Editing Atlas pages using the Modern UI

Modern Pages have been available in SharePoint for a long time now and all Atlas versions from 2.0 onwards have used only Modern pages.

If you used Classic SharePoint in the past you'll be happy to know that content layouts such as having multiple columns are easily configurable with a few clicks rather than being hard-coded, and you no longer need to separate content from web parts in different "zones".

Most of our users are not familiar with Classic pages at all, so comparisons will not be included in this article. There are a lot of things worth knowing if you are editing and managing pages in Atlas, so hopefully this article will help make everything clear.

Pages in Atlas are created from various Page Templates available from Add It, and once created can be modified by changing the layout of the various sections, which web parts are shown in each section, the configuration of those individual web parts, but also more standard content such as Text and Images.

If you are interested in creating your own Page Templates, please see this article to get going: Modify page templates and create custom ones

In this article:

• Static and Dynamic web parts
• Sections
• Web parts and content
  • Sections and components
  • Static components
  • Dynamic Atlas components
    
    

Static and Dynamic web parts

First we'll start with some general advice on how pages are constructed and populated in Atlas. It is helpful to think about web parts as being one of two types - Static or Dynamic.

Static web parts

Static web parts are edited on the specific page where they are added and that content cannot be returned on other pages. All the Featured web parts shown first when you add a web part are Static and should be used to add page-specific content:

On Content Pages such as Knowledge Pages it is likely that the majority of content will be presented in Static web parts because the content all relates directly to the specific piece of knowledge the page was created for.

Dynamic web parts

In contrast, on Landing Pages the majority of the content will usually be returned from other parts of Atlas by Dynamic web parts, for example the Atlas News web part which returns the latest News Pages from across Atlas. The content of these dynamic web parts is not updated directly on the page - they will update automatically when a new item is added that matches the search filters.

Examples

In the example below we have highlighted three parts of a Knowledge Page in Edit mode - the Page Header, Static web parts (Text and Image) and Dynamic web parts (Useful Links and News).

The Page Header and the Static web parts (Text and Image) can be changed by editing this page. For the Dynamic web parts; Useful Links can be added by creating Links via Add It, and the News web part can be added to by creating a new News page via Add It. To remove items you'll need to do that via the List or Library where the item or page is stored, for example you can read here how to manage Pages in a Pages Library: Managing content in Pages libraries

We'll come back to these web parts later, but before that we need to look at managing the Sections of a page in order to get the layout you need.

Sections

Modern pages are first split into one or more sections moving down the page. Your page will always start with some default sections, which you can configure by clicking Edit section at the top left of the current section, or Delete by clicking on the "trash can" icon:

The section can then be controlled by the following configuration options:

Additionally, you can make a section expandable, and choose whether it is expanded or collapsed by default when the page is loaded:

To add new sections, scroll down to the bottom of an existing section, or to the bottom of the entire page, then click Add a new section on the left:

You then just need to pick the initial layout, which can be changed later. Once you add the section, you can change the layout and background settings (shown above) on the right.

Web parts and content

Sections and components

Each section can be populated with content, web parts or a mixture of both. To add something to a section, move to that part of the page, then in the desired area of the section e.g. the specific column you want to use, click the + sign to add a component:

If there are already some components in the same area, you can hover above, between or below existing components, then click the + to place your additional component exactly where you want it. Next you need to choose the component to add:

Text

As mentioned at the start of the article, these Featured web parts are Static components which will only appear on the current page. 

To add text content, just click the first web part listed; Text. You will get a box like this which increases in size as more content is added, with some formatting options available such as lists and hyperlinks:

Images / HoverPoint

If it makes sense for your page layout, you can add images inside Text web parts from the formatting bar, rather than adding an individual Image web part:

 

To add a standalone image, choose the second web part; Image. This will open an image browser which allows you to choose an image already available on Atlas, add the image from a URL, or upload your own. You can actually paste or drag an image directly onto the page while editing it. Once the image is showing, you should take note of some of the tips, such as adding auto-generated alt text to make the image more accessible for screen readers:

One thing to note with the Image web part is that if you don't configure a hyperlink for the image, clicking it will open the image in a lightbox. This behaviour cannot be turned off, so if you want to prevent this occurring, add your image to an Atlas HoverPoint web part instead and simply do not add any HoverPoints to it.

Embeds

If you want to embed content such as a video or interactive map from another website, add the Embed component and paste in the embed code you got from the source. It should appear on the page almost immediately:

Dynamic Atlas components

As well as the basic building blocks for pages detailed above, Atlas offers a number of specialised web parts created to enhance the experience and bring other Atlas content to the user in a helpful way. These web parts are generally Dynamic and can return different types of content from across Atlas, and as a result you cannot add new items by editing the page the web part is on - instead you need to create the new items via Add It and they could be returned on multiple pages.

Each of these web parts is described in more detail in their own articles, but you can identify them when adding components by typing "atlas" into the search box:

A list of Atlas Modern components can be found below:

• Add It
• Communication In Focus
• Communication In Focus Filters
• ConneX
• Documents
• Documents Filters
• Emails
• Email Filters
• Events
• Events Filters
• External Insights
• External Insights Filters
• FAQs
• FAQs Filters
• HoverPoint
• In Focus
• In Focus Filters
• In Focus Search Box
• In Focus Verticals
• Knowledge In Focus
• Knowledge In Focus Filters
• Knowledge Pages
• Knowledge Pages Filters
• Landing Pages
• Landing Pages Filters
• Location Pages
• Location Pages Filters
• Mandatory Reads
• Markdown File Viewer*
• My ConneX
• My Groups
• My News
• News
• News Filters
• Page Authors
• People Directory
• People Directory Filters
• Spotlights
• Spotlights Filters
• Tenant Properties Management*
• Theme Manager*
• Useful Links

Those marked with a * are not really suitable for adding to standard pages as they are intended for administrative purposes.