Teams notifications when posting news on SharePoint

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Hi @Tom Neijenhuijzen

Thank you for your detailed description. 

You could refer to Q&A Assist's suggestion firtst, this behavior is expected and is due to a recent update in Microsoft Viva Connections. SharePoint News is now integrated with Teams, and notifications are automatically sent via the Connections app when news is published, especially for users who follow the site or are closely connected to the author.  

Currently, there is no organization-wide setting to disable or control these notifications centrally.  

Reference: Disable SharePoint News notifications in Teams - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn 

To help improve the overall user experience and influence future updates, I recommend sharing your feedback through the Feedback Portal and sharing the link here. This dedicated platform allows users to provide direct insight into how specific changes impact their workflows and to suggest ideas for product improvements. If other users are experiencing similar challenges or would benefit from this feature in Viva Connections, their votes can help increase visibility and priority for the product team. 

Apologies for redirecting you to the related development team. I’d like to clarify that this is a user-to-user support forum. We are not part of Microsoft Support, and moderators don’t have backend access or the ability to directly intervene in Microsoft services. We can only provide technical guidance and best-practice recommendations based on known issues and available documentation. 

I sincerely hope the product team reviews this feedback and introduces enhancements to better manage notifications, minimizing unnecessary disruption to your organization and your workflow soon. 

I hope this helps. 

If you have any additional concerns, feel free to comment below. I would be more than happy to assist. 

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We need to turn this off organization-wide, we do not want all users to edit their own settings. Please help find a solution!

The behavior is caused by Viva Connections News notifications, which now send Teams notifications when SharePoint news is published. This is a recent change: the Viva Connections app is preinstalled for all Teams users and delivers SharePoint news notifications via Teams on desktop, web, and mobile.

Notifications are sent when, for example:

• News is published on a SharePoint team or communication site users follow.
• News is published by someone they work closely with.
• News is boosted and targeted to them.
• Someone comments on or likes a news post the author created.

There is currently no organization-wide admin setting to turn these Viva Connections notifications off or to control them centrally.

Control options available today:

1. Per-user notification settings in Teams (desktop/web)
   • Users can adjust their own Viva Connections notification preferences:
     • Go to Settings → Notifications and activity → Apps → Viva Connections.
     • Turn specific notification types on or off (for example, new news posts, likes, comments).
   • These settings are respected on Teams mobile as well.
2. Per-user notification settings in Teams mobile
   • Users cannot selectively control only Viva Connections, but can toggle all app notifications:
     • iOS: Settings → Notifications → Custom → under Notify me for → Apps on Teams.
     • Android: Settings → Notifications → Custom → under Teams – General → Apps on Teams.
   • Even if push notifications are disabled, items still appear in the Teams activity feed.
3. Audience targeting and who receives notifications
   • Notifications only go to users who:
     • Have Viva Connections installed in Teams.
     • Have Teams notifications enabled and are outside quiet hours.
     • Have access to the news post and, if audience targeting is enabled, are in the selected Microsoft 365 audience.
   • To avoid “spamming” the whole organization, configure audience targeting on news posts so only specific audiences receive notifications.

There is no way today to send a notification only for some posts and suppress it for others via a global toggle. The practical options are:

• Use audience targeting to narrow who is notified for specific posts.
• Ask users who do not want these alerts to adjust their Viva Connections notification settings in Teams.

References:

• Disable SharePoint News notifications in Teams
• Viva Connections News notifications
• Create and share news on your SharePoint sites