Pre-populate HTML content in the Page Content field of custom Article Page layout?

Question

I have a custom content type, say "MyCompany Article Page" inheriting from standard "Article Page" content type. In my associated custom publishing layout, how do i pre-populate some HTML rich content in the "Page Content" field?
I'm looking for a way to do this in Design Manager, SharePoint 2013. I created the custom page layout using Design Manager.

Answer 1

This is possible to do from your custom page layout HTML file, but requires some jiggery-pokery to work properly.

If you navigate to the Page Content Snippet in your HTML page, you can add html by editing the following line:

<!--MS:<PageFieldRichHtmlField:RichHtmlField FieldName="f55c4d88-1f2e-4ad9-aaa8-819af4ee7ee8" runat="server">-->

simply edit it like so:

<!--MS:<PageFieldRichHtmlField:RichHtmlField FieldName="f55c4d88-1f2e-4ad9-aaa8-819af4ee7ee8" runat="server" Html="This is my HTML">-->

Note, however, that this will only accept text, if you try to add <h3> or other bracketed code, it will break the input, as < & > are used as code delimiters in Sharepoint. To get around this, you need to write:

< as < and > as >

This way the code <h2>Header</h2> becomes <h2>Header</h2>

While this is a bit awkward and long-handed, it is the method I use to directly implement templates into a custom publishing page content snippet.

Answer 2

If I understand correctly your question, you simply need to set a default value for your Rich Text field. This cannot be done from the UI, but can easily be achieved by PowerShell: see for instance http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/28386.powershell-to-set-up-default-value-for-rich-text-field-in-sharepoint-2010.aspx.

The PowerShell code would be like:

$web = Get-SPWeb <Absolute-URL-of-Root-Site>
$f = $web.Fields["<FieldInternalName"]
$f.DefaultValue = "<YOUR HTML STRING>"
$f.Update()

Answer 3

You could write a workflow in SharePoint Designer to set the field on that content type when the document is created.