Microsoft Viva Connections is available for free to Microsoft 365 Enterprise users.
This blog has been updated on the 22/07/2022 with more useful information.
Last year, 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.
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.
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 delivers enterprise grade features and components for Microsoft Viva Connections.
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.
View all articles by this author
