Weekly sharepoint news digest

[Oos]

We're using te sharepoint news webpart for all our news inside the company.
is it possible to send a news digest weekly? It is already possible with a trigger in SharePoint, but i cant find one in Flow. 
(https://support.office.com/en-us/article/create-and-send-a-news-digest-42efc3c6-605f-4a9a-85d5-1f9ff...)

[v-bacao-msft]

Hi @Oos,

MS Flow does not support features -"Send a news digest" currently.

I am afraid we can't achieve your needs at this time.

If you want to function that you mentioned to be supported in Microsoft Flow, please submit an idea to Flow Ideas Forum:

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Flow-Ideas/idb-p/FlowIdeas

Best Regards,

Barry

[RobElliott]

 Hi @Oos, there isn't an already-built template for this but you can still create a Flow to send a weekly digest of News created by the News web part in SharePoint to produce something like this:

The full list of actions is shown below and then I'll talk through each one:

 

1. SharePoint saves the news from the News web part in Site Pages, but you will probably have a lot of other pages there as well so you need to add a new column to show which pages are news and should therefore be included in the weekly digest. I created a called called PageType and set the default value to News - in normal work you might be creating more news pages than other types.

2. You want the flow to run once a week so in Flow create a recurrence schedule and set the details for when it will run:

3. The next step is to get the items from SharePoint. Select the site then type Site Pages in the List Name (it won't show up by default so you need to type it in as a custom entry). To speed up the processing of the flow once you have a lot of pages, set the filter query so that the only items that returned are those pages created in the last 7 days that have a PageType of News. The query filter should have the syntax Created gt  then an apostrophe ' then enter an expression using the syntax below and close it out with another apostrophe ' and PageType eq 'News'

adddays(utcNow(),-7)

4. We then want to initialize 2 string variables to capture the page name of the news item and the text content. the value empty:

5. Initialize an Array variable which will be used to initially hold each item that will go in the table:

6. The next step is to add an Apply to each and from the Dynamic Content box select Value. Then add 2 Append to string variables, one for the name and one for the description (remember, you initialized them earlier) and from the Dynamic Content box add the name and Description columns from your SharePoint Site pages document library.

7. At this point I decided to add a step to convert UTC into British dd/MM/yy format so that the email shows the correct format, so you might not need this step.

8. The next step is to add an Append to array variable which will hold each string variable and the converted date.  You'll see that what will ho into the email is written in JSON. I'm not an expert on that so I'm sure others can add to this very basic example. Start with an open curly parenthesis (brackets), on the next line put "Published": inside punctuation marks, then add the Converted time from the Dynamic Content box and add a comma , before going to the next line and doing the same but this time using the varName variable you initialized and appended to earlier and after another comma , before doing the same for the Description line. As this is the last line there is no comma before you go to the next line and add curly closing parenthesis (brackets). So it should look like this:

 

9. Unless you clear the string variables at this stage it will keep appending them so add 2 Set variables and you can select the Name you created earlier from the dropdown, and set them to an expression of null.

10. We're almost there. You now need to add a Create HTML Table control and in the From box choose from the Dynamic Content box your array variable that you formatted in step 8.

11. The final step is to create your email and add from the Dynamic Content box the Output from the Create HTML Table control. You can then add any other thins you want on the email. I've just added a link back to the intranet.

In your final version you will probably want to add more controls about who the email will go to. 
Shortly I will be looking at whether it's possible to improve the formatting of the final table which will no doubt need more complex JSON code, ad I'd also like to include a thumbnail image for each item but I haven't investigated this yet.

I hope this is useful for you.

Rob

[RobElliott]

 Hi @Oos, there isn't an already-built template for this but you can still create a Flow to send a weekly digest of News created by the News web part in SharePoint to produce something like this:

The full list of actions is shown below and then I'll talk through each one:

 

1. SharePoint saves the news from the News web part in Site Pages, but you will probably have a lot of other pages there as well so you need to add a new column to show which pages are news and should therefore be included in the weekly digest. I created a called called PageType and set the default value to News - in normal work you might be creating more news pages than other types.

2. You want the flow to run once a week so in Flow create a recurrence schedule and set the details for when it will run:

3. The next step is to get the items from SharePoint. Select the site then type Site Pages in the List Name (it won't show up by default so you need to type it in as a custom entry). To speed up the processing of the flow once you have a lot of pages, set the filter query so that the only items that returned are those pages created in the last 7 days that have a PageType of News. The query filter should have the syntax Created gt  then an apostrophe ' then enter an expression using the syntax below and close it out with another apostrophe ' and PageType eq 'News'

adddays(utcNow(),-7)

4. We then want to initialize 2 string variables to capture the page name of the news item and the text content. the value empty:

5. Initialize an Array variable which will be used to initially hold each item that will go in the table:

6. The next step is to add an Apply to each and from the Dynamic Content box select Value. Then add 2 Append to string variables, one for the name and one for the description (remember, you initialized them earlier) and from the Dynamic Content box add the name and Description columns from your SharePoint Site pages document library.

7. At this point I decided to add a step to convert UTC into British dd/MM/yy format so that the email shows the correct format, so you might not need this step.

8. The next step is to add an Append to array variable which will hold each string variable and the converted date.  You'll see that what will ho into the email is written in JSON. I'm not an expert on that so I'm sure others can add to this very basic example. Start with an open curly parenthesis (brackets), on the next line put "Published": inside punctuation marks, then add the Converted time from the Dynamic Content box and add a comma , before going to the next line and doing the same but this time using the varName variable you initialized and appended to earlier and after another comma , before doing the same for the Description line. As this is the last line there is no comma before you go to the next line and add curly closing parenthesis (brackets). So it should look like this:

 

9. Unless you clear the string variables at this stage it will keep appending them so add 2 Set variables and you can select the Name you created earlier from the dropdown, and set them to an expression of null.

10. We're almost there. You now need to add a Create HTML Table control and in the From box choose from the Dynamic Content box your array variable that you formatted in step 8.

11. The final step is to create your email and add from the Dynamic Content box the Output from the Create HTML Table control. You can then add any other thins you want on the email. I've just added a link back to the intranet.

In your final version you will probably want to add more controls about who the email will go to. 
Shortly I will be looking at whether it's possible to improve the formatting of the final table which will no doubt need more complex JSON code, ad I'd also like to include a thumbnail image for each item but I haven't investigated this yet.

I hope this is useful for you.

Rob

[Oos]

Thanks for your workaround. Unfortunately, this workaround is without the news images and has a different layout than the original

I made a Flow Idea. You can vote here: https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Flow-Ideas/Automate-sharepoint-news-digest-weekly/idi-p/194140

[RobElliott]

Ah right, I see what you mean. Good idea, I've voted.

Rob
Los Gallardos

[DanielaHo]

Hi v-bacao-msft

Is this still correct - no Flow connector to SPO news digest yet? 

We are wanting the ability to change the 'sender' of the news digest, so the sender shown in the email is not the person who sent the news digest. I was wonderig if this could be achieved via Flow. 

Also, the solution presented in this thread appears to send all news items from a web part, so it does not have the same functionality of letting the sender select which news items to send..

[MikeRooker]

Hey Rob, I found this super useful. I know it's been way over a year since you've posted this super useful flow, worked like butter for me. I was wondering, did you get to figure how to get those images to show as opposed to the link?
Format the News Digest with fonts, spacing , etc?
Thanks again.

[RobElliott]

@MikeRooker I didn't turn my attention back to it, but it's certainly possible to format the table and I'll post up about this and the images as soon as possible.

Rob
Los Gallardos

[MikeRooker]

Thanks so much @RobElliott 

[MikeRooker]

I'm really surprised that MS had not presented a way to at least make their New Digest customizable.
At least letting us remove their logos on top so that the Clients can feel that their News is "theirs" by only having their branding.

[MauriceC]

Hi @RobElliott :

These steps were very helpful in getting an automated weekly digest started for news on my agency's SharePoint page. Did you ever figure out how to add an article's thumbnail (and perhaps URL) to the table in the body of the email? 

Thanks for any help you can provide! 

[Toby958]

Hi Rob,

Thanks for sharing this Flow it's been really useful. I know this was published a while ago, but do you know if it's possible to integrate an article's thumbnail image into the HTML table?

[jcollins]

 @RobElliott   @Oos  This works great for me, except one caveat: The Description field is only populated when I use the Default Blank News template.  If I use any template that I've created myself, it doesn't fill the Description field with any text,  just the Authoring Canvas Content field, but that isn't discoverable in PA to select.  Any tips in this case? Has anyone else found this to be true? Maybe I just need to find a way to make my templates populate the Description field?
  Thanks, Joe

[jcollins]

@Toby958  You should be able to use the "Banner Image URL" dynamic property field in PA to show the image. For me though it only shows the image in OWA but not the desktop OL

[soeren]

Hi Rob.

Did you manage to figure this out, yet? 🙂

[mobilismexico]

I don't see the Site Pages in the Get Items block.

I only see Lists that I've created.

[RobElliott]

@mobilismexico it won't put it into the dropdown as it's a library, not a list. YOu need to add it as a custom value in the dropdown.

Rob
Los Gallardos
If I've answered your question or solved your problem, please mark this question as answered. This helps others who have the same question find a solution quickly via the forum search. If you liked my response, please consider giving it a thumbs up. Thanks.

[mobilismexico]

I missed the part in the main post that said exactly that: manually type "Site Pages". Thanks for reiterating it. Sorry.

On a separate issue, is the string variable limited to 250 characters only? 

My digest comes out truncated to that many characters per row.

[Adela_Dolezalov]

Hi, I add "Site Pages" as a custom value and I am not able to add the name and the rest dynamic content from the step "Get file". Is it possible to get dynamic content from "Get file" step only for Team site, not for Communication site? On both Communication sites, I am the owner.