Demystifying SharePoint news

In this article 

What kind of content should I use SharePoint news for?

Where is news shown?

What is an organization news site?  

How are news recommendations for users determined?

How do I get SharePoint news to the right audience at the right time?  

Do all of these features work for Office 365 GCC High and DoD?

Where can I learn how to do all of this?

What kind of content should I use SharePoint news for? 

You can use SharePoint news for a variety of content that you want to share with your employees – both at the team, department level, and organization level. Here are some examples: 

• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

• Distribution of quarterly reports

• Request for volunteer applications for Giving program activities

• Organization and team announcements

• Training tips and tricks

• External news articles about your company

• Team projects and status

• How-to information on a product your organization makes or sells

• Advertisement of “Bring your kids to work” day

• Article on learning and living your company culture

• Preparation instructions to get ready for a big event targeted to your marketing team

• Notification of required HR training

• “Inside stories” like how your company assesses accessibility

• Your company’s current ad campaign and strategy behind it

• “Behind the scenes” stories like lessons in inspiration for your next big project

• Train-the-trainer lessons and learning from subject matter experts

• Campaign results with a video and survey

• Welcome post for a new group during a merger and acquisition

Where is news shown?  

To give users an easy way to stay connected with your organization, news is distributed through a number of channels such as in the personalized feed on the SharePoint start page, the mobile app, SharePoint sites, Teams channels and more. Here are ways news is distributed: 

• SharePoint start page – Automatically displayed based on relevance to user

• Team sites, and Communication sites when the news web part is used or the Highlighted content web part is used and filtered to news

• Hub sites, when the news web part is used

• Viva Connections for Teams Desktop, when a news web part is used on the home site

• Email – SharePoint will automatically send a news digest of news users might have missed, and you can also manually curate a news digest to send in email

• In Viva Connections mobile app (available later in 2021)

• Displayed in the mobile app Feed based on relevance to user

• In the Viva Connections Dashboard (available later in 2021) when you add one or more cards for news (manually curated).

 What is an organization news site? 

You can specify SharePoint sites as "official" or "authoritative" for news in your organization by creating them on an organization news sites. These posts get special visual treatment (see the "NEWS @ CONTOSO" color block below) and appear on the SharePoint start page. 

SharePoint admins can specify any number of organization news sites. For multi-geo tenants, organization news sites would have to be set up for each geo location. Each geo location could use the same central organization news site, and/or have its own unique site that shows organization news specific to that region. Learn more about how to set up an organization news site. 

How are news recommendations for users determined? 

Relevant news articles are shown to users based on: 

• News sites users frequently visit or follow.

• Suggested sites based on your people network

• News authored by people user interacts with

• User interactions with sites, documents, files and lists

• Most recent news

• Boosted news

• Organization site news

How do I get SharePoint news to the right audience at the right time? 

1. Use audience targeting: Promote and prioritize files, news, pages, and navigational links to your chosen audiences with audience targeting. Learn more about audience targeting for news.

2. Pin and filter posts on pages using the News web part:

   • Pinning: Organize posts in the order you want them to appear on your page. Similar to using a bulletin board, you can think of this as "pinning" news posts in the position you want so that everyone can see them. Learn more about organizing posts.

   • Filtering: Filter the posts you want to show by title, recently added or changed, created by or modified by, and page properties. Learn more about filtering.

3. Boost: You can order your boosted news to determine which shows on top of news feed and set an expiration date for the boosting of individual posts. Learn more about boosting news.

4. News Digest: You can manually curate news for your colleagues and send them through digest emails. Learn more about creating a news digest.

Do all of these features work for Office 365 GCC High and DoD?

The following features are not yet supported in GCC High and DoD:

• News on the SharePoint Start page (coming soon)

• App bar (coming soon)

• Sources for news in the news web part except for "This site" (more coming soon)

• Auto news digest

• News in the Viva Connections feed

Where can I learn how to do all of this? 

• Create and share news on your SharePoint sites - Office Support (microsoft.com)

• Use the News web part on a SharePoint page - Office Support (microsoft.com)

• Automatically sending news post digests with branding - SharePoint (microsoft.com)

• Create and send a news digest - Office Support (microsoft.com)

• Create an organization news site - SharePoint in Microsoft 365 | Microsoft Docs 

• Boost news from organization news sites - Office Support (microsoft.com)