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15 February 2023
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Viva Engage is available via Microsoft Teams and Outlook as part of the Microsoft 365 software suite.
Viva Engage is seen to be the digital equivalent of a conversation in passing or a water cooler moment. While you have regular conversations with your closest colleagues, you’re less likely to chat to people in other teams. Viva Engage is designed to make those interactions easier and more common, even with hybrid working where the water cooler is a virtual concept.
It isn’t. Viva Engage is the latest addition to Microsoft’s Viva employee-experience platform. Microsoft is positioning Viva Engage as a social-community app with its roots in the Communities app for Teams.
Learn more about Microsoft Viva in our popular blog: https://www.clearpeople.com/blog/microsoft-viva-explained
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said that the company plans to take on the likes of Facebook with Viva Engage.
Workplace communication platforms have grown in importance since the pandemic, when millions began using Microsoft Teams. Hybrid work has also made work social networking more important than ever, so Microsoft is updating the way Yammer works inside Teams and Outlook.
Teams has more than 270 million monthly active users as of January 2022 and, as part of Microsoft Office, it contributes almost 23% of the company's $49 billion in quarterly revenue.
But Teams is designed for focused tasks between people who work closely together rather than general social connections. And if you want a single team for everyone in your organization, there’s a limit of 10,000 people. So, for broader social networking that relies on open conversations rather than tight-knit teamwork, there’s Yammer – and now Viva Engage. And Viva Engage may well inject more life into Teams.
Yammer has been rebranded as Viva Engage, retiring the Yammer brand. In addition, Microsoft will continue to enhance Viva Engage with new capabilities that spur leadership engagement, authentic expression, events, and knowledge discovery, including new experiences rolling out from 13th February 2023.
While Yammer will be replaced in Microsoft Teams, it will live on in web and native Yammer mobile apps. Viva Engage is intended to enhance the experience of Yammer Communities in Teams and bring new capabilities to connect people and help them find a sense of connection at work.
You could say that Yammer now contributes to employee experience more directly through Viva Engage.
Storyline posts, stories and conversations posted to Yammer will be visible in the new Viva Engage platform. Microsoft are continuing to invest in Yammer and bring its capabilities to Microsoft 365 and MS Viva.
Microsoft says it has “much more to share soon” so we're predicting they’ll roll out more Viva Engage branding.
Viva Engage has all the features you’d expect of a social media platform including news feeds, profiles, and the ability to post images and videos.
Users get a profile page, similarly to Facebook, where you can post status updates, photos and videos, just as you would on other social networks.
Viva Engage’s key features are storylines and stories that connect colleagues and let them air their thoughts, knowledge, and experiences through conversations, images, and videos.
There’s a particular emphasis on video in Viva Engage, because videos allow you to express things in your own voice and capture much richer body language and signals.
The app also features community groups where you can join people from across your company with shared interests.
Viva Engage provides a way to keep up with your colleagues without having to follow each other personally on social media platforms (which can sometimes feel a little awkward).
Viva Engage unlocks opportunities for people to connect at work, in a looser, more sociable way than purely through the work we do. For companies it’s a tool to help shape culture and connect their workforce. For employees, Viva Engage offers a new way to feel part of a community, to share their work and perspectives, and to strengthen connections to colleagues.
Watch video about Viva Engage storylines https://youtu.be/r3h7d8QQghI
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Leadership Corner
Leadership corner is a personalized space that aggregates leaders' posts and announcements across storylines, communities and employee groups so you can catch up with what's top-of-mind for your leaders. You can engage in two-way dialogue with them, share questions and ideas in Ask-Me-Anything events and participate in social campaigns to drive business initiatives.
Advanced Analytics
New analytics experiences let you understand engagement deeply. They include intuitive dashboards and activity from Yammer posts and communities, which accrue to Personal & Audience Analytics modules like personal-, audience-, campaign-, answers-, and global answers analytics.
Answers in Viva
Answers in Viva is a new space that makes it easier than ever to ask questions and get answers. Powered by Viva Topics, Answers uses AI to match questions with answers from its knowledge base and rewards experts who contribute their knowledge. In other words, Answers in Viva puts collective intelligence to work for everyone.
To use Viva Engage an organization must be licensed for Yammer. Viva Engage is therefore available at no additional cost to most Microsoft 365 customers.
Late August 2022. Rollout of the new Engage tab, which will replace the existing Communities section, will start in late August for all versions of Microsoft Teams, including web apps, desktop clients and mobile apps.
The Communities app for Teams will be rebranded Viva Engage, deployable immediately into the Teams desktop, web, and mobile apps. For existing users of the Communities app for Teams, no change will be needed from admins. Current Yammer customers will be able to deploy and pin Viva Engage on the left rail of Teams through the Teams Admin Center. Storylines will open for public preview in late August too.
Built for Microsoft 365, Atlas Digital Workplace enables better ways of working for the modern enterprise. Atlas combines a modern intranet with knowledge management, automated document management, powerful enterprise search capabilities, as well as governance and provisioning tools for Microsoft Teams.
Atlas augments Microsoft Viva and brings coherence to content scattered across Microsoft 365 and Viva. By aggregating content from multiple sources, Atlas dynamically and proactively surfaces information in the flow of work.
Download this eBook to learn everything about Microsoft Viva and why your organization needs it. It includes:
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