If you use the SharePoint news feature, you know that you can keep your team in the loop as well as engage them with important or interesting news stories on your site.
You may also know about the news digest feature where you can manually curate posts to send to users in email.
There's also a way for users to catch up with the latest news in your organization without anyone having to curate a news digest. The SharePoint auto-news digest feature sends an automated email to users about the latest news posts that are relevant to them, but that they may not have viewed yet.
If your organization is branded with theme colors and a logo, these will automatically show in your news digest.
This is a great way for users to catch up on news that they may have otherwise missed. Here's what the email looks like:
To open a news post, a user can click on the news post right from the email to open it in a browser window.
Here's what's covered in this article:
What news is sent and when?
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Authoritative news posts published on organization news sites.
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News posts boosted by the organization that a user has access to.
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Published news posts that are relevant to the user, and that the user has not viewed yet.
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Only posts that the user has access to. Rest assured that users won't be sent news posts that they don't have permission for.
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No more than 10 news posts in each digest.
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No more than one email digest is sent per week. If there are no news items that are relevant to the user, a news digest will not be sent.
How is relevant news determined?
Using the power of Microsoft Graph, the following criteria is used to determine when news is relevant for a user:
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When someone in the user's direct management chain publishes a news post
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When someone a user works closely with publishes a news post
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When a news post is published to a site that the user follows
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When a news is posted in an organization's site or is boosted by your organization
How to unsubscribe from auto-news digest
To unsubscribe from or re-subscribe to the auto-news digest emails, users can select Notification Settings at the bottom of the email.
Users can then manage their email notification preferences by turning each option on or off.
Branding your automatic news digest
If your organization's site is already branded with theme colors and a logo, the news digest will automatically reflect your branding.
If you haven't branded your organization site yet, and want to learn how, see Customize the Microsoft 365 theme for your organization.
Global administrators can brand their site, which will appear in the news digest, with the following elements:
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Logo image: Your organization site logo image will show in the news digest.
Note: For SharePoint admins: The company logo shown in the news digest is retrieved from the theme settings in the Microsoft 365 admin center and must be in PNG or JPEG format. If the logo you’ve specified is in SVG format, it is instead retrieved from the Azure Active Directory (AAD) admin center. To see the Microsoft 365 themed logo, either change the format to PNG or JPG in the Microsoft 365 admin center, or update the logo in AAD to match. Once updated, the changes will take effect in a few hours.
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Navigation bar color, text, and icon color: This will represent the background, text, and icon colors that show in the background of the header and footer of the digest. Note that if your background color is black, you might see an inversion of the dark theme in Outlook.
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Accent Color: This affects buttons and text in the body of the digest.
Frequently asked questions
Why don’t I see group themes in the Admin Center?
Only global admins can customize company themes. Global readers have read-only access.
Can I remove this feature from my organization?
If you are a tenant admin, you can remove the feature from your tenant by using the PowerShell command:
Set-SPOTenant -EnableAutoNewsDigest $true | $false.
For more information, see Set-SPOTenant reference.
Note: Ensure that you are running the latest version of the SharePoint Online Management Shell to enable the command. Use the following Update-Module command to do this:
Update-Module Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.Powershell
