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Introduction

We love the capability that News Pages give you and your organisation in Microsoft 365. However, one of the things we are often asked is how can we set up several types of news and filter the news to show only those types on SharePoint?

This guide will explain how to set up, manage and filter Microsoft 365 News pages in SharePoint.

The How

The way that the News web part can filter pages is using metadata on page libraries. We are going to suggest a way that anyone who is a site owner can configure news.

On the SharePoint site that you are using to publish and access the news go to the Site Pages library:

• Click the SharePoint cog.
• Click Site information

• Click View all site settings.
• Click Site Columns under Web Designer Galleries

• Click Create button
• Provide a column name for the field such as News Category
• Choose Choice
• Choose or create a group that is specific to your organisation
  • E.g. [Company Name] Custom Columns, we use iThink 365 Custom Columns.
• Fill in the description as “Describes the category of news this content is related to.”
• Provide all the different types of news categories
  • E.g. Leadership Connection, Company news, Product news, Service news
• Decide if you want to allow multiple selections
• Click Ok

The next step is to allow this column to be used for a News Page. To do that:

• Click SharePoint cog.
• Click Site contents

• Scroll down the list of SharePoint document libraries and SharePoint lists and find Site Pages.
• Click the … and choose settings.

• Scroll down to the Columns section and click Add from existing site columns.

• Filter the group to your Organisation Custom Columns group
• Select the News category column, click Add and then Ok.

• Now, go and create a news post by browsing your SharePoint site home page and clicking New->News Post
• Choose the Template
• Click on Page details

• The right hand task pane will open where you can select the News category from

Complete your news story and publish it.

Filtering News

Now that we have the SharePoint News site set up with the News category field. We can set up the filtering of the news using that column.

To set up the SharePoint News web part to filter by the News Category do the following:

• Add the News Webpart to the page that you wish to display the News on.
• Edit the News Webpart, by clicking the pencil.

• The right-hand panel will appear, scroll down, and find the Select a news source
• Change the news source to “This site”. If you do not do this, then you will not be able to select the Page properties in the next step.

• Next scroll down and find the Filter section.
• Select Page Properties as the filter

• Select News Category
• Choose the values that you wish to display.

• Make any further changes to the N
• News web part to get the right look and feel.
• Close the panel.
• Save and Publish the Page.

Your news web part will now display only the stories that have been assigned those News categories.

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