The feature that launched as Viva Connections has quietly become "the SharePoint app" in Teams. That happened a couple of months ago now – long enough for us to feel reasonably confident there isn't another rename lurking around the corner...
We'd usually be the first to raise an eyebrow at another Microsoft rename. But this one, we're genuinely fine with. Actually, we like it.
It's the same front door to your SharePoint intranet inside Teams it's always been – rebranded rather than rebuilt.
What actually changed with the Viva Connections rebrand?
The name, inside Teams, on desktop and mobile. That's the headline change. Alongside it, a couple of genuinely new pieces landed on the home site experience: a Resources web part for surfacing key links and tools, a new Announcements web part, and an updated customization experience for how the app looks and behaves inside Teams.
Microsoft framed the move as simplification, positioning SharePoint as the platform behind its widest range of content experiences and emerging AI agents – which is a fair way to describe where the underlying investment has actually been going. Microsoft has the full rundown of what's changing on Learn, if you want the details straight from the source.
What didn't change?
If your organization already gave the app its own custom name and logo, you won't see any difference at all – your configuration carries over exactly as it was. For everyone else, the app that used to say “Viva Connections” now says “SharePoint” instead, and that's about the size of it. The functionality is the same. Your data is the same. Your home site's content, branding, and permissions are all exactly where you left them. This is a front door getting a new sign, not a different house.
Why are we fully on board with this one?
Here's the thing about a company renaming its own product: it's either a sign nobody can agree on the positioning, or a sign the team keeps circling back to the one word that actually describes what the thing does. We think it's the second one.
Microsoft's own reasoning for the rename – that SharePoint underpins the broadest set of content experiences and agents across Microsoft 365 – is a quiet admission of something we've known for a while.
A well-structured, SharePoint-native intranet isn't a legacy piece of the digital workplace waiting to be replaced by something newer. It's still the center of it.
A rename doesn't change much on its own, but this one happens to point in exactly the direction we'd have picked.
Where do dashboard cards fit into a SharePoint-first home site?
Since the home site is getting more attention as the real front door to the digital workplace these days, it's worth pointing out a few of our own dashboard cards that fit right into that story. A few small, glanceable cards can do a lot of the work of making a home site feel genuinely useful day to day, rather than just a place news gets posted.
My Calendar
A quick look at what's coming up, right on the home page, without a detour into Outlook.
My Emails
A glanceable view of what's waiting in an inbox, for anyone who treats the intranet as their actual starting point for the day.
Poll
A simple way to ask the organization something and see where people actually stand, rather than guessing.
Stock Price
A live look at company performance for publicly traded organizations, sitting right alongside the news that talks about it.
None of these need the Viva Connections name, the Connections name, or the SharePoint app name to do their job – they just need a home site worth visiting. A few small cards, in the right place, tend to matter more than what anyone's calling the app that day.
Further reading
- Home site updates – SharePoint in Microsoft 365 (Microsoft Learn)
- Microsoft 365 Roadmap: SharePoint app in Teams (ID 557983)
