Bring rich SharePoint News to new audiences, with one connected conversation across both experiences.
SharePoint helps communicators create rich, engaging stories, announcements or news posts for their organizations. Viva Engage helps those stories travel through the communities and conversations where people connect every day. With SharePoint News and Viva Engage cross-posting, authors can now bring these experiences together.
The new experience lets you distribute a SharePoint news post to a Viva Engage storyline or community. Readers can open the complete news post in full fidelity from Engage, while comments, replies, and reactions made in SharePoint or across Engage surfaces remain synchronized as one conversation.
See this video with Reetik Chandra and Vesa Juvonen for the live demo of new features.
Meet people where they already connect
A great news post should not stop at the boundary of a single site. Cross-posting extends the reach of SharePoint news into Viva Engage feeds, digests, and connected experiences. Readers get the same experience whether they use Engage on the web or mobile app, including iOS, or the Engage apps in Microsoft Teams and Outlook. Authors can reach these audiences without recreating content or managing separate discussions.
A SharePoint news post in the Viva Engage feed.
Full-fidelity news, directly in Engage
The Engage feed card gives readers a clear entry point to the complete SharePoint story. Wherever people discover the cross-post in Engage, selecting View news post opens the complete SharePoint page in full fidelity. It is not a screenshot or a simplified copy: sections, images, buttons, links, custom SPFx webparts and other page elements remain available as part of the original news post.
Readers can open the complete SharePoint news post from the Engage feed.
Links in both experiences make it easy to move between the original SharePoint news post and the Engage conversation. The result is one story that remains visually consistent wherever readers encounter it.
One news post - One conversation
Cross-posting creates a single synchronized conversation. Comments, replies, and reactions made from SharePoint or Engage appear in the same thread. Readers can participate from the experience that works best for them while authors keep one connected discussion attached to the news.
Comments and reactions remain connected across SharePoint and Viva Engage.
Because the comment thread is shared, communicators do not need to monitor or reconcile separate conversations. Readers see the same discussion, including nested replies and reactions, from either product.
Cross-post in just a few steps
The experience is built into the SharePoint publishing flow and is also available for news posts that have already been published:
- Publish your SharePoint news post. The distribution panel appears automatically after publishing.
- Select the Engage card. For a news post that is already published, start from the Amplify or Promote button in the command bar, and then choose Engage.
- Confirm the Post as identity, choose a storyline or an Engage community where you can publish, and select Amplify.
The Engage composer retains the publishing options authors already use in Engage. Authors can add people, send the post as an announcement when they have the required role, and, if they are configured as a delegate, publish on behalf of the person they support.
Choose who is posting and where the news should appear in Engage.
This feature is available to everyone with a Microsoft 365 license, including users who do not have a Viva C&C license. Those users see Promote instead of Amplify in the SharePoint command bar; the remaining cross-posting steps are the same.
Understand performance across channels
Authors can use analytics in SharePoint and Engage together to understand how their news is performing across distribution channels. SharePoint page analytics can show performance from SharePoint and Engage, while Engage analytics provides a channel-level view of reach, reactions, and comments.
Available analytics can vary by license, and SharePoint news is identified as a distinct post type in Engage conversation rollups.
SharePoint analytics help authors understand performance across distribution channels.
Bring your news and conversations together
SharePoint News and Viva Engage cross-posting combines the rich authoring experience of SharePoint with the reach and participation of Engage. Authors can publish once, bring the story to a wider audience, and keep every comment and reaction connected to the original news post.
Try cross-posting your next SharePoint news post to a Viva Engage storyline or community, connect people with important news and create more unified conversations across your organization!
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