SharePoint: Interactive Demos with SPFx

Key insights

• Demo Time: an SPFx web part demo that turns a SharePoint page into a slide-like presentation so presenters can run guided tours directly in the browser.
  
• Slide-like presentation: each page section becomes a step and shows contextual tooltips, keeping navigation simple and focused for viewers.
  
• Controls: includes keyboard navigation and play/stop controls for smooth, hands-free demonstrations and walkthroughs.
  
• Implementation: the demo injects UI via the DOM and CSS as a deliberate, lightweight proof-of-concept rather than a full framework integration.
  
• Use cases: ideal for onboarding pages, department sites, product tours, and quick training sessions inside SharePoint sites.
  
• Community and resources: showcased on the SharePoint Framework community call (26 June 2025) and available as a sample and SPFx guidance in public repositories and docs for developers to explore and adapt.
  

Microsoft reports on a recent YouTube demo from the SharePoint Framework community call that showcases a practical way to build guided, interactive presentations directly inside SharePoint pages. The video, presented on 26 June 2025, features Adam Wójcik demonstrating a web part named Demo Time, which converts page sections into slide-like steps with built-in tooltips and keyboard controls. Importantly, the demo aims to keep presenters and audiences inside the browser rather than switching to external presentation software. Consequently, it emphasizes quick onboarding, in-app guidance, and lightweight deployment for department sites and documentation pages.

What the Demo Shows

The demonstration highlights how Demo Time interprets each section of a SharePoint page as a distinct step and overlays tooltips whose data comes from a SharePoint list. Then, the web part adds keyboard navigation, play and stop controls, and a minimal UI that emulates a slide deck without moving content out of the page. The presenter purposely injects UI elements using the DOM and CSS as a proof‑of‑concept, so the approach is somewhat hacky by design yet intentionally lightweight. Thus, the demo focuses on immediacy and usability rather than a fully polished production component.

Technical Approach and Tradeoffs

The approach relies on manipulating the page DOM and applying styles to create a presentation layer, which makes integration fast and flexible but also introduces fragility when SharePoint updates or page structure changes. On the one hand, injecting UI directly keeps deployment simple and avoids heavy framework changes, enabling rapid prototyping and quick adoption. On the other hand, this method can conflict with future platform updates, require maintenance when markup evolves, and sometimes bypass recommended extension points. Therefore, teams must weigh speed and convenience against long-term stability and supportability when choosing this pattern.

Use Cases and Practical Value

Primarily, the demo addresses onboarding scenarios, guided tours, and departmental documentation where step‑by‑step walkthroughs improve user understanding and reduce support queries. Because the tooltip content is stored in a SharePoint list, administrators and content owners can update guidance without changing code, which supports decentralized content maintenance. Moreover, keyboard controls and stop/play behavior make it accessible for live demonstrations and recorded walkthroughs, so presenters can stay in the browser while narrating. Consequently, organizations can adopt the pattern for training hubs, new-hire pages, and feature rollouts with minimal overhead.

Challenges in Implementation

Despite its promise, implementing this approach in production requires careful attention to accessibility, performance, and governance. First, injecting elements into the DOM must preserve screen reader semantics and keyboard navigation so that users with disabilities can follow the steps; otherwise, you risk excluding users. Second, overlays and dynamic styles can affect page performance, especially on content-heavy pages or when multiple web parts run concurrently. Third, storing step definitions in a list is convenient but demands clear authoring workflows and permissions to prevent inconsistent or stale guidance. Therefore, teams should plan testing, author training, and fallback behavior before broad rollout.

Community Context and Support

The demo emerged from the SharePoint Framework community call, which encourages contributors and practitioners to prototype and share ideas. While the video showcases a single proof-of-concept, the community offers templates and sample code that organizations can adapt for their specific governance and performance needs. Additionally, the demo demonstrates how community-driven tools can complement official extensions while remaining experimental, thereby giving teams a jumpstart on innovation. Consequently, community feedback and iterative refinements can turn quick demos into robust patterns suitable for enterprise use.

In summary, the YouTube demo illustrates a practical, browser-based way to deliver guided experiences inside SharePoint pages using the SharePoint Framework. While the DOM-injection strategy accelerates prototyping and keeps presenters within the site, it also brings tradeoffs in maintainability, accessibility, and resilience to platform changes. Therefore, organizations considering adoption should pilot the technique, validate accessibility and performance, and establish authoring rules to reduce long-term risks. Ultimately, the demo provides a useful starting point for teams that want to enhance in-place learning and reduce context switching for users.

For teams interested in exploring further, the community maintains a project named Demo Time and related SPFx samples that demonstrate patterns and implementation details, and community calls continue to showcase similar innovations. Furthermore, practitioners can adapt the concept by moving from a proof‑of‑concept DOM approach to supported APIs and extension points to gain greater stability over time. In this way, the demo acts as both an inspiration and a roadmap: it highlights immediate benefits while pointing to the careful tradeoffs that organizations must manage to succeed at scale.

• Presenter: Adam Wójcik, Hitachi Energy
• Project: Demo Time (community sample)
• Framework: SharePoint Framework (SPFx)

Keywords

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