Get your FREE News feed web part today!

Click here to learn more about our FREE news web part!

12 SharePoint best practices

Posted on 6 May 202517 May 2025 by John Scott

Blog

John Scott
6 May 2025

SharePoint is an amazing platform that is both very flexible and scalable and can help your organisation and employees achieve multiple goals, including delivering a strong intranet. However, SharePoint can also be complicated, and its sheer versatility and flexibility means that it is easy to fall into traps that mean you’re not using SharePoint to its full potential.

In this post we’re going to explore twelve SharePoint best practices that help you get the best value out of SharePoint, particularly in terms of using it as an intranet. Of course, there are many other SharePoint best practices to follow, and some will be more relevant to particular organisations. Note that in this article we’re following more best practices on the business side of using SharePoint rather than the technical side.

Twelve SharePoint best practices for 2025

Here’s our view of 12 key SharePoint best practices to follow!

Brand your SharePoint site or intranet to your organisational needs

Many SharePoint sites look similar with a relatively standard look and feel. However, a SharePoint intranet sometimes doesn’t meet the full branding requirements that organisations need or expect. In our view, a SharePoint intranet and its sites are important sources of information, and a central intranet team should be able to brand them how they want.

A SharePoint intranet is an official corporate channel so internal communications or the core intranet team might want to:

emphasise this by applying appropriate corporate branding
provide a particular look and feel to ensure there is a continuity of experience across other digital channels
apply different designs to a number of sites in more complex organisations that cover a range of brands, so there are effectively a number of separate intranets or sub-sites.

SharePoint comes with some flexibility on branding, with options increasing with the release of the “SharePoint brand center” functionality. Using templates from the SharePoint lookbook can also help teams to explore the art of the possible with design.

If branding flexibility is still not quite to your needs or is difficult to implement, using Lightspeed365’s popular Branding customiser feature provides a simple way to customise your SharePoint design and theme options by extending what you can do with your corporate font and colour palette. Many of the other Lightspeed365 features also have configurable design options that extend beyond what can be achieved out of the box.

Integrate SharePoint with other Microsoft 365 tools

One of the most powerful aspects of SharePoint is its seamless integration with other tools across the Microsoft 365 suite. This means you can access data and interact with tools through web parts without having to leave SharePoint. For an intranet, this has several advantages in:

Providing a more integrated, consistent and frictionless digital employee experience.
Helping employees to get things done more quickly.
Encouraging better adoption of Microsoft 365 tools.
Increasing the ROI of Microsoft 365.

In particular, just using web parts that are out of box you can embed:

Viva Engage conversations.
Viva Connections feed and dashboard.
Group calendars.
Microsoft Forms.
Microsoft PowerApps with custom functionality created within your organisation.
Power BI reports
Stream (Classic) videos.

Make your SharePoint intranet feel less corporate and more personal

Many organisations have SharePoint intranets that aim to be an essential resource to help employees get things done, stay informed. find what they need and feel engaged. However, many SharePoint intranets can feel too corporate and formal, which can ultimately impact adoption and value.

There are lots of ways to make your SharePoint intranet less corporate and more personal, helping to support engagement and adoption. For example:

Using imagery which shows real photos of your employees (with their consent), rather than bland stock photography or silly AI-generated pictures.
Having a feed of people-centred stories that feature inspiring and positive stories about employees both in and outside work.
Surfacing user-generated content on the homepage, for example using a Viva Engage web part that surfaces discussions and conversations – this is available out of the box with SharePoint.
Adding a personalised greeting to the intranet homepage that names the user accessing the intranet, not only making the homepage feel more welcome, but also reminding users it is a personalised experience – this is available with Lightspeed365.
Adding personalisation to the homepage not only so content is targeted and relevant to the individual but also features such as the ability to add personalised links to tools (again available with Lightspeed365).

Make your SharePoint intranet available through Microsoft Teams

Today many employees spend much of their working day in and out of Microsoft Teams. It’s the place they communicate, collaborate, access documents and more. It also makes sense for your SharePoint intranet to be available within Microsoft Teams – not only is this convenient for users, but it is also helps bring the intranet into the flow of work and supports adoption.

Given the ubiquity of Teams, it’s surprising that not all organisations choose to make their SharePoint intranets available within Teams. The usual way to achieve this is through using Viva Connections which is included in subscriptions. There are also additional ways that intranet content can be surfaced within Teams, for example through the Viva Connections dashboard.

Put SharePoint site approval processes in place to avoid site sprawl

SharePoint site sprawl is a major issue for many organisations. Because it is so easy to create a SharePoint communication or team site, inevitably:

many sites get set up and then don’t ever get used
get abandoned after limited use or a site owner leaves
are duplicates of sites already set up that have similar aims already set up.

The result of this is far too many SharePoint sites that take up more space, are hard for admins and IT teams to manage, cause confusion for users and makes it difficult for users to search for what they need. A similar process happens with the creation of Microsoft Teams spaces and Viva Engage groups.

A good practice is to ensure there is a proper approval process in place for creating a new SharePoint site. The request can then get reviewed to ensure the space is being set up for the right purpose, is not a duplicate and has proper ownership.

This is not available out of the box with SharePoint and is best done through using a request form with approval workflow which can be sent to the right people. With Lightspeed365 there is also a powerful site provisioning feature which has a form which guides the requestor through the right type of site to request (SharePoint, Teams or Viva Engage) and then triggers the necessary approval workflow and then even automatic site provisioning, making the entire process far more efficient.

Reduce the need for SharePoint customisation through configuration or alternative web parts

SharePoint is an exceptionally flexible platform where you can build multiple different sites and pages that support communication, collaboration, business processes and more. This is partly down to the numerous web parts that can be arranged on every single page. Despite its enormous flexibility and scalability, sometimes SharePoint or one of its constituent web parts doesn’t quite do what organisations want, in terms of the way it looks, or what it can deliver. There may also be some missing functionality in terms of what is available out of the box; this is certainly the case, including some popular features of modern intranets.

When this happens, there can be a temptation to use customisation to tweak an existing web part or build a new one from scratch. Most IT functions try to avoid customisation as far as possible because it is costly and also creates technical debt; it can become increasingly complicated with upgrades.

One good practice with SharePoint for organisations who want to avoid customisation is to look to other options to deliver what they need:

Many of SharePoint’s web parts are surprisingly configurable and some very versatile, and there are always options to explore here, so it’s always important to see if configuration provides an alternative path.
SharePoint’s wide set of native features, variety of options and seamless integration with other Microsoft 365 tools means there is often more than one way to achieve the same result – for example SharePoint Lists are remarkable versatile, so turning to alternative web part options may be answer.
There are a variety of different products that can integrate seamlessly into SharePoint that can bridge the gaps and provide the extra design or functionality a business needs, avoiding the need for customisation or development. This is exactly what Lightspeed365 delivers – a rich set of additional web parts and features that fill all the main gaps within SharePoint to give you the ability to deliver a world-class intranet, that are also maintained by the Lightspeed365 team.

Investigating all three of these options can reduce the need for costly customisation that you may regret later down the line.

Plan for effective SharePoint site lifecycle management

As well as putting in a SharePoint approval process in place you also need to have effective ongoing lifecycle management in place to prevent site sprawl and avoid a cluttered SharePoint environment.This can be achieved in several ways, including:

Establishing clear policies for when SharePoint sites or pages need to be retired, archived, or removed, ensuring that content owners understand and agree to these criteria.
Ensure your policies are aligned with any security, regulatory or legal obligations, for example how long you need to keep data.
Review usage at regular intervals to identify abandoned or redundant sites or pages.
Where possible automate reporting to help monitor your environment.
Ensure there are named owners for each site who understand their commitment to keeping their SharePoint pages up to date.
If a site or page owner leaves the organization or moves to a new role, always appoint a replacement owner – not doing this is a key reason for why sites get abandoned.

Keeping site sprawl under control helps to ensure you can maintain good findability across your SharePoint environment.

Define the right metadata strategy

Good findability is essential for any intranet and SharePoint environment. However, it is often an area where many teams struggle, resulting in employees complaining that they can’t find the items they need.There are multiple elements that contribute to strong findability including a good navigation, effective governance to reduce site sprawl, content management practices so that content is up to date, and more.Having an effective metadata strategy is also critical and underpins findability. This involves:

Defining the metadata that needs to be associated with an item covering areas such as content type, owner, any associated groups or divisions within your organisation, project and so on.
Using the right custom terms (through SharePoint managed properties) for each type of data, helping to support filtering within search.
Matching terms to organisational taxonomies where appropriate.
Defining which metadata should be mandatory and non-mandatory.
Using automation where feasible to define and add metadata, for example automatically tagging an item with a division or function name based on the person creating the item.

Following all these can help to improve search and also encourages good information management.

Work to improve SharePoint search

SharePoint’s search capabilities are powerful, but there is always room for improvement. A best practice is to actively work to improve search by having an intentional process in place that seeks to make incremental improvements based on data.Improving SharePoint search needs a muti-pronged approach taking in elements such as:

Reviewing search analytics to make informed decisions and to target improvements,
Revisiting the use of metadata and SharePoint managed properties to improve search performance and enable custom filters
Enforcing site and content governance to reduce unnecessary noise in search
Getting user feedback on search to identify particular issues

Depending on the products you use, there may also be improvements you can make to the SharePoint search experience by introducing new features. For example, within Lightspeed365 additional search and findability features include:

A flexible, floating search facility that can be placed anywhere on any page and configured to search particular content.
A powerful people search that makes finding people easy via multiple criteria including name, department and skills.
A versatile Site Index feature that provides a searchable index of collaboration spaces covering Teams, Viva Engage and more.

Ensure strong governance around SharePoint external collaboration to prevent oversharing

One of the most valuable elements of SharePoint beyond the use for an intranet is the ability to use it for external collaboration. This can be exceptionally useful when working with third parties on projects.However. external collaboration does come with some risks in staff inadvertently oversharing sensitive documents and information beyond the firewall. You also want to ensure that people with external access have robust security in place. For all these reasons, organisations in regulated industries sometimes disable external collaboration.If you are using external collaboration, then it is good practice to have robust governance in place:

Limit external collaboration to only where it is needed.
Have a strict approval process in place to enable it on a particular SharePoint site.
Insist that those accessing information have multi-factor authentication turned on.
Regularly review guest access to mitigate against the risk of content being overshared.
Ensure that any SharePoint sites with external access are clearly identified to users to lessen the risk of oversharing
Use sensitivity labels on SharePoint items again to reduce oversharing.
Use platforms like Microsoft Purview to support governance over external collaboration.

Use feedback and data to drive continual improvement of your SharePoint intranet

Microsoft Clarity Heatmaps — © Microsoft

An intranet is never done. Every intranet manager will tell you that there are always improvements and changes to make. One of the advantages of a SharePoint intranet is that it is highly flexible so you can keep on making incremental changes that result in a process of continual improvement.The best way to drive continual improvement is through a data-driven approach that is informed by user feedback and analytics. Knowing what works and what’s doesn’t is critical to make the right real-world decisions to improve SharePoint. You can:

Use SharePoint analytics and other data from packages like Microsoft Clarity, or any other analytics package.
Gain data from user testing.
Get complementary data from other areas such as IT help desk calls.
Create a feedback form on the intranet for users to make suggestions and request improvements.
Get focused feedback from groups of users and stakeholders, for example through workshops or in more focused testing.
Use surveys to gain wider input from the business.
Work with local champions to provide feedback from their relevant sections of the business.
And more!

Leverage digital and intranet champions to launch and improve a SharePoint intranet

Intranets and digital workplaces tend to be managed by small central teams. This can make rolling out new features to a large workforce challenging. A great SharePoint best practice is to use a network of voluntary digital or intranet champions from right across the organisation to:

Promote a SharePoint intranet and any ongoing improvements to their local office, team or function, with the additional context of how that local area works.
Answer any questions from local users and stakeholders.
Provide ongoing feedback from local users back to the central team helping drive improvement
Participate in user testing.
And more!

Using digital champions is particularly important in launching a new intranet but can also continue to be of high value after launch and beyond.

Following SharePoint best practices

SharePoint is highly flexible – you can do so much with it. Follow these best practices to help drive business value and adoption, achieve an excellent intranet, and set yourself up for longer-term success. If you’d like to discuss any of these SharePoint best practices or any others, and the contribution that Lightspeed365 can make, then get in touch!

Ready to get started?

UNLOCK SharePoint's full potential with Lightspeed365

30+ additional feature-packed web parts

Prebuilt best-practice templates

Intranet designs & case studies

10 SharePoint site & page templates for your intranet

Posted on 28 April 202528 April 2025 by John Scott

Blog

John Scott
28 April 2025

Intranet teams sometimes struggle with how their intranet should look. Luckly, there are a whole range of SharePoint design templates that can help you. SharePoint templates for intranets cover both sites and pages, and also a whole range of different use cases. In this post we’re going to:

Look at what SharePoint intranet templates are.
Explore why and how SharePoint templates for intranets provide value.
Share some of our favourite SharePoint design templates that we’ve produced.

What is a SharePoint site template?

A SharePoint template is essentially a pre-determined SharePoint layout for a page or site than be used as the starting point for creating a part of your page or site on your intranet.

SharePoint templates come in two main types:

SharePoint site templates that provide a shape of an overall site (a collection of pages that sit within your broader intranet)
SharePoint page templates that deliver a specific SharePoint page design.

There are number of different SharePoint templates that can be deployed directly from Microsoft that are explored in the Microsoft SharePoint look book. However, you can also create your own SharePoint intranet design templates to use internally within your organisation, for example across your publishing or content creator community.

SharePoint site template examples

SharePoint intranet homepage site template
SharePoint employee engagement campaign site template
SharePoint knowledge base site template
SharePoint employee on-boarding site template
SharePoint employee benefits site template

1. SharePoint intranet homepage site template

The main homepage of an intranet is arguably the most important. It needs to provide the right blend of features and content that is appropriate for the organisation, but also the employees. This normally means a mixture of content types and links, ideally tailored to the needs and interests of different employee groups and types. Additional personalisation options give additional control to the employees.

2. SharePoint employee engagement campaign site template

Intranets are the ideal place to launch and keep employees updated on company initiatives. These can range from innovation drives, to embedding brand values or peer recognition. The aim is to create engaging pages full of content, discussions and ideas that will engage your people and make them feel that they are part of the initiative.

3. SharePoint knowledge base site template

Intranets are go-to places to access knowledge, establishing a single source of the truth. The Knowledge base SharePoint site template is an excellent way to present a collection of knowledge such as a policy library, list of “how do I” pages or even brand assets. While the top section provides details and context about the collection and also can highlight specific items within it, it’s the A-to-Z listing and search facility which often provides the most value.

What value does this SharePoint template bring?

This SharePoint page template is flexible in that it can present any collection of knowledge or controlled documents; it I useful for any function that needs to provide a set of resources that employees need to reference.
The scoped search and browse facility provide strong findability so is very useful in connecting employees to the resources they need.
Content owners love this SharePoint template because it allows them to easily present a collection of resources in a user-friendly way.
The Knowledge base template uses Lightspeed365’s powerful handbook feature which is not available out of the box with SharePoint.
Additional features like ‘Must read’ are powered by Xoralia controlled document management for SharePoint

4. SharePoint employee on-boarding site template

When new employees start working at an organisation, they often have a lot of questions about the way the organisation works, how it is structured and how to navigate its various knowledge areas. An onboarding area on the intranet is the ideal place for them to orient themselves and get answers to questions quickly. They can also be guided through common on-boarding activities like registering for employee benefits and completing mandatory training.

5. SharePoint employee benefits site template

Employee benefits are typically of great interest to your people, so laying them out clearly on the intranet is a great way to add value to the platform and ensure you have frequent visitors. In some organisations the benefits are financial or health related, but others include career development opportunities.

What about SharePoint page templates for your intranet?

SharePoint page templates are a little different to site templates, in that they are designed to be a single page and not a homepage of a site/section. Typically they are found lower down in the information architecture/hierarchy.

Lightspeed365 allows you to create beautiful, flexible and high value SharePoint pages (and therefore accompanying SharePoint templates!) that really do make a difference.

Below we share six essential SharePoint page templates for an intranet. Note that these templates include both out-of-the-box SharePoint web parts but also some Lightspeed365 features:

News article SharePoint page template
‘How do I?’ guide SharePoint page template
Department or location SharePoint page template
Employee directory SharePoint page template
Triage SharePoint page template

1. News article SharePoint page template

Internal communications is one of the fundamental jobs of an intranet. A news page will inevitably be one of the most used SharePoint page templates, helping to deliver and elevate news stories for your employees.

What value does this SharePoint template bring?

Brings consistency to news items across different areas of the intranet encouraging familiarity, engagement and adoption.
Encourages the use of headlines to break up a story, helping make it more digestible and supporting clarity of message.
Provides flexibility to add elements such as images and quotes to make a news item more inviting and engaging.
Ultimately, this SharePoint template will encourage views and increase the impact and success of news items, in turn supporting wider internal communications goals and employee engagement objectives.

2. ‘How do I?’ guide SharePoint page template

The How Do I SharePoint template provides instructions for employees on how to complete a task and get things done. A task can be simple or have multiple steps. Typically, the How Do I template is used to explain simple tasks such as how to log an IT support ticket or claim expenses, or something more complex like applying for paternity leave.

What value does this SharePoint template bring?

This SharePoint intranet template makes it easy for employees to follow each of the steps in completing a task and adds further detail with embedded documents, process diagrams and even forms to trigger workflow.
The template layout also includes a prominent contact display for users to get in touch if they have questions about the task or process.
Ultimately, this SharePoint design template helps employees to get things done quickly and efficiency, in turn supporting productivity and encouraging standardisation in terms of processes.
It also saves time for IT, HR and other internal helpdesks, meaning employees don’t need to contact them asking how to achieve a task.

3. Department or location SharePoint page template

Most intranets have information about different departments or locations, particularly in large, global and complex businesses. This department or location SharePoint template provides information and news about a particular department, function, region, country or office and can either be aimed at people based in that department/location, or the rest of the business and be about that department/location. (It’s usually not best to mix both these use cases.)

What value does this SharePoint template bring?

This versatile SharePoint page template provides useful targeted information about amenities and travel for both people located at a particular office or site, or those wanting to travel to it.
The template tends to provide a route to more detailed pages or sections but can also provides news as well as links. It also includes key contacts at a particular location.
Because it is a template it encourages and provides a consistent and complete set of information for each location which invariably is extremely useful.
This SharePoint template has multiple benefits – helping support people who visit a site less frequently (more common in the age of hybrid working), supporting efficiency and productivity, and encouraging connections regardless of geography.

4. Employee directory SharePoint page template

Intranets often help connect people to each other. The employee directory SharePoint template is an attractive and useful way to introduce members of a team or department to a wider audience, helping encourage the right person to contact.

What value does this SharePoint template bring?

This SharePoint template ensures people can view team details divided appropriately into different areas with contact details prominent, as well as the ability to click through to individual profiles.
The search box supports findability while additional links to other resources to the right also provide additional context about the team.
The people directory template could be part of a wider SharePoint site template for a department, team or location page or areas.
This flexible SharePoint design page template helps to encourage connection across an organisation, but also establishes the right person to contact, helping people get things done and waste less time.

5. Triage SharePoint page template

The Triage SharePoint page template provides a high value design for your intranet. Some pages act as places to guide users to other important pieces of content based on their needs. The Triage template presents options to different pages in an attractive way with images for each resource. These can then be arranged under different headings.

What value does this SharePoint template bring?

The Triage SharePoint design template is very versatile and can be used for initiatives, information resources on areas such as strategy, service hubs for HR or IT and more.
It provides a consistent and attractive way to guide users toward the resources they need, bringing structure and clarity to intranet content, while also increasing findability.
The SharePoint template not only helps employees find that they need, but also encourages content owners to think about content structure and how they can satisfy common user needs and support user journeys.
At the bottom of the page there is an opportunity to place an option for people who haven’t found what they are looking for.

What are the benefits of SharePoint site templates and SharePoint page templates?

SharePoint templates deliver value in a number of different ways.

Saving time: A SharePoint site templates provides a significant starting point for creating a page or site, providing the right layout and web parts which can then be edited as appropriate. This can save large amounts of time and support the productivity of busy site editors and authors.
Inspiring ideas: SharePoint’s flexibility is a strength. However, having that much creativity can mean it is hard to know just exactly where to start, particularly for less experienced publishers. SharePoint templates provide an excellent source of inspiration for both seasoned intranet professionals and less confident users to achieve the ideal SharePoint layout.
Supporting your publishers: Using SharePoint intranet templates helps do some of the heavy lifting around SharePoint page design for your site admins, publishers and content creators who may not be professional communicators and are infrequent users of SharePoint. It gives them a starting point that also reflects your publishing standards and best practices.
Establishing consistency and content standards: Using SharePoint intranet templates helps to enforce publishing and content standards across your intranet, establishing consistency in the look and feel and ensuring everything is on-brand. It also provides a consistency in layout across different sites and content types making it easier for users to find what they are looking for on a particular page.
Make the best use of Lightspeed365 features: Many of our Lightspeed365 features increase the usability of native SharePoint, while also extending design and brand options. Many of the Lightspeed365 features have also been designed around key use cases. Using the right SharePoint intranet templates will ensure you’re making the best use of Lightspeed365’s rich library of additional web parts.

SharePoint homepage templates for your intranet

The most important page on your SharePoint intranet is the homepage. SharePoint intranet homepage templates can make a real difference in driving adoption and value. As these kind of SharePoint templates can support intranet success, we’ve created a separate article with seven great SharePoint intranet site examples. This article includes several SharePoint homepage templates for your intranet – from the “balanced intranet homepage” to the “social hub intranet homepage.”

The power of the SharePoint templates

SharePoint page templates and SharePoint site templates help to ensure your site is consistent, on-brand, attractive, usable and accessible. If you want to see how you can use Lightspeed365 features in combination with SharePoint templates, then why not book a demo?

Ready to get started?

UNLOCK SharePoint's full potential with Lightspeed365

30+ additional feature-packed web parts

Prebuilt best-practice templates

Intranet designs & case studies

How to use & customise the SharePoint lookbook for your intranet

Posted on 22 April 202529 April 2025 by John Scott

Blog

John Scott
22 April 2025

Modern SharePoint is an extremely flexible tool that can meet multiple use cases to support communication and collaboration inside an organisation. This means intranet teams and site owners have a lot of choice in how they structure and design individual sites and pages.

Recognising this, Microsoft has created the SharePoint Lookbook, a collection of site templates and designs that can be viewed and then actually deployed on to your SharePoint tenant. The Lookbook is an extremely useful resource that both provides inspiration and a way to give teams a head start in setting up a site.

The Lookbook can help you get the best out of SharePoint, although sometimes this is still not enough for teams who want more flexibility and control over how their site looks in order for it to be fully compliant.

In this post we’re going to explore what the SharePoint Lookbook is, why it is useful, the kind of templates it contains, what to consider when using it, and how to use the Lookbook in conjunction with Lightspeed365 features.

How is SharePoint so flexible?

One of the strengths of SharePoint is its flexibility and versatility to support multiple use cases, usually as part of a wider intranet. A strategy page for leadership communications, a departmental site for the sales function, a site for onboarding employees, a place for your volunteering community to come together. All these and more can be achieved using modern SharePoint.

One of the reasons for this flexibility is the ability to add, arrange and configure multiple web parts – the basic “building blocks” of SharePoint – on any given site and page. This means you can have multiple combinations on a page to create different experiences that meet various needs. It also gives intranet teams and individual site owners a lot of choice in how they design and structure individual sites, which are either standalone or sit within a wider intranet structure.

This flexibility can leave some teams wondering what the best structure and design is for their site. This is where the SharePoint Lookbook can act as a useful resource for both reference and deployment.

What is the SharePoint Lookbook?

The SharePoint Lookbook is a publicly available site provided by Microsoft that can be reached at https://adoption.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-look-book/. As Microsoft itself describes it, it provides an opportunity to “create beautiful, fast sites and pages” and “get inspired with these designs or add them to your tenant to start building your next stunning site with them.”

What’s in the SharePoint Lookbook?

Within the Lookbook there is a:

A gallery of SharePoint templates covering major use cases and scenarios.
Information about the design of each template including site features, web parts used, and content included.
A call to action for administrators with the correct permissions to deploy a Lookbook template to their tenant.

Which communication site templates are available in the SharePoint Lookbook?

The SharePoint Lookbook has downloadable templates that cover both communication and team sites. The following use cases are covered for communication sites:

Brand Central (brand assets)
Crisis management
Department
Event
Human resources (HR information)
Leadership connection
Learning central
New employee onboarding
Organisation home (cross over with intranet homepage)
Showcase (for a product, event etc.)
Standard communication
Volunteer centre.

Which team site templates for collaboration are available in the SharePoint Lookbook?

There are also several team site templates that cover some useful collaboration scenarios:

Event planning
IT Help Desk
Project management
Retail management team
Training course
Training design team.

You will almost certainly find some templates more useful than others, depending on your needs. But they all provide a starting point and also a great way to kickstart a few ideas.

What are the benefits of using a SharePoint Lookbook template?

Using templates from the SharePoint Lookbook has a number of benefits:

Providing inspiration: The Lookbook provides tangible and achievable examples of site designs across multiple use cases and scenarios; it’s a great starting point to stimulate ideas.
Increasing speed to market: Site owners can get a huge head start in providing a template that can be deployed in minutes and then modified to suit your needs, reducing the time needed to get a site up and running.
Supporting new and busy site owners: Some site owners who are not trained communicators can lack confidence in using SharePoint or can be very time-stretched; the head start provided by a Lookbook theme provides confidence and resourcing.
Encouraging good use cases and adoption: Lookbook templates reflect good practices and showcase the best of what SharePoint has to offer; this can help encourage good use of SharePoint, in turn leading to good adoption and high value use cases.
No costs involved: The use of the SharePoint Lookbook is completely free so does not come at any additional cost on top of your normal Microsoft 365 subscription.

Four challenges associated with using SharePoint Lookbook templates

However, there are some considerations in using the SharePoint Lookbook and its templates.

1. A template is not a finished site

A Lookbook template is not going to be complete. It will likely need more work on it to truly optimise it to meet a particular business need within your organisation. For example, it might be missing a particular web part. However, site owners might consider a site “complete” because it is a Microsoft template and therefore reflecting best practices. It is likely that content owners still need additional guidance and support from the central intranet or communications team to complete a site.

2. Still needs to fit in with your Information Architecture and security

A deployed template site also needs to fit into your existing Information Architecture and align with your security policies, so any site generated from the Lookbook will need further configuration.

3. A template might bypass governance processes

Many intranet, communication and digital workplace teams want to establish governance about the use of SharePoint sites to deliver business value, minimise duplication, ensure adherence to standards and support alignment with a content strategy.

Automatically deploying a template on your tenant could bypass provisioning and other governance processes, particularly if your IT function carries out SharePoint administration duties but has a different view on site creation to the intranet team. For example, it can encourage the creation of a lot of standalone sites that lead to site sprawl and associated problems such as poor findability.

4. Not aligning with custom branding

Some organisations want to establish specific designs for their digital workplace or intranet that better align with their brand standards. In these cases, the SharePoint Lookbook templates may not align with the look and feel that the brand team are after. In these cases, an organisation may choose to deploy custom branding or use a product like Lightspeed 365 that provides more control over the look and feel of SharePoint. Some organisations may even need to introduce custom branding across multiple sub-brands.

How Lightspeed 365 features extend the power of SharePoint

Lightspeed365 features are designed to complement SharePoint and extend its ROI. You get access to a whole additional library of features (web parts) that:

Complete some of the inherent and frustrating gaps in SharePoint that you need to deliver a world-class intranet or communication hub.
Provides more flexibility in the look and feel so you can actually align with your brand standards – even across multiple sub-brands if required.
Delivers additional control and governance required to support a global intranet.

Can I use the SharePoint Lookbook with Lightspeed 365?

The answer is yes! Because Lightspeed365 extends the power of SharePoint, it can also extend the power of the SharePoint templates in the Lookbook but help you overcome some of key challenges around brand flexibility and template governance.

How can I extend the power of Lookbook templates?

Lightspeed365 can extend the power of Lookbook templates in a number of ways.

Providing branding tools to support brand flexibility: Our branding tools allow teams to deploy customer brand elements including colours and fonts, while specifying where these should be applied. Teams can define a main corporate brand and multiple sub-brands and themes if they wish, not only to align with your brand portfolio, but even to identify different sections of your intranet, for example.
Develop your own templates: Lightspeed365 allows you to create your own page templates – albeit with much greater flexibility than the Lookbook. In creating these you could leverage a Lookbook template as the starting point and then add more Lightspeed365 features to get the exact look and feel you want. You can also use some of Lightspeed365’s own site templates that come bundled with the product for popular use cases such as community or project sites.; In creating your own templates, you can use the extended, combined library of SharePoint and Lightspeed365 web parts to create a range of modern and striking designs.
Greater control: Using Lightspeed365 templates also enables you to execute stronger control to ensure different areas of the site inherent the right theme rather than allowing different content owners to implement different templates. You’ll avoid the messy, inconsistent and non-brand compliant jumble of SharePoint sites that can rapidly evolve.; For those accessing Premium Lightspeed365 features, there is even more control using the site provisioning tool that can triage requests for new sites, create approval workflow and even assign appropriate templates.
Getting the best out of the SharePoint Lookbook: In our view the SharePoint Lookbook is an excellent resource that used properly can help save time, and encourage the best use of SharePoint, but there are limitations.; Using an additional product like Lightspeed365 can make all the difference to extend brand flexibility, extend your control over templates, and help you to create fantastic looking intranets.

Need help? Get in touch!

If you’d like to discuss how Lightspeed365 can be used in conjunction with the SharePoint Lookbook, or how you can extend your design options in SharePoint, then get in touch!

Ready to get started?

UNLOCK SharePoint's full potential with Lightspeed365

30+ additional feature-packed web parts

Prebuilt best-practice templates

Intranet designs & case studies

SharePoint webparts: a practical guide

Posted on 25 March 20258 April 2025 by Dan Hawtrey

Blog

Dan Hawtrey
25 March 2025

SharePoint is the leading base technology for intranets. It is a highly flexible and scalable platform that delivers many intranet features straight out of the box, but also has a highly mature ecosystem of additional products that means you can deliver a truly world-class SharePoint intranet.

One of the best qualities of SharePoint is the ability to deliver different types of intranets that suit a wide range of organisational and employee needs. A small organisation with 100 people and a global corporation with 50,000 people can both have a successful SharePoint intranet. It also supports multiple sectors – a retailer with a young, frontline workforce or a legal firm with lawyers who need access to knowledge. Both might use a SharePoint intranet.

In this post we’re going to explore ten different SharePoint site examples to use in 2024 which demonstrate the versatility and flexibility of the platform. From a dashboard intranet for fast-moving businesses to a knowledge base ideal for regulated industries to a SharePoint intranet more focused on building community and engagement.

Web parts are one of the core elements of SharePoint and therefore of any intranet built on SharePoint. They are the basic building blocks that make up the different sites within SharePoint; every page can be broken down into a series of different web parts. If you are creating an intranet based on SharePoint or even just contributing content to it, it really helps to have an understanding of what web parts are and the kind of web parts that you can deploy to deliver your overall content and experience.

In this article we’re going to take a deep dive into SharePoint web parts. We’re going to cover what they are, the different kinds of SharePoint web parts there are, what a custom web part is and the kind of value that custom web parts can bring to a SharePoint Internet.

What are webparts in SharePoint?

Web parts can be defined as the basic components of SharePoint. Microsoft themselves describe them as “the building blocks of your page” with the ability to “add text, images, files, video, dynamic content and more.”

Web parts are a significant part of the editing experience in SharePoint. Web parts can be arranged in different ways on a page. Content editors in SharePoint modern can also add new web parts, selecting from a number of web parts that come as standard with the platform.

Web parts can display SharePoint content but can also integrate feeds from other Microsoft 365 tools including Viva Engage / Yammer and Viva Connections. Each web part also has extensive configuration options around elements such as what to display or link to, how items are sorted or filtered, and how they are displayed. The combination of the sheer number of web parts and configuration options is one of the factors which enables SharePoint to be a highly flexible tool that can be used across multiple use cases.

What kind of SharePoint web parts are there?

There are currently around fifty SharePoint web parts that are available out of the box. These include everything from the ability to format calls to action or featuring a Power BI report to embedding a video or even a world clock. There isn’t enough space here to go into all the web parts that are available, but some of the most popular include:

Connectors: provides options to bring in different feeds from external services based on the connectors available.
Document library: displays a SharePoint document library.
Events: displays upcoming events with the ability to click through for more information for each event.
File viewer: the ability to embed a file such as a Word or PDF document to read within a page.
Hero: displays up to five items at the top of a page, usually on a home or landing page.
Highlighted content: a flexible web part that displays a dynamically generated list of content based on its type such as documents, videos or images, and other salient criteria.
List: displays a SharePoint list, again another very flexible way to display and manage information.
Microsoft Forms: embeds a Microsoft Form, and can be used for forms, polls and surveys.
News: displays news items with different formatting options.
People: displays details of a selected group of people, such as a team or key contacts, with links to individual profiles.
Quick links: the ability to display quick links to other pages, apps, external sites and more.
Yammer (Viva Engage): embed a personalised Viva Engage / Yammer feed on a page, for example to support a community.

Standard SharePoint web parts and gaps in functionality

Despite the high number of web parts and the ability to configure them, in practice there are still some gaps in functionality and features that can be particularly frustrating for intranet teams and internal communicators who want to deploy a high value SharePoint intranet or site with strong adoption.

Sometimes these “gaps” relate to branding and design options around the look and feel of a web part being limited or not quite right. At other times, it might be that there simply isn’t a web part available out of the box that delivers particular functionality. For example, a popular intranet feature that is not available in SharePoint out of the box is the ability for users to add their own personal links to frequently used apps that can then be displayed on an intranet home page.

Sometimes there also might be no web part available that delivers content from a different external system or application, where there might need to be an integration, and there is no current connector.

What are custom SharePoint web parts?

When there is gap in functionality, organisations have the option to deploy a custom web part. A custom web part is one that has either been custom developed from scratch or has been modified from a standard SharePoint web part. A custom SharePoint web part therefore can be considered to be any web part that is not supplied by Microsoft as standard and has involved some degree of additional coding. Custom web parts are often designed to give you functionality and features that is very specifically suited to delivering a great intranet experience.

Custom web parts tend to fall into two types:

Those developed specifically for the needs of an individual organisation.
Those provided more generically by intranet software vendors that fil the gaps in SharePoint.

Here at Content Formula, we produce both types, regularly creating specific custom web parts as part of an intranet build, but also now delivering a standard set of custom web parts as part of our Lightspeed 365.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of custom SharePoint web parts?

Custom web parts both have advantages and disadvantages. On the upside, they complement SharePoint and complete the gaps, adding value by:

Enabling “classic” intranet features that have been overlooked by Microsoft in SharePoint when its used straight out of the box.
Supporting richer options for internal communicators.
Delivering more engaging and flexible design options.
Supporting additional integrations not supported by out-of-the-box connectors that drive a more connected digital workplace experience.
Supporting specific business processes and automation, helping raise productivity and efficiency

The disadvantages of custom web parts include the additional cost involved. If you choose to develop your own individual custom web parts then this will involve development resources and effort; however, if you choose to purchase customised web parts that have already been developed by a vendor, they will be considerably cheaper than developing your own, following the usual rules around “buy vs build”.

The other disadvantage comes with customisation in general. Most IT functions want to limit custom development as much as possible because they create technical debt, makes upgrades harder and can require ongoing management. However, buying additional custom web parts from a vendor that are completely managed removes this issue.

How Lightspeed 365 adds most of the SharePoint web parts you need

Content Formula’s Lightspeed365 is a product from Content Formula that adds many of the custom web parts that you need for your intranet, effectively extending the value of SharePoint, and filling many of the gaps in functionality. Lightspeed 365’s web parts are based on the work we’ve done across hundreds of projects over the years. These are easily added to your tenant and can then be added by your content editors just like all the other standard SharePoint web parts.

Because intranet and internal communication teams now have a more complete set of web parts to support a SharePoint Online intranet, it can prove to be highly cost effective, because it reduces the need to purchase a more expensive “in-a-box” intranet solution.

Examples of some of the most popular Lightspeed 365 web parts include:

Navigation

Table of contents

Manually create and configure a navigable structure of the site’s pages or sections.
Requires HTML coding knowledge to build the links.

vs

Table of contents

Automatically recognizes headings on the page to create chapter links, with customizable templates for the look and feel.
Turn on the floating mode to follow users down the page and open closed sections.
User friendly, straight forward and dynamic.

Content roll-up

News

Curates and displays news posts from your site or the entire organization.
Configurable layouts include grid, list, and carousel.
Supports audience targeting.
Lacks configuration options e.g. Date published.

vs

News feed

Offers an enhanced presentation of news on the homepage.
Multiple configuration options including ability to increase legibility of headlines.
Site tags to show where content resides

Social & Communication

People

Highlights selected individuals, showing their profile picture, job title, and contact information.
People must be selected/added manually

vs

People search

Allows users to search for colleagues using additional filters like skills, language and much more using Microsoft Entra ID content.

People directory

A visually appealing search module enhancing the discoverability of personnel without leaving the page.
Display teams by department or location without the need to manually configure the page.

Search

Microsoft search

The standard search box covers a wide scope of content and sends users to a search results page.
Can be scoped to ‘current site’ or ‘hub site’ only

vs

Floating search

Place a search box anywhere on the page, which encourages finding specific content related to smaller topics like HR.

Navigation

Quick links

Provides a visually appealing way to link to internal or external resources.
Supports custom icons, images, and layout styles.
It also supports audience targeting, enhancing the user experience and site navigation.

vs

Card links

Enhances on-page navigation by giving publishers a range of options beyond the standard Quick Links.
With a selection of templates and configuration choices, Card Links allows for a tailored presentation of links.

Want to know more about SharePoint web parts? Get in touch!

Web parts are one of the elements that make SharePoint such a valuable and flexible platform. If you want to know more about using web parts, or want more information on our Lightspeed365 offering, then get in touch!

Ready to get started?

UNLOCK SharePoint's full potential with Lightspeed365

30+ additional feature-packed web parts

Prebuilt best-practice templates

Intranet designs & case studies

10 great SharePoint intranet site examples

Posted on 12 January 202519 March 2025 by John Scott

Blog

John Scott
12 January 2025

Intranets are highly flexible, scalable and valuable. They support a wide variety of use cases and processes and have multiple areas of value, including supporting communications, productivity, task completion, engagement and knowledge sharing. Inevitably different organisations will have different needs and priorities and the role of the intranet and its homepage often reflects this; an intranet for a global tax consultancy might look quite different to a small media company, for example. One size does not fit all.

The good news is that SharePoint intranets (and their homepages) are extremely flexible so organisations can invariably build an intranet that reflects their particular needs. One of the reasons for this is the sheer number of web parts that are available within SharePoint Online, straight out of the box.

Web parts are essentially building blocks with different functionality and features that can be combined together into multiple ways to build an intranet homepage. However, SharePoint does not have enough web parts to meet all modern intranet needs, which is why we built Lightspeed365, a set of additional web parts and features that enable you to build an even richer experience and wider variety of different homepages. You can achieve the intranet that your organisation needs, and that your users want.

We’re often asked about the kind of SharePoint intranet homepage experiences that be built using both SharePoint Online web parts and Lightspeed365. With so many different possibilities, there are a very wide variety of intranets to suit every need.

In this post we’re going to show you seven real world examples of very different SharePoint homepages that we have built and have a particular function or focus. You can use this post to help you get thinking about what your perfect homepage might look like.

Here’s seven SharePoint intranet site homepages that use both web parts and Lightspeed365 features.

1. The balanced intranet homepage

Intranets perform a huge variety of different functions and support multiple processes. A balanced intranet homepage provides an overview to reflect these multiple activities with a different web parts and features – supporting internal communications, improving productivity, driving collaboration and helping employees complete tasks. Large, global and complex businesses tend to adopt this kind of balanced homepage, helping a diverse workforce to stay informed, get things done, be engaged and find what they need.

In this example:

A personalised greeting helps make the intranet feel less corporate, and also indicates it is a personalised experience.
The news is displayed prominently to support internal communications, with an alert at the top for immediate operational or urgent messages.
The My Apps area provides a personalised launch pad to key apps and tools, to help employees complete their day-to-day work and drive productivity.
Tasks are highlighted in the dashboard section to help employees get things done, in this case leveraging the Viva Connection dashboard feature.
A middle panel provides a personalised overview of key tasks that employees need to complete, including relating to individual and team learning, as well as policies that must be read. Typically a feature like this could involve integrations with SharePoint-based solutions including policy management software such as Xoralia, or a Learning Management System like Learn365 from Zensai.
A “My news” area presents personalised news relevant to the individual, which is important for intranet adoption and valuable in highly diverse workforces.
Collaboration, discussion and dialogue is supported by the “Engage” panel which highlights activity within Viva Engage groups.

2. The knowledge collection intranet homepage

Intranets have proved to be adept at housing valuable reference information, the “one source of truth”. This means intranets are often a key channel in supporting knowledge management and can act as an effective knowledge base for corporate or organisational knowledge. Typically, this kind of approach might be adopted by a professional services, consulting or engineering firm. A knowledge collection intranet homepage encourages findability through search but also in encouraging links to resources.

In this example:

A prominent search box allows and encourages users to search for documents and through knowledge collections, with the potential ability to filter items on areas such as project type and country, using metadata based on the company’s taxonomy. There’s a link to a more advanced search for convenience.
A “go to” section provides links to key knowledge collections or resources by topic, providing an opportunity to discover knowledge items or to find what someone needs through browsing.
A significant proportion of the homepage is dedicated to personalised access to knowledge, including collections of knowledge, previous searches, personalised recommendations of knowledge (potentially based on role, preferences and previous searches), as well as curated sets of resources.
Calls to action encourage users to add knowledge to the collection as well as share useful feedback for improvement.

3. The daily work intranet homepage

Intranets can act as a central point for employees to keep on top of all their daily work and support them in their role. In this “daily work” intranet, the homepage acts more as a dashboard, providing access to project sites and workspaces where employees carry out their day-to-day, as well as helping employees keeping on top of their priority tasks. In this way, the intranet becomes a dynamic channel that supports employee productivity.

In this example:

There is a custom-built system status web part giving RAG (Red Amber Green) status updates on key software platforms, with the ability to drill into more detail.
A personalised feed from Viva Engage surfaces the latest conversations that are going across different working groups or communities.

A personalised “My Workspaces” area links through to the SharePoint team sites or even Microsoft Teams spaces where collaborative work is carried out on different projects.

5. The subject hub intranet homepage or landing page

In practice intranets tend to be made up of a number of different sites, often maintained by the relevant teams and groups within an organisation, all tied together by an overall homepage, navigation and search. Sometimes sites within a wide intranet can be dedicated to a particular department and team, while others act as a place to access resources on a particular topic. This screenshot shows a potential subject or topic hub – in this case about patient wellbeing.

In this example:

A visually striking carousel links through to headline content, prominent reference information and major updates about the subject in question.
Featured resources including story updates and knowledge collections on the topic, with indicators of the number of likes and comments to reflect their popularity.
A noticeboard feature presents the latest subject-specific quick updates, aggregated from different sites across the intranet. The most viewed and downloaded items are also displayed, to drive engagement.

“Show more” and “View more” buttons allow the user to view more content, ensuring the initial homepage experience remains focused and uncluttered.

6. The GTD (Getting Things Done) intranet homepage

A key function of a good intranet is to help employees get things done efficiently and in the right way, supporting productivity and saving time. The GTD intranet homepage focuses on task completion, making the intranet the go-to place to complete simple tasks, and also a valuable asset that supports increased productivity.

In this example:

A welcome bar at the top includes a link to an intranet tour which automatically loads when an employee first visits the intranet, and walks users through the main intranet features and the information that can be found.
The homepage leverages the Viva Connections dashboard to deliver a common tasks panel to highlight common tasks such as logging an IT ticket, and to highlight key activity; integrations with common enterprise systems often means that employees don’t actually need to visit these applications if just needed to view data or perform simple transactions.
A searchable database of “How Do I” information provides succinct information on how to get things done across a wide variety of topics, helping to streamline and standardise processes and supporting productivity.
“How Do I” information is also targeted based on an employee’s profile, so for example a person sees the right process information based on their location.
Personalised links to relevant pages also mean employees can reach the apps, sites or pages they frequently need to access or refer to in getting things done.
A handy people search allows a quick search of employee profiles to help contact the right person which is often necessary for task completion.
Other features such as news and events also ensure the intranet continues to keep people informed and supports engagement too.

7. The News Centre intranet homepage

Keeping employees informed and supporting internal communications is one of the most important roles for an intranet; in fact, many intranets are owned by the internal comms function. The News Centre intranet homepage keeps employees informed by providing news updates from right across the organisation – often personalised to different groups. The News Centre intranet has particular value in larger global businesses with multiple locations and diverse workforces.

In this example:

The header displays local weather, the stock price but also the local time across a number of key locations – this is not only useful in helping contact colleagues in a different time zone, but also makes the page feel a little like a global newsroom where there is always something happening.
There is major news from across markets with also a primary news item. In the layout on this page there are more news items than on homepages which tend to be dominated by a carousel, and where items can sometimes get lost.
Engagement data such as views, comments and reactions indicate the most popular items.
A separate feed of London news is personalised to the location of the user based on their profile or their preferences – this could potentially say New York, Frankfurt, Mumbai or elsewhere.
A special area for operational announcements is also shown under the news – again this might be for an item such as an unexpected IT outage and could be targeted, for example saying that there will be fire alarm for a particular office.
The news centre is also balanced by more “How to” and operational-related content in the lower half of the homepage, including a database of “I need to” information on how to complete key tasks, as well as links to apps and resources.

8. The community hub

Tailored for the media or marketing sectors, this SharePoint site example integrates external and internal social feeds. The large news carousel and social media feeds make it a vibrant SharePoint website example that actively engages users.

A large news carousel at the top gives plenty of room for rich imagery and showcasing the company’s brand and products.
A stock price widget is neatly integrated inside of the news carousel to as not to constrain impact of the look-and-feel.
The events feed is a standard SharePoint feature, but brought to life by the playful iconography and colour selection.
A large proportion of the homepage is then given to a feed of content from the companies external social media feeds – making a point that what the organisation says to those outside is just as relevant to those inside.

9. The field worker

Optimised for use in the field with tablets and smartphones, this SharePoint intranet design is practical and accessible, making it perfect for industries like construction or field services.

The icon based app launcher dominates the homepage experience, but avoids being cumbersome by including a contextual quick search feature – similar to that found on smartphones.
The apps and services presented to the employee are targeted based on their role.
Employees can also customise the launcher, just as they would customise the homescreen on their phone or tablet.

10. The dashboard

A real-time information hub featuring tools like countdown clocks and milestone trackers. This SharePoint intranet example is ideal for fast-paced environments, providing quick access to essential functions and tools.

More traditional fare of global news and personalised quick links are still a feature.
But as we go down the page we see personalisation features like the welcome bar.
And various search tools which not only cover colleagues and ‘how do I’ guidance, but also a ‘parts finder’ – something more specific to the needs of this particular organisation.
A milestones dashboard gives a snapshot of where the company sits with current deliveries.
And a task list acts as a mini to-do for each employee, nestled conveniently alongside the other information.

Building the right intranet homepage for you

We hope these examples have given you a bit of inspiration! The combination of SharePoint web parts available out of the box and additional Lightspeed365 web parts means that you can build the right homepage that meets your organisational needs and culture, and highlights the main functions of your intranet.

If you’d like to discuss your intranet project or how Lightspeed365 intranet could add value to your intranet, then get in touch!

For more inspiration, be sure to check out our SharePoint intranet playlist on YouTube.

Ready to get started?

UNLOCK SharePoint's full potential with Lightspeed365

30+ additional feature-packed web parts

Prebuilt best-practice templates

Intranet designs & case studies

Get a free SharePoint news webpart from Lightspeed365

Posted on 24 October 202416 May 2025 by John Scott

Blog

John Scott
24 October 2024

Want to improve the visual appeal and layout of the news on your SharePoint intranet to improve engagement and adoption?

By downloading Lightspeed365’s free intranet web part you can extend your design options and enhance the presentation of your news feed to improve usability, boost the visibility of news and increase views.

And it’s 100% free with zero costs and obligations.

What is Lightspeed365?

Lighstpeed365 helps organisations to drive adoption and get maximum business value from their SharePoint intranet by building additional features for users, content editors and internal communicators. These help to take your intranet to the next level and provide a satisfying and richer employee experience.

SharePoint is a brilliant platform to build an intranet on. However, when you just use SharePoint Online straight out of the box for your intranet there are several gaps in functionality and missing features. A SharePoint intranet can also lack the flexibility in design that many intranet teams are after.

That’s where the additional features (web parts) from Lightspeed365 come in – helping fill the critical gaps that occur when intranet teams and internal communicators use SharePoint out of the box.

About Lightspeed365’s news web part

A key job of any intranet is to keep employees informed.

The news feed on a SharePoint intranet homepage or on an individual landing page is one of the most important and most widely used intranet features, helping to deliver targeted internal communications from right across the organisation.

The news feed web part that comes out of the box with SharePoint is useful, offering:

The ability to curate and display news form one stie or from multiple sites
Some layout options including grid, list and carousel formats
Audience targeting based on Entra ID profiles

But beyond this, this native SharePoint web part usually falls short of what internal communications and intranet teams need to truly drive engagement with news and get high number of views.

They often tell us that they are frustrated by the lack of design options and feel the web part doesn’t meet needs and expectations.

Lightspeed365’s free news web part significantly extends your options around presenting news, offering:

Ways to enhance the presentation of news.
Many additional configuration options such as the ability to increase the legibility of headlines, add the date published and more.
The ability to add site tags to show where a news item resides.
Modern website-like styling

By downloading the web part, you’re effectively upgrading your intranet news experience.

Why are you running this promotion?

We’re on a mission to improve the world’s SharePoint intranets. This promotion provides the opportunity for intranet teams to experience the difference that Lightspeed365 web parts can make in improving your SharePoint intranet.

Of course, we’d love to gain some new Lightspeed365 customers from the promotion, but we’re also intranet nerds that love making a difference.

Is the Lightspeed365 news feed web part really free? Where’s the catch?!

Yes, you can download the web part for free with no upfront or hidden costs. And we don’t ask you to complete a dodgy form demanding the details for your credit card details.

So there really is no catch at all or any other future obligation.

How can I download and install the web part?

It’s super-easy for an intranet administrator with the correct rights to download and then deploy the Lightspeed365 news feed web part. It will only take a few minutes.

Get over to our download page and view the installation video for full instructions.

Unfortunately, we’re unable to offer support for downloading or installing the web part.

How does the web part work?

Once you download and install the web part it will just appear in the normal SharePoint editing experience as one of many different web parts your intranet team or content editors can add to a page. They can also configure the web part as they would like any other, using the web part settings that appear in the right hand panel within the SharePoint editing experience.

Will Lightspeed365 update the news feed web part?

We won’t update this webpart regularly like our paid products. However, we may release a new free version sometime in the future which you can, of course, upgrade to if you’d like.

Do you have any other Lightspeed365 features that can boost intranet adoption and value?

Yes! We have a huge range of features (web parts) as part of the Lightspeed365 offering that:

improve the way you can present content and communications
add the must-have functionality you need for a world-class intranet
provide additional services on top
extends the ROI of SharePoint by plugging the gaps
ultimately drives usage of and engagement with your intranet
provides exceptional value.

Why not arrange a free Lightspeed365 demo?

Get your FREE news feed web part

Supercharge your intranet homepage today!

UNLOCK SharePoint's full potential with Lightspeed365

30+ additional feature-packed web parts

Prebuilt best-practice templates

Intranet designs & case studies

15 essential SharePoint web parts that every intranet needs

Posted on 8 October 20247 April 2025 by John Scott

Blog

John Scott
8 October 2024

A key strength of a SharePoint intranet is its flexibility and versatility to craft experiences to meet the needs of your business and your employees. It’s possible to configure each individual site and even page to a highly granular level, while also still remaining on-brand and delivering a consistent look and feel. This is achieved through SharePoint web parts – the “building bricks” of SharePoint that can be assembled together at the page level to create a world-class intranet.

We often get asked which are the must-have SharePoint web parts that an intranet needs. While every intranet is different, there are some SharePoint web parts that deliver essential intranet features and capabilities. In this article we’re going to explore fifteen of the most essential web parts, illustrated with screenshots.

What are web parts in SharePoint?

SharePoint web parts are building blocks which can be assembled together to deliver a SharePoint page. Each web part does something slightly different. It might deliver a block of text, display an image, or add a SharePoint capability such as a document library, set of links or even integrate feeds from other Microsoft tools like Viva Engage.

An editor can choose from a wide range of different SharePoint web parts to add to their page, rearrange them and then even configure each web part separately. From this detail they can then build up an engaging and useful intranet page.

Out-of-the-box SharePoint web parts vs additional web parts every intranet needs

Microsoft provide a wide range of modern SharePoint web parts that are available straight out of the box and ready to deploy. These are very useful, but they can only go so far. They fall short of all the web parts an intranet needs to be truly world-class, and meet the needs of employees, internal communicators, business functions and more. These “missing” web parts limit an intranet’s design options and key capabilities.

Recognising that SharePoint out of the box is not enough we built Lightspeed365 to add a whole new set of additional SharePoint web parts that complement what already exists in SharePoint and give you all the features and design flexibility you need to deliver an excellent SharePoint intranet. These web parts all delivered within the same editing experience so content owners and admins can edit their page in the same way, but just have a greatly expanded set of web parts to choose from.

15 must-have SharePoint web parts

Let’s dive into our must-have web parts that every intranet needs. Below we explore both modern SharePoint out-of-the-box web parts and Lightspeed365 web parts.

1. Hero area

Intranets need to look modern, progressive and attractive to drive adoption. The Hero area is a pleasing web part available out of the box that is usually used at the top of a homepage or landing page to highlight key content. It does this in a highly visual way with the use of images, but it can also display videos. You can include up to five items in the Hero area, with different configuration and layout options.

2. News feed

News is an essential part of any intranet and is usually highlighted not only on the homepage but also within departmental or topic-based sites, for example displaying HR news. SharePoint does have out-of-the-box web parts that display news but these often fall short of what internal communication teams require. We built a News feed web part for Lightspeed365 that includes additional attractive ways and configuration options to present news, and also makes it easier to target news to different audiences, ticking the box for internal comms.

3. Card links

Intranets help users find the results they need, often providing links to both internal and external resources, Subsequently the Quick links web part is one of the most used on any intranet. However, for such a ubiquitous web part the display options are limited. The Lightspeed365 Card links web part provides a range of templates and configuration options to display your links in a clear and eye-catching way. It’s also possible to target links to different audiences.

4. Document library

Intranets are used as the one source of truth for reference content, while SharePoint is often used a document management solution in its own right. The Document library web part allows a site or page to display a SharePoint document library allowing users to share particular documents with users across the business. Different permissions can be applied to restrict access to particular files.

5. Events

The events web part enables communicators and different business teams to display information about upcoming events with all the information about each individual event that employees need. This useful web part can cover enterprise-wide events like town halls or more targeted events like a wellbeing session.

6. Highlighted content

The Highlighted content web part is one of the most useful out-of-the-box web parts in SharePoint Online because it allows you to highlight different types of content in a variety of different ways and is highly configurable. This means you can dynamically display the latest news, documents, videos, pages and more based on highly flexible criteria, or highlight fixed or single items if you prefer. It consistently proves to be a very useful way to guide users to the resources they need.

7. List

We love SharePoint lists! They are an excellent way store and display information that is frequently updated and needs to act as one source of truth. You can also do sophisticated things with a list such as apply workflow, permissions and formatting to different parts of it. A List web part allows you to embed a List in a page meaning you could display information such as a list of offices, approved suppliers, external sources or internal first aiders, for example.

8. People directory

The People directory is always one of the most used parts of any intranet. The Lightspeed365 People directory web part provides a very useful way for users to search through the directory on any page that is deployed, with results linking through to Microsoft 365 profiles that display within the web part itself. This helps to drive a more consistent and uninterrupted user experience where an employee can search but stay on the page.

9. Microsoft Viva Engage

One of the strengths of a SharePoint intranet is its ability to seamlessly integrate other Microsoft 365 tools. The Viva Engage webpart allows you to embed a Viva Engage feed, meaning you can feature topic or community discussions in context with other related content and resources – for example for an employee resource group or Community of Practice. You can also embed a Viva Engage feed on your homepage, perhaps relaying personalised updates from an all-company group.

10. Page tour

A great way to support users and drive adoption is by providing a custom “page tour” that walks a user through key intranet functionality or a particular feature, ensuring it has context relating to your organisation and intranet. This is usually triggered when a new user logs in for the first time but it can also be made available on-demand. This highly useful and popular feature is not available out of the box, so we created a special web part within Lightspeed365.

11. App launcher

Modern Intranets play an essential role as the entry point into the wider digital workplace and the multitude of apps that employees need to access in the working week. Providing a list of personalised icons on the intranet homepage where employees can reach all the apps they use is consistently one of the most popular user features and helps drive adoption. Surprisingly this is not available out of the box. Our Lightspeed365 App launcher web part delivers allows employees to configure the apps that matter to them and drive productivity.

12. Handbook

The Lightspeed365 Handbook feature is another handy web part that allows content owners to present pages within their site as a searchable index. This is perfect for presenting information such as a Handbook or a series of “How to” content together to help employees find what they need successfully and quickly.

13. Welcome bar

An engaging intranet provides a highly personalised experience for users to drive relevancy and make it feel like it is built for employees rather than just being a corporate tool. The Welcome bar web part is another popular Lightspeed365 feature. This delivers a personalised message but also additional local details like the weather. This not only signals the intranet is personalised to the individual, but also makes it more welcoming.

14. External social feeds

Many intranet teams choose to add their company’s external social feeds into their intranet homepage to help drive awareness of how they are going to market ad provide a more rounded view of communications. The External social feed feature in Lightspeed365 is a web part that allows you to integrate updates from major platforms like X and LinkedIn. It uses a third-party service called Juicer.

15. Accordion

One of the aims of additional Lightspeed365 web parts is to extend the options to present information in SharePoint in a useful and engaging way. The Accordion feature is yet another web part that enables intranet teams to present information such as FAQs in an efficient way via expandable and collapsable sections. This means you can present the content employees need to reference while ensuring a page stays tidy and is not overwhelming.

The essential SharePoint web parts for your intranet

Every intranet is different but there are some web parts that prove to be essential for the majority. If you’ d like to discuss SharePoint web parts or how Lightspeed365 features can extend the power of your SharePoint intranet, then get in touch!

Ready to get started?

UNLOCK SharePoint's full potential with Lightspeed365

30+ additional feature-packed web parts

Prebuilt best-practice templates

Intranet designs & case studies

Lightspeed365: Distinctively ahead in the digital workplace

Posted on 26 January 202411 February 2025 by Dan Hawtrey

Blog

Dan Hawtrey
26 January 2024

Lightspeed365 adds useful functionality and design options to SharePoint that will appeal to organisations looking for some additional features without going for a full intranet in-a-box product.
ClearBox Intranet and Employee Experience Report 2024

The recently published ClearBox Intranet and Employee Experience Report 2024 shines a spotlight on Lightspeed365, revealing its standing as a leader in the digital workplace domain.

According to the report, Lightspeed365 sets itself apart in the digital workplace sector with its unique features. The platform’s user interface is lauded for its ease of use and intuitive design, fostering a positive user experience.

Its integration capabilities are a standout, allowing seamless interconnectivity with a wide range of external tools. Furthermore, Lightspeed365 excels in supporting robust internal communication and collaboration, key factors in enhancing employee engagement and productivity.

These distinct qualities underscore Lightspeed365’s leading position in the market, making it an ideal choice for modern organisations.

Designing an intranet homepage: seven must-have web parts

Posted on 28 July 202320 March 2025 by Dan Hawtrey

Blog

Dan Hawtrey
28 July 2023

Intranet teams often ask us questions about how to design an intranet homepage and which web parts (widgets) or features they should include on it. Of course, there is no right or wrong answer; no two intranet home pages are the same, and depending on the needs of your users, the web parts to include will vary from organisation to organisation. However, it’s also safe to say that there are some web parts that are extremely common to find on a homepage, with some appearing on the majority of intranets.

In this post we’re going to look at seven must-have web parts or features that appear on multiple homepages. To help illustrate these, we’ve included a screenshot (with dummy content) of a global intranet based on SharePoint Online. Let’s explore seven of the key web parts or features that are featured on the intranet, and are likely to feature on your homepage too.

1. Personalised greeting

Many intranets now choose to display a personalised greeting at the top of the page. For example, in this screenshot “Good morning, Kelly” is displayed. This personal greeting has three main functions; firstly, it helps to make the intranet feel less formal and corporate, with a friendly greeting. Secondly, it confirms to the user that they are authenticated into the intranet and it recognises who they are, critical if a user is expecting some level of personalisation. Thirdly, it can also be a place for some hyper-local content that perhaps sits less well elsewhere – a link to the local weather forecast, for example.

2. Hero area

Virtually every intranet homepage has a hero area which will display major news or campaign items – this should be a much sought after spot to promote and spotlight important content. This intranet contains four items, but other intranets can display five or six. In some intranets this has been displayed as a news carousel in the past.

Using attractive images in the hero area helps to draw attention to these pieces, but also gives some balance to the overall intranet design. In many organistions, the news or content presented in the hero area is relevant for all employees, although it can also be personalised to ensure relevance.

3. Personalised news feed

Personalisation is key to the success of an intranet in a global, large and complex organisation. A news feed for personalised news (“My news”) should aggregate items that are the result of content targeting based on user profile, but also include additional items subscribed to by a user. Subscriptions might be extra additional targeted content that a user wants to see – for example for another division or location – as well as topic-related items that are of interest. In the screenshot, labels on each story show their intended audience. Other metadata to consider displaying here can relate to engagement including the numbers of views, likes and comments of each news item.

4. Other communication feed

Sometimes you’ll also want to display other kinds of news on your homepage that you want to distinguish from the more general items. In this example there is a “People focus” area with items that are more focused on highlighting the specific work of different teams. But in your organisation this may be product news, something relating to your values, more blogs and user-generated content, customer success stories or perhaps something else entirely.

5. Links to apps and sites

A major use case for your intranet is as a convenient gateway to all the apps and sites that people need to access during the week to complete tasks and carry out their role. When intranet teams ask a user what they rely on their intranet for, this feature is always near the top of the list.

Including useful links is a must-have for any homepage. In this example there are links to “My tools” and also “My sites”. Ideally, users should be able to configure their own list of links, with the aid of a central directory of apps to choose from to help them, and existing default links to get people started, ideally personalised to different sections of the organisation to ensure relevance.

6. Content spotlights and promotions

Intranets are there to guide people to the most important content, so content spotlights and promotions that reflect priorities and campaigns are a common part of any homepage. These might be an organisational priority (COVID-19 updates) or be important because they are timely (Black Friday deals for employees).

7. Yammer / Viva Engage feed

Many intranet teams choose to include a feed from their social collaboration platform on their homepage. This could be a general personalised feed for users, or from a specific community, although the latter will usually be company-wide if appearing on a homepage.

Including a social feed helps to encourage adoption of the social platform, supports the role of the intranet as the “front door” to the wider digital workplace and also brings the employee voice into the homepage to balance more “top-down” internal communications messaging. With a SharePoint intranet including a feed from Yammer (now being rebranded as Viva Engage) is super easy with web parts that are available out of the box.

Need help with your homepage or looking for web parts to help you build your intranet?

How Lightspeed Modules adds most of the web parts you need

Content Formula’s Lightspeed Modules is a product from Content Formula that adds many of the custom web parts that you need for your intranet, effectively extending the value of SharePoint, and filling many of the gaps in functionality. Lightspeed’s web parts are based on the work we’ve done across hundreds of projects over the years. These are easily added to your tenant and can then be added by your content editors just like all the other standard SharePoint web parts

Because intranet and internal communication teams now have a more complete set of web parts to support a SharePoint Online intranet, it can prove to be highly cost effective, because it reduces the need to purchase a more expensive “in-a-box” intranet solution.

Examples of some of the most popular Lightspeed web parts include:

A page tour, highlighting key intranet features for new staff.
Branding customiser, extending branding and theming options for SharePoint.
Share price, allowing teams to embed a stock price on the homepage.
App launcher, allowing users to personalise their own links to apps.
Tabs, allowing multiple web parts to be displayed in a tabbing format to save page real-estate.
Table of content to appear at the top of a page to support findability for long-read content.
Site provisioning, to embed the provisioning process for different Microsoft collaboration sites including Teams.
External social feeds from different sources.
Floating search, providing the ability to add a contextual search anywhere on a page.
Feedback, allowing structured feedback on the intranet and its content from any page.
Welcome bar, for personalised welcome messages to users to create a more engaging experience.
Noticeboard, for employee classified adverts and notices.
And more!

Want to know more about web parts? Get in touch!

Web parts are one of the elements that make SharePoint such a valuable and flexible platform. If you want to know more about using web parts, or want more information on our Lightspeed Modules offering, then get in touch!

Ready to get started?

UNLOCK SharePoint's full potential with Lightspeed365

30+ additional feature-packed web parts

Prebuilt best-practice templates

Intranet designs & case studies