What’s new in the News Widget

When you are using Ichicraft Boards, you know how useful the News Widget is for staying updated with the latest news and announcements from your organization. The News Widget allows you to display news articles from various sources in a customizable and interactive way.

We are excited to announce that we have made some improvements to the News Widget based on your feedback and suggestions. These improvements will make the News Widget even more powerful and user-friendly. Here are some of the new features that you can enjoy in the latest version of the News Widget.

Improved side-by-side view

We have improved the side-by-side view of the news articles to show more details, such as the author and a snippet of the article. This will help you get a better idea of what the article is about before opening it. 

You can also see the originating SharePoint site and publication date of the article.

Control the size of the first news article

We have also added an additional admin setting to control whether the first news article should be displayed in a bigger size in the News Widget. This will help you highlight the most important or recent news article for your users.

You can use a toggle to choose how this should be displayed. Either show the first news article in a larger card with a bigger image and more text, or show it in the same size as the other news articles.

Automatic inclusion of hub site news

If you have a SharePoint hub site that connects multiple related sites, you can now automatically include news articles from all the associated sites in the News Widget.

This will save you time and effort from adding each site manually in the admin configuration.

Filtering by managed properties

It’s now possible to filter news articles by certain managed properties, such as author, date, category, or keywords. This will help you find the most relevant and interesting news articles for your audience.

You can apply the filters globally across the entire widget, or specifically for news coming from certain sites. For example, you can filter news by category to show only the articles related to a certain topic, such as innovation, awards, or HR.

"Show all" link in the dialog

You can now easily open a dialog and show all news articles in a side-by-side view by clicking on the brand new “Show all” link in the widget header. This will give you a quick overview of all the news articles available in the widget. You can click on any article to read it in full.

Overriding the "Show all" link

Don’t like the default “Show all” behavior? You can also provide a custom url to open in the show all dialog.

This will allow you to link to a different page or site that contains more news articles or information. For example, you can override the show all link to point to your intranet homepage, or to a SharePoint news page that has more options and features.

Improved dialog for opening news articles

We have also improved the dialog that opens when you click on a news article in the News Widget. The dialog now works better on mobile devices and includes back and forth navigation if you use hyperlinks within a news article to open other pages within SharePoint online.

These updates will make it easier for you to read the news articles on your phone or tablet, and to follow the links to other pages without losing your place in the dialog. 

Conclusion

We hope you like these improvements and find them useful for your News Widget. We are always working to make Ichicraft Boards better and more responsive to your needs.

If you have any feedback or suggestions, please let us know. We would love to hear from you.

Stay in the Loop

Related posts

Urgent Notice: Valo Intranet Support Ends on July 31, 2025—Upgrade to Ichicraft Boards Today

Push notifications for urgent messages

Never Miss an Update: The New About Page

Introducing the All-New Search Widget

Start a 30-day free trial

Set up a demo with our team or start your 30-day trial to discover how it can change your digital workplace.