Published 29 March 2023
We are excited to officially launch our brand new monthly blog which focuses solely on Microsoft Viva updates!
We love that our monthly M365 updates blog is our most read of every month, but did anyone feel that it was slowly becoming the Viva show? Yes, us too. We don’t have favourite children here at Engage Squared, so it’s important to us that we share a variety of updates across the whole M365 stack.
Our monthly Microsoft Viva updates blog will be published alongside our monthly M365 blog at the end of each month (here is our March blog) and guide you through the latest updates we think you should care about. Think of them as siblings – you might gravitate towards one over the other, but they’re part of the same family, so give them both a little love.
1. Viva Connections: Customer facing analytics
What’s new?
Viva Connections will soon include an analytics experience!
Why is this important?
You can use these analytics to understand how and when users engage with components of the Viva Connections experience, popular content types, and the platforms used to access the app. Viva Connections Analytics is available to users who have Site Member (or higher permissions) on your organisation’s SharePoint home site.
You do not need to do anything to prepare for the analytics experience. Viva Connections Analytics data can be viewed from the SharePoint home site by selecting the Settings gear, then select Manage Viva Connections, and then select View analytics. It can also be turned off by setting the DisableVivaConnectionsAnalytics parameter to off using PowerShell in the M365 Admin Center (MAC). Get more details about the PowerShell command.
When is it coming?
Rollout will begin in March and is expected to be complete by early April.
2. Viva Connections: Send Praise from the Dashboard
What’s new?
Site owners/authors of Viva Connections can soon add the Praise card from Microsoft Insights on the dashboard. The Praise experience is the same experience as the one available within Microsoft Viva Insights today and allows employees to send praise to their colleagues.
Why is this important?
Who doesn’t love a little praise to make them feel good?
This card will be available in the Connections dashboard toolbox and site owners will need to add the Praise card manually to their organisation’s dashboard. Just search for “Praise” in the dashboard toolbox.
When is it coming?
Rollout will begin in early March and is expected to be complete by late March.
3. Viva Connections: Coming to Android tablets
What’s new?
Viva Connections is being released to Android tablets.
Why is this important?
If you have deployed Viva Connections in your organisation, the change will impact all Android tablet users. Before rollout begins, Android tablet users will be seeing a “Not available for tablet”, however, once Microsoft begin rollout, they will see the full experience. Some users might have been facing issues seeing VC app on their folding screen type devices – this update should enable VC for them as well.
Remember to make sure to request your organisation members update the Teams app on their tablet to take advantage of this new feature.
When is it coming?
Rollout will begin in late March and is expected to be complete by mid April.
4. Viva Goals: Web integration for Microsoft Project
What’s new?
Viva Goals is launching a new integration for Microsoft Project for the Web, which will enable users to automatically update Initiatives and Key Results in Viva Goals based on progress in Project for the Web.
Why is this important?
Integrations in Viva Goals help save time and energy by automatically updating your key results and projects through connections to other applications from Microsoft and third parties. These integrations allow data to flow from the connected applications into Viva Goals so that results and initiatives are up to date.
Once this integration is enabled by global admins, Viva Goals users will be able to connect Project for the Web as a data source for Initiatives and Key Results
When is it coming?
Rollout will begin in mid-April and is expected to be complete by early May.
5. Viva Goals: New admin controls for administrators
What’s new?
Viva Goals administrators (and global administrators) will now have a new admin page from which they can manage the existing Viva Goals policy settings for the tenant. They will also be able to view and manage all the organisations on Viva Goals by updating the organisation owner or admin privileges.
Why is this important?
Currently, Viva Goals administrators (or global admins) can manage the following aspects of Viva Goals:
- Creating organisations or configuring who can create organisations within Viva Goals.
- Enabling integrations that should be available for all Viva Goals organisations in the tenant.
- Configuring the URLs that can be embedded in Viva Goals Dashboards.
After this rollout begins, Viva Goals will have the following admin controls starting in late March 2023:
- The Viva Goals admins or global admins will be able to view all organisations and their metadata. They can update the owners or admins for these organisations. They can also administrate an organisation on Viva Goals by granting themselves organisation admin privileges.
- These abilities will be accessible from a newly refined admin page called the Viva Goals admin portal.
When is it coming?
Rollout will begin in late March and is expected to be complete by early April.
6. Viva Engage: Data export features available within the admin centre
What’s new?
Next month, the same tenant and user data export experiences currently available in the Yammer admin centre will also be available within the Viva Engage admin canter for Microsoft Viva customers. Global admins, Engage admins (Yammer administrators AAD) and Yammer Network admins can export data from within the Viva Engage admin centre in addition to the Yammer admin centre.
Why is this important?
The following compliance capabilities will become available for customers with licensed Viva Suite, Viva Topics and/or Microsoft 365 customers.
- Export tenant data: Admins can export data for their entire tenant and choose to include attachments and external networks (if applicable)
- Export data for a user: Admins can select a single user in their tenant and export all their Viva Engage activity data. At this point, we don’t support scoping the user data.
- Manage user removal and GDPR requests through Yammer: Admins will be linked to the Yammer admin centre to complete other data compliance capabilities. Note: Microsoft is working on incorporating these capabilities into the Viva Engage admin centre in the coming months.
When is it coming?
Rollout will begin in mid-April and is expected to be complete by late April.
7. Viva Engage: Now supporting cross geo B2B guest access
What’s new?
Previously Microsoft only allowed Viva Engage users to add guests from within the same geo their network, however cross Geo B2B guest access will soon go live!
Why is this important?
Viva Engage community admins will be able to invite cross geo B2B guests to their communities. If they do not want the cross-geo guest access to be enabled for their Viva Engage network, they can make the requisite updates to manage external guest access by following this guide.
When is it coming?
Rollout will begin in March and is expected to be complete by early April.
8. Viva Engage: The evolution from Yammer
What’s new?
As announced last month Yammer is rebranding to Viva Engage to provide a consistent and delightful experience and there changes we are excited to finally share.
Yammer mobile apps (iOS/Android)
- To help inform users about this rebrand, Microsoft have started rolling out an in-app banner messaging the upcoming change.
- The mobile app rebrand will start to rollout on April 3rd with all Yammer references in the app updated to Viva Engage.
- The app name in the Google Play and App Store will be updated to “Viva Engage (Yammer)” and the icon will be updated to the Viva Engage icon. Search by “Yammer” will continue to display the app as the top result.
- Once users see the mobile rebranded experience and launch the Viva Engage app, they will be greeted by an in-app pop up informing them of the brand change as well as the banner described above.
Yammer Communities app in Outlook
On March 31st the Viva Engage app in Outlook will start to be deployed for Current Channel users using Outlook for Windows, and targeted release users using Outlook on the web, where the Yammer Communities app is currently available. The Viva Engage app will simply replace the Yammer Communities app in the Outlook navigation bar. The experience will mirror the change in the Viva Engage app in Microsoft Teams delivered in August 2022. Once users have the rebranded experience available, a popup will be displayed to announce the change. Email notifications from Yammer and the Yammer Office 365 Connector will not be rebranded in this moment.
Yammer web, SharePoint integration and embed
Between the end of June and the beginning of July, the rebranding of the remaining Yammer surfaces will take place. We will be sending out additional communication regarding the final date and in-product announcements for the web rebranding soon. We understand the importance of giving our customers ample time to plan their communication campaigns around this change and our priority is to make the transition as seamless as possible while keeping our customers’ needs at the forefront.
Why is this important?
There will be no impact to the existing profile, posts, bookmarks, etc. All rebranding updates don’t require additional actions; changes will be automatic. Outside of branding changes, there are no changes to the features, capabilities, and investments for Microsoft 365 customers. You will continue to experience and benefit from all the powerful features of Viva Engage just as you did with Yammer.
When is it coming?
Rollout will begin in March and is expected to be complete by early April.
9. Viva Topics: Upgraded Viva Topics admin experience
What’s new?
Microsoft are rolling out an updated admin experience for Viva Topics. This update is designed to create more consistency and clarity navigating the admin experience across the Viva suite.
Why is this important?
Only the admin experience is being updated for Viva Topics, there is no impact to end user experience. Admins will be able to access the Viva Topics admin experience in the Microsoft 365 admin center via the Setup tab -> Viva Collection -> Viva Topics, or by simply searching for “Viva Topics” in the search bar at the top of the admin center home page.
Through the Setup page, admins can assign licenses, setup policies, or designate Viva admin privileges to a specific individual for ongoing management of the Viva suite. Admins can return to this setup experience to make future edits to your app’s configuration.
The update is designed to provide a connected experience across the Viva suite with a more intuitive flow in configuring and managing Viva Topics in the admin centre.
When is it coming?
Rollout will begin in late March and is expected to be complete by late April.
10. Viva Insights: Meeting Category updates in the app and ‘Digest’ email
What’s new?
Categories in Outlook and Teams allow users to easily tag, label, and group calendar events. In the Viva Insights app in Teams, using meeting category insights in the Effective meetings tab, users can see a percentage breakdown of how they are distributing their time across their categories.
Why is this important?
An upcoming update to this feature will allow users to:
- See how their meeting time distribution has changed over the last 3 months, the last 4 weeks, and the next 4 weeks under meeting trends
- View the list of meetings in each category, with details including meeting name, total time spent, duration of each instance, and cadence, under meeting details
Microsoft are also releasing a new card in the Digest email from Microsoft Viva that summarizes their meeting category insights. In this card, users will be able to see up to 3 categories in which they have spent the most time over the last 4 weeks. This card will show the percentage of time each category contributed to the user’s total meeting time in the last 4 weeks, as well as how that percentage has changed from the previous 4 weeks. The explore more button provides an easy way to navigate to meeting category insights in the Viva Insights app, where users can explore percentage breakdown, trends, and details.
When is it coming?
Rollout is expected to be complete by early April.
