Recently, I undertook the task of integrating News posts from a separate SharePoint site into the primary SharePoint Intranet platform. However, the specific requirement in this instance was to exercise control over which news items were showcased on the intranet. The imperative was to only feature those designated as ‘Featured’, thereby excluding any other news content from display on the intranet. This approach empowered the business to curate the dissemination of news across the organization, contingent upon approval protocols.
To implement this functionality, a structured approach utilizing a term set and a managed metadata column was indispensable. These elements ensure uniformity and consistency in the process across disparate sites.
To get started, first we need to create a Term Set.
Create a Term Set
- Go to your SharePoint Admin center.
- Navigate to Content Services and click on Term store.
Note: In the middle section you’ll see all of your term groups
Term Groups
First, we need to create a term group, this allows us to have a single or multiple term sets.
- To add a term group, click on the ‘Add term group’ button that’s on the right pane on the top.
- Enter a name for your term group and press enter.
Term set
Next, we need to create a term set, this is what we’ll need to use to tag the news posts across the other sites as ‘Featured’ in order to be displayed in the main SharePoint intranet. We’re going to name this term set: ‘Featured’.
- Give it a name and press enter.
Term
Finally, we’ll add the terms that are going to be used within the ‘Featured’ term set. In this example, I will be using the terms: ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ for the options to be selected within the managed metadata column. I could just use the term ‘Yes’, but I want to give the business the ability to specify on their news posts by tracking these based on these options.
- Select your term set.
- Click on ‘Add term’.
- Enter a name and press enter.
- Select your term set again.
- Enter your second term and press enter.
Note: Every time you need to add a term, you need to make sure you’re selecting your term set so they are added to it, else they could be added in a cascading fashion.
Create managed metadata column
Now that we have the term set created, we need to create a managed metadata column.
- Go to the SharePoint site that will feed the news post to the intranet.
- Go to site settings.
- Under site columns, create a new site column named ‘Featured’.
- Choose the type as Managed Metadata
- Set it to the term set we created earlier.
- Click ok to create the column.
Note: Be sure to select the term set, not the terms themselves from your term group.
You can see the newly created managed metadata column in site columns under the section Custom Columns
Add site column to Site Pages
Let’s add the site column we just created to our Site Pages document library.
- Go to Site Pages.
- Click on the gear icon.
- Select Library settings.
- Select More Library settings.
- Click on Add from existing site columns
- Under select site columns from, select Custom Columns.
- Select the managed metadata column we created earlier named Featured.
- Click on Add to move it to the columns to add box.
- Click Ok.
You should see your column added to your Site Pages document library.
Now we need to make it visible and tag a news post on the Featured column to Yes, so that it can be displayed in our intranet.
- Go back to your Site Pages
- If your view doesn’t show the Featured column, you’ll need to modify your view.
- Select the page you want to Feature in the intranet news.
- Click on the ellipsis and go to properties.
- Click on Edit all
- Find the Featured column and click on Add tag.
- Select the option you want and click Apply.
- Click Save
Display News Post on Intranet
It is time to display the news from another SharePoint sites to our Intranet.
In the main page, using the News Web part, we’re going to edit its settings and filter the news that are tagged as ‘Yes’ using the Featured managed metadata column.
We’re going to navigate to our intranet and modify the News webpart to display the news post we just tagged as featured.
- Click on Edit Page
- On the news web part, click the pencil icon to edit.
- Select the ‘Select sites’ option from the news source
- Put a check on the site you want to pull news from.
- In the Filter section click on the dropdown and select Managed property.
- Next, we’ll need to provide the internal column name of the managed metadata column we have created.
- this normally starts with owstaxIdColumnName.
- For the operator, instead of using ‘equals’, we’re going to use ‘Contains’.
- Add the choice ‘Yes’ as we provided when we created our term set.
- Click Republish your page and it’s all done.
Note: When the managed metadata column is created, it will take about 24 hours for the column to show up in order to select it, so if you start typing owstaxId and nothing shows up, it’s because it hasn’t been fully created in the back end.
