How to Create an FAQ Page in SharePoint Online, and Is It Worth the Effort?

FAQs (frequently asked questions) are not just for customers visiting a vendor’s website - they are also an incredible resource for your team. You can transform common questions from your team into a comprehensive list of Q&As from experts in the company.

If your team uses SharePoint, there are a couple of ways to do this - with a list or with a page.

Unfortunately, both of these options have their flaws, and I’ll highlight them as I run you through the process of creating an FAQ page in both formats.

This post is brought to you by Perfect Wiki, a tool that helps you create a database of your company resources right in Microsoft Teams. Try us out for FREE today, no sign-in or credit card required.

Table of Contents:

• SharePoint option 1: FAQ list
• SharePoint option 2: FAQ page
• Can I add my SharePoint FAQs to Microsoft Teams?
• Making an FAQ page in Perfect Wiki - it’s simple from the start

SharePoint option 1: FAQ list

To create an FAQ list in SharePoint like the one below, follow these steps:

Step 1: On your team’s site, click “New” > “List”. Sadly none of the premade list templates will work for an FAQ page, so choose “Blank list.”

Step 2: After you name your list, hit the “Title” column > “Column settings” > “Rename” and call it “Question”.

Step 3: Go to “New” to create a row where you will enter your first question and answer. You can attach a link to the answer, but you can’t attach images or videos, which is a big disadvantage for SharePoint.

Step 4: Repeat that last step with every FAQ you have. If you leave the list open for everyone to edit, your team members can add questions as they appear. This is what users will see:

If you want to see the whole answer to a question at a glance, you will need to manually change the view of the list to “Multiple lines of text” when creating the “Answer” column. Even then, you won’t see the whole text if the answer is longer than one sentence.

How easy is it to find an answer in a SharePoint list?

The search function is not that great in SharePoint. There’s no in-page search for lists, and you won’t get any text highlights for the keywords you look up using the full-text search, just suggestions for where your answer may be.

Pros and cons of the list option in SharePoint:

Pros:

• Convenient and easy to navigate
• You can click on a row to expand the full answer

Cons:

• No templates available so you have to create your list from scratch
• The process of setting up the list is tedious
• No import options
• No on-page search
• You can’t add any images or videos to the FAQ answers
• No intuitive way to organize questions by topic

SharePoint option 2: FAQ Page

The other option is to create a page for your FAQs. This will look more like a web page with images and a familiar FAQ layout like you might find on a commercial website, not like a Word doc, and the formatting process is much more time-consuming as a result.

Here’s what your FAQ page will look like:

Step 1: Go to “New” > “Page” and choose the “Blank page” option, since once again none of the templates are designed for the FAQ format.

Step 2: Name your page “FAQs” and you can begin adding your Q&As. This is what the editor looks like - you can add sections and special features like interactive calendars, YouTube videos, and images or screenshots.

Unfortunately, the SharePoint editor doesn’t let you copy and paste content with images already in it, so you will need to add them yourself.

SharePoint doesn’t have a file import option that turns docs into editable site pages, so you can’t easily migrate your existing FAQs from a Word doc to your new FAQ page. Only copy and paste will work and that’s not a quick or risk-free option.

Step 3: To add more text sections to your page, click the blue “+” button on the left and then the grey one, and choose “Text.”

I tried formatting the questions into headings to generate an interactive table of contents, but the SharePoint pages don’t have that feature. It seems like a simple enough function that makes navigation easier, but for some reason isn’t a thing yet.

Step 4: Once you’ve added your FAQs and their answers, hit “Publish” in the top right or “Save as draft” on the left if the Q&As need further review. This is what users will see once it’s published:

You can also assign editors and view-only users to limit who can add content to this page. This can be done in your personal “Settings” menu, and the permissions are pretty easy to edit for each user, but it’s unclear how to add new users to your site or to a specific page.

How easy is it to find an answer to my question in SharePoint?

Unfortunately, the search feature is even worse on pages. The search will just take you to the whole page, and you’ll still have to search through all the questions manually.

So if you’re in a pinch, don’t count on the SharePoint search to help you find your answer quickly.

Pros and cons of the page option in SharePoint:

Pros:

• You can add images and links to videos for better explanation
• You can save a page as a template for future FAQ pages

Cons:

• No templates available so you have to create your page from scratch
• Clunky page editor
• No table of contents for easy navigation
• You can’t make subpages for different FAQ topics
• You can’t import files from Word
• No on-page search

Can I add my SharePoint FAQs to Microsoft Teams?

If you actively use MS Teams in your organisation, then you won’t be able to seamlessly merge the two workspaces.

You can add a list or page as a tab in a team channel, but only one and only from the SharePoint site associated with that team. So if you want to scale one FAQ page to multiple teams at once and make them available in MS Teams, you will have to create a new page in each of the SharePoint team sites.

Fortunately, there’s a much simpler way to make an effective FAQ page right inside Microsoft Teams, and no, it’s not the frustrating built-in wiki.

Making an FAQ page in Perfect Wiki - it’s simple from the start

Our knowledge base system for Microsoft Teams considered the flaws of SharePoint, and made creating a great FAQ page incredibly simple, right from your MS Teams channels.

First of all, we have a free FAQ template that has the whole page structure automated for you. All you have to do is enter your team’s common questions and answers, and they will appear in the navigable table of contents.

Here’s how to create an FAQ page in 2 steps:

Step 1: Go to “Templates” and choose the “FAQ - Team and HR” template (which includes subpages for different question topics).

Step 2: Follow the tips and steps in the template to enter your own team FAQs, and you can add or change the subpages to fit the topics you need for your organisation.

You can easily assign designated editors in the “Account and settings” menu in your Perfect Wiki profile. The app inherits members from the Microsoft Teams team you added it to, so you can make anyone on that team an admin or member.

The template is super easy to edit, so you can change any of the content to fit your needs.

You can attach images, playable YouTube videos, or even documents from your Google Workspace that you can open right from the page.

You will need to find information on short notice sometimes, and our typo-tolerant full-text search shows you the location instantly, with multiple page suggestions and text highlights.

The FAQ template and the page formatting options in Perfect Wiki generate an automated table of contents when you use headings, making for fast scrolling through a long list of Q&As. Every Team's user will have the same simple but versatile formatting options.

If you have existing FAQ pages in the MS Team's built-in wiki, or Word and HTML format, you can migrate them into a ready-to-use wiki page in seconds with the “Import” menu.

And last but not least, the whole FAQ creation and sharing process happens inside Microsoft Teams, so you don’t have to switch between apps to find the answer to your question. Simply add Perfect Wiki to any channel, and you can begin using templates, importing Q&As, and creating new content right away.

We use your Microsoft Teams credentials, so there is no sign-in or set-up required.

Support your team in their workflow by making answers to crucial questions easy to find. And save your nerves from having to make the page from scratch.

Try the FAQ template in Perfect Wiki for free today, no credit card or commitments, and see what a difference an intuitive FAQ page can make.

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