SharePoint Online - Modern UI Target audience

[Kannan_Kalisamy575]

Hi,

Im trying to use the target audience for news component , Ive turned on the audience target feature at the site page library and added security group to target my users at the page level as well. However when user logged in able to see all the news and audience target feature is not working as expected.

I just want to clarify couple of questions:

1. Is it possible can i target the audience from SharePoint group members ?  or what is the limitation of the target audience picker ? 

2. When i check the SharePoint documentation, I found this - Uncompiled audiences are present in SharePoint online. Im not sure what is uncompiled audiences related to target audience and if we add new users to group is this will effect in feature ?

Thanks
Kannan

[#2]

Not 100% sure whether you can use the old SharePoint Groups, but if these are Office365 groups then yes you should have no issue because these exist in Active Directory. The basic overview is here - https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/overview-of-audience-targeting-in-modern-sharepoint-sites-6...

Audiences use in SharePoint Online compile on a weekly schedule, this can impact on your testing if you are trying to test this quickly. So you have to configure your Audience and wait for these to be compiled before you have a real world test.

In SharePoint on Premise, this could be manually compiled making testing really simple.

[#3]

Thanks @Martin Kleynhans for you response. 

Hope this will not impact once its done the initial compile. add/remove users to security group or adding target audience to the pages?

Thanks

Kannan

[#4]

Hi @Kannan_Kalisamy575,

The only impact will be that, new members will only be Targetted after the next audience compilation.

So if you add another user, then that user will not see the information directly targetted to them until the following week.

Hope this helps.

- Martin 

[#5]

Hi @Martin Kleynhans ,

Thanks for your response. In that case i'm not sure audience targeting feature is not going to solve any business problems. Example corporate want to publish the news to target audience , they have to wait a week to target the users ?

Thanks
Kannan

[#6 · Accepted solution]

Hi @Kannan_Kalisamy575,

Audience targetting is an awesome and very rarely used feature, its unfortunate that the compilation takes so long. The only other way you can handle this is through Search Driven content and Permissions.

I personally think if you are willing to go through the initial pains of setting up Audience Targetting rules the benefits far outweigh the pitfalls.  The only challenge will be once the compilation is complete then when a new user joins the organisation then they will see more targetted informationa week prior to joining.

This can be solved by onboarding a user' at least a week prior to joining the business which most enterprise companies should be doing anyway.

Regards, Martin

[#7]

Hi @Martin Kleynhans ,

Thanks for your response. I'll investigate further on this topic.

Regards

Kannan 

[#8]

@Martin Kleynhans 

Hi Martin,

I read your post on Uncompiled Audience Target on Modern SharePoint View - when we add Audience Target on a navigation link then changes takes place after a week. Following it I added Target Audience to left hand side navigation menu last Monday 8-Jun-2020 12:00 PM IST. When I checked today link visibility was behaving as it did 1 week earlier. I will explain you my steps and please let me know what mistake I am making.

My Requirement: Out of 5 left hand side navigation menus there are 3 links which should be visible to only application administrators.

My Problem: When I set Target audience in navigation menu the link became hidden from me and after 1 week also link is hidden. Group that I added to Target Audience I am owner of that group.

Steps involved in setting up Target Audience:

1) I enabled Target Audience feature on the List.

2) Set it to open in Modern view by default.

3) Created and Office 365 group in Outlook, made myself and one more user as Owner of the group - attachment O365 Group.

4) In my Outlook I can see this new group - attachment Outlook Groups.

5) I went to the SharePoint site and enabled Target Audience in the menu.

6) I then set the Target Audience to the group which I created in Outlook - attachment Setting Up Target Audience.

7) After 1 week still I am not seeing the link in which I set up the Target Audience - attachment Links Missing.

Thanks,

Deepansh Saxena

[#9]

even am facing same issue, not able to add SharePoint group or members (only o365 groups are saggesting)

[#10]

Hi  @Martin Kleynhans , @Kannan_Kalisamy575 

Audience targeting on modern SharePoint pages and news is based on groups on Azure AD, and SharePoint Groups cannot be utilized. Also audience complilation is required for "classic" audience targeting feature and this modern one is relying on search. Results might not be available in real time, at least I have noticed that it might take some time to targeting actually kick in.

[#11]

@Kannan_Kalisamy575 Why o Why has MS removed SharePoint groups as possible target audience?