Focus keyphrase: Viva Connections home sites.
Viva Connections home sites are getting an admin-center relocation that SharePoint teams should not ignore. Microsoft 365 Roadmap item 567887, updated July 29, says Viva Connections multi-home site management is moving from the Microsoft 365 admin center to the SharePoint admin center, with general availability planned for August 2026.
That may sound like a tiny UI shuffle. It is not exactly earth-shattering — nobody needs to wake the incident bridge and bring snacks — but it is a meaningful governance change for intranet admins. Home site creation, audience targeting, home site priority order, and removing home sites are being consolidated into the SharePoint admin center. Existing Microsoft 365 admin center entry points will redirect admins to the new SharePoint admin center experience.
Home site management moves
Admins manage multiple Viva Connections home sites from the SharePoint admin center instead of the Microsoft 365 admin center.
Audience and priority
This is a good moment to clean up audience targeting, site ownership, naming, and home site priority rules.
SharePoint becomes the hub
The admin work lands closer to the SharePoint sites, permissions, and intranet architecture that actually power the experience.
What Microsoft is changing for Viva Connections home sites
According to the Microsoft 365 Roadmap, the change brings Viva Connections multi-home site management into the SharePoint admin center. Administrators will be able to:
- Create and manage multiple home sites.
- Configure audience targeting for home sites.
- Manage home site priority order.
- Remove home sites directly from the SharePoint admin center.
- Follow redirects from existing Microsoft 365 admin center entry points to the new SharePoint admin center experience.
The roadmap item also says legacy Viva Connections instances and the older draft/enabled management concepts are being deprecated as Viva Connections administration is consolidated into SharePoint home site management. Existing Viva Connections experiences will be upgraded to full home sites.
Why SharePoint admins should care
Microsoft Learn describes a SharePoint home site as a customized landing experience that reflects the organization’s brand, voice, and priorities, and as a gateway to other portals in the intranet. Viva Connections then brings relevant news, conversations, resources, and tools into Teams and web experiences.
So, when Microsoft moves multi-home site administration into the SharePoint admin center, it is not just moving buttons around. It is putting the operational control plane closer to the assets that matter: SharePoint communication sites, hub architecture, permissions, branding, news, global navigation, and audience targeting.
That matters because home sites are rarely “just a site.” They often represent regions, departments, business units, frontline worker populations, or acquired companies. If the priority order or targeting is messy, employees can land in the wrong experience and your intranet starts feeling like a vending machine that dispenses governance debt.
Viva Connections home sites prep checklist
Here is the practical prep list I would run before this lands in the tenant. No heroics required — just tidy admin hygiene before the furniture gets rearranged.
Permissions and licensing are still part of the story
The existing Microsoft Learn setup guidance is still important. Microsoft notes that organizations need appropriate Enterprise, Frontline, or Academic licensing to create a Viva Connections experience, and that using two or more experiences — up to 50 — requires every user in the tenant to have Microsoft Viva Suite or Viva Communications and Communities licensing. The setup documentation also calls out SharePoint admin permissions for admin center access and Teams administrator permissions to pin the Viva Connections app in Teams.
That means the SharePoint admin center move should trigger a quick permissions review. If your current process depends on one Microsoft 365 global admin doing everything manually, this is a good chance to split responsibilities properly. SharePoint admins can own home site configuration, Teams admins can handle app pinning and Teams policy bits, and communications owners can focus on content quality instead of spelunking through admin portals. Fewer portal scavenger hunts. More useful intranet.
Suggested operating model after the move
| Area | Owner | Governance question |
|---|---|---|
| Home site creation | SharePoint admins + intranet governance board | Who can request a new home site, and what business case is required? |
| Audience targeting | SharePoint admins + identity/audience owners | Are groups accurate, maintained, and reviewed? |
| Priority order | Intranet owner | What should users see when they match multiple experiences? |
| App pinning in Teams | Teams admins | Which users should see Viva Connections pinned, and in what policy? |
| Content quality | Communications teams | Is the home site useful, current, accessible, and not just a beautiful link graveyard? |
Bottom line
The move of Viva Connections home sites into the SharePoint admin center is a sensible consolidation, and it gives admins a clean reason to review home site sprawl before August 2026 rollout. Inventory the current experiences, clean up audience targeting, agree on priority order, update runbooks, and make sure the right people have the right permissions.
It is not glamorous work, but neither is explaining to the CFO why they keep landing on the intern onboarding portal. Governance: boring until it saves your Monday.
Sources
- Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 567887: Viva Connections multi-home site management moving to SharePoint admin center
- Microsoft Learn: Plan, build, and launch a SharePoint home site
- Microsoft Learn: Set up Viva Connections in the Microsoft 365 admin center
- Microsoft Learn: Overview of Viva Connections
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