LiveTiles Everywhere Panel

What used to be called the PowerPanel (from LiveTiles Intranet Enterprise) has now been moved to LiveTiles Intranet hub. It enables admins to configure a sidebar that follows the users during their whole intranet experience. The sidebar contains different sections, each containing a set of web parts/widgets. The widgets can be arranged in a layout with a certain amount of columns.

Architecture

The Everywhere Panel is deployed to a tenant as an own SharePoint Framework app that contains an application customizer for modern pages as well as a web part that can be placed on classic pages, for example to add the Everywhere Panel to the hub page. There is no dedicated backend for this app, as the configuration is stored as an own node in the LiveTiles Intranet Hub config.

Installation

To install the Everywhere Panel execute following steps:

  • Download the app from here.
  • Add it to your global app catalog. Please make sure that you are viewing the app catalog in the classic view, as otherwise you might not be able to deploy correctly. Make sure to choose "Make this solution available to all site collections in the organization" if you would like to globally deploy the app.
  • If the app is not globally deployed, then deploy the apps on all relevant site collections
  • If you would like to make it available on a hub page, please add the web part called "LiveTiles Everywhere Panel Launcher" to the hub page. Choose chrome type "None".
  • Please note that wherever this app is used, the LiveTiles Intranet Hub app needs to be installed as well (either globally or per site collection).

Teams

The Everywhere Panel can be synced to Teams to be available as Teams Personal App.

For this to work, "LiveTiles Intranet Hub" and "LiveTiles Everywhere Panel" Apps need to be deployed globally to the SharePoint tenant app catalog.

After global deployment is done, you can click "Sync to Teams" in the SharePoint Files tab with the LiveTiles Everywhere Panel App selected. Sync To Teams

Once synced, the "Everywhere" App will be available as an App inside Teams.

Hub Widget Config

  • hubWidgetConfig: This is a regular LiveTiles Intranet Hub widget config. You can for example configure it on a regular page hub page and copy its JSON to the corresponding section.
  • hubWidgetHeight: This a CSS value for the desired height of the widget.

Changing the visibility of the Everywhere Panel

In case you would like to hide the Everywhere Panel on specific pages you can use Scoped Settings. You can provide an identifier such as the url of the page that you want to target. Check out this link in order to get familiar with this functionality: link

Configuration

The configuration of the Everywhere Panel is done via the LiveTiles Intranet Hub JSON Editor on a root node named "panels", which will contain an array of Everywhere Panel configurations. In the "panels" node, each element consists of an object that contains two nodes: "settings" and "content".

  • settings contains the basic settings
  • content contains the content (sections, widgets, etc.) in the structured content format known from LiveTiles Intranet Enterprise

The widgets can be configured either using the actual config from SharePoint (this can be accessed by appending the maintenancemode=true query param to the page URL within SharePoint). Or via the configuration of LiveTiles Intranet Hub Widgets. This is the recommended approach. See the next chapter for more details on this.

Structure

The configuration for each element in the "panels" array node, should look like this:

{
"settings": {...},
"content": {...}
}

Config Sample

"panels": [
    {
      "settings": {
        "EnabledModern": "true",
        "default": true,
        "UseThemesOnModern": "true",
        "layoutStyle": "default",
        "defaultIconColor": "",
        "defaultIconBackground": "",
        "WelcomePage": {
          "heading": "LiveTiles Everywhere Panel",
          "description": "",
          "smallLogo": "",
          "bigLogo": "",
          "brandingColor": "",
          "sectionLineType": "slope",
          "previewOnDesktop": "true"
        }
      },
      "content": {
        "children": [
          {
            "children": [
              {
                "children": [
                  {
                    "id": "d144d589-e0f0-4a31-ade5-5bce1ce5d119",
                    "title": "Content",
                    "value": {
                      "hubWidgetConfig": {
                        "tabs": [
                          {
                            "configTypeKey": "widgetTab_sharePoint_items",
                            "title": {
                              "en": "Docs from SharePoint"
                            },
                            "contentType": "Document",
                            "showSearch": true
                          }
                        ],
                        "configTypeKey": "widget_tabs"
                      },
                      "hubWidgetHeight": "500px",
                      "columnIndex": 1
                    }
                  }
                ],
                "id": "5ef0adc0-191f-429b-b5bc-0ca69dffde78",
                "title": "Section",
                "value": {
                  "layout": {
                    "key": "'1column100'"
                  },
                  "noWebpartBackground": true
                }
              }
            ],
            "id": "ba26a800-dc29-4cda-bc55-4f3c4de62c85",
            "contentType": "powerpanel-panel",
            "title": "Content",
            "value": {
              "widthType": "Medium",
              "icon": {
                "icon": "ms-Icon ms-Icon--12PointStar",
                "color": "",
                "backgroundColor": ""
              },
              "label": "Content"
            }
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  ]

The value property of a SharePoint QuickLinks Web Part

"value": {
  "webpartProperties": "{\"id\":\"c70391ea-0b10-4ee9-b2b4-006d3fcad0cd\",\"instanceId\":\"d1911627-c723-496a-96b5-d78447ca8853\",\"title\":\"Quick links\",\"description\":\"Links.\",\"audiences\":[],\"serverProcessedContent\":{\"htmlStrings\":{},\"searchablePlainTexts\":{\"items[0].title\":\"Example Domain\"},\"imageSources\":{},\"links\":{\"baseUrl\":\"\",\"items[0].sourceItem.url\":\"https://example.com\"},\"componentDependencies\":{\"layoutComponentId\":\"706e33c8-af37-4e7b-9d22-6e5694d92a6f\"}},\"dataVersion\":\"2.2\",\"properties\":{\"items\":[{\"sourceItem\":{\"itemType\":2,\"fileExtension\":\"\",\"progId\":\"\"},\"thumbnailType\":3,\"id\":1,\"description\":\"\",\"altText\":\"\"}],\"isMigrated\":true,\"layoutId\":\"Button\",\"shouldShowThumbnail\":true,\"imageWidth\":100,\"buttonLayoutOptions\":{\"showDescription\":false,\"buttonTreatment\":2,\"iconPositionType\":2,\"textAlignmentVertical\":2,\"textAlignmentHorizontal\":2,\"linesOfText\":2},\"listLayoutOptions\":{\"showDescription\":false,\"showIcon\":true},\"waffleLayoutOptions\":{\"iconSize\":1,\"onlyShowThumbnail\":false},\"hideWebPartWhenEmpty\":true,\"dataProviderId\":\"QuickLinks\"}}",
  "webpartId": "c70391ea-0b10-4ee9-b2b4-006d3fcad0cd",
  "columnIndex": 1
}

The content JSON structure is a 3-level hierarchy with a hierarchical structure.

The following illustrates this concept:

{
  "children": [
    {
      // Level 1: Panel configuration
      "title": "Panel Title",
      "value": {
        // See `IPanelContentValue` below
      },
      "children": [
        {
          // Level 2: Section configuration
          "title": "Section Title",
          "value": {
            // See `ISectionContentValue` below
          },
          "children": [
            {
              // Level 3: Web part configuration
              "title": "Web Part Title",
              "value": {
                // See `IWebPartContentValue` below
              }
            },
            {
              // additional web parts...
            }
          ]
        },
        {
          // additional sections...
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      // additional panels...
    }
  ]
}

All levels of children have the following interface in common:

interface IContentElement<T> {
  id: string; // Uniquely identifies the element
  title: string;
  sortOrder: number;
  value: T;
}

This interfaces value T is individual to each level's specific configuration requirements.

Level 1: Panel configuration

interface IPanelContentValue {
  widthType: "Small" | "Medium" | "Large" | "Full screen" | "Custom";
  width: number; // width in pixels, used together with widthType: "Custom"
  label: string;
  icon: {
    icon: string; // string used in icon html class name (see https://uifabricicons.azurewebsites.net/ for all icons)
  };
}

Level 2: Section configuration

interface ISectionContentValue {
  layout:
    | "'1column100'"
    | "'2columns50x50'"
    | "'2columns33x66'"
    | "'2columns66x33'"
    | "'3columns33x33x33'";
  noWebpartBackground: boolean;
}

Level 3: Web Part configuration

interface IWebPartContentValue {
  webPartValue: ISharePointWebPartValue | IHubWebPartValue;
}

interface ISharePointWebPartValue {
  webPartProperties: string; // JSON stringified value of SharePoint Web Part Data object
  webPartId: string; // SharePoint Web Part Id
  columnIndex?: number;
}

interface IHubWebPartValue {
  hubWidgetConfig: object; // Hub widget config JSON
  hubWidgetHeight: string;
  columnIndex?: number;
}

Both SharePoint and Web Parts or Hub Widgets with their respective configuration.

Hub Widget Config

  • hubWidgetConfig: This is a regular LiveTiles Intranet Hub widget config. You can for example configure it on a regular hub page and copy its JSON to the corresponding section.
  • hubWidgetHeight: This a CSS value for the desired height of the widget.

SharePoint WebPart

Enter the SharePoint maintenance mode by appending the maintenancemode=true query param to the page URL within SharePoint, where you have configured a Web Part that you would like to display in the Everywhere Panel.

  1. webPartId: In the Summary tab, copy the Id of the Web Part and use it as value
  2. webPartProperties: Copy the whole content of the Data tab and stringify it as JSON string. (e.g. using the browser console JSON.stringify() command)

Layout Style Variants

The Everywhere Panel currently comes with 2 layout variants. These variants define how the Everywhere Panel is displayed within the viewport. The position is set using the layoutStyle key which excepts a value of either default or floating and is added to the settings object.

Example:

"panels": [
    {
      "settings": {
        "EnabledModern": "true",
        "default": true,
        "UseThemesOnModern": "true",
        "layoutStyle": "floating",
        "defaultPosition": "right",
        ...

  • Default - The default layout places the Everywhere Panel from top the bottom to the left-hand side of the viewport. This position can then be toggled from left to right by clicking the available toggle icon at the base of the Everywhere Panel. The position is saved to local storage on the end user device.

    A defaultPosition key can be set to either left or right to define the intitial position of the Everywhere Panel prior to a user defining a position.

    Default layout variant

  • Floating - The floating layout places the Everywhere Panel as a draggable floating panel to the left of the viewport. The position can be dragged to either the left, right or bottom of the viewport by dragging the drag icon at the base of the panel. Within each position, the panel can also be dragged vertically or horizontally within the set position. The position is saved to local storage on the end user device.

    A defaultPosition key can be set to either left, right or bottom to define the intitial position of the Everywhere Panel prior to a user defining a position.

    Floating layout variant

Updates

The code (JavaScript) for this app is served from a CDN hosted on the LiveTiles tenant. When we do a new release, we silently push those changes to the CDN. There is no need to do anything on the customers tenant unless there are major changes (e.g. in the manifest) that require the app to be updated.

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