SharePoint API to change NewsPost description

[RogierE]

Hi there,

Yesterday I succeeded in changing the Thumbnail preview of a newspost created by Powerautomate. Solved: Re: Updating SharePoint Page content SharePoint AP... - Power Platform Community (microsoft....

Today I found just one more little issue: the description does not seem to change

I used this code as a payload for the api call _api/sitepages/pages(304)/SavePage

{
  "__metadata": @{body('Parse_JSON')?['d']?['__metadata']},
  "PageLayoutType": "@{body('Parse_JSON')?['d']?['PageLayoutType']}",
  "Title": "@{triggerBody()['text_1']}",
  "LayoutWebpartsContent": "@{body('Parse_JSON')?['d']?['LayoutWebpartsContent']}",
  "CanvasContent1": "[{\"controlType\":4,\"id\":\"1212fc8d-dd6b-408a-8d5d-9f1cc787efbb\",\"position\":{\"controlIndex\":2,\"sectionIndex\":1,\"sectionFactor\":12,\"zoneIndex\":1,\"layoutIndex\":1},\"addedFromPersistedData\":true,\"innerHTML\":\"@{outputs('Clean_up_HTML_for_SharePoint_Page')}\"},{\"controlType\":0,\"pageSettingsSlice\":{\"isDefaultDescription\":true,\"isDefaultThumbnail\":true,\"isSpellCheckEnabled\":true}}]",
  "BannerImageUrl": "@{body('Parse_JSON')?['d']?['BannerImageUrl']}",
  "BannerThumbnailUrl": "@{body('Parse_JSON')?['d']?['BannerThumbnailUrl']}",
  "CallToAction": "",
  "Categories": null,
  "ContentTypeId": "0x0101009D1CB255DA76424F860D91F20E6C41180070844039BCC0554CA1CA14C01E186144",
  "Description": "@{outputs('Compose_description')}"
}

But the Decription does not seem to stick... Anyone has an idea on what I missed? 

[Expiscornovus]

Hi @RogierE,

Did you Publish the page after you updated the Description with the SavePage method? And what value did you use in the Compose_description action?

[RogierE]

@Expiscornovus thank you for helping out again,

I have published the page after the SavePage method, but without effect to the news item description.

And the compose description action is to get the first 250 characters from the page and remove line breaks as follows:

replace(substring(outputs('Html_to_text')?['body'],1,250),decodeUriComponent('%0A'),'')

[Expiscornovus]

Hi @RogierE,

Have you checked the outputs section of that compose action if it is not empty? Does your flow run show any value/text in that outputs section?

And which layout are you using in the News Web Part? Not all layouts actually use the description field.

Some of them just use the first few lines of the actually body content itself.

[RogierE]

The outputs are correct and entered into the SavePage method

The news webpart is in Side-by-Side view with the author hidden (because I don't want to be the shown as the author and the flow is run on my behalf), but I do not see any difference when i change the list settings.

[Expiscornovus]

Hi @RogierE,

If it helps I can share the payload I used for testing in my SavePage request.

Below is an example

1. The compose, checkoutpage & save page actions.

{"__metadata":{"type":"SP.Publishing.SitePage"},
"Description":"@{outputs('Compose_description')}","LayoutWebpartsContent":"[{\"id\":\"cbe7b0a9-3504-44dd-a3a3-0e5cacd07788\",\"instanceId\":\"cbe7b0a9-3504-44dd-a3a3-0e5cacd07788\",\"title\":\"\\n      Title area\\n    \",\"description\":\"\\n      Title area description\\n    \",\"audiences\":[],\"serverProcessedContent\":{\"htmlStrings\":{},\"searchablePlainTexts\":{},\"imageSources\":{\"imageSource\":\"\"},\"links\":{},\"customMetadata\":{\"imageSource\":{}}},\"dataVersion\":\"1.4\",\"properties\":{\"imageSourceType\":2,\"title\":\"Test\",\"textAlignment\":\"Left\",\"showPublishDate\":false,\"authors\":[{\"id\":\"\",\"upn\":\"\",\"email\":\"\",\"name\":\"\",\"role\":\"\"}],\"showTopicHeader\":false,\"authorByline\":[],\"layoutType\":\"CutInShape\",\"titlePlaceholder\":\"Name your news post\",\"topicHeader\":\"\",\"enableGradientEffect\":true},\"reservedHeight\":356}]","CanvasContent1":"[{\"controlType\":0,\"pageSettingsSlice\":{\"isDefaultDescription\":false,\"isDefaultThumbnail\":true,\"isSpellCheckEnabled\":true,\"globalRichTextStylingVersion\":0,\"rteOptions\":{\"isCK5Page\":false}},\"htmlAttributes\":[\"modifiedDescription\"]}]","AuthorByline":[],"TopicHeader":"","BannerImageUrl":"","Title":"Test"}

2. The publish action

3. The end result in a side-by-side news web part.

[RogierE · Accepted solution]

okay, thanks to your example I could try some different scenario's. That way I learnt that the News Webpart only uses the description from the "Description" field as long as the page itself does not contain any content itself. As soon as the page has any content (in the CanvasContent InnerHTML field), this will overrule the description field. 

[Expiscornovus]

Hi @RogierE,

I don't entirely agree 😁 The description should be adjustable, independent of the content of the page (CanvasContent1). The interface supports this and I believe the REST API also supports this.

You are right that it can be generated from the content of your page 

I think the difference between the payload I used and what you tested with is that my CanvasContent1 has  \"isDefaultDescription\":false & \"htmlAttributes\":[\"modifiedDescription\"] attributes. Maybe that is the piece of the puzzle you are missing?

Below is an example to demonstrate that it is possible to set a different description, even with content on the page.

{"__metadata":{"type":"SP.Publishing.SitePage"},
"Description":"Testing modified description","LayoutWebpartsContent":"[{\"id\":\"cbe7b0a9-3504-44dd-a3a3-0e5cacd07788\",\"instanceId\":\"cbe7b0a9-3504-44dd-a3a3-0e5cacd07788\",\"title\":\"\\n      Title area\\n    \",\"description\":\"\\n      Title area description\\n    \",\"audiences\":[],\"serverProcessedContent\":{\"htmlStrings\":{},\"searchablePlainTexts\":{},\"imageSources\":{\"imageSource\":\"\"},\"links\":{},\"customMetadata\":{\"imageSource\":{}}},\"dataVersion\":\"1.4\",\"properties\":{\"imageSourceType\":2,\"title\":\"Test\",\"textAlignment\":\"Left\",\"showPublishDate\":false,\"authors\":[{\"id\":\"\",\"upn\":\"\",\"email\":\"\",\"name\":\"\",\"role\":\"\"}],\"showTopicHeader\":false,\"authorByline\":[],\"layoutType\":\"CutInShape\",\"titlePlaceholder\":\"Name your news post\",\"topicHeader\":\"\",\"enableGradientEffect\":true},\"reservedHeight\":356}]","CanvasContent1":"[{\"controlType\":4,\"id\":\"76a835c1-c3c7-4dd7-8a99-759e25b374e8\",\"innerHTML\":\"<p>Testing Text Power Automate<br></p>\",\"position\":{\"layoutIndex\":1,\"zoneIndex\":1,\"sectionIndex\":1,\"sectionFactor\":12,\"controlIndex\":1},\"addedFromPersistedData\":true},{\"controlType\":0,\"pageSettingsSlice\":{\"isDefaultDescription\":false,\"isDefaultThumbnail\":true,\"isSpellCheckEnabled\":true,\"globalRichTextStylingVersion\":0,\"rtePageSettings\":{\"contentVersion\":4}},\"htmlAttributes\":[\"modifiedDescription\"]}]","AuthorByline":[],"TopicHeader":"","BannerImageUrl":"","Title":"Test"}