A poor intranet rarely fails because the organisation chose the wrong Microsoft product. It fails because news is hard to find, key resources are buried, and staff have no reason to return after their first visit. The SharePoint versus Viva Connections question matters because the two tools address different parts of that problem – but they are often treated as alternatives.

For most Microsoft 365 organisations, they are not. SharePoint is where the intranet is built and managed. Viva Connections is a way of bringing that intranet into Microsoft Teams, where many employees already spend their working day. The useful decision is not which product to buy, but what each should do in a practical employee experience.

SharePoint versus Viva Connections: the core difference

SharePoint is the foundation. It provides the sites, pages, document libraries, permissions, navigation and publishing tools behind a modern intranet. It is where an internal communications team publishes a policy update, where HR maintains onboarding information, and where a department stores controlled documents.

Viva Connections is an employee-facing experience within Teams. It presents a branded landing experience, a dashboard of useful cards, a feed of relevant content and access to resources already held in SharePoint and Microsoft 365. On mobile, it can be particularly useful for colleagues who do not routinely sit at a desk or open a browser-based intranet.

That distinction has a direct implication: Viva Connections does not replace a well-structured SharePoint intranet. It depends on one. If your news pages, navigation, permissions and content ownership are confused, putting them in Teams will not fix the underlying problem. It may simply make the same confusion easier to reach.

What SharePoint is best for

SharePoint is the right place to solve the structural parts of an intranet. This includes creating a clear home site, organising departmental content, setting sensible permissions, publishing news and making documents easier to locate.

It also gives intranet owners control over the experience. You can create pages for services, teams and locations; build navigation around the tasks employees actually need to complete; and apply governance to content that must be accurate and current. A good SharePoint home site should answer simple questions quickly: what is happening, where do I find the right policy, and who can help?

For many small and mid-sized organisations, stock SharePoint gets a solid foundation in place but can look sparse or generic. That is often where the intranet loses attention. A standard news feed may be functional, while a branded welcome area, news carousel, employee directory, recognition space or useful quick links make the site feel designed for the organisation rather than merely switched on.

This does not automatically mean commissioning a custom build. If a custom SPFx web part is likely to cost £8,000 or more to design, test and maintain, a production-ready app licensed at £249 per year is a more sensible choice for a common requirement. ThePoint’s SharePoint Experience Pack is designed for this gap: web parts install within the tenant, inherit existing branding and can be deployed in days rather than months.

What Viva Connections is best for

Viva Connections is strongest when the business problem is reach. Your intranet may already contain useful information, but employees may not remember to visit it. Teams is different: it is already part of daily communication and collaboration for many organisations.

Adding Viva Connections gives staff a familiar route to company news, key links and practical resources without asking them to adopt another destination. A well-planned dashboard can surface actions such as booking leave, reporting an issue, finding a colleague, viewing a rota or accessing the staff handbook. The precise cards will depend on the systems you use and which tasks create the most friction.

It can also improve the experience for mobile workers. A browser-first SharePoint site can still work on a phone, but the Teams app gives employees a more natural starting point if they already use Teams for messages and calls. This is valuable for dispersed teams, field-based staff and people who have limited time at a desk.

However, visibility is not the same as engagement. A Teams entry point does not guarantee that staff will read updates, use resources or trust what they find. The content needs to be relevant, timely and visibly owned. The dashboard also needs restraint. Filling it with every possible link turns it into another confusing menu.

The practical choice is usually both

A sensible pattern is to treat SharePoint as the intranet platform and Viva Connections as a distribution channel. Build the content and structure properly in SharePoint first, then use Viva Connections to bring the most valuable parts into Teams.

For example, an organisation might use a SharePoint home site for company news, policies, department hubs and a searchable employee directory. Viva Connections could then feature the latest news, a small set of frequently used actions and direct routes to the most useful areas. Staff get quick access in Teams, while content owners retain a governed publishing environment in SharePoint.

This approach also avoids duplicate work. Publishing separate versions of the same announcement in Teams, email and an intranet creates more administration and makes it harder to establish a reliable source of truth. Publish the full item once in SharePoint, then use Teams and Viva Connections to draw attention to it.

Where organisations get the decision wrong

The most common mistake is treating Viva Connections as a quick fix for an underused intranet. It can increase exposure, but it cannot provide missing content, settle unclear ownership or repair poor navigation. Start by identifying what employees struggle to find and which transactions still rely on emails, shared drives or spreadsheets.

The opposite mistake is investing heavily in a SharePoint site while ignoring how people work day to day. If staff spend most of their time in Teams, expecting them to open a browser and remember an intranet address creates unnecessary friction. A Teams-based entry point is often a modest addition with a meaningful effect on reach.

There is also a design trade-off. SharePoint pages can support richer editorial content, larger layouts and deeper navigation. Viva Connections works best when it is focused and quick to scan. Do not try to reproduce every part of the intranet dashboard in Teams. Use it for priority actions and information, then let staff move into SharePoint when they need detail.

Finally, be careful with licensing assumptions. Core Viva Connections capabilities may be available within your existing Microsoft 365 arrangement, while wider Viva capabilities can have different licensing requirements. Check your own agreement before designing around features that may not be included.

A sensible implementation order

Begin with the jobs your intranet needs to do. Speak to internal communications, IT, HR and a cross-section of employees. Find the repeated frustrations: locating forms, understanding company updates, identifying the right contact or accessing a process that changes too often.

Next, establish the SharePoint foundations. Define site ownership, simplify navigation, remove obsolete content and create clear page templates for news and key resources. This is also the right point to decide which standard web parts are sufficient and where a ready-made enhancement would visibly improve the experience.

Then configure Viva Connections around the few things people need most often. A dashboard should prioritise useful actions over corporate decoration. Test it with real users on desktop and mobile, and adjust it based on the questions they still ask and the tasks they still complete outside the intranet.

Measure the outcome in operational terms. Are fewer people asking where a form is? Are policy updates reaching staff faster? Can a new starter find the information they need without a chain of emails? These are better indicators than page views alone.

The useful question is not whether SharePoint or Viva Connections wins. Build a SharePoint intranet that earns trust, then use Viva Connections where Teams can make that intranet easier to reach. Employees will not care which Microsoft product delivered the answer – only that the answer was there when they needed it.