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In 2021, Microsoft announced that Microsoft Viva Connections was available for free to Microsoft 365 Enterprise users.
Microsoft Viva was introduced as the employee experience platform integrated within Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Viva includes four modules: Viva Connections, Viva Insights, Viva Learning, and Viva Topics.
At ClearPeople, we have patiently been waiting for the launch of Microsoft Viva Connections to deliver an even better experience of Atlas. Together Microsoft Viva and Atlas empower people and teams to achieve even more through enhanced employee experience and by encouraging knowledge-based relationships.
Microsoft Viva Connections is your gateway to a modern employee experience. It gives you a curated, company-branded experience that brings together relevant news, conversations, and other resources. Viva Connections will be available for free for any employee in the organisation with a SharePoint license. The desktop experience for Viva Connections will rollout soon and is available by the end of March. Users need to wait a bit longer for the mobile experience for Viva Connections, which will be available in Teams this summer.
What Is Microsoft Viva Connections?
Microsoft Viva Connections is a framework through which you can deliver your intranet. Employees can access internal communications and company resources like policies and benefits and participate in communities like employee resource groups, all from a single customisable app in Microsoft Teams.
Today more and more employees are using Microsoft Teams as their primary place to communicate and collaborate with colleagues. Viva Connections is a way of delivering content even if employees don't log into SharePoint daily.
Get the most from your SharePoint intranet. If people are spending more time in Teams, it might mean they could miss important company news or updates. By bringing the content from your SharePoint intranet into Microsoft Viva Connections, you create a rich, personalised employee experience.
Employee Engagement. By bringing company communications and news into Teams, Microsoft is aiming to address engagement challenges.
More mobile friendly. No matter what your role is in the company - a frontline worker or an information worker - Microsoft Viva Connections offers a streamlined experience for tackling important tasks from your mobile.
Company Branding: Tailor the appearance and user interface to reflect your brand's identity.
Dashboard: A customized dashboard of relevant news, resources, and discussion.
Built on Microsoft 365: Integrates information from SharePoint, Viva Engage, and Stream.
Dashboard: The dashboard is your employee’s digital toolset. It brings together the tools your employees need, enabling quick and easy access whether they are in the office or in the field by using cards that represent different tasks and functions. Cards on the dashboard can be filtered to the most relevant audience and are designed to drive action and engagement for the people using them. For example, cards that help users clock into a shift, approve an expense report, or submit a ticket to the IT helpdesk. There is a library of existing cards that require little setup, a growing list of third-party cards, and the ability to use the SharePoint Framework (SPFx) to build custom cards.
Feed: The feed delivers updates to the right people at the right time. It’s tightly integrated with Viva Engage, SharePoint news, and Stream to display a personalized feed, based on news post-level targeting of the groups that employees belong to.
Resources: The resources experience enables way finding across platforms to popular destinations. Navigational links in resources can be targeted to specific audience to ensure content is relevant and discoverable. Content in the Frequent sites and Followed sites columns are dynamically generated to display links unique to the individual viewer.
By providing a centralized hub for communication and resources, Viva Connections helps keep employees engaged and connected to the organization. Engaged employees are more productive, motivated, and likely to stay with the company.
Viva Connections streamlines communication by consolidating company news, announcements, and resources in one place. This ensures that employees receive timely and relevant information without having to navigate multiple platforms.
With social features and personalized content, Viva Connections fosters a sense of community and belonging. This helps strengthen company culture, which is critical for employee satisfaction and retention.
By making it easy for employees to find the information and tools they need, Viva Connections reduces time spent searching for resources. This leads to increased productivity and efficiency across the organization.
There is no additional cost for Viva Connections. The application is free and does not require additional premium licenses. However, it does require SharePoint Online licenses.
The Microsoft Viva Connections Teams app was released in April 2021 for general availability worldwide.
The Microsoft Viva Connections template can be downloaded directly from Microsoft's website.
However. before you download the package, we recommend that you review the step-by-step guide to setting up Viva Connections.
Microsoft Viva Connections for desktop is not yet supported in the Teams mobile app. Only modern SharePoint sites and pages can be viewed in Teams. All other content will open in a browser. Some functionality is not available for SharePoint pages viewed in Microsoft Teams, such as social gestures, comments on a page as well as the ability to add an event automatically to an Outlook calendar.
The summer update for the desktop experience focused on improvements for IT administrators and deployment enhancements.
Latest updates include:
No. For Microsoft Viva Connections to work well, you're still going to need a SharePoint intranet with appropriate sites and good information management.
We have recently expanded the Atlas delivery experience through Viva Connections and will enrich this further through the Viva Connections dashboard.
Please note that if you are exploring Microsoft Viva as a solution for your business, this not a “plug and play” solution. Approaches and management of governance, taxonomy, content, adoption and more need to be defined and implemented. That is why Atlas compliments Microsoft Viva in so many ways.
Atlas is a leading knowledge management and digital workplace platform that helps organizations harness their collective intelligence. By providing advanced search capabilities, intelligent content recommendations, and seamless integration with Microsoft 365, Atlas makes it easier for employees to find, share, and collaborate on information.
1. Enhanced knowledge management
Atlas uses Viva Connections to create a centralized hub where all organizational knowledge is easily accessible. Employees can quickly find documents, policies, and other critical resources, reducing time spent searching for information and increasing productivity.
2. Advanced search capabilities
Atlas provides a unified search experience across all your digital workplace content and tools. Employees can search for content across Teams, SharePoint, and other integrated systems from a single interface, simplifying their workflow.
3. Provides governance and automation
With powerful governance functionality for creating, managing and maintaining workspaces, Atlas enables employees to self-serve, freeing up your internal IT team.
4. Extends Generative AI and Microsoft Copilot to all employees
Atlas enables employees to tap into the most credible sources of enterprise knowledge through a variety of copilot experiences.
Gabriel is Co-Founder of ClearPeople, responsible for the overall technical and Atlas Intelligent Knowledge Platform vision. He works closely with colleagues at Microsoft on roadmap alignment and innovative Content AI Services programs such as Microsoft Viva Topics and SharePoint Premium (previously known as Syntex). Gabriel was part of Microsoft's partner program for Project Cortex.
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