How to show SharePoint Online on Digital Signage

Businesses use Microsoft SharePoint to increase productivity and enhance collaboration and employee engagement. But if your latest news posts in SharePoint go unseen, there’s less business value for the investment.

This is why smart companies are putting an effort in the right places:

Successful end-user adoption
Use Digital Signage to amplify the reach of your communication

The Use Cases for SharePoint on Digital Signage

Digital Signage & SharePoint can go hand-in-hand. In this blog, we cover the basic use cases and steps on how you can connect digital signage to your SharePoint online.

Use #1 – Drive traffic to SharePoint

A highly used best practice to drive SharePoint adoption is actually to drive traffic from other channels and media. One media that receives a high attention rate in the workplace is Digital Signage.

“Amplify your SharePoint content by showcasing news posts on digital displays to engage employees and boost traffic.”

You can drive traffic to your SharePoint intranet by giving the latest news screen time on digital signage displays throughout the office.

Automate the latest content, news posts, or blog posts from SharePoint to digital displays throughout the workplace to highlight what is trending and what is going on.

Use Case #2 – Reach all employee groups

In manufacturing companies, non-desk workers may not have immediate access to SharePoint. This can be a large group of employees who are not within easy reach of daily communication.

Take your latest intranet news to the factory floor using SharePoint & Digital Signage. SharePoint news on Digital Signage is a great way to make sure internal communication can reach all employee groups.

In case you are looking to display Excel or PowerPoint content on Digital Signage, you might like to read these:

Simplify Your Digital Signage Workflow with PowerPoint Integration

Display Excel Charts or Table Data on Digital Signage

Follow these steps to connect SharePoint online to Digital Signage

Valotalive is a versatile digital signage platform that can be directly connected to your SharePoint Online environment. This integration allows you to pull and display your SharePoint News Posts on your digital signage screens, keeping your employees informed and engaged.

Before moving on make sure you have a valid SharePoint online account.

Step 1 Create your Valotalive account

You’ll land on the Valotalive main page where you can easily find the SharePoint app icon.

Step 2 Activate Your Display in Valotalive

Make sure you have an active display in Valotalive. You may test the service with a Chrome Extension display during the free trial.

To connect Valotalive to your office or shop floor displays, you’ll need a media player. Use any HDMI-enabled display. We recommend professional Full HD or 4K screens for optimal results.

For Hardware tou have some options to go forward:

Option I – use Chrome devices as media players

You can order the preconfigured, ready-to-go devices from Valotalive. Or you can source and manage the Chrome media players yourself. Valotalive can be found in the Chrome Web Store.

Option II – use a media player running on Win 10

Valotalive is compatible with Windows devices, allowing you to transform any Windows computer or media player into a captivating digital display.

Step 3 Locate the SharePoint online app in Valotalive

– Once you have your Valotalive account activated, locate the SharePoint online app in Valotalive under “Apps”

– Click new apps

– Browse through the apps or select the “News” category to shortlist the available apps. Scroll down to locate the SharePoint Online app.

Step 4 Choose SharePoint online app

– Click “Choose this app” to activate it and set your preferences.

Step 4 Set your preferences & authenticate

As one of the first steps, you will be asked to authenticate Valotalive with your SharePoint Online account using your MS / Azure AD credentials. This is a secure process using Microsoft’s native API.

Use your Microsoft Credentials to authenticate. Valotalive – Microsoft is enabled via a standard and secure authentication that uses Azure AD / OAuth.

Choose your site to follow

Once you have activated your app, you will be taken back to Valotalive. You can now choose which SharePoint site’s news you want to follow. You may create multiple apps, each one following a specific site.

Brand the look & feel

You can use themes to set the look & feel for your app. Valotalive provides multiple default themes or you can create a company-specific theme to match your brand guidelines.

Step 5 Go live- add your SharePoint app to your displays

Once you have saved your SharePoint app, you can add your app to Flows linked to a specific display or display group(s). This will be done in Valotalive.

A custom and optional call to action can be automatically added to all posts all posts.

Step 6 The Content

Once running Valotalive SharePoint app will display your news on office TVs from your SharePoint account from a selected SharePoint team Site or a Blog Site. Anytime you add a news post on the selected sites, it will be automatically shown also on office TVs.

Valotalive will show the following content items on your displays:

– News image, if included

– Headline

– Ingress/body text

– The date and channel

Test Valotalive

You can test Valotalive without any hardware using our FREE Trial account.

👉🏼 Read more about SharePoint online and free trial here.

Steps forward

I do not have any prior digital signage service

If you do not have any digital signage service yet, you are good to go with Valotalive as it has all the features needed for a small company or enterprise use. Activate your Valotalive account here.

I already have a digital signage service in place

If are already using some digital signage service, but that does not offer integrations to the required business systems, such as SharePoint online, you might like to consider running Valotalive in parallel with the service.

The other option is to replace the service with Valotalive entirely.

All you need to do here is to:

1. Activate your Valotalive account

2. change the media player. A media player is running the content behind the digital displays. You can:

Option I – order your media player from Valotalive or selected partners

Option II – Set up one to run Valotalive yourself