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

[john john]

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

[#2]

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.

[#3]

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@Chris Webb 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.

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@Chris Webbthanks 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?

[#4]

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.

[#5]

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@Chris Webb wrote:
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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thanks for your reply. OK, i got your point, so the "Notification" are not customizable even if we use MS teams?.. But when you say use "push notification" you mean to use the "alert me" options inside sharepoint lists and libraries, as follow:-

??or you are referring to something else?

Thanks

[#6]

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.

[#7]

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

[#8]

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@Matt Coats wrote:

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).

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@Matt Coatsok thanks for your reply. First Point. now in our case, our customer is trying to eliminate sending emails, and instead they want to have the alerts inside the sharepoint site itself, ideally under the "Notification" area (the "Ring" icon). so my question is not about sending emails , but rather about showing alerts inside sharepoint under the "Ring" icon. so is this possible?

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@Matt Coats wrote:

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.

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Second Point. Now in my case i am using classic team site, and not Microsoft teams.. so if i chose to create a Microsoft team site instead of using sharepoint classic site, then how will "Notifications" work? can i force a notification to be shown under the "Ring" icon when a News page is published and it is linked to a specific term ? or even in Microsoft Teams we can not have this feature?

[#9]

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@Steven Collier wrote:

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

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@Steven Colliercan you please advice more on your reply. how will this work exactly? and what do you mean by "SharePoint modern will send push notifications to the SharePoint app when a news story is published in a site you are following. " ?? what are the differences between SharePoint modern and SharePoint app.. and how the notifications will be pushed? by emails or under the "Notification" area?

[#10]

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.

1. 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.
   
   
2. 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.
   
   
3. 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.

[#11]

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@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.

1. 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.
   
   
2. 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.
   
   
3. 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.

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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?

[#12]

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.

[#13]

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@Charlie Lee wrote:

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.

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i am actually a sharepoint developer :) but seems even with development knowledge we can not force a notification to be shown under the "bill" icon when news page which is linked to a specific term is added...

but not sure from a user perspective, who will this:-

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@Charlie Lee wrote:

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.)

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look like? notification at the top of the page?

[#14]

It can look like anything you want assuming you can develop it!

The SharePoint Framework Starter Kit has an example for an 'alert' which is driven from a SharePoint list.  You would need to consider the logic required to push an alert into this list based on a news article being published - possibly a Flow attached to the Site Pages library would suffice, if not there are plenty of other options to achieve this.

Perhaps try starting from the SPFx Starter Kit example and see where you get to:

https://github.com/SharePoint/sp-starter-kit/blob/master/documentation/components/ext-alert.md

[#15]

@john john 

Hey John,

I have a similar requirement..Were you able to send custom notification to the bell icon?