Microsoft 365 Community SharePoint, 12 Dec 2019

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From YouTube: Latest on Microsoft 365 Learning Pathways – General Availability

Description

This PnP community demo is taken from the bi-weekly SharePoint Developer Community - General Development Special Interest Group (SIG) call recorded on December 12, 2019.

In this 23-minute video, Julie Turner, demonstrates setting up Microsoft 365 Learning Pathways in a tenant. Learning Pathways now GA, is free curated product training from Microsoft updated quarterly that Admins can elect to expose (via web parts) on their SharePoint sites today. Microsoft and non-Microsoft content may be pulled from multiple sources and viewed on a single SharePoint page. Use Learning Pathways to quickly deliver topical readiness.

Presenter: Julie Turner (Sympraxis Consulting) | @jfj1997

Supporting materials:
• SharePoint Provisioning site: https://provisioning.sharepointpnp.com/
• Support/Github site: https://github.com/pnp/custom-learning-office-365
• Documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/customlearning/
• Learning pathways Admin Success Center: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/customlearning/custom_successcenter

All SharePoint PnP Developer Community demos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR9nK3mnD-OWSbg0o9a7mx_E7s2u7h_o2

Learn more about the SharePoint developer community at: http://aka.ms/sppnp

A

B

Name is Julie Turner and I'm here to talk about Microsoft, 365 learning pathways, the general availability release, so that generally, it went general availability at ignite this year and so I just want to recap and sort of level set for anybody who hasn't heard about learning pathways, what it is and a little bit about how it works and then and then I'll do a demo of all the new and exciting features so learning pathways, which originally was known as custom learning for office 365.

B

Is this customizable on-demand training solution that helps you with increasing usage and adoption of all the various services in your organization? So it helps by delivering training and so overall, what it provides. Is this access to this end-user training content, which includes video based training and scenarios and articles all put together in various playlists to address particular topics? So it's pretty easy to install because we are deployed via the SharePoint provisioning service and so within minutes.

B

Without doing any coding, you can provision an entire communication site in your tenant, with the learning pathways webparts installed for you and the content is provided by we'll call it a content, delivery network or a light content delivery network that actually leverages github pages so that that content gets updated quarterly by Microsoft, so that the changes come to you automatically without you having to do anything and in addition, you are able to customize that content.

B

So you can hide and show various technologies, depending on how you're, how you're adopting office 365 in your environment and then create your own training playlist based on your own content. So you can build your own pages and SharePoint and then combine those pages together into customized training content, and so then for version 3 or the general availability release. We have some new features for the admin we're now supporting multiple content.

B

Pacs, so Microsoft provides a learning pathways content pack sort of we'll call that out-of-the-box, but in addition, you'll be able to add content, packs from other third-party training providers or even create your own content packs, if you feel pretty comfortable with JSON and and putting playlist together, you'd be able to create your own content packs if you want to. He also added the feature to copy playlists. So one of the most requested features we had was people saying well, Microsoft has this particular playlist and I like everything about it, except for one of the assets.

B

I don't want to have shown in in our environment, and so now you have the ability to go in and pick a play, a playlist from Microsoft or even one of your custom ones and copy it which makes a custom playlist. That is an exact replica of Microsoft's playlist, and then you can customize it as you, like. We've, also added some updates to the user experience for adding assets to custom playlists to make that experience a little bit better for the users. We've really improved the user experience for a playlist navigation.

B

So we had a lot of feedback that it was a little bit confusing to navigate them around the various assets of a playlist, and so we've improved that user experience we've also added a full-screen mode so that a playlist that is in a particular section on a page can be expanded to take over the full screen. So that gives us a better user experience for viewing the actual playlist content and we've improved the responsive design of the web part itself, so that it behaves a little bit better in the various sections on your page.

B

So I wanted to just again I've shown this before, but I'm gonna review the architecture of how learning pathways work in your tenant. You would have deployed a the Microsoft 365 learning pathways solution, which is a SharePoint framework solution that contains two webparts and it is provisioned into your tenant, app catalog.

B

Then you would have the Microsoft 365 learning pathway site, which is, in general, a modern communication site and in that site the admin web part will be automatically added to a single out part page, so that you can administer your environment learning environment and then the viewer web part, which is available through the web part selector when you're creating pages and that viewer web part can be added to any page in that learning, pathway site or you can enable the learning pathways solution into other sites, either team sites or communication sites in your tenant and thereby add the viewer web part to view training content in any of the sites in your tenant.

B

Now how this works is that the viewer then iframes in content from support office, calm or Docs that Microsoft comm, depending on what assets are recognized as part of a particular playlist. So some of the content as part of a playlist is from support, office comm and some is from Docs and Microsoft comm, and what I'm speaking of is the content?

B

That's delivered from Microsoft specifically and how we go about that is by having a github repository that uses github pages and there's three JSON files in that, in that github pages library in a particular I just see an update that needs to happen this as v-two, but we're now at v3. So there's a v3 folder. It has these files in it plus some images and that the learning pathways web part knows how to read those manifests and then serve up the content from support or Docs.

B

So what then happens is if the content is updated in the github repository within 24 hours. The learning pathways web part will recognize that there's a change and will update the content appropriately.

B

Okay, so customizations is another thing that you can do so from the admin web part.

B

There are three lists that are in that same learning, pathway, site, a custom, config site, a custom, playlist site and a custom asset site, and basically those lists will just hold items that have bits of JSON data stored in them that help define custom, playlists or ask point to custom assets, which would be sharepoint pages in your site and then pulls them together and caches sort of a manifest of all the content that you have and what you've hidden in what you've shown in any custom subcategories you've created, so those customizations are stored in that manner.

B

Okay, so let's do a demo and again I have recorded this as a video, so I'm gonna, so that I wouldn't have had any problems this time. So hopefully, so, let's start by just discussing the provisioning service.

B

So the provisioning SharePoint PNP comm site is where you would go and you go under view the designs and then under solutions and then to the Microsoft, 365, learning pathway, site and so here's a lot of descriptions about what's part of this provisioning, and so it will tell you all the content, that's included and also then give you resources that you can click on to read to see what the prerequisites are and where the documentation is and the information you need to know about provisioning it.

B

And then, when you're ready, you click Add to your tenant, and it will bring you to a page where you can specify. You know who you are what you want, where you want the site provisioned into your tenant, and then you just click on provision and it will go out and provision that site collection for you now.

B

If you already have learning pathways- and you just are trying to update to the most recent version, you would go to our github site, which is PNP, custom learning, office 365 and you scroll down here to current release version will tell you what version first version 3. There was some upgrade information that you needed to be aware of, but then there's complete documentation about how you download the learning pathways package and then how you update it into your tenant step-by-step.

B

So show you a little bit how that's done so you go into the web part folder, and then you would pick the SP pkg file, which is there at the bottom and you would download it and then once you have it downloaded, you go to your tenant, app catalog in your SharePoint site. So if you click over here, then you would be in the apps for SharePoint section and you click on the upload button, and it will then ask you for the path to your SP pkg file.

B

You pick it from whatever folder you have downloaded into and then say: ok and it will update into your tenant. Ok.

B

So after it does that you come into your learning pathway site go to the con site contents and if you had already had it in there, you will see it and you go to the detail section and then you want to just say get it to get to the most recent version.

B

That step is actually optional, but I think it's a good practice, so I always try to update and then as soon as it's updated. That will turn from being sort of that grayed out. Looking looking line to full blue and now you have the updated version of the learning pathways webparts in your site collection. So now, if we just go into site pages and then down to the custom learning admin page by landing on custom learning admin, one time, you're making sure that you're forcing a refresh of the MIT content.

B

So that's a good practice when you do an upgrade at the web part to come to the admin page, because every time you land on the admin page, it refreshes your content. So now let me go over and show all the updates to the user experience. So we can see that we had a massive content update with icons that were updated and lots of new content.

B

That was added things like stream and sway, whereas ask to be added, and we also added an admin Success Center, which has playlists that link to content about learning pathways itself. So this is for the learning pathways Edmund help them get to up to speed with the content. So that's what that looks like- and we can see in here that for a playlist, we've updated this user experience so now to get two different steps in the playlist. We can use that combo box, and this is the new full page experience.

B

So as you scroll through the pages, you can see we've taken over the whole page, so it gives a better experience and you'll see that later that it's especially good when you have multiple versions of the web part. So we still have the copy a link, so you can copy a link to a particular playlist and if you want to, you, can also search particular content.

B

So if I type Excel in here and hit enter, it shows me all the content, that's related to excel either as a technology or it has excel in the title or the description. And so we can be linked to those custom pieces of content. So now, let's just do a little demo of creating read a new page, so I'm, adding a page, and so this page we're gonna start with a blank page and give it a name.

B

And the goal here is to sort of demo how you can add multiple versions of the learning pathways web part to a page, to create a very curated learning experience for your users. So I'm just gonna give it a nice and if that's happen to anybody else, you've got to click the button. It kills me, that's terrible. It should just be clickable. I, don't write all right. So we clicked on that, and so we have a nice header and it's all pretty and maybe Center that a little bit and.

B

Yeah yeah, why did I take so long to do this last cut video? Okay? So now we're going to go in here and add a section. So if I go and create a two-column section.

B

Now we can add the learning pathways webpart in here and then we go into the web part properties, and you can see the select learning store so I'm going to talk about that a little bit more later. But for now let's just go in and specify that we want to filter this web part to a particular subcategory and in this case we're going to pick Outlook and then we're also going to set this to the content only which takes away the breadcrumb navigation and the search and the link thing.

B

And then we can give it a special title. So we can title this anything we want I. You know very blandly named it Outlook, but the point is that you can, you know curate what you want, that webpart title to be, and you can see that the web part is and I keep doing, that as well is nicely responsive in that section. So it really is is playing a lot nicer with each of the section sizes that we have now, which was definitely an improvement for v3.

B

So I'm gonna link this one to onedrive, particularly, and so you can kind of see how you can put other webparts, as well as the learning pathways webparts together to sort of create this curated experience in here in this last section, I'm going to actually link directly to a playlist. So I'm going to add the web part here again and this time instead of linking to a category I'm, going to actually link to a playlist. So I'm going to go to content only mode again and now I'm going to go to a particular playlist.

B

Will do create office files and you can select a particular asset, so you can actually move it ahead to a particular point in the playlist. But if you leave it blank it'll start at the first, the first asset in the playlist so and then I, give it a custom name and now I have sort of a playlist plus other content right here in this one page.

B

So now you will also be able to see that, because we have that fullscreen button, we can actually come down to the playlist and go into full-screen mode if we want to right from this page. So that gives a better experience. We used to redirect back to a viewer, page and I. Think that wasn't is a good of experiences we could have had so we've we've reworked it so that it works this way and I think it's a much better experience.

B

Ok! So now, let's come back over to the admin center and go through some new features here, so we've sort of redirected. This we've got a question mark thing there that takes you to the docs for learning pathways to help you get to those that information more quickly and we've sort of Riegert jiggered some stuff. Here we have some new features in the or some removed some stuff in the playlist content. So now we have title and description are required and categories required, but technologies and.

B

A

Just get down there level.

B

And audience now our optional instead, so you can tie this playlist to a particular technology or you can just leave it blank. So then we have level an audience that can be set and as soon as you save this, then you can go add assets, and so this is the new. Let me show you this new search and select experience. So if I type in Excel, we now have a better experience here.

B

Where I can multi select content and if I click on the title, it will actually open that playlist into a or asset into a new page. So you can actually preview the asset, so you know which one is which and then for adding custom assets. We've really streamlined this. So all you do is add a title optionally. You can add a technology and then there's the ability to create an asset page and what that just does is create a page in the SharePoint library, with the title as its name.

B

And so, if you click that button, it goes out and does that for you and then comes back and shows you the URL to your to your page, and you have a button there that I quickly went by that you can open the page, so you can go edit it and you note here the copy playlist is there. So that's that new copy playlist feature. So you can also then now navigate to technologies here from this drop-down menu instead to hide and show playlet our technologies. If you want to do that.

B

Okay, so this is the custom content pack. So let me show you how I built one of these. So if you go down to the learning pathways admin stuff and into the early adopter program, and then it's a partner integration models- and you scroll down in here, there's a very detailed description of what each one of those JSON files are and how they're structured.

B

So we have pretty good decent I, think documentation on what needs to be in them and then how you need to host them, and so what I did was created a quick demo. So in my github repo I created an open-source demo here of what that might look like, and so in here.

B

I have the docs folder and then a v3 folder I've created an assets JSON a metadata Jason and a playlist, a JSON file, with some images that I'm using and if you go into the settings of the a particular github repo and you scroll down. You can see that there's a set up section for github pages and so I've set that so that the source is the master branch, docs folder, and then it tells you what the URL is to your github pages site and so I copy.

B

That and now I come in and I say: I want to add a custom content pack and I paste that URL in here and then give it a display name so I'll just call this Julie's content pack and- and we save that and now learning pathways has two sets of content that it can manage.

B

And so, if I go back over to my demos, web parts section here and I edit, my page I can change well I had to refresh the page first, let me say that, and then I can edit that web part and we'll change this outlook, one so that it's pointing at the other source.

B

So now I can have two webparts on the page, pointing to each of the content packs if I want to and I'll just specifically say: okay I'll filter to this piece of content that I put in here, I'm, giving it a title, but when you're filtering to a category that doesn't actually make as much sense. So it doesn't look so good because it's duplicated. But the point, the bigger point here is that I now have content from two different content: packs loading in this one page.

B

Now, obviously we wouldn't have to use it that way, but that ability is there for you, and so now you can see that we have. You know all these different various pieces of content all on one page, which is pretty cool and pretty powerful. So let me just go back over to the admin page quickly here and just show that now that I have that in here, I can edit any of the custom content.

B

Packs I can edit the URLs and I can delete them out if I want to at any time or add additional ones. So that's that's part of all that, and by just clicking on each of these I can go back and forth and manage the content separately. So all right, let's see page two.

A

B

And so just wanted to share some quick links to get to the provisioning site, provisioning, SharePoint, P and P comm. The documentation is Doc's pages for custom learning or you can type in learning pathways in the search and they'll. Take you there. Also. The support center is the github repo, P and P slash custom learning office 365, so vasa I'm all set.

A

Yeah excellent, they will say one quick question: is this available in the government, tenants and and I. Don't see any reason why it would not be able to be yeah.

B

You would maybe have to do I think you would have to do the custom. So if you go to the github repo, there's actually instructions to deploy the SharePoint framework solution and create the communication site manually and it uses some PowerShell to do that. You would definitely probably have to do that, but other than that, as long as what I want to just say, I am NOT, a hundred percent sure of is I. Think GCC hi does not support SharePoint framework solutions and I.

B

Don't know that for a fact, but I think I've heard that from several people so but I think regular, GCC or whatever they call it does support, and so you should be able to deploy that no problem, but I would definitely be interested in hearing if somebody has feedback and whether it's worked or not. I have.

C

A question this is actually really cool, I'm, actually trying to set it up now for a customer to show them and- and they have an app catalog. But it's not allowing me to provision saying that I don't have an app catalog configured if.

B

You have problems with provisioning. The right course of action is to submit an issue to SP dev Docs mom I. Do know that if you also, there is a problem, if you are a customer with vanity URLs or the customer has vanity URLs. There are some problems with that. You won't be able to use the provisioning service to provision into a tenant with vanity URLs, which.

A

Is office treasonist if I've dedicated with just like thirty tenants in the world.