A practical comparison of the ways to run a forum in Microsoft 365: the classic SharePoint Discussion Board, Viva Engage communities, Microsoft Teams channels and the Vitextra Discussions web part - modern pages, permissions and guests, reply threads, best answer, notifications, moderation, compliance, availability by cloud and licensing, with guidance on when each one fits.
One-page guide for employees using the Vitextra Discussions board in SharePoint Online or Microsoft Teams: the topic list and its views (Recent, Unanswered, Answered, Featured, My topics), filtering by category and search, opening a topic, starting a new topic, replying, liking, following a board or a topic, and what your SharePoint permissions let you do.
Vitextra Discussions is a discussion board and Q&A forum for modern SharePoint Online pages and Microsoft Teams. Learn what the two web parts do, how boards, topics and threaded replies work, where the data is stored, which permissions apply, and how the trial and licensing work.
How to follow a board or a topic in Vitextra Discussions: the Follow button and its menu, the Immediately, Daily digest and Weekly digest frequencies, automatic subscription of topic authors, unfollowing, what each kind of subscription delivers, where subscriptions are stored (the Discussions Subscriptions list) and the role of the Power Automate flow.
How to format topics and replies in Vitextra Discussions: the toolbar buttons and keyboard shortcuts, links, quotes and code blocks, inserting images by button, paste or drag-and-drop (10 MB limit, stored in the Discussions Assets library), what happens to pasted content, and exactly which HTML tags and attributes the sanitizer keeps.
Step-by-step guide to adding the Vitextra Discussions web part to a modern SharePoint Online page, creating or selecting a board on first run, understanding the lists created on the site, and tuning the default view, paging, categories, counters and search in the property pane.
Step-by-step guide to using Vitextra Discussions as a tab in a Microsoft Teams channel: publishing the app from the SharePoint App Catalog, adding the tab, creating or selecting a board on the team's SharePoint site, configuring the tab, how permissions, approval and deep links behave in Teams, and what to check if the tab is empty.
Step-by-step scenario for an IT help desk or HR question-and-answer forum on a SharePoint Online intranet with the Vitextra Discussions web part: a board in Q&A mode with categories, the Unanswered view as the default, experts following the board, marking the best answer, pinned and locked topics, moderation, and the Discussions Activity web part on the home page.
Step-by-step scenario for a community of practice or a course forum on SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams with the Vitextra Discussions web part: a board in mixed mode with discussions and questions, approval of new posts by the instructor, pinned and locked rules topics, code blocks and images in replies, the moderation queue, @mentions and the weekly digest.
How the Vitextra Discussions web part counts likes, views and replies: where each counter is shown in the topic list, the topic page and the Discussions Activity web part, who can like a topic or a reply, when a view is counted, how pending and deleted replies affect the reply counter, what moves a topic to the top of the Recent view, what readers without write permission see, why a counter may lag and which list columns hold the numbers.
How the best answer works in question topics on a Vitextra Discussions board: who can click Mark as answer (the author of the question or a moderator), how the accepted answer is pinned to the top of the thread, what the Answered and Unanswered states and views mean, how to change or remove the mark, what happens when the accepted reply is deleted, and how locked questions keep their Answered state.
Reference for site owners and administrators on how the Vitextra Discussions web part maps SharePoint site permissions to what users can do: readers with Read, members with Add Items (Contribute / Edit) who post, reply, like, follow and report, and moderators with Manage Lists who approve, pin, feature, lock and delete. Covers guests, the default Members group, the visibility rule for pending posts and unique permissions on the Discussions lists.