☕ SharePoint Tip #23 — SharePoint Pages: building your company intranet

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Good morning! Here is your 15-minute SharePoint tip for today.

Day 23 | Week 4 — Product Owner Mastery

SharePoint Pages and the Intranet

SharePoint is not just a file server — it is also a full intranet platform. Communication sites and SharePoint Pages let you publish news, announcements, and departmental content to the whole organisation.

SharePoint Pages vs classic web pages

SharePoint pages are built using web parts — modular content blocks that you drag, drop, and configure without writing code. There is no HTML required. A typical page might contain:

  • A Hero web part (full-width image with title and call-to-action)
  • A News web part (pulls latest news posts from associated sites)
  • A Quick links web part (tile grid of important links)
  • A People web part (headshots and contact info for the team)
  • A Document library web part (shows files from a library inline on the page)
  • A Viva Connections dashboard (personalised employee experience cards)

News posts vs pages

Pages are static content — an About Us page, a policy page, a project landing page. They don’t expire.

News posts are time-stamped content — announcements, weekly updates, event recaps. They appear in news feeds and rollups. They have an author, a published date, and can be "boosted" to appear at the top of feeds.

Viva Connections

Viva Connections is the Microsoft employee experience platform built on top of SharePoint. It provides:

  • A personalised dashboard visible in Teams (your "company app" in Teams)
  • A curated news feed
  • Quick access to HR tools, IT portals, and company resources

As a Product Owner, Viva Connections is where SharePoint meets the employee experience. It’s the answer to "how do we make SharePoint the front door of the digital workplace?"

Try it today (5 minutes)

Go to any SharePoint communication site. Click + New → Page. A blank page opens in edit mode. Click the + button to add a web part. Browse the web part library — there are over 40 built-in web parts. Add a "Text" web part and a "Quick links" web part. You’ve just built a SharePoint page — no code required.

As a Product Owner

An intranet is only valuable if it’s maintained. Define page ownership rules: every departmental page has a named owner who reviews and updates content quarterly. An outdated intranet is worse than no intranet — it destroys user trust in the platform.

See you tomorrow at 6:00 AM with Tip #24 — Conditional Access and device compliance!