SharePoint News widgets

This page is about the SharePoint News widgets included into Elementi 2025.

Introduction

The SharePoint News widgets are digital components designed to display news posts or pages from SharePoint Online sites. These widgets can be integrated into various digital signage projects to keep audiences informed with the latest updates and news. Here are some examples of how SharePoint News widgets can be used:

Corporate Communications: Display company news and updates on screens in office buildings.
Event Announcements: Share information about upcoming events and activities.
Community News: Keep the community informed with local news and announcements.

Tip: See the full article on SharePoint Online support.

Requirements

Elementi 2025 or later.
The designated players must run at least DSOS 4.8.7, preferably the latest DSOS version.
A Microsoft Office 365 account.

Secure data access

Access to SharePoint data can be obtained via the “Connectors” service or the legacy Cockpit Channels service. While both can be used, we recommend “Connectors” for a more flexible and robust integration.

See step-by-step instructions on how to add an Office 365 connector to your cloud account, here.

Get started

Click the "Projects" tab in the Browse panel.
Create a new Elementi project or open an existing one. If you are going to use the "Connectors" service, make sure your project is linked to a SpinetiX cloud account.
The project's main index file is opened by default. If needed, open the file that should contain the widget.
Click the "Widgets" tab in the Browse panel to find all the collections of widgets included with your Elementi version/type.
Elementi 2025 X widgets
Double-click the "SharePoint News" collection and find the widgets available for that data source.
SharePoint News widgets
Select the widget that best fits how you want to present the data.
Drag that widget from the Browse panel and drop it into the Edit panel (or the Preview panel) to create a new media layer within the opened document. The built-in widget is automatically copied into your project files.
Double-click the widget's layer in the Edit panel to find its properties.
Configure the widget's properties and layout to display your data.

Included in Elementi

Elementi software comes with several SharePoint News widgets accessible from the "Widgets" tab within the Browse panel:

Single Post
Single Post widget icon

The Single Post widget generates a list of slides, each showing a single SharePoint News/Page, with or without a transition effect in between. It utilizes a stylish layout design that includes two distinct sections: at the top, the page's title and creation date, over the page's header image (or a dark-blue background, if missing), and at the bottom, the page's description and a QR code that directs users to the corresponding page on the SharePoint site.
Text Bar
Displays text content using a fixed number of lines and applying a bottom-to-top & line-by-line scrolling effect whenever the entire text doesn't fit into the widget area.
Text Ticker
Displays text content using a continuous horizontal scrolling effect. The font size is adjusted automatically for the text to fit into the widget area.
Text Roll
Displays text content using a continuous vertical scrolling effect. The font size is automatically adjusted for the selected number of lines to fit within the predefined area.
Slideshow
Displays slides composed of text & media layers, which are automatically filled out with data retrieved from SharePoint. The slides are displayed one after another, with or without a transition effect in between, similarly to a playlist.
Horizontal Table, Vertical Table, and Table
Displays slides composed of multiple cells of text & media layers, which are automatically filled out with data retrieved from SharePoint. The slides are displayed one after another, with or without a transition effect in between, similarly to a playlist.

Note:

These widgets can only be used on a single screen when creating a multiscreen project.

Configuration

Widget properties

All the widgets provide some customization options under the "Properties" tab – for more details, go to the dedicated page of each widget type:

Single Post widget configuration

The following properties, found under the "Properties" tab, can be used to customize the Single Post widget:

SharePoint Single Post widget properties

Data
Click the button to open the "Data Properties" dialog and set up the data source.
Locale
Select the locale used for displaying dates and numbers.
Slide duration
Enter the number of seconds each tweet is displayed on the screen.
Transition
Click the button to open the "Transition Properties" dialog and select a transition effect and its properties.
Looping
Select whether the widget ends after the last tweet or loops to the first one.
Color
Select the foreground color of the QR code.

Note:

To modify the general properties of the document, including the dark-blue background used on the top section, click the

icon at the right-side of the toolbar.

Data source setup

To configure the data source, click the button. This opens the "Data Properties" dialog, which allows changing the following:

SharePoint widgets - “Data Properties” dialog

Account
Select one of the connected Microsoft accounts or click "Connect account..." if none were previously connected.
Timeline
Select the type of data to be displayed from: “News posts” or “All pages”.
Site
Click the "Change..." button, then search and pick the SharePoint site.
Max count
Max number of posts to be retrieved.
Refresh
Specify the period after which the widget should automatically refresh the feed data - this is useful when the widget is running in a loop.

Select one of the predefined options or enter a number, optionally followed by s (implicit), m or h, to specify the period after which the widget should refresh the feed data; the minimum accepted value is 60 seconds.

Select "When document opens" to get new data only when the widget is reopened by its parent document (like a playlist).
Include all web parts
Enable this option to retrieve all the page's components, such as all the images, not just the header one, and all the links included in the page. This is useful if you want to create a custom widget showing these extra details.

Tip:

Make sure to click the "Test..." button and verify that the data source configuration is correct.

Troubleshooting

You get this message: Problem detected with target device. Widgets using channels will not work properly. Are you sure you want to continue?
This happens when trying to publish a project, containing SharePoint News widgets and not linked to a SpinetiX cloud accout (thus using the legacy Cockpit Channels service) and one or more of the target players have not been added to the Cockpit account. To solve the issue, open Control Center and add the player to Cockpit using the same account in which the Elementi license is registered to.
Multiscreen usage.
These widgets can only be used on a single screen when creating a multiscreen project; for multiple screens, a data feed widget must be used instead.