Very often I came across business requirements to automation the creation of sites and pages in SharePoint, this process is not easy in Office 365 SharePoint Online.

In this post I’m sharing my experiences with client side page creation with PnP-PowerShell.

Many thanks to the #amazing #PnP team on providing us with this #great tool.

https://github.com/SharePoint/PnP-PowerShell

First of all you need to have PnP-PowerShell cmdlet’s installed, follow the guidance described on the link above.

What we want to accomplish is to automate the creation of a new page looking like below

The component we are using:

• This is a Communication site, hence the full-with column for “Hero” webpart and “Navigation” on top
• Hero Webpart
• A Custom List, we need the “List – GUID”
• The default Document library, we need the “Library – GUID”
• Standard News webpart
• Standard Events webpart
• Standard “Highlighted Content” webpart

After connecting to the site we will run some cmdlet as below, to create a new page and it will work pretty well, the thing I’ve seen which is a bit challenging is how to actually set the properties to the different webpart, otherwise they will be empty.

##Connecting to site

$tenant = ‘tenant’
Connect-PnPOnline -Url https://$tenant.sharepoint.com/sites/sitename -Credentials “YourSavedCredentials”

#Set variable pagename
$pagename = “Welcome”

#Add 3 new sections to the page
$page = Add-PnPClientSidePage -Name $pagename -LayoutType Home #Using layouttype Home, removes the title and banner zone

Add-PnPClientSidePageSection -Page $page -SectionTemplate OneColumnFullWidth -Order 1 # OneColumnFullWidth is only available if the site is a Communication site

Add-PnPClientSidePageSection -Page $page -SectionTemplate TwoColumn -Order 2

Add-PnPClientSidePageSection -Page $page -SectionTemplate OneColumn -Order 3

#Add Hero webpart to page
Add-PnPClientSideWebPart -Page $page -DefaultWebPartType “Hero” -Section 1 -Column 1

#Add List webpart to the page, currently we need to provide the List-GUID,
Add-PnPClientSideWebPart -Page $page -DefaultWebPartType “List” -Section 2 -Column 1

What you will notice immediately is that the Hero webpart for example, is added to the page but it’s empty. After a lot of trying and failing, the two method I’ve been using to get the webpart properties is below, unfortunately not all is -WebPartProperties is matching the PropertiesJson.

#Using Get-PnPProvisioningTemplate, this will give us an xml with the webpart properties.

Get-PnPProvisioningTemplate -Out template.xml

#Using Get-PnpClietnSidePage Controls, this also give us an overview of the webpart controls on a page

$clientPage = Get-PnPClientSidePage -Identity welcome
$clientPage.Controls

Example for a list webpart the properties

Full sample code

###############
##Add a new client side welcome page, using PnP PowerShell
########

##Connecting to site
$tenant = ‘tenant’
Connect-PnPOnline -Url https://$tenant.sharepoint.com/sites/sitename -Credentials ‘YourCredentials”

#Set variable pagename
$pagename = “Welcome”

#Add 3 new sections to the page
$page = Add-PnPClientSidePage -Name $pagename -LayoutType Home #Using layouttype Home, removes the title and banner zone

Add-PnPClientSidePageSection -Page $page -SectionTemplate OneColumnFullWidth -Order 1 ##OneColumnFullWidth is only available if the site is a Communication site

Add-PnPClientSidePageSection -Page $page -SectionTemplate TwoColumn -Order 2

Add-PnPClientSidePageSection -Page $page -SectionTemplate OneColumn -Order 3

#Add Hero webpart to page
Add-PnPClientSideWebPart -Page $page -DefaultWebPartType “Hero” -Section 1 -Column 1

#Add List webpart to the page, currently we need to provide the List-GUID,
Add-PnPClientSideWebPart -Page $page -DefaultWebPartType “List” -Section 2 -Column 1 -WebPartProperties @{selectedListId=”754c3e51-b7ba-4fbd-8680-fefa77330acc”}

#Add text webpart to page
Add-PnPClientSideText -Page $page -Text “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor congue mass a. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna.” -Section 2 -Column 1

#Add the list webpart to the page, but stating that it’s a document library then add the library GUID
Add-PnPClientSideWebPart -Page $page -DefaultWebPartType “List” -Section 2 -Column 2 -WebPartProperties @{isDocumentLibrary=”true”;selectedListId=”4546de9f-af03-422f-b396-2be87f3be59d”}

#Add more text to page
Add-PnPClientSideText -Page $page -Text “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor congue mass a. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna.” -Section 2 -Column 2

#Add the default News webpart
Add-PnPClientSideWebPart -Page $page -DefaultWebPartType “NewsFeed” -Section 3 -Column 1 -WebPartProperties @{layoutId=”GridNews”;title=”News”}

#Add the default event webpart
Add-PnPClientSideWebPart -Page $page -DefaultWebPartType “Events” -Section 3 -Column 1 -WebPartProperties @{layoutId=”FilmStrip”;title=”Upcoming Events”}

#Add the default Highlighted content webpart,
Add-PnPClientSideWebPart -Page $page -DefaultWebPartType “ContentRollup” -Section 3 -column 1 -WebPartProperties @{layoutId=”FilmStrip”;title=”Recently Updated Documents”}

#Set the new clientside page as HomePage and Publish
Set-PnPHomePage -RootFolderRelativeUrl SitePages/$pagename.aspx
Set-PnPClientSidePage -Identity $page -Publish

#The Hero Webpart is still a mystery to me, to Add Content to it I’ve set the PropertiesJson using PnP, but it’s not working the way I wan’t it to yet.
#Simply create another page with Hero webpart on it, extract and resuse the PropertiesJson

$welcomePage = Get-PnPClientSidePage -Identity $pagename
$heroWebPart = $welcomePage.Controls | ? {$_.Title -eq “Hero”}
$heroWebPart.PropertiesJson = ‘{“layoutCategory”:1,”layout”:2,”content”:[{“id”:”abaaab59-08b6-4e5b-a9f7-2b0b96220acd”,”type”:”Web Page”,”color”:4,”description”:””,”showDescription”:false,”showTitle”:true,”imageDisplayOption”:3,”isDefaultImage”:false,”showCallToAction”:false,”isDefaultImageLoaded”:false,”isCustomImageLoaded”:true,”showFeatureText”:false,”previewImage”:{“siteId”:”84a6b67f-2f2b-4b7f-9753-c23c33beca65″,”webId”:”13849cfb-c0e9-4d81-b999-b4efb97e98b1″,”listId”:”181c23ab-6ad7-4770-93d4-cba07d659092″,”id”:”{5B41EDAB-4A2E-4877-988D-90EE8593961D}”},”image”:{“siteId”:”84a6b67f-2f2b-4b7f-9753-c23c33beca65″,”webId”:”13849cfb-c0e9-4d81-b999-b4efb97e98b1″,”listId”:”89a15b2f-54e1-4142-8bec-b4b624d67be3″,”id”:”{51661A7C-623F-4AD2-B19A-8A27F2448DA9}”}},{“id”:”98216f06-d02b-4056-a606-9c78854899cb”,”type”:”UrlLink”,”color”:5,”description”:””,”showDescription”:false,”showTitle”:true,”imageDisplayOption”:2,”isDefaultImage”:false,”showCallToAction”:false,”isDefaultImageLoaded”:false,”isCustomImageLoaded”:true,”showFeatureText”:false,”previewImage”:{},”image”:{“siteId”:”84a6b67f-2f2b-4b7f-9753-c23c33beca65″,”webId”:”13849cfb-c0e9-4d81-b999-b4efb97e98b1″,”listId”:”89a15b2f-54e1-4142-8bec-b4b624d67be3″,”id”:”{FB7042CB-A331-4653-8F55-8CA559660398}”}},{“id”:”d277c086-5636-4bc7-a1f9-7e9648a24ad1″,”type”:”Image”,”color”:4,”description”:””,”showDescription”:false,”showTitle”:true,”imageDisplayOption”:0,”isDefaultImage”:false,”showCallToAction”:false,”isDefaultImageLoaded”:false,”isCustomImageLoaded”:false,”showFeatureText”:false},{“id”:”d9c4117c-3b6d-42bc-b791-0e7517edb99d”,”type”:”Image”,”color”:4,”description”:””,”showDescription”:false,”showTitle”:true,”imageDisplayOption”:0,”isDefaultImage”:false,”showCallToAction”:false,”isDefaultImageLoaded”:false,”isCustomImageLoaded”:false,”showFeatureText”:false},{“id”:”a2dd8929-1a05-4e3a-9f50-ecb9c0b6e81f”,”type”:”Image”,”color”:4,”description”:””,”showDescription”:false,”showTitle”:true,”imageDisplayOption”:0,”isDefaultImage”:false,”showCallToAction”:false,”isDefaultImageLoaded”:false,”isCustomImageLoaded”:false,”showFeatureText”:false}],”isFullWidth”:true}’

$welcomePage.Save()

The new page after the PowerShell has been run, and as you can see below, the Hero webpart is displaying the Image and the colour code but the Titles are missing.

Have fun with PnP-PowerShell.