Modern SharePoint Intranet in 2025: Key Features Every Organization Should Have
In 2025, a SharePoint intranets are no longer just digital filing cabinets—they’re your company’s communication hub, culture driver, and productivity booster. Microsoft continues to evolve SharePoint into a modern intranet experience designed around employees, not just documents. Whether you’re upgrading your legacy portal or building a new one, knowing what features define a modern intranet is key.
From Viva Connections to audience targeting, home sites, and global navigation, let’s explore the essential components of a SharePoint intranet that drives engagement and efficiency in 2025.
Why Modern SharePoint Intranets Matter in 2025
Remote work, hybrid collaboration, and digital-first workplaces have made intranets more important than ever. Employees want a central place to:
- Stay updated with news and resources
- Navigate company tools effortlessly
- Feel connected to the culture, regardless of location
Modern SharePoint intranets deliver this through intelligent design, personalized content, and tight integration with Microsoft 365 tools.
Create a Home Site in SharePoint: Set the Foundation
Your intranet starts with a home site—a branded communication site that serves as the front door to your digital workplace.
What is a SharePoint Home Site?
A home site is your company’s main intranet landing page. It’s where corporate news, leadership messages, navigation, and branding come together. Microsoft recommends making this your communication HQ.
Key Benefits of a Home Site
- Central Hub: Acts as the authoritative source for company-wide updates and navigation.
- Integrated Search: Connects to Microsoft Search for organization-wide content discovery.
- Boosted in Viva Connections: Becomes the dashboard entry point in Viva Connections.
- Audience-Driven Experience: Supports targeted content for different departments or roles.
How to Create a Home Site in 2025
- Choose a Communication Site: Select or build a modern communication site in SharePoint.
- Add Company Branding: Use your logo, colors, and tone to reflect your internal brand.
- Enable Global Navigation: Activate the SharePoint app bar to streamline navigation.
- Run PowerShell Command: Use Set-SPOHomeSite in PowerShell to designate the site officially.
- Promote Content: Highlight announcements, quick links, events, and resources.
Creating a home site is the first step to building a cohesive and functional intranet experience.
Overview of Viva Connections: The Employee Experience App
Microsoft Viva Connections is the modern front door of your SharePoint intranet—especially for frontline or hybrid workers who access content via Microsoft Teams.
What is Viva Connections?
Viva Connections integrates your SharePoint intranet into Microsoft Teams, offering a tailored, mobile-friendly employee experience with company news, announcements, and resources—all in one dashboard.
Core Features of Viva Connections in 2025
- Personalized Dashboard: Show cards for upcoming meetings, to-dos, HR forms, and learning content.
- News Feed: Displays SharePoint news posts, Yammer conversations, and announcements.
- Resources Panel: Quick links to tools and sites based on user roles.
- Seamless Teams Integration: Available on desktop, tablet, and mobile via Teams.
Why Viva Connections Matters:
In 2025, employees expect content that’s not only relevant—but also instantly accessible. Viva Connections bridges this gap by blending your SharePoint intranet with the tools employees use daily.
Audience Targeting: Deliver Personalized Intranet Experiences
One-size-fits-all is a thing of the past. Audience targeting allows you to tailor intranet content for specific user groups based on their roles, departments, or locations.
How Audience Targeting Works
You can enable audience targeting in SharePoint for:
- Navigation Links
- News Posts
- Highlighted Content Web Parts
Once enabled, content only appears to users who are part of the selected Microsoft 365 groups.
Use Cases in 2025
Use Case # 1 – HR updates shown only to employees in a specific region
When HR shares information like new holiday calendars, region-specific health benefits, or updated local compliance policies, not every employee needs to see it. With audience targeting, SharePoint ensures that a policy update for Saudi Arabia-based employees, for instance, doesn’t clutter the feed of team members in Europe or North America. This keeps the news section relevant and reduces confusion or questions from employees who aren’t impacted by the regional update.
Use Case # 2 – IT notices sent to only technical staff
If your IT department is planning a scheduled downtime for developer tools, VPN configuration changes, or system upgrades only relevant to engineering teams, these notices can be targeted to technical users like developers, admins, and system analysts. Non-technical staff won’t be distracted by updates unrelated to their work, while your IT team avoids the frustration of repeated questions from uninvolved users. This is especially helpful in large organizations with mixed user groups.
Use Case # 3 – Sales resources tailored to global or regional teams
Sales enablement teams often create assets specific to different regions—such as pricing decks, pitch materials, or customer success stories. With audience targeting, SharePoint allows a European sales team to see content aligned with EU regulations and local customer preferences, while APAC sales teams see materials optimized for their region’s strategies and metrics. This precision improves how quickly sales teams can access the right resources without wading through irrelevant global files.
Use Case # 4 – Policy changes highlighted to people managers only
Let’s say there’s a new performance review framework or an updated expense approval workflow. These updates are crucial for managers but not immediately relevant to all employees. Audience targeting ensures only those with people management responsibilities—team leads, department heads, or supervisors—receive this content. This allows them to take necessary actions ahead of broader announcements while minimizing noise for individual contributors.
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Benefits of Audience Targeting
- Higher engagement through relevant content
When employees see news, updates, and resources tailored specifically to their role or location, they are more likely to interact with the content. This increases trust in the intranet as a meaningful and valuable resource, rather than just a content dump. - Improved clarity by reducing information overload
By filtering out irrelevant announcements and updates, audience targeting helps declutter users’ feeds. Employees focus on the information that directly impacts their work, resulting in fewer misunderstandings and more efficient communication. - Stronger security by limiting visibility where needed
Some information—like early HR drafts, IT configurations, or sensitive leadership updates—shouldn’t be seen by everyone. Audience targeting adds a basic layer of security by ensuring that only authorized groups view specific content, reducing the risk of data exposure. - Simplified communication for internal departments
Internal teams like HR, IT, Legal, or Sales can post content without worrying about confusing the rest of the organization. With audience targeting, they can confidently push updates to just the intended recipients, avoiding repeated clarification emails or unnecessary meetings.
Global Navigation: One Menu for Everything
A modern intranet needs one consistent, cross-site navigation, this is where global navigation via the SharePoint App Bar comes in.
What is Global Navigation?
Global navigation provides a company-wide menu accessible from every SharePoint site. It lets users jump from their team sites to the intranet home, HR portal, or any relevant location without digging through bookmarks.
How to Set Up Global Navigation in 2025
- Activate the SharePoint App Bar
- Go to Settings > Global Navigation
- Add links to key portals, resources, and sites
- Use audience targeting for different menus if needed
Why It’s Crucial Now
In large organizations, users visit dozens of SharePoint sites. Global navigation ensures they always have a way back to the hub, improving productivity and usability.
Modern SharePoint Intranet Must-Haves in 2025
Let’s recap the essential SharePoint intranet features your organization should have this year:
| Feature | Purpose | Benefit |
| Home Site | Main landing page of your intranet | Establishes brand, central hub, connects Viva |
| Viva Connections | Brings intranet into Teams with personalized content | Enhances accessibility and daily engagement |
| Audience Targeting | Shows content to the right people only | Improves relevance and clarity |
| Global Navigation | Unified menu across all sites | Boosts discoverability and intranet consistency |
Together, these features help your organization foster connection, streamline communication, and keep employees informed—wherever they work.
Tips to Maximize Your SharePoint Intranet Experience
Here are a few best practices to make the most out of your modern SharePoint intranet:
- Use branding strategically: Make your home site reflect company culture.
- Train content authors: Empower teams to publish department news and updates.
- Measure engagement: Use SharePoint analytics and Viva Insights.
- Iterate and improve: Gather feedback and adjust intranet content regularly.
- Connect everything: Link your intranet with apps like Microsoft Lists, Planner, or Power BI dashboards.
Getting Started: What You Need to Build Your Intranet
To start building or modernizing your SharePoint intranet in 2025, you’ll need:
- A Microsoft 365 license with SharePoint Online
- Admin access to designate the home site
- Viva Connections set up in Microsoft Teams
- Defined user groups for targeting audience
- A navigation structure designed around business needs
Whether you’re working with internal IT or a SharePoint consulting partner, the foundation starts with intentional planning and use of these modern tools.
Conclusion: Modern SharePoint Intranets Empower the Workforce
Modern intranets built on SharePoint in 2025 are no longer static pages—they’re dynamic, personalized, and connected to the flow of work. Features like Viva Connections, home sites, global navigation, and audience targeting ensure your internal communication reaches the right people, in the right way, at the right time.
Ready to make your intranet work harder for your team?
FAQs
Q1: What is the difference between a home site and a team site in SharePoint?
A home site is a communication-focused portal for all employees. A team site is used for collaborative work by small groups or departments.
Q2: Can I have more than one home site in SharePoint?
As of 2025, Microsoft allows only one official home site per tenant, though you can create multiple hubs and communication sites.
Q3: Is Viva Connections free with Microsoft 365?
Yes, Viva Connections is included with most Microsoft 365 enterprise plans. Some dashboard components may require Viva Suite licenses.
Q4: Can global navigation be different for different users?
Yes, using audience targeting, you can tailor navigation menus for specific user groups across the organization.
Q5: Do I need to know PowerShell to set up a home site?
Yes, currently, designating a site as a home site still requires a simple PowerShell command, but the rest of the setup is through the UI.
