Questions & Answers Overview
"Where do we put the FAQ?" has more than one good answer in Microsoft 365, and the right one depends on how many questions there are, who maintains them and whether employees should be able to ask. This article compares the five options that come up in practice — a modern page with collapsible sections, a list with the List web part, the classic wiki, Answers in Viva Engage and the Vitextra Questions and Answers web part — on the criteria that decide the choice.
📝 Note
The statements about Microsoft features reflect Microsoft's documentation as of 2026. Microsoft changes modern pages and Viva regularly; check the current documentation for details.
The options in brief
A modern page with collapsible sections. Each question is a section heading with the answer in a text web part below it; the sections are set to be collapsible. Everything is authored in the page editor.
A SharePoint list with the List web part. Questions and answers are items of a list, shown on a page through the built-in List web part (or as a formatted view with JSON column formatting).
The classic wiki. A wiki page library or an Enterprise Wiki site: free-form pages with links between them, edited in the classic editor.
Answers in Viva Engage. The question-and-answer community of Viva Engage: employees post questions, colleagues answer, the best answer is marked, topics organize the content. It is part of the Viva Engage Knowledge service plan, which comes with the Viva Suite rather than with Microsoft 365 alone.
Vitextra Questions and Answers. A web part that shows the items of a SharePoint list as a searchable accordion with categories, rich answers, comments and an Ask a Question button, with publishing controlled by a Published flag.
The comparison
| Page with collapsible sections | List + List web part | Classic wiki | Answers in Viva Engage | Vitextra Questions and Answers | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Where the content lives | In the page | In a list | In wiki pages | In Viva Engage | In a list on your site |
| Who edits | Page editors, in the page editor | Anyone with Edit on the list, in the list | Wiki contributors | Any employee posts; experts answer | Editors in the list; employees submit questions |
| Accordion (question → answer) | Yes, per section | No — a table or a formatted view | No | No — threads | Yes |
| Search within the FAQ | Browser find on the page | Column filters of the list web part | Site search | Viva Engage search | Search box over questions, answers and contacts |
| Categories | Headings | A column, with grouping in the view | Pages and links | Topics | A column, with grouping and filter tabs |
| Employees can ask | Via a separate form or e-mail | Only with Contribute on the list, visible immediately | No | Yes — that is the model | Yes, submitted as unpublished items |
| Moderation before publishing | Edit the page | None built in | None | Community moderation after posting | Published flag; nothing appears until an editor publishes |
| Rich answers (video, attachments, contact) | Web parts in the section | Columns, shown as text | Embedded content | Attachments and links in posts | Video player, attachment cards, detail link, live contact card |
| Comments | Page comments (for the whole page) | List comments, in the list | None | Replies | List comments per question, in the web part |
| Deep link to one question | Anchor link to the section | No | Page link | Link to the thread | ?questionId=N, highlighted and expanded |
| Scales to hundreds of questions | Poorly — one long page | Yes, with views | Yes, as pages | Yes | Yes, with paging, search and categories |
| Microsoft Teams | Page as a SharePoint tab | List as a tab | — | The Viva Engage app | Channel tab |
| Licensing | Microsoft 365 | Microsoft 365 | Microsoft 365 | Viva Suite (Viva Engage Knowledge) | Vitextra subscription per tenant |
| Maintenance effort | Grows with the page | Low | Medium | Community-driven | Low — list editing |
When a page with collapsible sections is enough
For a short, stable FAQ — ten questions about a policy, a project page's "good to know" — collapsible sections on a modern page are the simplest tool: no list, no web part, everything in the page editor, and a page anchor for each section. The limits appear with growth: no search beyond the browser's find, no categories beyond headings, editing a long page becomes slow, and employees cannot ask anything without leaving the page. When the page passes twenty questions, or when more than one person edits it, move the content into a list.
When the List web part is enough
A list keeps questions as data — sortable, filterable, exportable, editable in a grid — and the List web part shows it on a page. For an editor-facing knowledge base or a reference table (error codes and their meaning, say), that is adequate. What the List web part lacks is the reader's experience: no accordion, no full-text search box over answers, no rich answers beyond text columns, and no way to let employees ask without giving them Contribute on the list — in which case their question is visible to everybody immediately. Vitextra Questions and Answers uses the same kind of list and adds exactly these parts, so a list-based FAQ can be upgraded by connecting the web part to the existing list once the required columns exist.
When Answers in Viva Engage fits
Answers in Viva is a community rather than a curated FAQ: anybody asks, anybody answers, the best answer is voted or marked, experts earn badges, and topics tie questions together. It fits organizations that want peer-to-peer knowledge at scale and that have the Viva Suite license — Answers requires the Viva Engage Knowledge service plan, and users without it can only open threads they are mentioned in. It does not give you a curated page where an owner guarantees that the answer is correct and current; a community answer is as good as the colleague who wrote it. Many organizations use both: Viva Engage for the open questions, a curated FAQ for the official answers.
When Vitextra Questions and Answers fits
Questions and Answers is built for the curated, owned FAQ with employee input:
- content in a SharePoint list of your site — permissions, retention, versioning and reporting as for any list;
- an accordion with search over questions, answers and contacts, categories with grouping or filter tabs, paging for large bases;
- rich answers: Markdown, embedded video, attachments, a detail link and a contact person with a live profile card;
- Ask a Question for employees, with every submission arriving unpublished and an editor deciding what goes live;
- comments per question and deep links for support work;
- a channel tab in Microsoft Teams, 48 interface languages, theme and dark-mode support;
- no API permissions and no data outside your tenant.
Its limits: it works with a list on the site of the page (no cross-site FAQ in one web part), and it needs the Vitextra subscription after the 14-day trial.
Which option to choose
- Up to ~15 stable questions, one editor, no employee input → a page with collapsible sections.
- A reference table maintained by a team, readers are editors too → a list with the List web part.
- Open peer-to-peer questions across the company, Viva Suite licensed → Answers in Viva Engage.
- An official FAQ with search, categories, rich answers and employee questions reviewed before publishing — on the intranet and in Teams → Vitextra Questions and Answers.
💡 Tip
The setup of the web part takes a few minutes and all features are available during the free trial; see KB10218. How to Add and Configure the Questions and Answers Web Part. A step-by-step scenario for an intranet FAQ page is in KB10387. How to Build an Internal FAQ Page for Your Intranet with Questions and Answers.
