Viva Connections - Simply Explained
Welcome to another episode of Knowledge Nuggets with Mirko Peters. Today we're exploring Viva Connections, Microsoft's employee experience platform that brings your company intranet directly into Microsoft Teams. For years, organizations relied on traditional intranets to share company news, HR information, policies, and internal resources. Unfortunately, many of those intranets became digital filing cabinets that employees rarely visited. Information was scattered across multiple portals, important announcements were easily missed, and finding something as simple as an expense form or IT support link often became a frustrating search. Microsoft Viva Connections was designed to modernize that experience. Instead of asking employees to visit another website, Viva Connections delivers personalized news, company resources, business applications, and workplace information directly inside Microsoft Teams. Even more importantly, Microsoft recently rebranded the experience, making it even more closely aligned with SharePoint and the broader Microsoft 365 ecosystem. In this episode, we'll explore what Viva Connections is, how it works, why the recent changes matter, and how organizations can use it to create a more engaging digital workplace.
THE PROBLEM WITH TRADITIONAL INTRANETS
Traditional company intranets served an important purpose, but they often struggled to keep employees engaged. Many organizations built large SharePoint portals that contained HR documents, company policies, IT support information, executive announcements, and department news. While these portals held valuable information, they were usually static websites that employees only visited when absolutely necessary. Over time, content became outdated, navigation became increasingly complicated, and employees stopped relying on the intranet as part of their daily work. Mobile access was often poor, personalization was limited, and finding relevant information usually required navigating through multiple pages or remembering URLs that few people actually knew. As remote and hybrid work became the norm, these limitations became even more obvious. Employees no longer spent every day inside corporate offices, making the traditional intranet experience increasingly disconnected from how people actually worked. Microsoft recognized that employees already spent much of their day inside Microsoft Teams. Rather than asking them to visit another portal, the company decided to bring the intranet directly into the collaboration platform they were already using.
WHAT IS VIVA CONNECTIONS?
Viva Connections is Microsoft's employee experience application that provides a personalized digital workplace inside Microsoft Teams. Rather than existing as a separate product, Viva Connections is built on top of a SharePoint Home Site, which supplies the content, branding, navigation, and organizational information displayed throughout the experience. The easiest way to understand Viva Connections is to think of it as the digital front door to your organization. Employees open Microsoft Teams and immediately gain access to company news, internal applications, HR resources, business tools, announcements, and important organizational information without needing to switch between multiple systems. Because the experience is integrated into Teams, employees can stay informed while remaining inside the collaboration platform they already use for meetings, chat, and teamwork. The result is significantly higher visibility for internal communication and much easier access to the resources employees need throughout the day.
THE 2026 REBRAND
One of the biggest recent changes is that Microsoft has rebranded Viva Connections inside Microsoft Teams. During 2026, Microsoft gradually renamed the Viva Connections application to simply SharePoint. While this initially surprised many organizations, the reasoning behind the change is actually quite straightforward. Viva Connections was always powered by SharePoint behind the scenes. News articles, dashboards, navigation, and resources all originated from SharePoint Home Sites. However, many customers mistakenly believed Viva Connections required separate licensing or represented an entirely different product. By renaming the application to SharePoint, Microsoft removed much of this confusion while emphasizing that the employee experience is fundamentally built upon SharePoint technologies. Importantly, the rename changed branding rather than functionality. Existing deployments continue working exactly as before, administrators use the same management experience, and organizations with customized branding generally see no visible changes for their users. Microsoft also introduced several administrative improvements alongside the rename, including easier Home Site management and new web parts that are available without requiring additional Viva licensing.
THE THREE CORE COMPONENTS
The Viva Connections experience is built around three primary components that together create a complete employee portal. The first is the News Reader. Instead of presenting the same company announcements to everyone, Microsoft Graph personalizes news based on departments, organizational roles, and collaboration patterns. Sales employees see sales updates, HR teams receive policy announcements, and frontline workers receive information relevant to their daily responsibilities. Organizations can also target announcements using Microsoft Entra groups, ensuring employees receive information that actually matters to them rather than overwhelming everyone with every update. The second component is the Dashboard, which serves as a personalized workplace command center. Dashboard cards provide direct access to commonly used business processes such as requesting vacation, submitting expense reports, launching HR applications, checking training progress, or opening frequently used business systems. Organizations can build custom dashboard cards using SharePoint Framework technologies, while employees can personalize their own dashboards by rearranging, hiding, or prioritizing the cards they use most frequently. The third component is Resources. This provides centralized access to company policies, benefits information, training materials, support links, and other important organizational content. A particularly valuable improvement is centralized link management. Administrators maintain resources in one location, and updates automatically appear everywhere the Resources web part is used throughout SharePoint, dramatically reducing maintenance effort and eliminating broken links across multiple pages.
PERSONALIZATION DRIVES ENGAGEMENT
One of Viva Connections' greatest strengths is personalization. Unlike traditional intranets that display identical information to every employee, Viva Connections adapts content based on organizational context. Microsoft Graph helps determine which news articles are most relevant, while Microsoft Entra groups allow organizations to target announcements, dashboard cards, and resources toward specific audiences. This creates a much more relevant employee experience. Warehouse staff, HR teams, executives, engineers, and finance departments can all open the same application while seeing content specifically tailored to their responsibilities. Employees also gain greater control over their own experience. Dashboard layouts can be personalized without requiring SharePoint administration rights, allowing each person to organize their workplace tools according to individual preferences rather than following a one-size-fits-all design. This combination of organizational targeting and personal customization significantly improves usability while helping employees find important information much faster.
WHAT MAKES DEPLOYMENTS SUCCESSFUL?
Technology alone doesn't guarantee adoption. Microsoft's research shows that organizations which simply deploy Viva Connections without an ongoing communication strategy often experience very low employee engagement after the initial rollout. Content quickly becomes stale, employees stop checking the application, and the digital workplace gradually loses relevance. Successful organizations take a different approach. They continuously publish fresh news, maintain active dashboards, regularly update resources, and ensure the application remains prominently pinned inside Microsoft Teams. According to Microsoft's research, pinning the application within Teams accounts for a significant proportion of weekly active usage because employees naturally access information through applications already visible within their daily workflow. Mobile usage also plays a critical role. Frontline workers and mobile employees often engage with Viva Connections even more frequently than traditional office workers because Teams already serves as their primary communication platform throughout the day. Keeping information current and relevant ultimately matters far more than simply deploying the technology itself.
WHO SHOULD USE VIVA CONNECTIONS?
Viva Connections is suitable for organizations of almost every size, although implementation approaches vary. Smaller organizations can often achieve excellent results using the standard Microsoft 365 capabilities that are already included with their existing subscriptions. A SharePoint Home Site, personalized news, dashboard cards, and resource links provide everything many businesses need without purchasing additional software. Large enterprises often use Viva Connections as the primary digital entry point for tens of thousands of employees.
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Did you know Microsoft just renamed one of its most important employee tools?
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Most people didn't even notice.
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This isn't some minor app nobody uses.
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It's the tool that delivers company news, gives quick access to benefits and time off requests,
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and pulls everything together in one place.
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By the end of this episode, you'll understand what Viva Connections actually is,
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why the rebrand matters, and whether your organization should be using it.
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Let's dive in from the old problem to the new solution, the old internet problem.
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Imagine going back about 10 years.
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If you worked at a company with more than a few hundred people, you probably had an internet.
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It was that one website where HR posted the holiday schedule,
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IT put the password policy and leadership shared quarterly updates.
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For most employees, it was a place you visited maybe once a month, if you remembered the URL.
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The problem was, these intranets were static.
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They were one size fits all landing pages that rarely changed,
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so everyone saw the same content whether you worked in accounting or on the factory floor.
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Finding specific information meant hunting across multiple sites, portals and tools.
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The pension policy was on one page, the expense form was buried three clicks deep in another site,
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and the IT help desk link, good luck remembering where that lived.
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The result was predictable.
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You'd get low engagement, outdated content, and frustrated workers who eventually stopped trying.
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Classic SharePoint intranets were especially bad at two things,
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mobile accessibility and personalization.
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If you were on the shop floor or working from a coffee shop, forget it, the experience was terrible.
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Some organizations tried to fix this with custom development.
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They'd build a custom portal, hire consultants to maintain it,
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and spend a fortune keeping it current.
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That worked for a while, but it was expensive and hard to maintain.
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Then the pandemic hit and suddenly employees were working from anywhere,
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home warehouses, hospital floors,
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the old internet model wasn't just outdated anymore, it was broken.
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You couldn't expect someone to VPN into the corporate network,
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just to find the lunch menu or read a CEO update.
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So Microsoft looked at this problem and built something different,
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that something is Viva connections.
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What is Viva connections, the simple definition?
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So here's the simplest definition.
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Viva connections is an employee experience app that lives inside Microsoft Teams.
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And you can think of it as a digital front door.
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One place where employees go for company news, tools, and resources.
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Instead of opening five different browser tabs,
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they open one app inside the tool they already use all day.
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Now, Viva connections isn't a standalone product.
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It's built on top of SharePoint, specifically a SharePoint home site
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that access the foundation. The app pulls content from that site
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and presents it in a friendly and more personalized way.
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So while it's SharePoint under the hood,
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the experience feels completely different.
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The app has three core components.
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The news reader, a feed of company updates tailored to each employee,
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the dashboard, cards that link to tools like submitting time off
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or checking training progress,
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and resources, a curated list of links to important content
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like policies and benefits.
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We'll dig into each of these in a moment.
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Viva connections works everywhere, desktop, tablet, mobile.
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And the experience is consistent across all devices,
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which is a huge advantage for organizations
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with front-line workers who don't sit at a desk all day.
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Here's the part that surprises most people.
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The basic version is included with your Microsoft 365 subscription
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so you don't need to buy anything extra.
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There's a feature-rich version with targeted push notifications
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and premium analytics, but the core experience,
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the news reader, the dashboard, the resources,
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is already there waiting for you.
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But here's where it gets interesting and confusing.
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In 2026, Microsoft changed the name.
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The 2026 rebrand, Viva Connections is now SharePoint.
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So in mid-2026, between May and July,
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Microsoft renamed the Viva Connections app inside Teams to the SharePoint app.
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It happened quietly over a few months,
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and if you open Teams one morning,
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the icon that said Viva Connections now said SharePoint.
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Why did they do this?
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It actually makes a lot of sense when you think about it.
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Viva Connections was always powered by SharePoint.
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The news, the dashboard, the resources,
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all of it came from a SharePoint home site behind the scenes,
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but customers kept treating it like a separate product asking,
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"Do I need a Viva license for this?
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Is this something new I have to learn?"
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The answer was always no, but the confusion persisted.
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So Microsoft decided to just call it what it is.
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It's SharePoint.
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The new name clears up that confusion once and for all.
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Now, what actually changed?
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The app name in Teams, the branding,
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and the default experience all changed.
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If your organization hadn't customized the app name,
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your employees now see SharePoint where they used to see Viva Connections.
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The global navigation inside the app reflects the same change,
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and Search is now scoped to SharePoint content by default.
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When someone searches from inside the app,
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they only see SharePoint results,
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not the entire Microsoft 365 universe.
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But here's what didn't change,
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the functionality, management tools,
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and admin experience are all identical to before.
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If you already had Viva Connections set up with a custom name and logo,
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nothing changes for your users.
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The rename only affects tenants that hadn't customized the app name.
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There are some nice admin improvements that came alongside the rename.
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SharePoint administrators can now create home sites
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directly from the SharePoint admin center
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instead of having to go through the Viva Connections console.
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That's one less step.
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Two new web parts also became available.
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The resources web part and the announcements web part
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are neither requires an extra license,
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so they're available to every SharePoint customer.
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That matters because the announcements web part used to be locked
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behind a paid Viva license.
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The name changed, but the core experience stayed the same.
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So what exactly is that experience?
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Let's look at the three building blocks.
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Component one, the news reader.
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So let's start with the first component, the news reader.
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This is probably the piece most employees will interact with the most.
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It's a feed of company news, updates, and announcements
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all curated and personalized for each person.
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When you open the SharePoint app in Teams,
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the news reader is right there,
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showing you the latest posts from your organization.
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But here's what makes it different from the old internet news page.
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The news reader doesn't show everyone the same content.
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It uses Microsoft Graph to figure out what's relevant to you
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based on your role, your department, and the people you work with.
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If you're on the sales team, you'll see sales updates first.
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If you're in HR, you'll see policy changes and benefits news.
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The system does this automatically
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without anyone having to manually tag content for each department.
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Now there's a new announcements web part
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that came with the 2026 updates.
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This used to require a premium license,
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but now it's available to all SharePoint customers.
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Think of announcements as micro news.
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Short, targeted updates that appear in the feed
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and can even trigger a Teams notification.
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You can aim them at specific groups
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using Microsoft Android ID groups.
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So only the right people see the right content.
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A warehouse safety update goes to warehouse workers.
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A finance policy change goes to the finance team.
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Nobody gets flooded with noise they don't need.
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If your organization has the Viva Suite version,
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you also get targeted push notifications.
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That means when there's an urgent announcement,
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a planned closure, a system outage, a leadership change,
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employees get a push notification on their phone,
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not just a post in the feed.
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For frontline workers who don't check email regularly,
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this is a game changer.
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Here's a stat that really matters.
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After a week, engagement on any piece of content drops off a cliff.
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People don't scroll back through old news.
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They look at what's fresh,
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so if you're running Viva Connections,
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you need to keep the feed active.
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Multiple posts per week.
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Fresh content.
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Otherwise employees stop opening the app
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because they've already seen everything.
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Freshness is what drives the habit.
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News keeps employees informed,
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but they also need quick access to tools and tasks.
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That's where the dashboard comes in.
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Component to the dashboard.
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The second building block is the dashboard,
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and this is where Viva Connections starts
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to feel less like a news site and more like a command center.
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The dashboard is a set of cards.
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Each card links to a tool,
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an app or a piece of information.
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Think of it as a home screen for your work life.
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These cards aren't just static links.
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They're built on something called adaptive cards
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and the SharePoint framework or SPFX.
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That's a technical way of saying IT teams can build custom cards
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without writing a time of code.
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If your company uses a time off system
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and expands reporting tool or a training platform,
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someone can create a card that connects directly to it.
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One click and you're submitting that vacation request
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or checking your training progress.
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No navigating through menus,
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no remembering which URL goes where.
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Here's a concrete example.
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Imagine you're an employee who needs to request time off.
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In the old world you'd open a browser,
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find the HR portal, log in,
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navigate to the time off section
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and fill out a form.
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With the dashboard, there's a card that says request time off.
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You click it and the form opens right there.
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Same for expense reports,
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same for checking your upcoming meetings,
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same for launching a training module.
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Each card eliminates steps.
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Now here's something that changed with the 2026 updates.
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End users can now personalize their own dashboard view.
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You can hide cards you don't use,
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reorder them so your most important tools are at the top
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or even add your own cards.
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And this personalization is available to every end user,
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regardless of whether they have edit permissions
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on the SharePoint site.
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You don't need to be a site owner to customize your dashboard.
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It's your view, your way.
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There's also a see all experience
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that gives users a focused view of all their dashboard cards
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in one place.
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Instead of scrolling through a long list,
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you get a clean full screen view of everything available.
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And from there you can customize, hide or reorder
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to your heart's content.
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One stat from Microsoft's own research
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really drives home the importance of the dashboard.
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Dashboards with 10 or more cards
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achieve three times the engagement of dashboards
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with fewer than five cards.
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That's not a small difference.
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The takeaway is clear.
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Don't be shy about adding cards.
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Cover multiple user needs.
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Give people a reason to come back.
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A sparse dashboard tells employees
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there's nothing useful here.
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A rich one tells them this is where work happens.
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So you have news and you have tools.
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But what about finding the right links and documents?
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That's the third piece.
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Component three resources.
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The third component is resources.
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It sounds simple, but it might save your sanity.
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Think of it as your own digital filing cabinet.
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You have policies, benefits information,
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IT help desk links, training materials,
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all organized in one place.
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If you've ever managed a traditional internet,
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you know the pain of keeping links up to date.
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Someone changes the URL for the benefits portal
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and suddenly every page has a broken link.
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You spend hours hunting them down one by one.
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The new resources web part
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solves this with something called content reuse.
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You create a central list of resources,
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links to policies, forms, tools, whatever,
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and then add the resources web part
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to multiple pages across your sharepoint site.
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When you update a link in that central list,
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it updates everywhere.
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Every page that uses that web part
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reflects the change automatically.
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Update once and it's done.
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No more hunting down outdated links.
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This feature sounds boring
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until you've had to fix a broken benefits link
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on 20 different pages.
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Then it becomes your favorite thing in the world.
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You can organize resources by category,
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audience or topic.
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You might have a section for HR policies
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and other for IT support, another for training materials.
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You can target specific resources to specific groups
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using the same EntraID groups we talked about earlier.
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A factory worker sees safety procedures
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and shift schedules.
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An office worker sees travel policies
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and expense guidelines.
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Everyone sees what they need and nothing they don't.
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And with global navigation,
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those resources are accessible from anywhere in SharePoint.
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You don't have to be inside the SharePoint app
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in Teams to find what you need.
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The navigation follows you across the entire SharePoint experience.
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One click and you're back to your company's curated resource list.
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So those are the three components.
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News keeps you informed, the dashboard helps you get things done
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and resources help you find what you need.
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But here's the real question,
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does any of this actually work?
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Let's look at the numbers.
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The engagement stats that matter.
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Let's talk numbers.
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Microsoft has done a lot of research
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on Viva Connections adoption.
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First, the bad news.
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Organizations that deploy Viva Connections
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without a defined strategy
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typically see fewer than one in 10 employees
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using it weekly.
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That's 10%.
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And within eight to 12 weeks,
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there's a significant drop off.
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People open it, find nothing useful,
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and never come back.
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The app becomes a ghost town.
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So what separates the successful deployments from the failures?
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The biggest factor is pinning.
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Organizations that pin the Viva Connections app globally in Teams
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see 75% of their weekly active usage come from that single action.
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Three out of four weekly users only open the app
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because it's right there in their Teams sidebar.
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If you bury it somewhere, people won't find it.
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If you pin it, they use it.
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That's a low effort move that makes a real difference.
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Mobile is another huge factor.
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Mobile users have doubled the engagement of desktop users.
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You'd think people at their desks would engage more,
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but mobile fits into the flow of work differently.
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You check it on the bus, you glance at it between tasks,
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you open it during a shift change,
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and for frontline workers,
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the numbers are even more dramatic.
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They show approximately three times
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the weekly engagement of desk-based information workers.
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Frontline workers don't sit at a computer all day.
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Their phone is their primary work device.
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If the internet isn't on their phone,
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it doesn't exist for them.
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The overall impact is real.
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Organizations adopting Viva Connections report up to 30% higher
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employee engagement compared to legacy portals.
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That's a measurable improvement in how connected people
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feel to their company, but you have to work for it.
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The research suggests a healthy target.
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50% or higher weekly active users.
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60% or higher at six months.
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And 75% or higher monthly positive response on employee surveys.
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Those are the benchmarks you should aim for.
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One more stat worth understanding.
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43% of Microsoft 365 internet implementations
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need a layered solution within 18 to 24 months.
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That means nearly half of organizations
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eventually hit a wall where the out-of-the-box capabilities aren't enough.
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They need third-party tools for advanced governance,
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better search, or deeper personalization.
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That doesn't mean Viva Connections is a failure.
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It means you should plan for growth.
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Start simple but know that you might need to add more later.
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So the numbers are compelling.
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But is Viva Connections right for every organization?
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Let's talk about who actually needs this.
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Who actually needs this?
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Practical guidance.
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So who actually needs Viva Connections?
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The honest answer?
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Not everyone, but more organizations than you might think.
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Let's break it down by size.
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If your organization has under 2000 employees
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with simple communication needs,
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the out-of-the-box Viva Connections experience is usually enough.
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You set up a SharePoint home site,
355
00:13:01,560 --> 00:13:02,840
configure the newsreader,
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00:13:02,840 --> 00:13:05,000
add a few dashboard cards, and you're done.
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No massive customization project.
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No extra license.
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It's included with your Microsoft 365 subscription.
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And if your employees already use Teams,
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this is a natural fit.
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They're already in the app.
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They just need a reason to open it.
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00:13:15,800 --> 00:13:19,400
On the other end, large enterprises with 50,000 or more employees
365
00:13:19,400 --> 00:13:21,880
use Viva Connections as their single front door.
366
00:13:21,880 --> 00:13:23,400
With that many people, you can't have them
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navigating 50 different portals.
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You need one entry point that's personalized, branded,
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and consistent.
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Viva Connections delivers that.
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It becomes the home page for your entire organization,
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no matter the department, location, or role.
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Here's the key question.
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Do your employees already live in Microsoft Teams?
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If yes, Viva Connections is a natural fit,
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you're not asking them to learn a new tool.
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You're putting the internet inside the tool they already use.
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That's a much lower barrier to adoption
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than asking them to bookmark a new URL.
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There are two versions.
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The basic version comes with Microsoft 365.
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You get the newsreader, dashboard, resources,
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and audience targeting via intraID groups.
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That's enough for most organizations.
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The Viva Suite version adds push notifications,
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premium analytics, and AI features through co-pilot.
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If you have frontline workers who need urgent notifications
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on their phones,
389
00:14:06,920 --> 00:14:09,080
or if you want deep engagement analytics,
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the premium version is worth it.
391
00:14:10,680 --> 00:14:11,960
But here's the honest truth.
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00:14:11,960 --> 00:14:14,760
Viva Connections is not a replacement for complex governance
393
00:14:14,760 --> 00:14:17,160
advanced search or deep workflow automation.
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00:14:17,160 --> 00:14:19,960
If you need strict content lifecycle management,
395
00:14:19,960 --> 00:14:22,920
federated search, or complex approval workflows,
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you'll likely need a layered solution.
397
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That's where third-party internet platforms come in.
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They build on top of Microsoft 365
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00:14:28,840 --> 00:14:31,320
and add capabilities that native tools don't provide.
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00:14:31,320 --> 00:14:33,720
The 43% stat we mentioned earlier,
401
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that's the group that needs these additional tools.
402
00:14:36,120 --> 00:14:37,640
So here's the practical guidance.
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00:14:37,640 --> 00:14:40,600
If you're a small, to mid-sized organization already using Teams,
404
00:14:40,600 --> 00:14:42,280
start with the basic version.
405
00:14:42,280 --> 00:14:45,640
If you're a large enterprise, use Viva Connections as your front door
406
00:14:45,640 --> 00:14:47,560
but plan for additional tools as you grow.
407
00:14:47,560 --> 00:14:49,560
And if you have complex governance or search needs,
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00:14:49,560 --> 00:14:51,800
budget for a layered solution from the start.
409
00:14:51,800 --> 00:14:54,680
So now, you know what it is, how it works, and who it's for.
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00:14:54,680 --> 00:14:55,960
What's the first step?
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Here's what you do.
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Check if you have Microsoft 365.
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If you do, you already have access to Viva Connections.
414
00:15:00,920 --> 00:15:02,040
No purchase needed.
415
00:15:02,040 --> 00:15:03,800
Then set up a SharePoint home site.
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That's the foundation everything else builds on.
417
00:15:05,880 --> 00:15:07,880
Without it, the app has nothing to show.
418
00:15:07,880 --> 00:15:10,440
Next, pin the app globally in Teams.
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That single action drives 75% of weekly active usage.
420
00:15:13,880 --> 00:15:15,880
It's the most effective move you can make.
421
00:15:15,880 --> 00:15:17,320
And keep the content fresh.
422
00:15:17,320 --> 00:15:18,600
Old news is ignored news.
423
00:15:18,600 --> 00:15:20,040
Publish multiple times per week.
424
00:15:20,040 --> 00:15:22,040
Target your content to the right audiences.
425
00:15:22,040 --> 00:15:23,080
Make it worth opening.
426
00:15:23,080 --> 00:15:24,280
So that's the system.
427
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Three components.
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00:15:25,160 --> 00:15:26,200
One app.
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00:15:26,200 --> 00:15:27,720
And a name that keeps changing.
430
00:15:27,720 --> 00:15:29,400
But the value stays the same.
431
00:15:29,400 --> 00:15:30,600
Start with your home site.
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Pin it in Teams.
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And keep the content fresh.
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Subscribe for more breakdowns like this.
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And drop a comment if you're using Viva Connections in your organization.
