Microsoft Viva Engage

The Microsoft Viva suite, including Viva Learning, Viva Topics, Viva Insights, and Viva Goals, are all available through the Microsoft Teams app. The latest addition to the Viva family is Viva Engage. With Viva Learning, employees hone their skills and grow their knowledge. Viva Topics organizes expertise and knowledge, making it easily discoverable for your staff. Geared towards individual employees, Viva Insights encourages productivity balanced with self-care for one’s healthy well-being. Viva Goals improves business results by aligning teams. Viva Engage will connect people across an organization by creating communities, encouraging conversations, participating in activities like events, and sharing openly on topics ranging from personal experience to data-driven analytics. Viva Engage is a place where people in your organization can connect, share, and create a sense of belonging by creating communities with each other, regardless of their work environment, whether they are working onsite or remotely or a combination of both.

Viva Engage and Yammer: Their Relationship

The surfacing of new and existing employee-high-value experiences in Viva Engage, such as knowledge sharing, community building, self-expression, and leadership engagement, is powered by Yammer services. Being integrated into Microsoft Teams, Viva Engage also introduces Storylines and Stories, and both features will appear in the web, desktop, and mobile versions of Yammer. Users will see the same content and effectively access the same feature set whether they launch Viva Engage or Yammer.

In comparison to Yammer, there are a few features that are limited in Viva Engage:

1. Live events and other videos hosted in Microsoft Stream (Classic) do not play on iOS;
2. Settings such as Managing delegate setting and Setting your skin tone, both of which are available only in the new Yammer, are not available;
3. Viewing community files stored in the document library of SharePoint; and
4. Editing or Viewing full community info.

Viva Engage and Viva Connections: What’s the Difference?

The best way to describe Viva Connections is that it is the “home” for the Microsoft Viva suite. It is the gateway, the place for your employees to start their day, and easily and quickly catch up on organizational news, resources, and tasks. Viva Connections is a branded company app where staff can find everything they need to stay connected and complete their tasks. As the overall arcing home of Microsoft Viva, Viva Connections provides a structured, tailored, and curated experience that reflects the user’s job role and the organization’s priorities, including resources, tasks, and organizational news. Featuring content from Viva Engage and SharePoint News, Viva Connections’ feed includes announcements, storyline posts from people who staff follow, and @Mentions.

Focusing on individuals, co-workers, leaders, and communities, by connecting and engaging each other, Viva Engage is the social layer of Microsoft Viva and Microsoft 365. Viva Engage provides a space for people to socialize through conversations (and they may come onto some unexpectedly), volunteering and sharing of their expertise and knowledge, and asking questions (and these can be work-related or “get to know each other” types such as “Post a pic of your pet”), hosting and/or participating in virtual events, and most importantly, extending their work network with more in-depth interactions and engagement.

Viva Engage: What is it?

Connecting. Sharing. Belonging. Microsoft Teams Viva Engage encourages a positive, inclusive, engaging, and community-based work culture as a social platform. Viva Engage allows individuals to connect with their co-workers, leaders, and communities regardless of their physical location in the work world. By fostering a social work culture, Viva Engage enables all members of a community and network to share:

1. Questions and Answers: this is a great way to crowdsource solutions to questions being posted. Questions can be posted and pinned, replies can be voted on, and the best answers can be marked.
2. Conversations: get social! Initiate, join, and build conversations across teams and departments with pinned conversations and @Mention to draw co-workers into the dialogue.
3. Announcements: there are several announcement types, and with each announcement, team members can be kept informed and engaged as notifications will reach them through the web or on mobile.
4. Stories and Storylines: using familiar social tools like creating, uploading, sharing, and following, leaders and co-workers can create stories by sharing their thoughts, experiences, and knowledge through conversation and video for colleagues to engage and follow. Storylines will be a feed that features posts from peers along with the most popular posts across the organization and the Following feed will feature the latest posts from the people that you follow.
5. Virtual Events: staff and leaders can be brought together to have meaningful conversations with virtual Town Halls, Q&A sessions, and video presentations.
6. Topics: call in experts with @Mentions after creating and following #Topics. #Topics will assist employees in finding relevant content from company resources and learning providers.
7. Analytics: detailed insights are provided for every conversation, event, and community. These detailed insights measure engagement and activity, providing enough data to act.

Viva Engage: Setting Up

Installing Viva Engage App for Yourself in Teams

1. Open Microsoft Teams on the desktop client or the web
2. Select Apps on the left side of Microsoft Teams
3. In the Search bar, search for Viva Engage
4. Select the app for Viva Engage
5. Select Add to add the app to all your Teams clients, including the mobile app

Note: Check with your Teams admin if you do not see Viva Engage in the available apps as they may have renamed the app.

Installing Viva Engage App for Your Organization

If the Microsoft Teams admin chooses to deploy Viva Engage for specific departments, then this can be done through a Teams app setup policy. If the Microsoft Teams admin chooses to deploy for the entire organization, then they deploy and pin the app for all users.

Licensing for Viva Engage and Yammer

As Viva Engage is included in the existing Yammer license, enable Yammer users will be enabled to use Viva Engage.

Configure and Review Privacy and Security Settings in Yammer

The content in Yammer and Viva Engage is managed by the Yammer administrator. However, Privacy and security controls from Yammer are shared with Viva Engage.

Viva Engage: Customizing the Appearance in the Teams Store

For organizations that have given their network custom branding to reflect their corporate identity, Viva Engage can be customized in the Teams app store. The appearances that can be customized for Viva Engage include:

1. Accent color
2. App icons
3. App name
4. App description

The Microsoft Viva suite has provided Microsoft Teams with several apps, including Viva Learning, Viva Topics, Viva Insights, Viva Goals, and Viva Connections (the home for the suite). Now, with Viva Engage, there is a place where people in your organization can connect, share, and create a sense of belonging by creating communities with each other, regardless of their work environment, whether they are working onsite or remotely, or a combination of both.