This document provides a summary of a Microsoft 365 community collaboration conference session on Microsoft Viva Essentials presented by Chirag Patel MVP MCT on October 5th, 2022. The session will introduce Microsoft Viva, the employee experience platform, and cover Viva Connections, Viva Topics, Viva Insights, and Viva Learning in under 45 minutes. It includes an agenda with the speaker's background and information about Microsoft Viva modules.
1. BLETCHLEY
PARK 2022
A Microsoft 365 Community
COLLABORATION CONFERENCE
Wednesday, 5th October 2022
Microsoft Viva
Essentials
in 45 minutes!
Chirag Patel MVP MCT 05 October 2022
2. • H U S B A N D
• FAT H E R
• B U S I N E S S O W N E R
• T E C H N O LO G Y S P E C I A L I S T
• C O N S U LTA N T
• A RC H I T E C T
• T R A I N E R
• S P E A K E R
• E V E N T O RG A N I S E R
• V O LU N T E E R
Chirag Patel
techchirag.com
@techchirag
3. Microsoft Viva: Employee Experience Platform (EXP)
For your organisation to thrive new tools are required to help people and teams reach their
potential with communications, knowledge, learning, resources, and insights.
4. Microsoft Viva: Employee Experience Platform (EXP)
For your organisation to thrive new tools are required to help people and teams reach their
potential with communications, knowledge, learning, resources, and insights.
• Hold on… but I already have
enough tools to do my job!
5. Microsoft Viva: Employee Experience Platform (EXP)
For your organisation to thrive new tools are required to help people and teams reach their potential with
communications, knowledge, learning, resources, and insights.
Employee
Company Resources
Employee Portals and Apps
Workplace Services (pay, benefits, IT,
legal, compliance)
Knowledge
People & Experts
Documents & Content
Projects
Communities
Diversity & Inclusion
Interest groups
Team cohesion
Wellbeing
Physical, Mental,
Emotional, Financial
Growth & Development
Learning & Coaching
Recruiting, On-boarding & Career
Talent & Performance Development
Communications
Announcements, News, Events
Insights
Analytics, Nudges, Surveys
Feedback, Sentiment
6. How is Microsoft Viva delivered?
Microsoft Viva
Viva
Connections
Connect people
Empower
employees
Viva Topics
Turn content
into knowledge
Curate topics
Improve
discovery
Viva Insights
Personal
insights
Manager and
leader insights
Advanced
insights
Viva Learning
Social learning
Personalised
development
Content
discovery
Viva Goals
Stay aligned at
scale
Focus teams on
impact
See goals in the
flow of everyday
work
Viva Engage
Build
communities
Share
knowledge
Encourage self-
expression
11. Curated and tailored experiences
Capability Name Curated vs. Tailored How
Home site Curated
Author controls layout, web parts, and audience targeting
of content.
Dashboard Curated
Author selects cards to show and uses AAD groups to
target them to specific audiences.
Feed Tailored
Content is automatically prioritised and displayed based on
signals associated with content from SharePoint and
Yammer posts.
Resources Curated
Using AAD groups, menu items in the global navigation can
be targeted to specific audiences.
12. Working with Connections Dashboard
• Viva Connections Dashboard is
available on the desktop as a web
part.
• This web part can be integrated
into a SharePoint Home site, which
then is exposed as part of the Viva
Connections for Desktop
experience in Teams.
13. Extending Microsoft Viva Connections
Web Parts
• HTML widgets
• Place web parts in the
content area of pages
• Configure them to their
needs.
Application Customisers
• Inject HTML and JavaScript
ion a SharePoint page
• Typically, header or footer
• Run background code
Adaptive Card Extensions
(ACEs)
• Similar to web parts but use
Adaptive Cards
• Works through a
connections dashboard
• Target to a specific users
group for relevance
15. Viva Topics: Connect with knowledge &
expertise
Turn content into usable knowledge
Use AI to reason over your organisation’s content and
automatically identify, process, and organise it into
easily accessible knowledge
Organise knowledge into topic pages
Enable your organisation’s experts to share and refine
knowledge through curated topic pages,
automatically generated and updated by AI
Make knowledge easy to discover and use
Deliver relevant topic cards in the apps people use
everyday
16. What is Microsoft Viva Topics?
Topic is a phrase or term for a specific meaning to the organisation, and has resources
related to it to help people understand what it is and find more information about it.
Different types of topics will be important to your organisation.
Initially, the types of topics identified are:
• Project
• Event
• Organisation
• Location
• Product
• Creative work
• Field of study
Viva Topics looks to identify the following properties and
display them on a Topic page:
• Alternate names and/or acronyms.
• A short description of the topic.
• People who might be knowledgeable about the topic.
• Files, pages, and sites related to the topic.
17. Organising people & knowledge
Topic identification
AI identifies knowledge and
people and automatically
organises them into related
topics.
Topic curation
Subject matter experts refine topics
through topic pages and AI learns
from your input.
Topic discovery
Discover knowledge in the apps you
use every day through topic cards. You
can also discover topics in Microsoft
Search.
18. Building blocks of Viva Topics
Topic cards - provide a quick
snapshot of the expertise and
content related to a specific
project or topic. Topic cards
appear automatically when a topic
is detected, giving you a
description, experts, resources,
and additional information.
Hover over a topic - when Viva
Topic identifies a topic to view the
topic card; written by AI, it
supports more curation by your
experts. Topics make it easier to
find people based on skills,
projects, and expertise. When you
search for a topic, you'll see a list
of people who added the topic to
their profile.
Topics - is shown in people cards
across Microsoft 365, helping you
identify who's working on what
inside your organization – tailored
by your existing access and
permissions.
Topic pages - roll up into your
Topic centre for a personalized
view of relevant knowledge across
your organisation, including
trending relevant topics and open
questions; users can more easily
discover content, expertise, and
topics related to their work or
interests.
Topic centre - supplies more web
components to integrate
knowledge and training from
around your organisation. These
custom Topic centres are built with
and integrate seamlessly into your
SharePoint.
19. Building blocks of Viva Topics
Content-sensitive topic mention detection
Topic identification and conflation
Acronym + alternate name extraction
Definition extraction
Related people
Related documents
Topic relatedness (coming soon)
20. Viva Topics roles & responsibilities
Viva Topics Roles The user must:
Topic viewer Be assigned a Viva Topics license by their Microsoft 365 admin.
Be allowed to have visibility to topics. The knowledge admin does this task in the Viva Topics
settings page in the Microsoft 365 admin centre.
Topic contributor Be assigned a Viva Topics license by their Microsoft 365 admin.
Be assigned permissions to create and edit topics. The knowledge admin does this task in the
Viva Topics settings page in the Microsoft 365 admin centre.
Knowledge manager View AI-suggested topics.
Review topics to confirm they're valid.
Remove topics you don't want visible to your users.
Additionally, a knowledge manager can edit existing topics or create new ones.
Be assigned a Viva Topics license by their Microsoft 365 admin.
Be allowed to have visibility to topics.
Knowledge admin Select which SharePoint sites will be crawled for topics.
Select which licensed users who can view topics (topic viewers).
Select which topics will be excluded from being identified.
Select which licensed users who can create and edit topics (topic contributors).
Select which licensed users who can manage topics (knowledge managers).
Name the Topic centre.
21. Viva Topics setup & admin tasks
Subscribe to Viva Topics
Assign licenses
Connect people to knowledge
Select SharePoint topic sources
Exclude topics (if any)
Who can see topics
Who can create and edit topics
Plan for Microsoft Viva Topics | Microsoft Learn
22. Managing Topics – things to remember
Topic identification improves
when more content is
available.
The security, privacy, and
location of your data is
preserved.
Users need a license to view
topic experiences.
There is one topic center per
tenant.
AI works in English, Spanish,
French, German
Topic Highlights appear on
Modern SharePoint sites
today. It will be in more
places in the future.
Suggested and confirmed
topics are rendered
when accessed; published
topics have static URL in the
Pages library.
For Viva Topics to deliver the
most value, the topics content
needs to be a combination of AI-
defined content, and human
curated content.
23. Viva Topics Licensing
Features Microsoft 365 Viva Suite
Search connectors (index items)
Available as
an add-on
•
Expertise finding
Available as
an add-on
•
Topic cards, pages, and centres
Available as
an add-on
•
Topic highlights in SharePoint, Office, and Microsoft Search
Available as
an add-on
•
Topic highlights in Teams, Outlook, and Yammer •*
Answer concierge and contextual search •*
25. What is Viva Insights?
Viva Insights includes a Microsoft Teams app and web features and tools that help people and businesses thrive with data-
driven, privacy-protected insights, and recommendations to improve productivity and wellbeing.
29. Setup & Admin Tasks
Viva Insights
App
Turn on the Viva
Insights app
Pin the Viva
Insights app to the
Teams app bar for
all employees
Configure Viva
Insights app
Personal
Insights
Assign licenses with
a service plan
Configure access at
the tenant level or
at the user level
Enable access to
the dashboard and
digests
Optionally, enable
access for select
users
Manager
Insights
Set up and edit
Manager settings
Measured
managers - Total
number of people
managers who are
assigned licenses
Enable Managers
with minimum
team size & access
to their team's
insights.
Set the minimum
size of a team
Select to allow
licensed managers
access to
aggregated insights
about their teams.
Leader
Insights
Enable role of
Analyst (Limited)
for Viva Insights in
Workplace
Analytics.
View the My
organisation page
Advanced
insights
As above, Assign
licenses and Assign
roles
System defaults -
Set the time zone,
week days,
weekend days, and
working hours
Set privacy:
minimum group
size, subject lines,
domains, email
addresses, terms
Prepare & upload
organisational data
Teams Service
Administrator
Global admin,
Exchange Online admin
or Viva Insights admin
Viva Insights Admin or
Workplace Analytics Admin
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/viva/insights
30. Setup & Admin Tasks
Features Microsoft 365 Viva Suite
Personal insights in Teams • •
Viva Insights add-in and inline suggestions in Outlook • •
Your daily briefing email • •
Your monthly digest email and personal insights dashboard • •
Personal insights: effective meetings tab in Teams with insights and
recommendations
•* •*
Premium personal insights: initiate shared effective meetings plan •*
Premium personal insights: meeting category insights •*
Manager insights for leading strong teams
Available as
an add-on
•
Leader insights for seeing trends across the enterprise
Available as
an add-on
•
Custom analysis tools and accelerators
Available as
an add-on
•
* coming soon
32. What is Microsoft Viva Learning
Make learning a natural part of your day
Foster a culture of learning by enabling
people to easily discover, share, and engage
with learning integrated into Microsoft Teams.
Make all your learning content available in
one place
Simplify the learning experience by bringing
together world class content from LinkedIn
Learning, 3rd parties, Microsoft Learn, and
your own content.
Drive results that matter
Empower your leaders and employees to
curate, assign and track learning aligned with
business outcomes.
33. Viva Learning setup & administration
Manage your
apps in the
Microsoft Teams
admin center.
Create a custom
app permission
policy and assign
it to those users
Assign the
knowledge admin
role (optional)
Configure settings
for the learning
content sources
Add SharePoint as
a content source
(optional)
34. Viva Learning Licensing
Features Microsoft 365 Viva Suite
Viva Learning in Teams • •
Access full Microsoft Learn and Microsoft 365 Training libraries and the top 125
LinkedIn Learning courses
• •
Search, share, and chat about learning content • •
Create learning tabs in Teams channels • •
Organization-generated learning content with SharePoint and Viva Learning • •
Course recommendations and progress tracking Available as an add-on •
Integration with partner content providers Available as an add-on •
Integration with learning management systems Available as an add-on •
Surface learning content across the Microsoft 365 suite Available as an add-on •
Viva Learning and Viva Insights: block time for learning •*
Viva Learning and Viva Topics: topic-relevant learning •*
Viva Learning and Viva Connections: learning content in Viva Connection •*
36. What is Viva Goals?
• New module for business goal setting and management.
• Brings purpose and alignment to the employee experience.
• Objectives and key results (OKRs) are the conduit for getting from strategy
to outcomes, and Viva Goals powers this process.
• Viva Goals integrates with Microsoft Teams, Azure DevOps, and other
work management and data tools — as well as more integrations to come
with Microsoft Viva, Microsoft Power BI & other Microsoft 365 apps and
services.
37. Viva Goals - Align
• Create clarity and stay aligned at scale
• Define success by creating OKRs from
scratch or with built-in templates.
• Align at all levels of the organisation
with OKR approval workflows and
organisational, team, and individual
goal pages, and chart view.
• Connect work to outcomes with
projects and tasks aligned to OKRs.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-viva/goals
38. Viva Goals - Focus
• Focus teams on impact, not output
• Focus discussions, provide context,
and simplify reporting with custom
dashboards and OKRs that dynamically
update.
• Share progress and insights across
your organization with sharable links to
dashboards.
• Stay focused on work that moves the
needle with individual, team, and
organisational goal pages.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-viva/goals
39. Viva Goals - Integrate
• Keep goals front and centre
• Stay in the flow of work with the Viva
Goals app in Teams and Azure Dev
Ops.
• Communicate, collaborate, and check-
in on goals with the message extension
in Teams chat.
• Increase visibility into progress with
integrations into critical systems of
work.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-viva/goals
41. Viva Sales
• New seller experience application that brings together any CRM, Microsoft 365
and Teams – AI powered
• Cut down on admin tasks, systems, navigation interruptions to enable more time
with customers – close the deal
• Happens through a simple customer tagging feature, automating data capture,
call highlights, action items, customise dashboards
• Sales coach to move deals along with recommendations and reminders
• First role-based Viva application specifically designed to meet sellers’ needs,
coming in Q4 2022
https://news.microsoft.com/june-16-2022
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-viva/sales
https://info.microsoft.com/ww-landing-viva-for-sales-interest-capture-form.html
42. Coming up in 2023
Viva Engage – Answers
Brings together Viva Topics and social Q&A to help everyone find the knowledge and insights they are looking for. Match questions to answers from
experts
Viva Engage - Leadership Corner
Employees can find a personalised view of their leaders, see their recent activity and communications
Viva Amplify
Viva Amplify streamlines the communication process by centralising it in a single hub
Viva Pulse
Managers and team leads to request regular, confidential feedback on their team’s experience
Viva Goals - Microsoft 365 integrations
Azure DevOps, PowerBI reports, Microsoft Project and Planner
Viva Learning - LinkedIn Learning Hub integration
People in Viva
Find people and teams based on expertise and OKRs, surface team insights and trends, and view hybrid work preferences
Viva Apps - Common Navigation
43. Microsoft Viva Resources
Employee Experience & Engagement
The People-Powered Workplace
Microsoft Viva Blog
Microsoft Viva Roadmap
Empower and energise employees with Microsoft Viva
Microsoft Viva Innovations Ebook
new category of technology solutions we call Employee Experience platforms or EXP.
digital platform that puts people at the centre by bringing together systems of work with systems of support into an integrated employee experience.
brings together all these resources into the natural flow of everyday work.
Unique points:
Organisation layer - for employee experiences through Microsoft Teams
People at the center - with skills, resources in the flow of work
Powerful insights - that are actionable
Privacy and security - that you can trust
Platform and ecosystem - with customisation and extensibility
new category of technology solutions we call Employee Experience platforms or EXP.
digital platform that puts people at the centre by bringing together systems of work with systems of support into an integrated employee experience.
brings together all these resources into the natural flow of everyday work.
Unique points:
Organisation layer - for employee experiences through Microsoft Teams
People at the center - with skills, resources in the flow of work
Powerful insights - that are actionable
Privacy and security - that you can trust
Platform and ecosystem - with customisation and extensibility
new category of technology solutions we call Employee Experience platforms or EXP.
digital platform that puts people at the centre by bringing together systems of work with systems of support into an integrated employee experience.
brings together all these resources into the natural flow of everyday work.
Unique points:
Organisation layer - for employee experiences through Microsoft Teams
People at the center - with skills, resources in the flow of work
Powerful insights - that are actionable
Privacy and security - that you can trust
Platform and ecosystem - with customisation and extensibility
new category of technology solutions we call Employee Experience platforms or EXP.
digital platform that puts people at the centre by bringing together systems of work with systems of support into an integrated employee experience.
brings together all these resources into the natural flow of everyday work.
Unique points:
Organisation layer - for employee experiences through Microsoft Teams
People at the center - with skills, resources in the flow of work
Powerful insights - that are actionable
Privacy and security - that you can trust
Platform and ecosystem - with customisation and extensibility
Microsoft Viva (curated & AI –enriched experiences) built on top of and integrated with the foundational services of Microsoft 365 and extending your existing investments.
To address these issues, we’ve created Viva Topics. Topics builds on Microsoft 365 and applies AI to identify knowledge and experts from across your organization and categorise them into shared topics.
The AI not only organizes knowledge into topics, it also automatically creates topic pages for each topic. These topic pages are edited and approved by experts and then kept up to date by AI.
It’s like Wikipedia for the enterprise where AI does the first draft.
And, what’s also powerful, is that AI surfaces these topics as Topic Cards right within Teams, SharePoint and Office. So if you hover over an acronym or a project name, you get an immersive topic card that you can click on to get more details.
Because Viva Topics automatically organises content across your teams and systems to connect topics like projects, products, processes and customers, information is ready when and where you need it. Experts at the company can also help curate the information shown in Topics by sharing knowledge through simple, highly customisable web sites called Topic Pages.
Along with content from Microsoft apps & services, Topics also surfaces information from third-party services like ServiceNow. And Graph connectors make it easy to connect to even more content employees would find helpful.
Viva provides the privacy, security and compliance you expect from Microsoft 365, so you can trust that sensitive content always remains protected.
According to Forrester, conservative estimates suggest that this could save employees between 1 and 3 hours each week, just by reducing search time.
To address these issues, we’ve created Viva Topics. Topics builds on Microsoft 365 and applies AI to identify knowledge and experts from across your organization and categorise them into shared topics.
The AI not only organizes knowledge into topics, it also automatically creates topic pages for each topic. These topic pages are edited and approved by experts and then kept up to date by AI.
It’s like Wikipedia for the enterprise where AI does the first draft.
And, what’s also powerful, is that AI surfaces these topics as Topic Cards right within Teams, SharePoint and Office. So if you hover over an acronym or a project name, you get an immersive topic card that you can click on to get more details.
Because Viva Topics automatically organises content across your teams and systems to connect topics like projects, products, processes and customers, information is ready when and where you need it. Experts at the company can also help curate the information shown in Topics by sharing knowledge through simple, highly customisable web sites called Topic Pages.
Along with content from Microsoft apps & services, Topics also surfaces information from third-party services like ServiceNow. And Graph connectors make it easy to connect to even more content employees would find helpful.
Viva provides the privacy, security and compliance you expect from Microsoft 365, so you can trust that sensitive content always remains protected.
According to Forrester, conservative estimates suggest that this could save employees between 1 and 3 hours each week, just by reducing search time.
We’re bringing people and AI together in this solution.
First, topic identification uses AI to identify knowledge and people and automatically organize them into related topics
Then, we bring people, subject matter experts, specifically, to refine these topics through topic pages. AI takes in these inputs and enriches them.
Lastly, these topics are discoverable in the apps used every day through topic cards and Microsoft search. Our goal in knowledge discovery is to bring this knowledge to you, in-context to your work, just when you need it.
Viva Topics include Topic cards, Topic pages, and Topic centres features.
Microsoft Viva Insights encompasses MyAnalytics and Workplace Analytics, along with new productivity and wellbeing insights and experiences in Microsoft Teams, to provide data-driven insights and recommended actions that empower people, teams, and organizations to focus on what’s important, achieve balance, and build resilience.
Personal insights - Get personal insights that only you can see. Insights about how you work and what you might change to do your best work, such as in Viva Insights in Teams, in a Briefing email in Outlook, or in your personal MyAnalytics dashboard. Get useful recommendations, such as protecting time in the day for regular breaks, focused work, and learning that help improve wellbeing and boost productivity.
Manager and leader insights - Manager insights provide much-needed visibility into work patterns that might lead to burnout and stress. These include regular after-hours work, meeting overload, or too little focus time. Managers and leaders can use these insights to help their teams strike a balance between productivity and wellbeing.
Advanced insights - Advanced insights help business leaders address critical questions about organizational resiliency and work culture with insight into how work impacts their people and their business. Leaders can see opportunities where a change in process could improve business outcomes and take steps to protect employee wellbeing.