Microsoft SharePoint already allows business and enterprise users to create websites for updating customers about their products. Today, Microsoft announced a new feature for SharePoint News that allows companies to convert news posts into emails that can be sent out to interested parties as newsletters, alerts, and more.

In a blog post, Microsoft stated that people in charge of creating SharePoint News articles will now be able to select a “Made for email” template. Once the person finishes their news post, they can also send it as an email.

Microsoft added:

Sending a page as an email will not change existing site permissions, and sending a page as an email will not give your recipients access to the original page if they don’t already have it. You can think of sending mail by email as making someone a photocopy of a page in a book. They can read that page, but nothing else in the book.

This new feature is rolling out now to SharePoint Targeted Release customers. It will be available for all SharePoint users by the end of September. You can check out a full demo of the SharePoint News email creation feature on Microsoft's SharePoint YouTube channel.

One interesting thing about this feature is that the view counts for SharePoint news stories will now also include views of the same article in its email edition.

Microsoft already has plans to put in its Copilot generative AI feature for SharePoint customers. It will allow them to create SharePoint pages or sites with just a few text prompts, at which point the site or page can be edited later. Copilot for SharePoint is expected to launch by the end of 2023 in a public preview edition. Microsoft also has plans to include a new image editor for SharePoint users in the future as well.