Microsoft 365 Community SharePoint, 29 Nov 2022

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From YouTube: Introduction to SharePoint page section templates

Description

Section templates can be added to any SharePoint page to easily give your page a more polished look. Make page design simpler by choosing from a variety of templates that display content beautifully without any guesswork. Section templates include preset content with formatted aspect ratios that can be edited and customized if needed.

In this video we'll focus to showcase the section templates in practice and also talk about bit about the next steps and future roadmap for the section templates.

Demo Presenter
• Sara Cummings (Microsoft)

Supporting materials
• Make designing SharePoint pages easier with section templates - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/make-designing-sharepoint-pages-easier-with-section-templates-e9eef9cd-57ce-4db4-b952-ae61950501a9
• Authoring modern pages in SharePoint - https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/authoring-modern-pages-in-sharepoint-ace947e7-2958-4baf-bab7-8605954a72cc
• Create and use modern pages on a SharePoint site - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/create-and-use-modern-pages-on-a-sharepoint-site-b3d46deb-27a6-4b1e-87b8-df851e503dec

Agenda
00:00 Introduction
02:28 Demo
04:12 Future plans

Learn more
• Microsoft 365 Platform Community in YouTube - https://aka.ms/m365/videos
• Microsoft 365 Platform Community - https://aka.ms/m365/community

A

Foreign everybody to this video series, where we're going to cover new features and capabilities. What we have available in Microsoft, 365 and with me today is Sarah Cummins um Sarah. Can you do a quick interest who we are and what do you do for living yeah.

B

I am Sarah Cummings.

B

To that canvas, so every time you go and you create a page and you edit something there's probably something that I've worked on with the rest of the team.

A

Yeah, it's and those spaces are getting created so much on every single day so and- and we get so much of great feedback around the pages experience, it's gone so far from what it was when, whenever I started, at least with SharePoint, so yeah.

B

A

A while back so yeah.

B

No I've only been here for two years, so um I've seen a shorter period of time, but we've still changed a lot in that time.

A

Period a lot of fun of cool stuff. Now, on this video we wanted to talk about uh the section templates: can you quickly describe what they are and then let's do a demo after that, yeah.

B

Of course, so uh recently we've added section templates to the canvas, so what we did is we made it so that when you go to add a new section, we're now offering templates for things that people normally use.

B

um So we looked at our data and we saw that overwhelmingly folks are using combinations of image and texts for their section. So, instead of having to add your image, add your text add your layout. We took some of the things that people are using most frequently and we just packaged them together for you. So, instead of going through all those steps yourself, you can drop something on the canvas and you know that it's going to look great.

A

To wait me as a user now and thinking so in past I was creating like a section and then it needed to select how many columns and all of that, but you and then I added the web part in and the settings and now all of those web parts are available in the template. Is that the thinking or the setup or structure yeah.

B

So we started, or the only ones that are built, build templates right now, but moving forward we would be able to bring in other commonly used combinations that we see um and bring those into our section templates as well. But we had a starting point started with the mission text and we wanted to see what happened and overwhelmingly. It's been a huge success. We've seen a ton of usage um and gotten a great a lot of great feedback, so I'm excited to share it all with you.

A

Cool that sounds really really good. So, let's, let's jump on your screen and let's have a look on this in practice. Yeah.

B

um So this is the same sample page we have going and to C-section templates and go here go into edit mode. So, as you can see, this page is made up of these different sections um and if we wanted to add a new one, we click this plus button here um now. First, you have your old options, which are all of your column layouts.

B

um But now we have this templates tab. So once you click on this, you get a number of options um of what you can add to the page. So I'm gonna go with this first one three column mentioned text, it's very popular and so once I click that it's inserted onto my canvas automatically. So now, instead of having to add three columns, go to my web Parts menu and add stuff individually, it's here and it's ready for me.

B

um These images also when you start have locked aspect ratios, so you know that they're all going to go, look good from the very start, but as a user as soon as you override it, it snaps to your settings. I can also go in here and add my own web Parts. I can add anything I want after the template is on the canvas. It is yours, but this gives you a really nice starting point.

B

um So I can even do things like change. My layouts, um but I didn't have to go through all of the work of doing this all initially. um So that's section templates. um It's it's really exciting. We've been seeing a lot of usage and it's our goal to make the author's life a lot easier.

A

This is really really cool. This is I was unaware of this, so to be quite Frank and honest, so this is cool. This is going to save a lot of the time when I'm writing my reports as a news articles in the SharePoint. This is yeah.

B

Awesome stuff absolutely.

A

Excellent thanks Laura that was really really cool, as mentioned and I will certainly use those in my my uh reports as well, but now now we offered there a set of those con templates. So can we can we configure our own templates? So if a companies have their own templates which they want to have there, is that a possibility already.

B

It's not a possibility right now, but it is something we are definitely looking at in our V2 next steps for this um we've gotten the request very frequently that people want to make their own templates at the section level, which is very interesting because it's there's a different interaction model to making a template at a section level than there is a page one. But.

A

B

Know if you make a beautiful section, you should be able to save it and use it later. um So that's feedback that we've got and we are thinking about and there are exciting things to come.

A

And that's actually a good point. You can save a state page as a template, so you can actually save an existing page and that's being widely used as well. But in this case it would be just the sections of the pages. So it's a bit of a different uh use scenario. Now what else is on the roadmap? Anything which again kind of uh explain, maybe and and please what's coming.

B

Yeah I can I can hint at some stuff, um so we're definitely looking to put in more work at the section level and making it so that when you put content on the canvas, we're predisposing it to look as beautiful as possible. um So this was the first investment into the space. Honestly, section templates was a little bit of an experiment. We wanted to see how they were used. It's the first interaction we've had at a section level and based on that, we were going to.

B

You know, make decisions on how to further invest into that and considering it's been a massive success, we're looking to move forward with other stuff. Now the entry point we have for it right now in the plus menu, um probably won't be the permanent one. You can expect in the future to see a broader pain and a more Rich experience when you are going to be interacting with uh templates at the section level, um but there's going to be a lot more to come to make your sections look beautiful, and not just your pages. Yeah.

A

Absolutely and that's actually a good point: it's just those who are watching the video on Carnival. Why aren't they showing this and this and these kind of options on Section, 10, plus things? We always need to think true. How do we expose that in the ux and we test out different things and experiences and then it's an evolving thing which which we understand that it's a change, management, Channel challenge, potentially because things are a bit changing but they're intended to be easier as we evolve. The experiences.

B

Yeah, absolutely every uh every step we make is incremental.

A

B

A product team we're building towards the best experience, but um we need to try things along the way and see what sticks, um and this is something that's definitely stuck, so you can look forward to more investments in this space.

A

Awesome awesome. Thank you. Thank you, Sarah for this one really really cool stuff, I'm good to get this one uh recorded for sure. Thank you, yeah. Thank you.