Save time by scheduling SharePoint News posts

Let SharePoint take the stress out of your embargos and timelines 

Reading time: 3 minutes

SharePoint Pages and News posts are a straightforward, easy to consume way to share intranet news articles, project updates and process improvements. 

Timeliness is key to effective communications, so wouldn’t it be great to automate publishing content on the day and time agreed in your communication plan? Well, the good news is you can and it’s all out-of-the-box!  

Some things to note 

• Page scheduling is not new but is often overlooked. 
• We’ll use the term ‘News post’ throughout this article as news content is more likely to need to be scheduled, but this will work on Pages too. 
• Scheduling is available for Modern Communication and Team site templates, but make sure you read the section at the end if you are using a Team site. 

How to turn on scheduling

When a new site is created page scheduling is turned off by default, it can be turned on or off by the Site Owners.

In the Site Pages library an Owner can click the Scheduling button on the library menu and then toggle the Enable scheduling to on.

Turning off again follows the same process. Note that if you turn scheduling off any pages scheduled to publish will continue to be held until the correct time and will auto-publish then.

How to schedule a News post 

Anyone who can create News posts and Pages (Site Owners and Members) can use scheduling. Creating and editing News posts continues in the same way as normal, until you come to the time when your news is ready.  

Instead of clicking Publish to post the news straight away click the Page details button to open the page properties. 

Simply toggle Scheduling to On and add a date and time. 

You’ll notice the Publish button becomes a Schedule button, clicking schedule will start the timer and your news will be automatically published at your chosen time. 

Can you make edits to a scheduled post?

Yes, the post will work exactly as any draft post would. If you make edits you’ll be prompted to re-schedule the article, it will remember the original time set.

Using scheduling on a Team site

Like all draft pages, scheduled posts and pages can be seen and edited by all Site Members before they are published. This is fine on a Communication site when you only have a small number of Members and most consumers are Site Visitors (Read only).

However, on a Team site all of your co-workers will be Site Members and your big surprise could be spoilt by prying eyes! There is a solution, if you’d like to create a draft to be scheduled on a Team site, select ‘Create as a private draft’. This way your scheduled post will only be visible to you and any individuals you share it with (It’s a good idea to share it with at least one other editor).

At the scheduled time the post will publish and be available to everyone on the site.

This is a super-useful feature that can help take some of the burden off busy communicators and leaders, why not give it a try?

Published: 26 April 2024

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