Modern SharePoint Home Sites: Personalization and Viva Connections 2025 Enhancements

Setting the Stage: SharePoint Home Sites and Viva Connections

SharePoint Home Sites are the cornerstone of any intranet built on Microsoft 365. They serve as the central hub, offering curated news, dynamic content, organizational resources, and a unified navigation experience. Meanwhile, Viva Connections provides a personalized gateway into that hub—bringing intranet experiences directly into Microsoft Teams, where employees already spend much of their day.

In 2025, Microsoft doubled down on personalization, branding flexibility, and streamlined access, turning Home Sites and Viva Connections into powerful digital workplace experiences that feel less like portals and more like personal productivity accelerators.

Personalization in Modern SharePoint Home Sites

One of the most exciting developments in modern SharePoint Home Sites is the leap forward in personalized content delivery. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, Home Sites can now dynamically adapt based on users’ roles, interests, locations, and Microsoft 365 activity patterns.

Key Personalization Features Include

• Audience Targeting Enhancements: You can now target content blocks, quick links, and web parts with even more refined user segments.
• Personalized Feeds: SharePoint news, conversations, and content are automatically curated based on individual employee behavior and organizational priorities.
• Customizable Dashboards: Employees can pin, rearrange, or personalize widgets on their dashboard, creating a workspace that mirrors their workflows.

This level of flexibility ensures that every employee, from a remote sales manager to a local office intern, accesses the information and tools they need most—right when they need them.

Viva Connections 2025: A Personalized Gateway to Work

Viva Connections has evolved from simply embedding the intranet into Microsoft Teams into a smart, interactive, and deeply personalized gateway to your digital workplace.

Here’s how Viva Connections 2025 takes personalization to the next level:

• Customizable Dashboard Layouts: Organizations can now offer multiple dashboard templates based on department, job level, or work type (remote, hybrid, on-site).
• AI-Driven Content Recommendations: Viva Connections leverages AI insights to surface relevant news, training modules, communities, and documents based on each user’s collaboration patterns.
• Adaptive Cards Refresh: Dashboard cards are now smarter, more dynamic, and connected to multiple backend systems—meaning your employees receive live updates, actionable tasks, and notifications all in one place.

With these upgrades, Viva Connections no longer just connects employees to the intranet—it connects them to the heart of their workday, ensuring every interaction is meaningful and efficient.

Branding Made Easy: SharePoint Themes and Customization

Another standout feature in 2025 is how much easier it has become to brand your SharePoint Home Site and Viva Connections experience. Microsoft recognizes that your intranet is not just a tool; it’s a reflection of your company’s identity and culture.

Now you can:

• Apply Preexisting SharePoint Themes: Microsoft offers a rich collection of themes designed for quick deployment, ensuring professional aesthetics with minimal configuration.
• Create and Apply Custom Themes: Organizations can design custom themes with specific color palettes, fonts, and logo placements, ensuring every employee sees your unique branding reflected throughout their experience.
• Consistent Branding Across Platforms: Your SharePoint Home Site’s branding seamlessly extends into Viva Connections inside Teams, creating a cohesive experience without requiring extra development.

These improvements make it easier than ever to promote a sense of belonging and identity, even for distributed teams.

Enhancements That Strengthen Engagement

Beyond personalization and branding, the 2025 updates also introduce several key enhancements focused on improving engagement, accessibility, and efficiency across Home Sites and Viva Connections.

Here’s what’s new:

• Integrated Video Experiences: SharePoint now natively integrates Microsoft Stream on SharePoint, allowing for richer, embedded video communications directly on the homepage.
• Announcements Web Part: Organizations can push important updates or crisis communications through a dedicated, visually impactful web part that’s hard to miss.
• Enhanced Search Experiences: AI-driven search capabilities within SharePoint Home Sites make finding documents, people, and knowledge assets faster and more intuitive.
• Mobile Optimizations: The Viva Connections mobile app has been revamped with a cleaner UI and smoother performance, ensuring the same rich experience across devices.

These enhancements not only make the digital workplace more functional but also more human—meeting employees where they are with the tools and information they need most. 

Designing a Seamless Home Site and Viva Connections Strategy

With all these capabilities at your fingertips, how should you approach designing a truly modern intranet experience using SharePoint Home Sites and Viva Connections?

Here’s a simple strategy:

1. Start with Audience Personas: Map out different employee segments and what information matters most to each group.
2. Create Content Journeys: Design pathways through your intranet that align with employee workflows—from onboarding journeys to department-specific dashboards.
3. Focus on Actionable Content: Prioritize delivering content and tools that solve immediate needs (task approvals, latest announcements, policy updates) over static content libraries.
4. Emphasize Brand and Culture: Use your SharePoint themes and Connections dashboard to infuse your organizational brand, values, and voice throughout the experience.
5. Test and Iterate: Launch pilot groups, gather feedback, and continue evolving your Home Site and Connections experience to keep pace with changing needs.

A thoughtful strategy ensures you’re not just building an intranet—you’re crafting a dynamic, evolving digital workplace.

The Future: AI-Powered Workplace Personalization

As we move deeper into 2025, Microsoft is hinting at even more advanced integrations between SharePoint, Viva Connections, and Copilot AI. Expect future enhancements to include:

• Hyper-Personalized Learning Paths: Automatically recommend training modules based on skills gaps and career goals.
• Predictive Workflows: Surface the right tool or file proactively based on an employee’s current focus area.
• Well-Being Insights: Personalized prompts encouraging mindfulness, breaks, or collaboration time based on digital behavior.

The journey towards a more intelligent, employee-centered digital workplace is just beginning—and SharePoint Home Sites and Viva Connections are leading the way.

Conclusion: A New Era for Intranets and Employee Experience

The modernization of SharePoint Home Sites and the powerful personalization features within Viva Connections 2025 are reshaping how organizations think about intranets. No longer static, outdated, or one-size-fits-all, today’s digital workplaces are dynamic, personalized, and deeply reflective of organizational culture.

By embracing these enhancements, companies can ensure they’re offering employees not just access to information, but a gateway to deeper engagement, higher productivity, and greater satisfaction—no matter where or how they work.

Are you ready to transform your intranet into a vibrant digital workplace that truly works for every employee?

At Code Creators, we specialize in transforming traditional intranets into dynamic, personalized digital workspaces with modern SharePoint solutions. Whether you’re launching a new Home Site, integrating Viva Connections, or planning a full-scale migration, working with a skilled SharePoint consultant can ensure a smooth, strategic rollout. As trusted SharePoint migration consultants, we help organizations modernize their environments while preserving governance, user experience, and performance every step of the way. Let us help you create a SharePoint experience that engages and empowers your workforce.