The recent announcement from Microsoft on modern page properties allows for a much better page editing experience. It will even allow for multiple Site Page content types in the Pages library, each with different metadata.
The Site Pages page library on both a SharePoint Communication site and a Modern Team site comes with the default Site Page content type. You can have multiple custom Site Page content types in the page library, this is nothing new, however with the new Page Details feature, we can more easily work with multiple content types through the UI.
To demonstrate, let’s say you have 2 content types in the Pages library:
- Site Page (the default)
- Adoption Page (custom)
Here is the Content type definition for the Adoption Page custom content type. I’ve added 2 custom managed metadata columns to it: AdoptionRole and AdoptionService.
This is a content type I use when building an Office 365 Adoption Center and is a quick way of organizing your modern pages by role and Office 365 service. Please refer to my blog post series for more details: Setup Targeted Training on Office 365 Adoption Center
If you want to create a new Adoption Page, you have 2 choices. You can either click New… Adoption page from the ribbon on the Site Pages library (left image below) OR if you’ve already created an Adoption Page, while on the page you can click New…copy of this page from the ribbon on the page (right image below).
If you choose the second option above, the copy will retain the content type definition (including all custom columns and their values) from the page being copied. You can open up the Page Details to make modifications. Check it out in this quick video…
Note: you cannot change the content type from the Page Details pane.
For those of you building out sites using modern pages, this is great news. The ability to have multiple content types in the pages library allows for more robust solutions to be built and the new Page Details feature makes it easier for information workers building modern pages to work with them.
Thanks for reading.
-JCK
Credit: Photo by Artem Bali from Pexels
Thanks for the post; I’ve been setting up a procedure document library for a team of about 20 people the past week and am starting to wonder if a page library might be a better option, especially now with these nifty metadata features (I can’t seem to wrestle SP doc library metadata properties into the content type document template (at least non-single line text metadata) anyway). The page authoring experience is much more inspiring than a word doc, too – imagine having procedure reference material in-line…pdfs, excel workbooks, video, etc…Site page libraries also has Flow for automations (email procedure Owner on a recurrence w/ attached or linked site page)
just doing some thinking out loud…
appreciate your blog,
– Kurt
Thanks Kurt, it’s always a good idea to rethink the design. Sometimes documents are the right way to go, but not always. Best of luck!
-JCK
Hi Kurt, A few more thoughts… I’d say the choice between documents and pages comes down to the rigor you require around approving and publishing your procedures. Although some approval options are coming to pages, documents still have more capabilities (major/minor versions, content approval, etc.) That said, I love sharing procedures using modern pages. I’ve done it on resource-type centers with a lot of success. Good luck!
-JCK
Thanks for sharing your thoughts – I was hoping you could provide a boil-down for me 🙂 I think we can wait for the approval options coming to pages, and while it’s not crystal clear yet how important version functionality will be, my sense is that we will give site pages a whirl. Worse case scenario we go back to the doc library…
Hi,
Is really great but after I change the Content Type to something is not “Site Page” I can’t edit the page.
Only if I change it back to “Site Page” Content Type – I have the ability to edit the page.
Any ideas?
Thanks
Yehuda
Hi Yehuda, I’m not sure. Have you tried publishing the page and starting the edit session over again? Sometimes that helps.
-JCK
Hi, sorry for the delay..
Yes I tried it.
I created a site page, then changed his Content Type to another one.
I saved and try to edit the page (from the content page itself – not form the page library).
I open a new Site and this accrues again..
Thanks,
Yehuda
Hi Yehuda,
I would check and re-check you’ve built your custom Content Type correctly. Make sure it’s parent is a ‘Site Page’, etc. Other than that, this is not the most suitable channel for support. I would suggest reaching out to someone who you can share your screen with to show them what you’re doing.
-Joanne
Hi Joanne,
Thanks for all you do. I follow your posts & articles. Have a question on Modern Site pages – Is it possible to add Site pages content type to a Wiki pages library? I was able to do it using SPD, but new site pages does not respond, they just show up as blank pages.
All I am trying to do is create a second Site pages library? Is it possible or have to stick with only one site pages library per stie?
Hi Bharath, you can only have 1 site pages library.
-JCK
Hi Joanne.
I need to ask if exist a good practice or approach about Content Type centrally administration on Sharepoint Online Modern Experience? Content Type Hub in my tenant is not doing what should do, I think. My Content Types are published but not visible in my Modern Experience Sites to be used in Library App Settings.
Hi Darwin, i don’t use the Content Type Hub in SPO, I’m waiting for some improvements to be made first as well as capability to publish content types at a SharePoint Hub level. I’ve deployed them via Site Designs instead. (Or manually create them)
-Joanne
-Joanne
Wow!!!. I cant believe it!!!
The modernization of the term store and a new interface for the content types definitions (content type hub) is happening very soon. (In large tenants, it historically didn’t perform/behave well) I’ve also not tested with a custom site page content page from the content type hub. Not sure if that’s what you’re doing.
You will soon be able to tap into content types from the Content Type Hub from a site design and be able to target Content Types to specific site collections. THAT is what I’m anxiously waiting for. 🙂
-JCK
Hi…
Is possible to add in Content Type template User Department and Job info?
I tried using quick parts and People or Group Field with no sucess.
I would like to get this info from Active Directory by default.
Great article! Since the site page content type are ‘sealed’, as a rule of thumb, is it correct to not modify any OOTB content types but to use them as parent when creating a custom content types? Just curious because we would like to add additional custom columns, such as page type, region, etc.
Hi Chris! I always create a custom site page content type (based off of Site Page) and then add my custom columns to it. It’s safe to do that and it always works. You technically can also add columns to the list level ootb site page content type but NEVER update the OOTB site-level Site Page base content type (never update ANY OOTB base content types for that matter). Hard to explain, hopefully you get what I mean.
-JCK
Thank you for confirming! It helps. 🙂