SharePoint pages: Things just got personal!

Matthew shares his view on the page creation invitations from the new SharePoint start experience

 Reading time: 8 minutes

So as you may have spotted by now, I'm a bit of a SharePoint fan, I've been enjoying seeing all the recent developments to the platform, particularly enhancements to web parts and features that contribute to a high quality Internet experience, that's still achievable at the box and without a great amount of application knowledge needed by the creator. Take a read of my recent intranet page creation blog about some of them. 

However, it's true to say one of the most recent updates that’s just landed into the Your 365 Coach tenant fills me with equal amounts of joy and delight, as it does apprehension!

What I'm talking about is the new SharePoint start feature that allows anyone to easily create their own SharePoint pages, regardless of if that person has an intranet site provided to publish content to or not. (M365 Roadmap Feature ID: 124824)

So, let's cover the publishing point first. If I'm not the owner or member of any communication (or team) sites in my organisation’s SharePoint where do those pages go?  

Well thankfully they follow the logic of most digital content in Microsoft 365, because they are personal and belong to me, they're saved back to my OneDrive. It's worth a note to say, that I know that by looking at the URL of the page, it is not easy to find the pages within OneDrive itself. 

Of course, if you’ve been on the SharePoint journey for a few years this concept is not actually new and reflects some of the use cases for ‘My Sites’ an older space for individual content, that OneDrive has pretty much replaced entirely.  

What’s made me thoughtful about this change? 

Maybe I'm overthinking things, because I can absolutely see a true value in individuals being inspired and empowered to create person centric digital page content.  

Some great examples might be an about me page that I could share with new joiners or coworkers to provide a summary of who I am and how I contribute to the organisation, maybe a digital CV in a page format to share for internal opportunities or material to support a personal community activity that I'm taking part in and want to promote with my colleagues. 

I guess where I see the risk is the potential ease to cross the line between individual opinion, pointers and helpful information, that could quite justifiably live in a OneDrive, over to relied upon corporate knowledge and process documentation.  The latter is clearly not appropriate to store only in a personal space, where it may not benefit from regular backup and definitely could be destroyed either at the will of the individual or automatically if they were to leave the organisation. (Albeit that recovery is available, but only if you notice it’s gone! 😬) 

I found that when I created a page using the new experience, at the point I clicked publish, I was given two options: 

• Publish privately and share how I see fit, using the familiar share and sharing links abilities  
• Publish publicly to any of the SharePoint sites that I had access to do that  

Interestingly, once I'd created a private page, I then couldn't see a straightforward way to move it to a public space in the future. Of course, it wouldn't just be as straightforward as moving a page, all of the assets like graphics, files and videos would need to be moved as well to construct the whole digital experience again from its new home. 

Who else should be thoughtful about this change?

In summary, I don't think this latest development is a terrible thing at all, but it does need to be on the radar of internal communicators and information managers. Not to be the page police and to stifle innovation or creativity, but instead to enlighten people on the importance of creating the right content, in the right place.  

What does that mean? Well, maybe somebody feels inspired to start creating a personal blog, perhaps your organisation would prefer they shared that rich content in your Viva Engage communities. If someone believes that this will be a really good way to share their tacit process knowledge with their team, could they actually benefit from an internet site or could they be invited as a contributor to a global knowledge management solution instead? 

As always with Microsoft 365, this development is just the start of this evolution, it'll be interesting to see how private pages grow to contribute to the already wide range of existing channels available for collaboration and communication.  

Let's enjoy the creativity private pages bring, while being mindful of what we're creating – and where! 

Matthew 

Matthew Burrell is a consultant at Your 365 Coach

Published 30 August 2024

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