Blog posts

Microsoft Viva explained: in this comprehensive blog, we'll unravel Microsoft's latest employee experience platform called Microsoft Viva. Microsoft Viva is a suite of applications that integrates with Microsoft 365 to support, inspire, and empower individuals and teams. From advanced learning opportunities and insightful analytics to OKR goal setting and engaging teams with communities.

Rubbish in. Rubbish out.

Anyone involved in building or delivering search solutions, or enterprise content management more widely, will subscribe to this mantra. Which, if said in more diplomatic terms, means that if you don't have good content, how can you expect to have good outcomes? Such as high quality search results.

When considering Artificial Intelligence (AI), I think we can all agree that it fosters a wide range of discussions - from the deeply philosophical, through science-fiction to highly technical. It is a somewhat divisive topic, with a huge fanbase and an equally large number of concerned parties. Most do though meet in the middle and agree on a pragmatic stance that - if we are to have AI, we probably cannot avoid it even if we wanted to - then we need to wrap some governance or protective measures and controls around it. 

Aside from all that however, one aspect that has generally been overlooked is the rise of that I would call "Shadow AI" in organisations.

Microsoft 365 Copilot (Copilot) is developed by Microsoft and integrated into your Microsoft 365 tenant (subject to licensing and so forth), and was announced to the wider world on March 16, 2023.

When you use Copilot, you will experience it in two predominant ways.

• First, Copilot is embedded within Microsoft 365 apps such as Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Teams and more.
• Second, it is surfaced through a new app called "Business Chat".

A common question that comes up when discussing ChatGPT in the context of knowledge, document and information management, is something along the lines of: "When or how will ChatGPT be able to discover our enterprise content, such as SharePoint Pages or Documents stored in Teams and SharePoint?"

What are best practices when it comes to SharePoint document libraries? And why is it so important to get it right? 

The amazing thing about Microsoft Viva Topics is how well the AI engine is able to discover and group together lots of content from across your SharePoint Online estate. It is really quite phenomenal to see Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing in action like this and we're getting the same positive and excited reaction from our clients who are using Viva Topics.

Microsoft Loop is the new application punted to change how people collaborate with their colleagues and perform daily tasks.  

Not to be confused with Atlas Connect, which since Atlas 2.1 has changed name to Atlas ConneX, Microsoft Teams Connect has been announced at Microsoft Inspire 2021 conference to help organisations collaborate seamlessly with customers, partners, suppliers or other external parties through shared channels.

In the modern workplace, employee experience is paramount. Microsoft Viva Connections is part of the Microsoft Viva suite. This blog delves into what Viva Connections is, its key features, benefits, and how to implement it effectively in your organization.