Migrate a Sharepoint Blog site to Sharepoint Online News Webpart

Question

I'm working on migrating my SP Foundation 2010 site to SharePoint Online. In 2010, we had a subsite using the blog template that we used for news. I had used a dataview webpart to display posts from the blog subsite on my main page. When I saw the News webpart in SPO, I figured that would replace that old functionality nicely. I've migrated the blog subsite to a subsite on SPO, and i tried adding the URL to the News Sources section on the webpart settings, but nothing is showing up.

Is there anyway to import the data from that old blog site so the News webpart can consume it (other than manually recreating the pages on in SPO)?

Answer 1

I figured it out! SharepointPNPPowershell to the rescue!

Here's the script I wrote to keep the two sites in sync: param ($credspo, $credW3, $idToSync)

    #
    $csomPath = "C:\Program Files\PackageManagement\NuGet\Packages\Microsoft.SharePointOnline.CSOM.16.1.19515.12000\lib\net45"
    $htmlPath = "<LocalPath>\Scripts\htmlagilitypack.1.11.17\lib\Net45"

    #IMport modules and types
    import-module SharepointPNPPowershellONline
    Add-Type -path $csomPath\Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.dll
    Add-Type -path $csomPath\Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime.dll
    Add-Type -Path $htmlPath\HtmlAgilityPack.dll

    #connect to SPO and on prem
    if (!$credspo){
    $credspo = get-credential -Message "Enter SPO credentials"}
    if (!$credOnP) {
    $credOnP = get-credential -message "Enter on Prem Credentials"}
    Connect-PnPOnline -Url https://<SharepointSPoURL> -Credentials $credspo

    $context = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientContext("<SPOnPremUrl>")

    $context.Credentials = $credOnP

    $web = $context.Web
    $context.Load($web)  #just a test to ensure connection
    $context.ExecuteQuery()

    $caml = new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.CamlQuery 
    $caml.ViewXml = "<View>  
                <Query> 
                   <Where><Geq><FieldRef Name='Created' /><Value Type='DateTime'>2017-10-09T12:00:00Z</Value></Geq></Where> 
                </Query> 
          </View>"

    #pull the list of news posts to sync. only needed posts after Oct 2017
    $posts = $web.Lists.GetByTitle("Posts")
    if (!$idToSync){
    $postItems = $posts.GetItems($caml)}
    else {$postItems = $posts.GetItemById($idToSync)}
    $context.Load($posts)
    $context.Load($postitems)
    $context.ExecuteQuery()



    #these characters are not allowed in titles 
    $specialChar  =  '[#?/\///:/*/?/"/</>/|/#/%]'

    #iterate though the collection of news items
    foreach ($post in $postItems){

    $title = $Post["Title"] -replace $specialChar, " " #clean out the title
    if ($title.Length -gt 374){
    $title = $Title.substring(0,375)
    } #max length for a title is 400 char. using 375 to give myself some headroom

    $newPage = Add-PnPClientSidePage -Name $title -LayoutType Article 


    $html = $post.FieldValues.Body


    Add-PnPClientSidePageSection -Page $newPage -SectionTemplate OneColumn 

    Add-PnPClientSideText -Page $newPage -Section $1 -text $html -Column 1


    $doc=  New-Object HTMLAgilityPack.HTMLDocument
    $doc.LoadHTML($html) 

    $img = $doc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes("//img")[0]   #being fancy - pull the first image to use for the thumbnail

    $newPage.ThumbnailUrl = $img.Attributes["src"].Value
    $Categories = ""

    $post.FieldValues.PostCategory | % {$Categories +="$($_.LookupValue); "}


    $newPage.PromoteAsNewsArticle()
    $newPage.save()

    $itemUPdate = Set-PnPListItem -List "Site Pages" -Identity $newPage.PageListItem.Id -Values @{"Categories0" = $Categories; "SyncedID" = $post.Id; "SyncDate" = get-date }
        #this is dumb but if you don't put the command above into a variable it fails with format-default error.
    remove-variable img #clear out the img var so if there's not a picture in the next post it won't get the old image


    }