Viva Engage Brings Community and Engagement to Microsoft 365

With the prevalence of hybrid work, employees can feel disconnected from their colleagues and from leadership. Microsoft Viva Engage aims to restore and enhance those connections, integrating a sense of community and a rich source of knowledge directly into Microsoft Teams.

With Engage, connections happen seamlessly. For instance, based on their preferences, employees can stay connected with their Yammer (now Viva Engage) notifications without leaving Teams. Pertinent community announcements and @mentions will show up in the Teams activity feed and also in Outlook and the Viva Engage app.

Anyone with a Yammer license will have access to the Viva Engage app as well as the community and conversation features. This includes all Microsoft 365 enterprise and frontline customers. Additional premium features, such as the leadership corner and Viva Answers, come as part of subscriptions to the Microsoft Viva Suite.

Build Company-wide Communities

Viva Engage brings social media connections to the professional setting. This includes features such as communities, storylines, and virtual events. For example, employees can connect to communities built around common interests such as hobbies, social issues, or job types.

Conversations and virtual events deepen connections, even across teams and departments. Users can @mention coworkers and pin conversations. And a variety of announcement types allow leaders and organizers to target specific audiences.

The storyline feature operates like popular social media platforms. Users create and share stories, and they follow stories from coworkers and leadership. They can also post and pin questions and upvote replies.

Premium features include advanced storylines and community campaigns. With advanced storylines, one user can post on behalf of another and amplify important topics. Dedicated campaign pages provide a unified view of posts related to an organization-wide campaign. And organizers can access analytics to improve the campaign reach.

Tap into Expertise Across the Organization

In addition to the ability to post and pin questions within communities, premium users have access to Viva Answers. Similar to Reddit, users can search for answers that already exist for their questions. They can also ask questions and route questions to specific coworkers. In this way, Answers acts like a centrally located, constantly-updated information bank.

For instance, marketing personnel can find a treasure trove of pertinent information on a product update. This could include updated keywords, pain points identified by customer support, links to feature descriptions from development, and more.

Deepen Connections Between Leaders and Employees

Premium leadership features give leaders the tools to engage deeper with their employees. This includes a leadership corner where employees can see all content from their leaders and connect directly with them. Additionally, leaders can create question and answer style events called Ask Me Anything (AMA) conversations.

In addition to the leadership corner and AMAs, leaders have access to advanced analytics. These detailed insights allow them to measure activity related to specific communities, events and conversations and take appropriate action.

New Copilot Feature to Extend to Viva Engage

In March, Microsoft announced new AI features coming soon to Viva Engage. Already integrated into Microsoft 365 productivity apps such as Word and Excel, Copilot will enhance the leadership and answers features in Engage.

For leaders, Copilot will analyze sentiments and trending topics across conversations and communities. Based on that analysis, it will offer leaders suggestions designed to help them draft more personalized posts and create the right tone. In Answers, AI capabilities can help users ask the right questions and suggest experts who may have needed information.

Viva Engage vs. Yammer

Viva Engage includes most of the Yammer features, and users can access their content from either platform. Features accessible through Yammer but not in the Viva Engage app include:

• Settings for managing the “post on behalf of” feature and skin tones
• Ability to view the community document library
• Ability to edit community information
• Viewing live events and other Microsoft Stream (classic) videos on iOS

Part of the Powerful Viva Suite

Viva Engage represents another important facet of the integrated Viva suite of employee experience applications. Viva Connections, the gateway to Viva, includes highlighted conversations, announcements, and storyline posts from Engage. Additionally, the Viva Answers feature relies on the AI components from Viva Topics to power research.

To learn more about the Viva Suite and additional exciting Microsoft productivity apps, contact the Microsoft experts at eMazzanti.

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