SharePoint Online PowerShell : Migrate Webparts between pages.
Introduction
Multiple times we get into a situation where we need to migrate webparts between pages. It's an easy job to add a webpart directly but it become very time consuming when you have to do it for multiple pages manually. In this article, I will discuss how to migrate webparts from one Site collection / Page to another Site collection /Page in SharePoint Online using PnP Online PowerShell. The Same process can be extended over multiple pages if needed.
Same steps can be followed for SharePoint On-premise infrastructure using counter PowerShell commands in Farm.
Pre-Requisite
Install latest SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline.msi from location https://github.com/SharePoint/PnP-PowerShell/releases
- Source and Destination Site collection have required webparts
- Source and Destination Page have same page layout
Overall process is consisting of 2 steps
- Download and save webpart details in XML schema in local drive
- Add all webparts to new Page using locally saved XML schema.
Download XML Schema
First step is to connect to SharePoint Online Site Collection
$credentials = Get-Credential
Connect-PnPOnline -Url $sourceUrl -CreateDrive -Credentials $credentials
$sourceUrl : This is location of source SharePoint Online site.
Now we will use "Get-PnpWebPartXml" command of PnP SharePoint Online PowerShell to download all webparts from a specified page.
Write-Host "Downloading WebPart Xml.." -ForegroundColor Cyan
$xml = "<WebParts>"
Get-PnPWebPart -ServerRelativePageUrl $FileServerRelativeURL -Web $webPath | ForEach-Object {
$xml += Get-PnPWebPartXml -ServerRelativePageUrl $FileServerRelativeURL -Web $webPath -Identity $_.Id
}
$Xml = $xml.replace('<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>','')
$xml += "</WebParts>"
$file = $XmlFilelocation + "\webparts.xml";
Set-Content -Path $file $xml
Different variables used:
$FileServerRelativeURL : Page relative URL in the Source Site collection e.g. /sites/abc/article.aspx
$webPart: Web Relative URL e.g. /sites/abc
$xmlFileLocation: Local drive location to save the XML file e.g. C:/XML
Above commands will download all webpart Schema and save as webparts.xml in local drive.
XML will look as follows:
Apply XML Schema
Connect to the Target Site Collection
$credentials = Get-Credential
Connect-PnPOnline -Url $targetUrl -CreateDrive -Credentials $credentials
$targetUrl: Target SharePoint Online site url.
Access the XML file from local drive and change references of old site collection in the Schema using 'replace'
$xmlFilePath = $path + "\webparts.xml"
$content = Get-Content $xmlFilePath
[xml]$xmlContent = $content.replace($OldSubSiteName,$NewSubSiteName)
$path: Local drive path where we have saved the schema XML : C:\XML
$OldSubSiteName: Old sub site name
$NewSubSiteName: New sub site name
Second step is to check out the File
Write-Host $page
Write-Host "Checking out "$page -ForegroundColor Gray
Set-PnPFileCheckedOut -Url $page -Web $subSiteRelativePath
$page: Relative path of the page where we want to add webparts
$subSiteRelativePath: Relative path of the sub site
Iterate through all webparts in XML, remove if already exist and add again.
Write-Host "Adding Webparts" -ForegroundColor Gray
$xmlContent.WebParts.WebPart | ForEach-Object {
Remove-PnpWebPart -ServerRelativePageUrl $page -Web $subSiteRelativePath -Title $_.Title
Add-PnPWebPartToWebPartPage -Xml $_.OuterXml -ZoneId $_.ZoneId -ServerRelativePageUrl $page -ZoneIndex 0
}
Write-Host "Added Webparts" -ForegroundColor Green
Final step is to Check in the page in Major version
Set-PnPFileCheckedIn -Url $page -Web $subSiteRelativePath -CheckinType MajorCheckIn -Comment "Updated webparts"
Write-Host "Checked In "$page -ForegroundColor Gray
Conclusion
Above I explained a simple process of migration of webparts between pages. We can extend this process and make a script which will migrate multiple webparts over different Webs/Pages. I have used above script to migrate multiple webparts span across multiple pages in different sub site by modifying the XML elements and parsing accordingly.
I have uploaded scripts at location