If your news is already in SharePoint, send it from SharePoint: a news digest rolls several published posts into one email, and a news post built from a Made for email template goes out in full with Post and send. Use Outlook Newsletters when the newsletter is its own email publication with subscribers, and Viva Amplify when one message has to reach SharePoint, Teams, Outlook and Viva Engage with approvals and reporting, and you have the Viva licence to cover it.
Not everybody visits the intranet every day, and plenty of people won’t visit it every week, however much work went into the news page. They’re in Outlook. All four options here stay inside Microsoft 365, and the first two send news you’ve already written in SharePoint, with no extra licence and no new tool to learn.
The four options at a glance
| SharePoint news digest | Made for email news post | Outlook Newsletters | Viva Amplify | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Where you write it | Separate SharePoint news posts, already published | One SharePoint news post | Editions in new Outlook | A publication in an Amplify campaign |
| What lands in the inbox | A list of the stories you picked, each linking back to its post | The whole post in the body of the email, or a link if you choose | The whole edition | The Outlook version of the publication |
| Channels | SharePoint and email | Email, plus the Newsletters hub | SharePoint, Teams, Outlook, Viva Engage | |
| Who can send | Anyone with edit permission on the site | Whoever posts it | Newsletter owners | Campaign members |
| Reporting | The posts’ own page analytics | Email views added to the page’s analytics | Views, emails sent, subscribers | Per channel and per campaign |
| Design control | None: the header, summary area and images can’t be changed | Limited to made-for-email web parts | Templates with sections and components | Per-channel versions of one publication |
| Licence | Included | Included | Included with qualifying Microsoft 365 subscriptions | Microsoft Viva licence |
How does a SharePoint news digest work?
A news digest is an email built from posts you’ve already published. In my demo the intranet home page had a company news feed pulling posts from several sites, including employee share options from HR and a corporate column from the main intranet.
- On the page with the News web part, select See all.
- Select Email a news digest.
- Tick the stories to include and select Next.
- Enter a Title, which becomes the email’s subject line (mine was “This week’s important news”), add recipients in To: as people, groups or distribution lists, and add an optional message.
- Select Send news digest.
In my demo the email reached Alex’s inbox within a minute or so. It’s a plain email with no logo. Selecting a story opens the full post on the intranet.
The News web part’s settings decide which posts you can pick, so if its source covers several sites, so does your digest. Each digest is also saved as a page in the site’s Pages library, which only holds what’s needed to generate the email.
How does Post and send work for a single news post?
A few months after that first video, SharePoint added news templates built for email, and I recorded two more videos on them. Select New, then News post, and the template picker has a Made for email section. When I recorded there were six: Blank news, Newsletter, Event, Status update, Process and Topic. From the three dots on a template you can make it the default, which suits a site that exists for comms and newsletters.
The editor is a SharePoint page with a cut-down web part toolbox, because everything has to render in an email: it includes Text, Image, People, File and media, Divider, Quick links and Link. Select Post and send, and SharePoint posts it to the site and opens a send panel for recipients, an optional message and the choice of full post or link only. In my demo Alex got a single-column email with all the content, readable on a phone, without opening SharePoint.
Four things to know before you choose this route:
- Recipients can read the post without site access. They get the full content in the email but no permissions on the site or the page.
- The email is a snapshot. Editing the post afterwards doesn’t update the email or notify anyone. To send the new version, use send as email from the post’s share menu.
- Analytics need the full email. Email views are added to the page’s analytics, but nothing is recorded if you send it as a link.
- Some web parts block it. If the post has custom web parts or ones that aren’t made for email, you can still send, but only as a link. Individual audience targeting is switched off for these posts.
If you send the same newsletter layout every week, save your adjusted version as a page template so it shows under Saved on this site next time. It keeps its send-by-email ability, and it’s only available on the site you saved it in. How to build and manage page templates is in creating custom SharePoint page templates.
On tenants with the new SharePoint experience, a distribution panel now opens after you publish a news post, and you can reopen it with Promote or Amplify on the command bar. Its Engage card cross-posts the news post to a Viva Engage storyline or community, with comments kept in sync between the two.
Where do Outlook Newsletters fit?
Outlook Newsletters, in new Outlook and Outlook on the web, gives a newsletter its own home with editions, contributors and subscribers, and it’s for internal audiences only. The trade-off against the SharePoint options is that the content is written in Outlook, so nothing appears as news on your intranet unless you post it there as well. Setup, contributors and the admin setting that controls who can create newsletters are in how to create a newsletter in Outlook.
Where does Viva Amplify fit?
Viva Amplify is the option for a comms team running campaigns: one publication goes to SharePoint, Teams, Outlook and Viva Engage, with a version for each channel, approvers, scheduling and reporting by channel. My second newsletter video compared it with SharePoint’s own Post and send. When I recorded it, Viva Engage was still coming soon as a channel; it’s now one of the four.
The deciding factor is usually the licence. Amplify needs a Microsoft Viva licence, and the licensing guidance reaches past the comms team to the people who receive its publications; I cover what that means, along with a campaign set up step by step, in publishing to SharePoint, Teams and Outlook at once with Viva Amplify.
Which one I’d pick
- A weekly or monthly roundup of news already on the intranet: the news digest. The posts are already written, and every story links back to the intranet. I’d live with the plain design for that.
- One announcement people need to read in their inbox: a Made for email news post with Post and send. Readers get everything without a click, and the post still lives on the site for anyone who goes looking.
- A newsletter with its own identity, its own readers and several writers, like a Copilot tips bulletin from a champions network: Outlook Newsletters. Subscribers and contributors are built in, and it doesn’t need to be intranet news.
- A comms team planning campaigns across channels, with sign-off and reporting: Viva Amplify, if the licence is already there or the business case covers everyone who’ll receive it.
Two checks before you send from SharePoint. A Made for email post gives every recipient the full content whether or not they could open the page, so check what’s in the post before sending it from a restricted site to a wide list. A digest works the other way: the email only links to the posts, so recipients need access to the sites those posts live on. Then decide who sends what. Nothing stops HR sending a digest, the comms team a made-for-email post and someone else an Outlook newsletter to the same people in the same week. I’d give each audience one owner and one newsletter.
Frequently asked questions
Who does a SharePoint news email come from? A Made for email post shows as sent by the post’s author, and a digest comes from whoever sends it. If it has to come from a comms address, send an email from that mailbox in Outlook with a link to the post.
Can I brand a SharePoint news digest? No. You can’t change the images, header area or summary area of the digest email. For more control over the look, use a Made for email template, which follows your post’s layout, or Outlook Newsletters templates.
Why can’t I see Email a news digest? The option sits on the See all page, and See all only shows when the site has more published posts than the News web part is set to display. Lower the number of posts shown, or publish more, and it appears. You also need edit permission on the site.
