An in-depth guide to Microsoft Viva
Article updates
October 2022
There are new Viva apps released in 2022-23! Read more in the follow-up article.
November 2021
Updated Viva Connections installation instructions and web parts
Image updates to reflect refreshed branding
License cost updates
April 2021
Viva announcement and highlights of preview features
Microsoft announced a new vision for the employee experience in February 2021 called Microsoft Viva. The Viva vision is centered on four modules that can be used and licensed independently:
Connections: Brings your SharePoint Online employee portal (intranet) into Teams with a few integrations such as Yammer communities and Stream.
Topics: Think of this as a wikipedia for your organization. It’s composed of a Topic Center in SharePoint that is built using AI (previously known as Cortex) to mine data across M365 and highlight experts and resources on “topic pages.”
Insights: Personal and organization analytics to improve performance, wellbeing and relationships at work.
Learning: A learning management system (LMS) that surfaces content from various sources.
Microsoft Viva components
Why is Microsoft investing in employee experience?
It’s timely for Microsoft to invest in the employee experience area now because of the shift to remote/hybrid work. Stats say that nearly 60% of people feel less connected to their team after shifting to remote work (Source: Microsoft Work Trend Index, 2020) and Microsoft Viva aims to help with culture, connection, productivity and growth.
Let’s dig into each component to understand what Viva is about:
Microsoft Viva Connections
Viva Connections is essentially your gateway to the employee portal/intranet. It’s not a rip and replace of an intranet, but it integrates with the one you already built on SharePoint Online. And if you don’t have an employee portal running in the cloud, now is the time to do it!
The benefit of Viva Connections is that end-users don’t need to leave Teams to access news, navigate the intranet or search:
Viva Connections, courtesy of Microsoft
Highlights
Mobile: A view for mobile users is automatically available, without intranet managers having to do any special design or setup work.
Search: The search bar changes to an intranet search
Company feed webpart: Having relevant and frequently updated news is key. Corporate Communications can curate the news for employee types and target groups of employees. This webpart will also surface news from sites that a user follows. In the future, comments and dialogue can come from Yammer.
Dashboard and other webparts: A dashboard webpart to highlight resources and tasks is built with adaptive cards, and available to configure now.
Release date
It’s available now as a Teams desktop version.
Cost
The cost is included with a Microsoft 365 enterprise license or a SharePoint license.
Microsoft Viva Topics
Have you ever needed to find a document or presentation that you KNOW exists, but you just can’t find it? Of course you have! Research from McKinsey shows that people spend over an hour a day finding or recreating information, and the problem is only getting worse. More content is created everyday, and it’s not getting classified or tagged properly to be findable down-the-road.
Viva Topics aims to tackle this problem through Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning, paired with help from knowledge managers. Topics gives you a summary of the knowledge in your organization through topic pages and identifying experts:
Viva Topics Center and example Topics page - from Gravity Union’s environment
Highlights
Topics shows up as topic pages that are managed in the Topics Center: These pages are linked to throughout the Microsoft apps – for example there are links to page in SharePoint, Teams or Word documents.
You can control where to index: There’s a setting for Global Administrators to choose all sites, or some sites, and we recommend you use this to avoid private data such as employee files showing up as topic suggestions.
Security trimming: If private data shows up, it’s security trimmed. This means that only people who have access will see the document on the topic page. Topics doesn’t use info from private systems such as email.
Assign someone to review topics: Topics supports a knowledge manager role, and we recommend assigning someone accountability to review and publish topics. Currently there isn’t an official ‘review or approval’ process, but this can be added on with Power Automate if needed.
What about the Microsoft 365 labels and terms you’ve already invested in? Integration with sensitivity labels (to exclude content from Topics) and starting a list of Topics with terms from the term store are coming soon.
Release date
It’s available for desktop now, and an app for Teams is coming later this year.
Cost
It’s an add-on to enterprise licenses for CAD $5.10 user/month (USD $4 user / month).
NEW in November 2021: Microsoft Viva Suite including all modules for CAD $11.50 user/month with a 25% discount.
Microsoft Viva Insights
Viva Insights is about managing time, relationships and wellbeing. It delivers both personal insights and insights for a larger team to use for action.
Highlights
Personal analytics: this data can help you stay on top of meetings, rescheduling meetings when there are conflicts, following up on tasks and catching up on unread threads. I’ve been using it at the end of the day to make sure I didn’t forget anything – it helps me breathe a little easier when I close my laptop.
Team and Organization analytics: Viva Insights can help answer questions such as what is the work culture like? How long do my teams spend in meetings, doing email? What is the behavior of top performers and can we learn from that? The goal is to get useful insights to improve the quality of work. Microsoft shared an example of a customer using Viva Insights to identify where salespeople spend their time. They found that the top performers spend 12 hours or more with direct customer interaction. This is used to help encourage that behaviour and focus the productivity of the sales team.
It is important to remember that this data is aggregated, and de-identified by default, meaning that data cannot be attributed to an individual. Managers see data if they have 9 or more people reporting to them.
We recommend planning the scenarios where more insight and data would help and reach out if you want help to work through a planning workshop.
Release date
The Teams Viva Insights app is available now.
Cost
“Free” tier if you have Exchange Online. This includes the Viva Insight app with personal analytics. This is what you see with the Free option:
Viva Personal Insights example
2. Add-on tier for manager insights and the organizational view. It’s an add-on to enterprise licenses for CAD $5.10 user/month (USD $4 user / month). NEW in November 2021: Microsoft Viva Suite including all modules for CAD $11.50 user/month with a 25% discount.
Microsoft Viva Learning
Viva Learning is the central hub for learning and training in Teams.
Viva Learning, courtesy of Microsoft
Highlights
The goals of Viva Learning are to bring together learning content together from across an organization, and to provide learning as chunks that fit naturally into an employee’s flow of work.
Integration: It brings together content from LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn, third-party content providers, Learning Management Systems, and a company's own content. Managers can track learning and how employees can stay on track with their learning journey. If you’re using Learning Pathways, you can surface content from SharePoint into Viva Learning.
Tracking learning: Viva Learning doesn’t have reports or analytics yet, but they are coming soon. With the paid option, managers can track course progress of people they recommend training to.
Does it replace a Learning Management System (LMS)? Not necessarily, especially if your organization is already invested in one. An LMS is still great for tracking certifications, making sure the right people are assigned to learning, and generally doing all the administration around learning. What Viva Learning brings is easier access to learning for employees from multiple sources, and employees don’t need to remember where that LMS app lives, or wait for emails to remind them of due dates of required learning. If you don’t already have an LMS, then Viva Learning is a simple entry-point into one with the basic search and discoverability features.
Release date
Viva Learning is available now.
Cost
NEW in November 2021 — there are 2 options for getting access to Viva Learning:
“Free” option if you’re already paying for Teams. This includes the app for Teams as well as access to Microsoft Learn, Microsoft 365 Training libraries and the top 125 LinkedIn Learning courses.
The add-on to enterprise licenses is CAD $5.10 user/month (USD $4 user / month). The Microsoft Viva Suite includes all modules for CAD $11.50 user/month with a 25% discount. The Viva Learning add-on includes the ability to track course progress, give learning recommendations to others, and integration with other content providers and/or your LMS.
Links to resources:
Microsoft marketing site with screenshots, videos
We hope you found this helpful! We’re excited about this bundle of employee experience capabilities, and we believe it can help all organizations, especially those that have already invested in Teams. Reach out if you want a demo and discussion about Viva.