a few elements for the benefit of John and others. The 'bell' icon is used by Microsoft to notify users of Office 365 related notifications (such as receipt of an email.) It is not to my knowledge customisable and has no API to allow you to insert a notification. News articles don't show up here when published.News articles, when published in SharePoint sites automatically send a push notification to users of the SharePoint mobile app, but only to the mobile app. There is no way (to my knowledge) you can see these notifications in the browser, other than to use the News web part on a SharePoint page.SharePoint Alerts are email based an thus not relevant in this case as the user wants to avoid email.Given the further need to only show alerts for news within a certain category I would be looking at a customisation using the SharePoint Framework to achieve this requirement. Not sure if that is an option, but I think its the only way to achieve what you are looking for.

Possible appraochies we can follow to show a notification to users when a news page is created

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Charlie Lee
Copper Contributor
Nov 22, 2018
Just reading over this thread there are a number of mis-communications going on I think. So maybe its worth summarising a few elements for the benefit of John and others.

The 'bell' icon is used by Microsoft to notify users of Office 365 related notifications (such as receipt of an email.) It is not to my knowledge customisable and has no API to allow you to insert a notification. News articles don't show up here when published.

News articles, when published in SharePoint sites automatically send a push notification to users of the SharePoint mobile app, but only to the mobile app. There is no way (to my knowledge) you can see these notifications in the browser, other than to use the News web part on a SharePoint page.

SharePoint Alerts are email based an thus not relevant in this case as the user wants to avoid email.
Given the further need to only show alerts for news within a certain category I would be looking at a customisation using the SharePoint Framework to achieve this requirement. Not sure if that is an option, but I think its the only way to achieve what you are looking for.
- john john
  Iron Contributor
  Nov 22, 2018
  Charlie Lee wrote:
  Just reading over this thread there are a number of mis-communications going on I think. So maybe its worth summarising a few elements for the benefit of John and others.
  
  The 'bell' icon is used by Microsoft to notify users of Office 365 related notifications (such as receipt of an email.) It is not to my knowledge customisable and has no API to allow you to insert a notification. News articles don't show up here when published.
  
  News articles, when published in SharePoint sites automatically send a push notification to users of the SharePoint mobile app, but only to the mobile app. There is no way (to my knowledge) you can see these notifications in the browser, other than to use the News web part on a SharePoint page.
  
  SharePoint Alerts are email based an thus not relevant in this case as the user wants to avoid email.
  Given the further need to only show alerts for news within a certain category I would be looking at a customisation using the SharePoint Framework to achieve this requirement. Not sure if that is an option, but I think its the only way to achieve what you are looking for.
  ok thanks for the clarifications. I were planning to convert/migrate our classic team site to be a Modern Team site, to be able to have "Notifications" under "Bill" icon showing notification when new pages that are linked to specific category are added. but what you are saying is that even on Modern Team sites, the "Notifications" under "Bill" icons will not support such a requirement?is this correct?
  - Charlie Lee
    Copper Contributor
    Nov 22, 2018
    Correct - that very specific scenario would not be possible, but with customisation you could create a notification in these circumstances that would appear in the browser at the top of the page, but not under the O365 notifications area (the bell icon.) You would need someone with development experience to develop this customisation though.
    
    If you would be happy having a 'latest news' section on the page itself then you could use the Highlighted Content web part to display news items based on your custom category property, which would partially meet your requirement at least without development.
ChrisWebbTech
MVP
Nov 21, 2018
You can’t really use that as it’s alerts for mostly new email coming in to o365 for the user. Microsoft really needs to add Microsoft Teams activity tab to that tab then open it up so other services can use it such as planner, SharePoint etc. and it sync to teams. This way we get a unified alert system and it would also solve having to get email for every alert and get them into teams / activity bell on pages in 365.
- john john
  Iron Contributor
  Nov 21, 2018
  ChrisWebbTech wrote:
  You can’t really use that as it’s alerts for mostly new email coming in to o365 for the user. Microsoft really needs to add Microsoft Teams activity tab to that tab then open it up so other services can use it such as planner, SharePoint etc. and it sync to teams. This way we get a unified alert system and it would also solve having to get email for every alert and get them into teams / activity bell on pages in 365.
  ChrisWebbTechthanks for the reply. but can you please explain your reply in more details? When you talk about teams are you referring to SharePoint modern team sites? as i mentioned in my case i am using classic team site.
  
  second point. now if i create a modern team site (which will have an office 365 group) will the notification work? and can the notification in this case be set when creating News pages which are linked to a specific term, as i described in my question? or even if we create a modern team site which will be linked to an office 365 group, we can not define notification to be shown when adding/updates News page which are linked to specific term only?
  - ChrisWebbTech
    MVP
    Nov 21, 2018
    I was just going on a rant to how that notification bell should work, nothing you do is going to change how that bell / notification icon works.
    
    You to my knowledge cannot add custom notifications to that icon. Your only options would be to send e-mail / push notification to your users. Your best bet is to just use the default SharePoint app which will send users push notifications when new news arrives.

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Possible appraochies we can follow to show a notification to users when a news page is created

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