Section Design Ideas

What are Section Design Ideas?

Section Design Ideas are a new Pages functionality that allows users to input text and image content and see image and formatting suggestions that can be applied right to the section they are authoring. These changes include:

• Suggesting an image webpart or background based on your section text

• Suggesting different text sizing and formatting

• Changing your layout to optimize for your content type

• Proposing different banner layouts and images based on your page title.

How to See and Apply Design Ideas

Design ideas can be found by clicking the shimmer icon in the page toolbox. The first time you have a design idea available during an authoring session, a red dot will appear next to this shimmer indicating your ideas are ready.

Once you open the Design ideas panel, you can preview and apply your available ideas. You can also click the “see more” button to generate more ideas.

Once you click on any idea, it will be automatically applied to your section. To undo this, use ctrl+z or the undo button at the top of your page. You can click on as many ideas as you want in the design ideas panel to try them out, however, once you click into your section and continue editing, they will automatically update.

In what situations are Design Ideas generated?

At this time, design ideas be generated and applied to sections containing ONLY the following content:

• 1 banner webpart

• 1, 2, or 3 text webparts.

• 1, 2, or 3 text and image webparts in equal quantities.

If you have a section containing any other 1^st or 3^rd party webpart (Quick links, people, etc.), we will not be able to suggest design ideas at this time. Additionally, if you have unequal quantities of image and text webparts, (such as one text webpart and two image webparts) we will also be unable to offer suggestions.

Design ideas can also be generated for sections containing inline images and tables. When a text webpart contains inline images, it will still be treated as a text webpart, and the inline image or table will remain in its position within the text webpart in all design ideas suggestions.  

PICTURE OF INLINE IMAGE IN DESIGN IDEAS PANEL

How does Design ideas Suggest images for me?

If you are in a non-government tenant, Design Ideas will suggest Banner, image webpart, and section background images for you based on the content of your section. This works by summarizing your section content into a set of keywords and searching for relevant images within Microsoft’s stock image service. This is the same set of images that you can search for yourself in the image picker.

If over 50% of the text in any given section is changed, design ideas will regenerate its set of relevant keywords, resulting in a different set of suggested ideas.  

In situations where Design Ideas cannot find images that match your keywords exactly, it will add “abstract” and “background” to your search terms and try to find suitable images again. ​​​​​​​

If text keyword recognition is unavailable in your tenant, or if a successful image search cannot be performed, Design Ideas will instead suggest images from our fixed set of stock filler content. 

Image webpart suggestions

If your section contains only text, design ideas will suggest image webparts to match the quantity of text webparts that your section contains. This allows it to suggest beautiful, symmetrical section configurations.

For example, if your section contains 2 text webparts, design ideas will suggest two image webparts. This works for sections containing 1-3 text webparts

How does Design Ideas format my text for me?

Design ideas formats. your text by applying one of 4 different text stylings. These styles will change text height, bold, and italicizes, but will never change your font to be different than that of your site.

If you have a section with a single blank text webpart, design ideas will suggest formatted, filler text to help you get started.

Design ideas will also ensure that its suggestions are accessible, suggesting only dark text colors for light backgrounds, and light text colors for dark backgrounds

How does Design Ideas work when I am coauthoring?

If you have design ideas open for a section you are editing, no other page editor will be able to edit or generate design ideas for that section. Similarly, if someone else is editing a section, you will not be able to generate design ideas for it.

PICTURE OF COAUTHORING ERROR SCREEN

Why isn’t Design ideas suggesting anything for me?   

Design ideas may not be able to generate a suggestion for any of the following reasons:

1. Your section contains a webpart other than image, text, or banner

   1. Example: Quicklinks is added to a text section, and design ideas are no longer available

2. Your section contains too many of a supported webpart:

   1. Example: a 4^th text webpart is added to a section, and design ideas are no longer available

3. Your section contains an unequal quantity of image and text.

   1. Example: a section contains two images and one text webpart, resulting in no design ideas available.

4. Your section is a full width or a vertical section

   1. Design ideas does not support these section types at this time.