Social Squared – The SharePoint Discussion Board Tool for SharePoint & Microsoft Teams
WHY CHOOSE SOCIAL SQUARED?
Social Squared makes it simple to add a rich, forum-style discussion board to your SharePoint sites or Microsoft Teams channels. Unlike chat-based tools that lose context over time, Social Squared provides structured, searchable, and moderated discussions—perfect for knowledge sharing, Q&A, and community engagement. Users can participate without leaving the platforms they already use every day.
With Social Squared, you can:
- Create dedicated discussion forums inside SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams
- Organise conversations with categories, forums, and threaded replies
- Empower moderators with permissions, post approvals, and reporting tools
- Maintain focus with topic subscriptions, notifications, and tagging
- Enhance engagement with rich text, images, videos, and file attachments
Built for SharePoint & Microsoft Teams
Whether you deploy Social Squared as a SharePoint discussion board tool or as a Microsoft Teams app, your users enjoy the same powerful forum features in a consistent interface. It’s ideal for enterprise communities, project teams, learning hubs, and any group that benefits from persistent, well-organised conversations. Social Squared integrates natively with Microsoft 365, ensuring secure data storage and compliance within your existing environment.
Social Squared is a powerful discussion board tool designed to enhance collaboration within SharePoint and Microsoft Teams. It offers a range of features that facilitate structured, forum-style discussions, including topic categorization, customizable forums, and rich text formatting to ensure clear and effective communication. Users can subscribe to forums and topics to receive notifications of new posts, while moderation tools allow administrators to manage content and maintain a productive discussion environment. With advanced search capabilities, Social Squared makes it easy to find relevant conversations and past discussions, fostering a centralized knowledge base within your organization. Additionally, features like user polls, tagging, and analytics provide deeper insights into user engagement and participation trends.
- Structured Discussions: Supports forum-style, topic-based discussions for organized communication.
- Customizable Forums: Allows for the creation of multiple forums and topics to suit various needs.
- Rich Text Formatting: Enables clear and effective communication with formatting options for posts.
- Notifications and Subscriptions: Users can subscribe to forums and topics to receive updates on new posts.
- Moderation Tools: Provides administrators with the ability to moderate content and manage discussions.
- Advanced Search: Easily find and reference past conversations and discussions.
- User Polls and Tagging: Engages users with interactive polls and tagging for better content organization.
- Analytics and Insights: Offers reporting features to analyze user engagement and participation trends.
Social Squared is a SharePoint Framework (SPFx) solution designed to seamlessly integrate with your Microsoft 365 environment. It leverages SharePoint lists as its data repository, ensuring that all discussion data is securely stored within your own Microsoft 365 tenant. This design not only provides a robust and scalable discussion board experience directly within SharePoint and Microsoft Teams but also guarantees that no data leaves your organization’s secure environment. By utilizing the familiar SharePoint list infrastructure, Social Squared offers easy data management, compliance with organizational policies, and efficient performance, all while maintaining the integrity and security of your data within your Microsoft 365 tenant.
Discover how Social Squared can bring structure, moderation, and searchability to your discussions.
Social Squared’s SharePoint discussion board tool lets you create Forum Groups that keep conversations organised and relevant to each audience. In this example, a fictional travel company uses Forum Groups to separate topic discussions, making it easy for employees to find and contribute to the right conversations:
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Flight Operations – Share updates, procedures, and flight coordination details.
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Cabin Crew Connect – Create a space for cabin crew to exchange ideas, tips, and shift updates.
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Ground & Ramp Crew – Discuss ground operations, logistics, and safety procedures.
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Training & Career – Post training resources, career advice, and development opportunities.
By grouping related topics, Social Squared helps your SharePoint discussion board tool stay structured, searchable, and easy to navigate—whether it’s in SharePoint Online or Microsoft Teams.
Manage and Engage with Topics in Your SharePoint Discussion Board Tool
Inside each forum in the SharePoint discussion board tool, users can easily view and interact with all the topics relevant to that space. From here, you can add new topics to start a discussion, read existing topics to stay informed, and subscribe to the forum to receive notifications when new content is posted. Built-in sorting and search tools make it simple to find the conversations that matter most—ensuring discussions remain organised, accessible, and engaging within both SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams.
Inside a topic, Social Squared provides a threaded discussion experience that keeps conversations organised and easy to follow. Users can:
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Reply directly to posts to maintain context in discussions.
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Vote on helpful replies to highlight valuable contributions.
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Mark posts as answered so others can quickly find solutions.
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Rate topics to indicate usefulness or popularity.
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Sort and filter replies to focus on the most relevant information.
For moderators, the SharePoint discussion board tool offers advanced management capabilities:
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Delete topics that are no longer needed.
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Move topics to another forum for better organisation.
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Lock topics to prevent further replies.
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Mark topics as sticky to keep important discussions visible.
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And more—ensuring forums remain structured, on-topic, and engaging for all participants.
With Social Squared, every topic becomes a well-managed, collaborative space—whether in SharePoint Online or Microsoft Teams.
Register for our next Social Squared webinar…
Creating a New Topic in Your SharePoint Discussion Board Tool
Starting a conversation in Social Squared is quick, intuitive, and flexible—whether you’re using it in SharePoint Online or Microsoft Teams. When creating a new topic, you can:
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Enter a Subject that clearly summarises your discussion.
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Write your Body content with rich text formatting, including headings, bullet points, and hyperlinks.
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Embed images directly into the post to provide visual context.
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Choose to post anonymously (optional) for open and honest discussions.
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Tag topics to improve searchability and organisation.
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Attach files such as documents, PDFs, or presentations.
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Use speech-to-text for hands-free topic creation.
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Create polls to gather quick feedback or vote on decisions.
These features make it easy to start meaningful, well-organised discussions that are both engaging and easy to follow—enhancing the value of your SharePoint discussion board tool for communities, project teams, and enterprise-wide collaboration.
Social Squared makes it easy to locate the discussions and answers you’re looking for—whether you have a few topics or thousands. Built into the SharePoint discussion board tool are powerful discovery features that save time and keep users engaged:
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Search – Instantly find topics, posts, or keywords across all forums with fast, accurate results.
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Forum Navigation – Browse by forum group, category, or recent activity to quickly reach relevant discussions.
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Tag Cloud – Visualise popular topics and click on tags to see all related discussions in one place.
These tools ensure your SharePoint discussion board tool remains organised, searchable, and user-friendly, so your team can focus on collaborating instead of hunting for information—whether you’re using Social Squared in SharePoint Online or Microsoft Teams.
All forum data resides securely in SharePoint lists within your SharePoint site. Content is protected by your existing SharePoint permissions, and all authentication is handled via Microsoft 365 for enterprise-grade security.
Social Squared is developed as a SharePoint Framework (SPFx) web part, ensuring seamless integration with SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams without external data dependencies.
Yes. By setting the Alternate Content Source option and specifying an alternate URL, you can display forums and their content across more than one site—making it easy for different departments or teams to collaborate in a shared discussion space.
Absolutely. You can connect the underlying SharePoint list data to Power BI for advanced analytics or use our Data Viewer Web Part to create charts, dashboards, and visual reports directly inside SharePoint.
Yes. Social Squared is fully compatible with Microsoft Teams, allowing you to add it as a Teams tab and interact with your forums without leaving the Teams environment.
Yes. You can surface forum activity through Adaptive Cards, making it easy to present updates and interactions in places like the Viva Connections Dashboard.
Yes. Social Squared is fully responsive and works seamlessly across desktop, tablet, and mobile devices, so users can stay connected wherever they are.
Viva Engage is designed for broad, social networking-style conversations. Social Squared, on the other hand, provides structured forum groups with categories, threaded replies, and moderation—ideal for knowledge management and organised team discussions.
Yes. Moderators have full control over discussions, including the ability to approve posts, move topics between forums, lock or delete threads, and mark topics as sticky to keep important information visible.