SharePoint Pages

The SharePoint Pages datasource allows you to display content from pages on a SharePoint Online site directly on your screens. This makes it easy to share internal news, announcements,or other published SharePoint content across teams and locations.

How it works

When connected, Smartsign retrieves published pages from the selected SharePoint Online site using Microsoft Graph API. The fetched page content is then formatted and displayed on your screens using a SharePoint-based template.

Smartsign can retrieve and display:

• Page title
• Page body text
• Header image
• Body image
• Published date
• Author information

The datasource refreshes content at regular intervals, ensuring that updates made to the SharePoint page are automatically reflected on your screens.

Requirements

• A Microsoft 365 work or school account with access to the relevant SharePoint Online sites. Personal Microsoft accounts cannot connect.
• Screens must be able to reach https://sharepoint.smartsigncloud.net
• A SharePoint site containing the pages

To connect to SharePoint Online, you must authenticate using your Microsoft 365 account.
Some of the permissions required to list available sites and read page data may require administrative approval. If you do not have sufficient permissions, you can request approval during the connection process and return once access has been granted.

If you have administrative rights, you can grant the required permissions immediately, either for your own account or on behalf of the entire organization. Granting consent on behalf of the organization allows all users in the tenant to use the SharePoint Pages datasource without needing to authorize it individually.

note

For security reasons this data source will not work on legacy hardware due to insufficient support for modern encryption standards.

Please see Legacy Hardware Support for affected devices.

On premise only

SharePoint Pages works the same way for on premise installations, without your own Microsoft app registration. It needs internet access to Smartsign's cloud services and to Microsoft.

Setting up the datasource

To use SharePoint Pages in a template, you must first set up and authenticate the datasource.

Note that you need one datasource per SharePoint site.
If you want to show multiple SharePoint sites, you need to set upp multiple datasources.

• Go to Templates and Datasources.
• Select Add datasource and Create new
• Browse available datasources and choose SharePoint Pages.
• Configure the datasource by entering name and description.
• Authenticate the datasource, then apply the settings listed in the configuration options table below.
• Click Create to save the datasource. It is now ready to be used.

Datasource configuration options

Setting	Description	Example
Microsoft 365 account	Click Connect to sign in with a Microsoft 365 account and authorize access to your data A consent dialog will appear. Some permission may require an administrator of your company to consent to before you are able to use this data source.	A service account with access to the SharePoint site you want to display content from.
URL	The base URL of your SharePoint Online instance. Available once an account is connected. An invalid address shows "Not a valid SharePoint site address".	https://MyCompany.sharepoint.com/
SharePoint site	This drop-down will list all sites that your account has permission to access, select the site that you want to use	Intranet News
Filter pages by	It's possible to filter the pages included by a Boolean page column (yes/no) in SharePoint. To do so enter the column name(s) here. Each name is added as a separate entry. If used, only pages that have this column set (yes) will be included. (Columns names will usually show with a display name including spaces in SharePoint, but the actual column does not have any. Enter the actual column name, without spaces. Upper and lower case do not matter.) Tip! Adding or changing a column value in SharePoint does not apply until you re-publish the page.	ShowInSmartsign

SharePoint template

Once the datasource is configured, you can create a SharePoint template to display the feed on your screens.

In this example, we will create a template based on one of the default text templates.

Create SharePoint template

• Go to Templates

• Select an existing template and choose duplicate.

• Rename the copy and save, then click Edit template.

• Go to Datasources panel to connect the Sharepoint datasource.

• Configure the datasource settings as needed.

  Setting	Description	Example
  Time between posts	Time in seconds to show each post	10
  Number of posts to show	The maximum number of posts to show (max setting is 20)	10
  Max page age in days	The maximum age of pages to show (By creation date, if all posts are older, the latest one will be kept to avoid an empty screen)	30
  Content language	Shows the selected translation of each page when it exists, otherwise the site's source language. Disabled for sites that do not support multiple languages.	All language versions (default)

• Select each individual text boxes and bind them to SharePoint data:

  • Sharepoint - Title - Page title
  • Sharepoint - Text - Page content
  • Sharepoint - Created By - Page author
  • Sharepoint - Created date - Published date
  • Last update time - When the data was last fetched

• To databind an image, remove the existing placeholder and add a image frame where you want the image displayed

• Click the frame and choose:

  • Sharepoint - Header Image - Always show the page header image
  • Sharepoint - Image - Use the first body image to override the header image

• Adjust the image scale, alignment and background color as needed.

• Use preview to verify the data connection.

• If you want to change datasource, click on the datasource box.

• Select replace this datasource to choose another and adjust settings as needed.

• If you plan to use multiple SharePoint pages, select Available for quick edit on the connected datasource under Datasources to adjust datasource settings without opening Advanced Editing in the media library. To change it, users need View and Edit under Template datasource in their user profile.

• Save the template when done. It is now ready to be published.

Using the template

Since the original template is now available in the Templates menu, the recommended best practice is to create a dedicated folder in the Media Library where you store copies of this template and configure each copy to display the SharePoint datasource or settings you want to show. This ensures that the original template remains unchanged and allows you to manage all configured versions neatly within one folder.

Create media in media library

• Go to Media
• Create or select a suitable folder.
• Open the folder and click Add media
• Select Use template
• Choose the SharePoint template. A copy will now be created in the folder.
• Rename the new media.
• Click the Datasource box to edit settings and change datasource.
• You can now publish your SharePoint pages to your screens.

Technical information

Permissions required

Smartsign SharePoint integration, Application (client) ID : 5ea454ae-f95a-43ff-ba11-8416454c0f28
Smartsign SharePoint service, Application (client) ID : 86011f19-3cec-4106-8908-d0ee72b5494d

API	Permission	Type	Microsoft description	Used for
Microsoft Graph	User.Read	Delegated	Sign in and read user profile	Allows users to sign-in to the app, and allows the app to read the profile of signed-in users. It also allows the app to read basic company information of signed-in users
Microsoft Graph	Sites.Read.All	Delegated	Read items in all site collections	Allows the application to read documents and list items in all site collections on behalf of the signed-in user
Office 365 SharePoint Online	AllSites.Read	Delegated	Read items in all site collections	Allows the app to read documents and list items in all site collections on behalf of the signed-in user
Office 365 SharePoint Online	access_as_user	Delegated	Read SharePoint data	Allows the app to access SharePoint sites and content on behalf of the signed-in user, respecting the user’s permissions.