Communication sites: the broadcast shape
Where a team site is collaboration-shaped (many editors, group membership), a communication site is broadcast-shaped: a small set of authors, a large set of readers, no Microsoft 365 Group by default. It's the building block of the intranet — a department landing page, a policy hub, a company home.
Modern pages and web parts
Pages are built from web parts on a responsive canvas — Text, Image, Hero, Quick Links, News, Highlighted Content (a dynamic query across sites), People, Events. Content authors compose without touching code; developers extend the set with SharePoint Framework (SPFx) web parts where the box doesn't fit. Pages support draft/publish and optional page approval (a flow that gates publishing) so the intranet doesn't show half-written content.
News: posts that travel
A news post is a page marked as news. Its value is distribution — it surfaces in the site's News web part, on the SharePoint start page, in the mobile app, and can be pushed further:
- Highlighted Content / News web parts roll up news from many sites (especially across a hub — the hub-sites concept).
- Organization news sites — designate authoritative sources whose posts are visually badged and prioritised org-wide.
- News boost — promote a specific post so it sits at the top of audiences' feeds.
- Audience targeting — show pages/news/nav links only to specified groups, so people see relevant content, not everything.
Viva Connections: the front door
Viva Connections surfaces the intranet inside Teams (and mobile) as a dashboard + feed + resources, built on the tenant's home site (a communication site designated as the intranet root). It's not a separate CMS — it's a Teams-native presentation of the SharePoint intranet you already built.
The failure modes
- Wrong site type. Building an intranet landing page as a team site drags along a group, membership and collaboration clutter it doesn't need; use a communication site.
- News that doesn't travel. A post authored as a plain page (not "news") won't appear in news feeds — authors forget the distinction.
- Audience targeting needs indexing. Targeting relies on group membership the service must resolve; newly targeted content can take time to appear/hide correctly.
- Publishing without approval on a compliance-sensitive intranet — draft content can leak to readers if approval isn't enabled.
- Home site is singular — only one site is the org home; changing it re-points Viva Connections.
What to watch (proofs)
- Site template:
Get-SPOSite <url> | fl Template—SITEPAGEPUBLISHING#0(communication) vsGROUP#0(team) confirms the intended shape. - Home site set:
Get-SPOHomeSite— the designated intranet root Viva Connections builds on. - Org news sources:
Get-SPOOrgNewsSite— the authoritative, badged news sources. - Page publishing state: a page's version/approval status in library settings — proof drafts aren't visible to readers.