Extending Microsoft Viva Connections with Custom Dashboards

If you've ever rolled out a new SharePoint dashboard, only to
watch your users ignore it completely, you’re not alone. What if
you could make Microsoft Viva Connections the homepage they’ll
actually use — and customize every tile, data feed, and workflow
step by step?Let’s break down how to extend Viva Connections with
SPFx web parts and adaptive card extensions, and what it really
takes to get end-user adoption.


Why Most Viva Connections Dashboards Fall Flat


If you’ve ever sunk hours into building a SharePoint homepage,
only to watch your users ignore it and go straight back to
Outlook or Teams, you’ll know exactly how underwhelming dashboard
adoption can be. It’s a pattern a lot of us recognize: leadership
gets excited, IT gets asked for a modern, all-in-one place—and
then nobody uses it. Here’s the odd part: the technology works,
the dashboard loads, the tabs point to the right places, but you
log in after week one and usage has already flatlined. It stings
a bit when you realize your “central hub” is just collecting
digital dust, right next to that abandoned OneNote section from
two years ago.The theory behind Viva Connections is promising:
one dashboard that connects your team to announcements,
resources, personalized links—right inside Teams. The reality,
though, is a little different. Even after a textbook rollout, the
adoption numbers usually fizzle after the initial push. There’s
often a mismatch between what IT thinks employees need—like a
clean announcements feed or a link to HR policies—and what staff
actually use day-to-day. For many, Teams already feels like the
only doorway they need, with files, chat, and a calendar a click
away. And if users have built their own shortcuts in Outlook or
saved links to OneDrive, why go hunting through a dashboard that
feels generic and disconnected from their real work?Disconnected
systems are one of the biggest culprits here. Every organization
has pockets of data: maybe purchase orders live in SAP, tickets
in Jira or ServiceNow, and files scattered across Teams,
SharePoint, and personal drives. The out-of-the-box Viva
Connections dashboard often stops at surfacing a few SharePoint
pages, a news web part, and some static links. It can feel like a
half-hearted attempt to glue things together that—if you’re
honest—weren’t designed to work smoothly with each other in the
first place. Generic layouts don’t help, either. Those default
square tiles give you a polished start, but if they all link out
to things your users either never visit or already have a faster
way to access, engagement drops fast. It’s like adding a fancy
new button to the coffee machine that nobody asked for.And then
there’s personalization—or the lack of it. Imagine logging in to
a dashboard and seeing the same weather widget whether you’re
working in finance, HR, or IT support. If solutions aren’t
tailored, they become invisible. After a while, employees scroll
past the dashboard because they already know there’s nothing new
or—more importantly—useful for them as individuals. One regional
sales team I worked with went live with a Viva dashboard
featuring links, company news, and an embedded Yammer
conversation. Within a month, traffic dropped to almost zero. In
their post-mortem, they found the links were all reused from a
previous SharePoint site, the news was months old, and the Yammer
thread hadn’t been updated since launch. Worse, nobody had set up
audience targeting, so sales folks in Europe saw the same content
as the back-office staff in Asia. That one-size-fits-no-one
approach made the dashboard feel irrelevant from the
start.Research backs this up: according to several digital
workplace studies, the top reasons employees avoid new platforms
aren’t visual design or a lack of training—it’s because the
content isn’t personally meaningful and the apps they actually
need are missing. IT’s focus tends to be on rolling out features,
ticking compliance boxes, and keeping the navigation organized.
But users—especially in hybrid workplaces—just want a fast way to
get to their stuff, no matter where it actually lives in the
stack. It’s easy to forget we’re not just pushing information
out; we’re competing with established habits and shortcuts built
up over years.So, how do you fix it? The trick isn’t swapping out
tiles or adding a chatbot. The real solution is to treat Viva
Connections like a system, not just another SharePoint landing
page. Every layer—navigation, permissions, data sources,
interactivity—needs to play a role and connect back to actual
business workflows. When those pieces start to work in sync,
usage doesn’t just go up, people start expecting more out of the
dashboard—they ask for new integrations, surface missing data,
and push for more automation.That’s when things get interesting.
But before you can customize, you need a dashboard that fits your
actual environment—without breaking everything else you rely on
day to day. So where do you even start when building a foundation
that doesn’t collapse under its own weight?


Building the Foundation: Setting Up a Dashboard that Fits Your
Ecosystem


Ever tried flipping on a fancy new Teams app—only to kick off a
SharePoint permission nightmare, or watch a different app break
in the background? Rolling out Viva Connections isn’t much
different. It’s never just a click-and-go. If you try to layer a
dashboard on top of messy, overlapping M365 workflows, you’re
almost guaranteed headaches—and worse, user complaints. Let’s be
honest: most of us don’t get to start with a blank slate.
Instead, your organization’s M365 setup is already packed with
legacy site collections, random permission groups, and maybe a
few half-baked intranet projects “pending migration” for the last
six months.Plugging Viva Connections into that reality can feel
less like opening a new app, and more like coming home to fix a
leaky pipe—while the rest of the family is in the kitchen making
breakfast. You can’t just bulldoze whatever’s already there. Even
something as basic as enabling the dashboard can ripple out:
restructure your SharePoint navigation and suddenly links break
for one team; add a custom web part and the load time for mobile
users starts creeping up; adjust audience targeting, and you
accidentally hide HR forms from the Finance group for a week.
These are the things nobody puts in the demo videos, but they’re
the reason half of these projects never get past the “pilot”
stage.Think of it like kitchen renovation while the house is
still full. The dashboard is your new countertop—shiny and
promising but only useful if the sink, cabinets, and oven still
line up and work when you’re done. You can’t move the fridge to
another room just because the tile looks nicer; everything still
needs to fit around the way people actually cook. The same goes
for setting up Viva Connections. If you drop the dashboard in
without thinking through what else is in the “digital kitchen,”
you’re just shifting messes around instead of solving them.A team
I worked with in healthcare tried going live with Viva
Connections out of the box—same navigation for everyone, basic
permissions copied over from SharePoint, and no real mapping to
what staff did day-to-day. Adoption just crawled. Then, instead
of guessing what users might want, they asked each department
manager to choose the four business apps or resources their teams
actually used. Suddenly, the Finance team saw links to expense
claims, the nursing staff had shift schedules on their front
page, and IT support could surface their ticket status directly
on the dashboard. Usage didn’t just rise—it kept climbing six
months later. The key? The dashboard wasn’t a fixed poster; it
was a window into actual business processes. The layout changed
as the needs changed. People noticed because those tiles finally
gave them a shortcut to something they’d otherwise have to dig
around for—no more ten-click journeys just to file paperwork.But
to get there, you really have to nail the basics. Start by
sorting out your site structure. If News lives in ten different
sites or you’ve got duplicate pages everywhere, users will end up
with broken links or mismatched branding. Audience targeting
isn’t just a “nice to have”—it means you can surface a dashboard
experience tailored even across roles or geographies, instead of
forcing everyone to scroll through irrelevant content.
Permissions? Get those wrong, and you’ll either lock out the very
people you’re trying to help, or worse, open the door to
sensitive data without meaning to. Don’t leave governance to the
last minute—it’s cheaper to get policies right now than to
rebuild things at scale after six months of confused access
requests.And don’t forget the one sticking point that trips up
even the savviest admins: everything you build for desktop needs
just as much attention on mobile. The Viva Connections app inside
Teams isn’t just a shrunken version of your SharePoint dashboard.
Visual layouts, navigation, and even security behave differently
when users flip from laptop to phone. A tile that fits neatly on
the web can overflow or break on mobile, and things like adaptive
cards or custom web parts might perform flawlessly in a browser
but sluggishly—or not at all—on an iPhone. Testing both sides is
slow but saves support tickets later.When you get that foundation
right, something shifts. Instead of complaints about needless
dashboards, you start to hear requests for more integrations or
questions about advanced functionality. Users notice when things
actually work. A dashboard that’s woven into the flow of work
becomes more than a digital roadmap—it’s the launchpad for custom
features and real productivity gains, without tearing up your
existing systems in the process.So, with the build-out solid and
the ecosystem mapped, you’re ready to try something with more
horsepower than just link tiles. Custom web parts and new
data-driven components open the next chapter. Let’s see how deep
you can go when you unlock the full power of your dashboard.


Unlocking Custom Power: SPFx Web Parts for Data and Interaction


You’ve seen them—those dashboards with the same row of impersonal
tiles: company news, a static policy link, maybe a weather widget
nobody ever checks. It’s a familiar sight, and it’s a big reason
users glaze over when they open Viva Connections. But you don’t
have to settle for generics. With the SharePoint Framework—SPFx
for short—you can actually surface the real data your team relies
on every day, build interactive forms right into the dashboard,
and visualize information in a way that gets people’s attention.
That’s where things start to feel less like a static homepage and
more like an actual productivity tool.SPFx is Microsoft’s
development model for building custom web parts, which means you
can pull in live reports, connect to business systems, or spin up
forms users can complete directly from their homepage. Out of the
box, you get a starter kit of basic tiles, but with SPFx, you
unlock the option to make those tiles do real work. Suppose your
operations team tracks safety incidents and needs
up-to-the-minute numbers. Sure, you could email spreadsheets
around, but why not surface an incident tracker right inside
Viva? That’s exactly what one facilities team did—they built an
SPFx web part that pulled incident data from an underlying list,
gave colored indicators for escalations, and let managers submit
new reports in the same workflow. The dashboard stop being an
ignored noticeboard—it became the first tool employees checked
every morning.Of course, getting started with SPFx isn’t as
simple as hitting “install.” You need to spin up the right
development environment: Node.js at the right version, Yeoman
generator, and the SharePoint Workbench for local testing.
There’s a particular kind of pain that comes from missing a
version dependency after you thought everything was ready, but it
does force you to keep things up to date. Once the environment is
sorted, scaffolding your web part is straightforward if you’re
used to React or similar frameworks—but hiccups are common your
first time out. Maybe your authentication fails, or CORS blocks a
third-party API you want to call. Packaging and deploying is
another spot where snags pop up—especially if you’re moving from
test to production and run into governance or permissions
mismatches. It sounds nitpicky, but these roadblocks add up. If
you skip over them, your sleek new tile might never leave the dev
tenant.Building for Viva Connections also means thinking about
more than just the web browser. The Teams mobile client handles
things differently. A grid layout with five tiles that looks
clean on a laptop might jam up on a phone, forcing users to
scroll endlessly or, worse, lose functionality completely.
Consider how forms present or how much data you ask to load up
front—what’s snappy on desktop can lag on mobile, especially over
flaky Wi-Fi. The facilities team that rolled out their incident
tracker learned just how much it matters: everything clicked in
the desktop demo, but the mobile version rendered half the text
off-screen and slowed to a crawl any time someone uploaded an
image. That kind of “small stuff” is the difference between a
hero tile and another support ticket.Then there’s security. SPFx
gives you the tools to call Microsoft Graph, talk to internal
APIs, or hook into external data—provided you mind your
permissions. Roll out a web part that surfaces sensitive data,
and suddenly, the wrong audience could see information they’re
not cleared for. On top of that, deploying custom web parts means
keeping an eye on performance. Every extra API call or heavy
visual can drag your dashboard’s load times, which is exactly the
kind of thing that makes users sidestep the dashboard altogether.
A finance team I worked with once deployed an SPFx chart plugged
into a legacy reporting system; it pulled so much data so fast
that every user noticed lag, and IT quickly yanked it back for a
revamp.If you want the dashboard to stay relevant, don’t drop in
every possible feature. Focus the custom web parts on workflows
and data people need almost every day—think ticket status,
approval requests, or KPI summaries. The visual impact can be
dramatic: a before-and-after look at a retail group’s dashboard
showed a transformation from nine bland links to three
interactive charts, a supply order form, and live queue status
for stores. Adoption tracked almost perfectly with the change.
Users logged in more often and actually interacted with the
dashboard, not just glanced at it.But sometimes your data lives
outside Microsoft 365, or you need to bridge systems Viva wasn’t
designed for. That’s where Adaptive Card Extensions come in,
letting you pull in information from far beyond SharePoint alone.


Connecting the Dots: Adaptive Card Extensions and External
Integrations


Getting data from outside your Microsoft 365 environment onto a
Viva Connections dashboard is a bit like updating your house with
smart technology—except half the devices speak different
languages and the user manual is missing pages. This is where
Adaptive Card Extensions, or ACEs, can pull weight. Suddenly, the
dashboard isn’t fenced in by SharePoint; it becomes an actual
command center that surfaces live feeds from tools your teams
check constantly, like ticketing or project management systems.
But the shine wears off fast if connection issues or clunky
logins remind users why they used to go straight to the source
instead.Say your company manages support tickets in Jira or
ServiceNow. It’s not uncommon for IT or customer service to live
in those apps, while the rest of the business barely acknowledges
them. Linking those worlds is where ACEs can actually change
daily flow. With an ACE, you can embed open tickets, show status
updates, and push critical alerts right onto the Viva Connections
homepage. For example, a support manager wants to see unassigned
high-priority tickets across all teams in a single glance, so
they set up an ACE that queries Jira, pulls filtered data, and
presents it inside a card. No more shuffling between browser tabs
or missing escalations because no one saw the email in their
cluttered inbox; now, the information sits exactly where work
already happens.It sounds ideal, but the process isn’t
plug-and-play. First, you need to set up the ACE itself—this
involves using the SPFx extension generator, configuring card
views, and handling data retrieval with whatever APIs your
external systems expose. Here’s where the fun starts: external
APIs change endpoints, alter authentication methods, or impose
strict limits on data calls, all of which can break your
carefully crafted card with little warning. And while Microsoft
Graph is predictable if you’re deep in M365, systems like Jira
often use OAuth 2.0 or other custom methods, so you’ll end up
wrangling access tokens, refresh cycles, and consent prompts.
It’s not just coding—it’s ongoing API relationship
maintenance.Let’s talk authentication for a minute, because it’s
the linchpin for why ACEs succeed or quietly fail. Service
accounts seem convenient, but security teams usually clamp down
and require tighter controls. So you configure user-delegated
auth, only to be hit with pop-up consent requests or permission
scopes that users ignore or misunderstand. A finance group
rolling out a ServiceNow ACE hit this wall: after three days,
half their team stopped using the dashboard because
authentication expired in the background and cards stopped
updating. What finally worked was a mix of single sign-on and
proactive guidance—basically, walking users through a one-time
login the first time the dashboard loaded and embedding a status
message if authentication failed. It wasn’t a work of art, but
suddenly cards were populated again.Device compatibility is
another silent saboteur. You get everything running, demo looks
crisp on desktop, but then your VP opens Teams on their phone and
half the card text is missing or images don’t render. ACEs use
adaptive cards, which are meant to resize, but the Teams mobile
client has a few quirks—like ignoring some layouts or timing out
data loads. Sometimes, it’s about small details, like text sizes
or button spacing, but other times entire card actions can
disappear. You end up switching between devices, tweaking JSON
payloads and layout settings, and occasionally shipping
mobile-specific variations to avoid a support nightmare.Where
ACEs really click is when they don’t just display a static feed,
but become entry points to business processes—opening ticket
details, triggering approvals, or linking directly into deeper
workflows. They’re not just widgets scrolled past on the
homepage; they’re how people move work along without context
switching. When deployed carefully, ACEs are woven right into the
flow, and adoption numbers spike because employees see their
world represented.Troubleshooting does not vanish with ACEs in
play. APIs can slow or change, integrations break during updates,
or users lose permissions. Best practices here become
vital—handle error states gracefully, keep users informed with
fallback messaging, and always monitor authentication for silent
failures. It’s less about a perfect launch, more about continuous
adjustment. Because when it works, ACEs can turn your dashboard
from a nice-to-have into an essential window on daily operations
that actually gets used.So what happens when those custom web
parts, ACEs, and foundational work all operate together in one
dashboard? That’s the moment where things finally start to feel
like the digital workspace everyone was promised.


Conclusion


If you stop treating Viva Connections as just another SharePoint
landing page and instead treat it as something living that
adapts, the whole idea of a digital workspace starts to make
sense. Dashboards land differently when every component links
back to real workflows and daily pain points. So here’s a
challenge: what’s the one custom tile or integration your users
keep asking for, but you’ve never tried building? Even one
thoughtful addition can shift adoption. If you want more ideas
grounded in actual Microsoft 365 rollouts, be sure to hit
subscribe—there’s always another puzzle just around the corner.


Get full access to M365 Show - Microsoft 365 Digital Workplace
Daily at m365.show/subscribe