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Enable social engagement features for BindTuning modern web parts

BindTuning Team avatar
Written by BindTuning Team
Updated over 3 months ago

This article guides you through enabling Social Engagement features – such as comments, likes, and ratings – within SharePoint Online.

These functionalities, which are natively built into SharePoint, are leveraged by specific BindTuning modernX Web Parts, including Documents, Lists, and News, to foster greater interaction and collaboration. BindTuning's Web Parts are designed to seamlessly integrate with these existing SharePoint capabilities; they only need to be activated within your environment.

Important Notes:

  • These features are exclusively for modern SharePoint sites.

  • Activation process varies for Team and Communication sites.

  • Team Sites generally enable these features automatically.

  • Communication Sites often require specific manual steps, detailed below.

All configuration steps outlined here are performed within the settings of the specific SharePoint list or document library where you intend to use these features. To access these options, navigate to the Site Contents of your site and open the Settings for the relevant list or library.

Enabling "Comments"

Comments are a straightforward social engagement feature.

  • By default, comments are already set up correctly in Team Sites and Document Libraries. In Document Libraries, comments are always on and cannot be disabled through these settings.
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  • For default Lists, you can control comment capability:

    1. Go to the Settings of your list.

    2. Click on "Advanced Settings".

    3. Under "Comments," select your desired option (e.g., "Yes" to enable).

    4. Click "OK" to save.

Enabling "Ratings"

Ratings, including both "Likes" and "Star Ratings," have different enablement processes based on your site type.

For Team Sites

On SharePoint Team Sites, the Ratings feature (Likes and Star Ratings) is available natively and should work automatically with your BindTuning Web Parts. You can proceed to configure their display if needed.

For Communication Sites

For Communication Sites, the Ratings feature is not available natively and requires a PowerShell script to enable it at the site level before you can configure it in your lists or libraries.

Step 1: Activate the "Ratings" feature via PowerShell
(Communication sites)

Ensure you have PowerShell 7 installed.

Install the necessary PowerShell modules:

Install-Module Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell 
Install-Module PnP.PowerShell

Connect to your Communication Site. Open PowerShell 7 as an administrator and run the following command. Replace {Tenant} with your SharePoint tenant name and {Communication Site} with your specific Communication Site URL.

Connect-PnPOnline -url https://{Tenant}.sharepoint.com/sites/{Communication Site} -Interactive

This will open a browser window for you to log in and grant permissions. Accept them all.

Enable the "Ratings" feature. Execute the following command. This will enable the hidden Ratings feature for your site. A PnP permission window might appear again; accept all permissions.

Enable-PnPFeature –Identity 915c240e-a6cc-49b8-8b2c-0bff8b553ed3 -Scope Site

Once executed successfully, the Ratings feature should now be available within your list/library settings.

Step 2: Configure Ratings in list/library settings
(Team and Communication Sites)

After the Ratings feature is enabled (automatically on Team Sites, or via PowerShell on Communication Sites), you can configure it within your list or document library:

  1. Within the Settings of your list or Document Library, click on the "Ratings settings" option.

  2. On the following page, activate the feature by selecting "Yes". You will typically see options to choose between "Likes" or "Star Ratings." For BindTuning Web Parts, enabling "Likes" here is usually sufficient to activate the Social Engagement functionality.
    ​

Step 3: Displaying Likes and Star Ratings columns
(optional for List View)

The Social Engagement feature in BindTuning Web Parts will work once the above steps are completed. The following steps are optional and are only for making the "Number of likes" and "Rating (0-5)" columns visible directly within your SharePoint list view (they are not mandatory for the Web Part feature to function).

  1. Navigate back to Site Contents and open your list. You should notice a new column called "Number of likes" in your list view, indicating that likes are now active.
    ​

  2. To also show the Star Ratings column, click on "Add column" (or the plus icon), then select "Show or hide columns".

  3. In the "Edit view columns" panel, scroll down and select the column named "Rating (0-5)".

  4. Click "Apply". Now, you will have both "Likes" and "Star Ratings" visible in your list view.
    ​

After following these steps, the Social Engagement feature will be ready to use with your BindTuning modern Web Parts.

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