Forum Discussion
Will Modern Pages ever allow "Web Part Connections" (to link related lists)? How about "Filters"?
One of the most powerful and, frankly, underused features in SharePoint (2010 and 2013) was the concept or practice of "connecting" related web parts. We used it ALL the time for things like:
- A list of Vendors connected to lists of Quotes or Invoices
- A list of Requests connected to a list of related Log Entries (each step in the request process generates a Log entry)
Also, it was helpful for creating "template" pages. For example, we would have a Query String Filter that connected to a bunch of lists on the page, each of which had a common column (e.g.: "Term"). So, when creating a course catalog, we didn't have to build a new page for each term, just use that template page with the right query string in the URL.
As slick as the Modern Page experience looks and feels, it seems like they're driving toward the model of creating tons of separate pages rather than a few reusable ones. While creating these pages is easier in the Modern Experience, enforcing consistency between them is pretty much impossible (that's where the idea of a template page really shone).
So, since I can't find any chatter about these features/functions whatsoever, I figured I'd ask here to see if anyone else had seen or heard anything. Heck, maybe even someone from the mothership (calling Mark-Kashman or Jeff_Teper) could chime in and let me know if I should just give up hope on ever using Connections or Filter web parts on Modern Pages.
There is the following in the Office365 Roadmap:
SharePoint - lists and libraries web parts consume dynamic data
Let web parts talk to other web parts and your pages and experiences become more dynamic with data and interactive. You will be able to configure web parts to get or give their property values from other web parts, including updating those values based on what is selected. And now, both SharePoint List and Library web part can consume dynamic data from other source web parts.
Featured ID: 57307
Added to Roadmap: 11/4/2019
Last Modified: 12/31/2019
But now, March 2020 and it is still in development...
This is really a needed feature.
I fully agree with those asking for this functionality and I am getting extremely frustrated by the lack thereof. Microsoft, please re-introduce this quickly to the general audience!
At the same time, this looks promising:
The File Viewer and Embed web parts have the connect functionality in my work organization. Not lists though. Yet ...
Correction: List Properties have connections. But this is not achieving what I need. I need connected lists, i.e. one list displaying items, depending on the choice in a separate list. Not just the details of a list, based on the selection in the same list. 😞
RoundaboutSkid I agree with you and am still waiting on the ability to connect lists and filter one based on the selection from the other. This is disappointing 😞
I've tested the new feature and the experience is once again very underwhelming.
So basically you can:
- Select a list item and see its properties (in a vertical lay-out, all fields under each other and yes another scrollbar inside your page).
- Select a document and see the file preview.
So no option to select a list item and (via a shared property) show all related documents in a library (you could do this in 10 years ago in classic pages).
Apart from this, I noticed you can use 'Page Environment' as a refiner source and select 'Query String'. I tried adding a few query strings but nothing seemed to work. Anyone an idea if / how this works?
Jeroen Lammens wrote:I've tested the new feature and the experience is once again very underwhelming.
So basically you can:
- Select a list item and see its properties (in a vertical lay-out, all fields under each other and yes another scrollbar inside your page).
- Select a document and see the file preview.
Jeroen Lammens I completely agree. The added functionality is neat because its new and does something, but it's underwhelming at best. The ability to connect lists and have one list filtered by the selections in a related list is huge. I am surprised that this hasn't come out yet. Can anyone give an update or possible solutions that don't entail building it from scratch from spfx?
Jeroen Lammens I have the same questions. Tried to use the query string parameter but I just don't understand how it is supposed to work.
See https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/SharePoint/SharePoint-Embed-Web-Part-Syntax/m-p/388388#M28329
Hi Mark-Kashman and Luca Bandinelli
Can you provide an update on that? If not please try to find someone who could. Question still unanswered after many months.
I need to know if it will be possible to connect the embed web part to a URL parameter. And, if so when Soon :-),
This year :-| ,
Someday / Top of mind :-(
- Mark-Kashman
Microsoft
Beyond the good insights called out in this thread, I wanted to add that we did announce the support of webpart-to-webpart connections coming to SharePoint in Office 365, sometimes referred to as "dynamic data connections." You can review my blog that has a disclosure section about what we shared at MS Ignite 2018: "SharePoint powers teamwork in Office 365 – Ignite 2018 announcements": https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-SharePoint-Blog/SharePoint-powers-teamwork-in-Office-365-Ignite-2018/ba-p/255465 (scroll to the "Enhancements to powerful SharePoint web parts and pages" section). Cheers, Mark.
This is welcome news and looking forward to it. Specifically looking forward to more development and customised features which support Visio integration with SharePoint Online. We are looking to embed visio diagrams on modern pages and connect the data in the diagram to other lists and libraries contained within our site..for example a page which contains the file viewer web part of a visio process flow diagram, and a web part showing a document library or highlighted content and as the user clicks on the shapes within the visio web part the document library or highlighted content will filter to only display the documents which correspond to that step (shape) of the process. This would be acheived by shape data values matching the values contained in the document library column. So basically modern versions of send shape data to, highlight. We need more out of the box customisation options in the file viewer web part edit settings for visio files to select default zoom, default tab, lock pan and zoom etc - would be great to see this type of functionality in the future.
Hello,
is there an update on the availability of this feature? In the SharePoint Roadmap the feature is marked as launched since December 2018. Unfortuniatly I cannot find this feature / active it in our SharePoint environment.
Kind regards,
Jan
where do you see this?
This has been added to the Roadmap as coming in 2019.
Has anyone achieved anything of use in regards to connecting a list web part to another list web part so you can show a parent / child related list easily? In the classic experience, you had a list view and you could edit the display page and add a second related list to show related records. Since related lists are key to how I would imagine EVERYONE uses sharepoint, I am very surprised and somewhat shocked that this isnt yet possible.
Thanks everyone, happy Friday.
- Only connecting a list to the same list unfortunately... I've been following this thread in hopes someone has a breakthrough on this or MS finally releases this functionality.
Does anyone know if, on sharepoint online, should the classic sharepoint webpages still have all the filter webparts? We're missing ALL the filter webparts on our sharepoint.
Luca BandinelliHello everyone, great conversation topic!
Let me try to provide some clarity on this topic. First, my name is Luca Bandinelli and the PM owner of the SharePoint Framework under the SharePoint Engineering Team.
As part of SharePoint Framework (SPFx) we released a new feature called Dynamic Data which basically brings the same capability of part to part communications (and much more!) to the Modern SharePoint User Experience.
This feature, initially released in version 1.5 of SPFx framework, is currently marked as "Developer Preview"; this means you can use it for testing and even for prototyping but it's not recommended to be used in production environments as some APIs can change in behaviors before we release the feature for production. And backward compatibility with Preview features is not guaranteed.
We are however working very hard to make it production ready sometime this calendar year.
in the meantime, here are some pointers to start getting familiar with Dynamic Data:
- SPFx 1.5 Release: https://github.com/SharePoint/sp-dev-docs/wiki/Release-Notes-for-SharePoint-Framework-Package-v1.5
- GitHub example from our community member showing Dynamic Data in Action: https://github.com/SharePoint/sp-dev-fx-webparts/tree/master/samples/react-events-dynamicdata
- Documentation (Developer Preview): https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/spfx/dynamic-data
Last, if you are planning to come to Microsoft Ignite, we will have sessions where we will present Dynamic Data capabilities both for end users and developers.
Thanks,
Luca
- They have already discussed at SPC and I want to say I had seen something on the AMA about it, that they do want to look at bringing this functionality in the future. Luckily, we still have access to classic pages when we have to use this stuff for now, so that's always an option until it's available.
- Fortunately, Today we have some interesting option to cover the use cases you mention:
(1) You can already clone an existing modern webpart to create another one, so technically you have the "templating" option there
(2) Site scripts and site desings are evolving really fast so I expect also the ability to include your customized modern pages there in the future
(3) Avility to connect modern WebParts, aka SPFx Dynamic Data, is comingUnfortunately, cloning a web part wouldn't really achieve the same result. What I'm talking about are entire pages of web parts connected to one another and/or to filters (particularly query string filters). Here's a brief look at one such site: https://youtu.be/f5A7Cf1IrRI
Maybe SPFx is going to be the way to do some of this going forward, but if so, that's a big ask from MS. I mean, I'm no coder, but I could create really useful experiences and sites using OOTB web parts. If I now need to learn how to write code and create web parts from scratch to achieve the same result, that's a step backward.
