In my daily interactions with clients looking for a new intranet or to revamp their existing intranet experience in SharePoint, one of the common requirements is, “How can I make SharePoint look less like SharePoint?”. This request might come from different perceptions or experiences with older versions of SharePoint, like 2010 or 2013, when, well, things didn’t use to be pretty.

Now, much has changed since SharePoint 2010, and the fact is that SharePoint has significantly improved over the years. I think that the recent Microsoft updates to pages (e.g., flexible layouts) have brought SharePoint to an entirely new level.

In this blog post, we will focus on two new additions: the Editorial Card web part and the redesigned Hero web part that now supports a new carousel layout.

Keep on reading to learn the benefits these two components bring to internal communications!

Editorial Card web part

Imagine you need to promote a leadership message, showcase an upcoming event, celebrate a milestone, or draw attention to a key internal initiative in a way that captures employees' interest on your intranet homepage. Instead of relying on plain text that might get overlooked or working with graphic designers to create images, you want a simple and visually appealing way to present your message. This is where the Editorial Card web part comes in.

The Editorial Card web part is very flexible and puts your message in focus, enabling internal communicators to create engaging, attention-grabbing content on their intranet pages. Add one or more editorial cards to your page, set a background image, define the section or category name, and customize the title, description, and call to action. You can also choose from a set of additional configuration options such as layouts, content alignment, overlays, and more to further customize the content.

Be warned! It’s so easy to achieve good outcomes with this web part that we might end up overutilizing it on our pages 😊

Re-designed Hero web part

Let’s say you want to promote your corporate news in a dynamic and visual way in the header section of your intranet homepage, or managers want to highlight their announcements on department sites. The Hero web part has provided this option, but the existing layout choices weren’t modern enough. Microsoft customers have been asking for a slideshow-style layout, and that’s now available in the Hero web part. Honestly, even Viva Connections, which I believe has lower usage compared to SharePoint, has its own news carousel component. So, it was about time SharePoint pages also supported a carousel layout.

The carousel layout in the Hero web part will grab the attention of employees when they visit a page. Use it to curate the latest news posts from your intranet, highlight town halls, or promote your company’s public announcements. The web part has polished configuration options for each slide, such as background image, style, overlays, and alignment to help you create engaging content.

Note: Displaying too much news on a carousel might result in people missing updates, as they might not wait for the slides to change. Also, all content displayed in the carousel is maintained manually, so make sure to keep the content fresh to ensure that this page section remains engaging for employees over time.

Conclusion

The recent updates to SharePoint pages help internal communicators focus more on their message while giving them good choices for presenting their content in a more engaging and compelling way.

I believe more updates and new capabilities are yet to come for SharePoint pages. I’m definitely looking forward to the creation of SharePoint pages via Copilot. So, let’s stay tuned for when this will roll out.

If you want to catch up on other recent updates, I’ve listed my recent blog posts below that cover similar topics.

Thanks for reading,
Jarbas