Microsoft 365 Community SharePoint, 12 Jan 2021

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From YouTube: Introduction to Learning Pathways 4.1 now as an open-source solution

Description

In this 15-minute Site Admin - focused demo, Julie Turner steps viewers through the latest (Dec 2020) open-source updates to Learning Pathways SPFx web parts. Look at the updated GitHub repository structure, review contribution guidelines, preview a new capability – deep linking in Microsoft Teams using the Learning Pathways Viewer web part. Finally, how to provision Learning Pathways and a SharePoint Success site add-on in your tenant. This PnP Community demo is taken from the SharePoint (PnP) Community call – January 2021 – Monthly sync call recorded on January 12, 2021.

Demo Presenter: – Julie Turner (Sympraxis Consulting) | @jfj1997

Supporting materials:
• Solution GitHub repository – Microsoft 365 learning pathways | https://github.com/pnp/custom-learning-office-365
• Documentation – Microsoft 365 learning pathways | https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/customlearning/

Learn more:
• Learn more about the Microsoft 365 Patterns and Practices community at: http://aka.ms/m365pnp
• Visit the Microsoft 365 Patterns and Practices community YouTube channel: https://aka.ms/m365pnp-videos

A

All right, so I'm here today talking about microsoft, 365 learning pathways and mostly what I'm going to be focusing on is the open source updates. We did right before the holiday break so just quickly. My name is julie. Turner, I'm partner cto with some praxis consulting here, are multiple different ways to get a hold of me, uh but primarily today, I'm going to be talking about learning pathways, which has its own github repo.

A

So what I want to point out is some changes that we made to the repository structure with this release. So previously, all our source code was not provided, and that was a conscious decision by microsoft that they wanted. We wanted to work on the code base and get it really stable before we released it.

A

So some changes that were made with this release is that we updated our repo to be have the main name instead of master. The docs folder is always uh where all are manifest for the content. The lists and everything live. uh Images were always there. Installation used to be called web parts so that installation folder is where you're gonna find the pre-compiled solution package as well as manual installation scripts and some other scripts for fixing things up.

A

Newly added is the source, folder and so I'll I'll go into more detail on that in a few moments, but the source folder is where all the styling and the web part source code lives.

A

What I want to talk about today is because we've open source the solution. I want to talk about quickly the contribution guidelines that we're going to have on the repository. So we are not going to accept any pull requests on that docs folder, so that docs folder is where uh microsoft's manifests of playlists and assets live and because of the shared nature of that repository, we're not going to be accepting pull requests on that microsoft will manage those lists, and so anyone who does a pull request on that.

A

I will just close it down and we'll be thinking about that and reviewing that and we may change that policy later. But for now that is, that is the stance we're going to take. uh We want you to target all your pull requests to the dev branch that way we can fully test and integrate them before we move them into the master branch and release them. So please target your updates to the dev branch. Also kind of keep your pull request fairly.

A

Simple right, give me a great overview of what you changed and in as much detail as possible, so it makes it quicker for me to review it and hopefully get it in enrolled into the solution, and if you have an idea for a big change, we're certainly open to that. But please submit an enhancement request idea so that we can chat about it ahead of time and make sure that the solution that you're proposing is something that's going to fit into the overall architecture of the solution.

A

So then, back to the source code, that source code folder has two main folders in it: the style guide, folder and the web part folder. So uh the development team was comprised of myself and stephen bauer and stephen bauer built this style guide solution that, basically, is a web app. That runs. That shows you all.

A

The component parts of all the design components within learning pathways solution, so the style guide is its own solution and the scss that lives in there gets imported or pulled into the web part code source code on build time, so the web part folder then has our sharepoint framework solutions inside of it, and so from that perspective we have this directory structure underneath it. So we have the custom learning web part, which is the viewer web part.

A

We have the custom learning admin web part, which is the um the admin ui and we have a set of common code as well as a couple of reusable controls that sort of sit outside the structure. The file picker for picking the images for uh the play, custom, playlists and custom subcategories, as well as a recursive tree control that I built to be able to pick uh what subcategory uh or category playlists sit in when you're using the ui okay. So that's all I had for slides.

A

So let me shut down my powerpoint situation here and, let's take a look at the source code. So um again we have the github repo here and, like I said, we have that docs folder and inside that we have. You know the learning pathways playlists and content for v4 and v3 they sent in here, as well as the sharepoint success kit.

A

Okay, so we have that docs folder, that's where all the manifests live and then again I showed the source code. This is that style guide app, and this is the web part code and again this is just sharepoint framework solution. So, if you're familiar with building for sharepoint framework, uh you know all of this is what you would expect okay.

A

So this is where that source code lives and and again, if you you know, if you have some ideas or or whatever feel, free to to get started and and help uh make the solution even better okay. So then the other thing we wanted to talk about was the microsoft teams integration.

A

So one of the things we're going to be doing in the future and vesa uh mentioned this earlier- is that the 1.12 version of the sharepoint framework is going to have a couple of features in it that we kind of have been waiting for for so from a styling perspective.

A

um There are some things that stefan did to make. The wet viewer web part behave nicely in the different locations on the page, so if you're, in a one-third section or if you're in a full-bleed section or wherever the web part behaves nicely in that he did some some work. That is, you know a little hacky at best, but it was our only solution with the 1.12 version of sharepoint framework, we're going to be able to revisit that and hopefully make that a lot more solid.

A

So that will be something that's coming in the next few months after the 1.12 sharepoint framework release. The other thing that the 1.12 version of the sharepoint framework gives us is the ability to put a more complex teams manifest in the solution, so in the source code we'd be able to bundle in at a um a manifest. That's more complex!

A

What that more complex, manifest is gonna. Allow us to do so. I'm gonna demo right now, so we have the the learning pathway solution and when we go to the viewer web part, if people are familiar with this, we have the ability to deep link into the web part.

A

So if I go into one of these playlists, I can click my link button and it's going to give me a link to my because I'm on the viewer web part page, it's going to give me a link back to that page, but with deep linking in it. So it comes right back to this location.

A

What we've done with the 4.1 release was that we added teams think deep linking so when you have added the teams, um manifest for a private app for teams and you're in the team's solution, and you click the link. It actually recognizes that you're in teams and gives the deep linking context, that's needed so that if you use this url, if I copy this url- and I paste it over in here- it's gonna deep link back into that same location in the team's app yeah, yeah yeah load load load load.

A

There we go so it comes back to that same location. So that feature we're going to be able to release more officially with the 1.12 release. But I will be sharing the manifest that I used for this, so that others can take advantage of that manifest and manually deployed into teams. So that is a new thing that I will be deploying shortly within the next couple of weeks.

A

I think that's about all that I wanted to share about that. So that was all I had.

B

A

There anything else you want me to cover.

B

Vesa, yes, julie. Can you briefly explain what is the learning place and why people would actually care about it? Let's not assume that everybody in the call actually remembers what it is.

A

Yeah, so learning pathways is um it's: it's a well! It's a set of web parts, they're two web parts in the solution that surface through an iframe iframe technology documents from support.office.com or docs.microsoft.com, combined together into a playlist of content to help people learn things.

A

So this is the um this is the home of the content um and we have um different categories of content so like getting started your first days using microsoft, office, 365 or uh recommended playlists, and we have content and playlists for products like word and excel um content about like how to do rows and columns, for instance, and once we get into that content, we have uh playlists that walk us through each of these tasks that we might need to do now.

A

The viewer web part that you can use can be put in in any uh site. Collection can be added as an app into any of the site collections in your um in your tenant, and then you can in line learning content in with the rest of your content. So it's a way to basically distribute learning in through your tenant and reuse content. That is hosted right in the central location. So we have the learning pathways administration web part that I mentioned earlier.

A

That helps us basically go through and decide what we want to show and what we want to hide as far as like which playlist and there's also the ability to go through and show and hide different technologies uh like. Maybe you have not implemented teams or powerpoint or yammer, for instance, and you want to hide all yammer content from the from the solution you can. You can do that, and so then it also allows us to do use other solutions, such as the sharepoint success site.

A

So the sharepoint success site is what's called a new content pack and it has learnings and playlists managed by a team at microsoft, just around sharepoint, and so this content. You can also add uh into your content, set for learning pathways to provision learning pathways. You can do it in a couple different ways. One way is to use the lookbook site. um I think I might have that memorized look book.microsoft.com, so you can go to lookbookmy.microsoft.com and there is solutions for learning pathways, and I guess this is probably small.

A

Let me zoom in a little bit, so we can go into the solutions and then microsoft learning pathways and if you are a tent global tenant admin, you can provision learning pathways into your solution by adding it into your tenant once you've signed in. But you do have to be a global tenant admin, because this is going to deploy web parts into your solution gallery. So you have to be a global tenant admin. That's the security level! You need, if that's a problem for you.

A

We have documentation our github site about how to manually deploy learning pathways. So you don't have to actually provision the the cust, the site collection, you can add a site collection manually and then provision learning pathways in you won't get the template pages that are just sort of like getting started pages, but they're not necessary to run the solution. So that's how you get started with uh learning pathways, and then I did mention the sharepoint success kit. So I'll just point it out here.

A

The sharepoint success kit is an add-on content pack and site collection for learning pathways. You might a prerequisite. Is that you've already deployed learning pathways into your tenant, but then you can go to the sharepoint success site template and deploy that into your solution. You will want to before you do this. It watch this very short video. It's like a four minute video that just gives you the step by step on how to provision it, because there is a little bit of a trick.

A

You have to add that content pack that I was showing over here this content pack has to be added manually in um so you need to do that final step or the solution won't work.

B

Cool, that's that's a really good summary! There's a great question by the way, from wayne related on your demo. Can you set a learning path for a particular user profile? So can you do a targeted learning path for a new employees as an example versus just showing everything.

A

Oh for sure, so like I, I think what you're saying is like um if you had like a we have this playlist that I had from a different demo. So luckily it's just right here we had this uh customized. So we took this six simple steps. Welcome to microsoft, 365 that microsoft built. We made a copy of it uh because it's a feature of the admin center and we made a custom. Playlist called welcome to your first week at acme, acme company.

A

Whatever, then, the playlist is a combination of microsoft provided assets and our custom assets, which are just pages in the site right. So we made custom pages on you know: enrolling your mobile app or creating an email signature um so that custom content. Then you can take this content and maybe, if I get wicked lucky I can, I can find acme hr. Oh my god really seriously. Oh sweet!

A

I did find it at the hr, and so if we go to this acme hr site, we can see that we have a custom human resources site where we have this welcome to your first week at acme link and that link has the playlist embedded right in it with some extra content that we just put on the left hand pane. So you can absolutely drive your users to this content specifically, so it's not audience targeted in that way.

A

Although this is just a page in sharepoint, and so of course, you could secure it or email it or you know, create a news feed on it. You know lots of different ways to use sharepoint to make uh make that content get to your users in the way that is best works for them. Does that help answer the question.

B

That's helped yeah absolutely helped so that that's a really good and and just to recap, the learning pathways is a free solution, helping every single company in the world to help to train their employees easily. So it is really targeted for providing answers directly inside of your intranet so surfacing that microsoft support material and guidance and videos and all of that inside of your internet, so people can easily find it. So that's that's what it's intended to use anything, what I'm missing, they're related on objective perspective.

B

That was a good way of putting that then, okay, cool. Thank you, julie,.