Published December 2023
In this blog, learn how we can help you implement and manage Viva Topics, a powerful AI-driven knowledge management solution for Microsoft 365.
Viva Topics is one of the core modules of Microsoft Viva, the employee experience platform that brings together communications, knowledge, learning, resources, and insights. Viva Topics uses AI to automatically identify, extract, and organise information from across your organisation, and presents it in the form of topic pages that provide relevant context and resources for your work.
But how do you ensure that Viva Topics is configured and managed in a way that meets your organisation’s needs, goals, and standards? How do you define the roles and responsibilities for the different stakeholders involved in topic management? How do you ensure the quality, accuracy, and relevance of the topics and the information they contain? How do you measure the value and impact of Viva Topics for your organisation and your users?
That’s where Engage Squared can help. We are a Microsoft Solutions Partner with extensive experience in delivering successful digital workplace solutions for a range of clients across different industries and sectors. We have a team of experts who can help you plan, implement, and manage Viva Topics, and provide you with tailored governance recommendations to support your use of this innovative solution.
As an example of the support we can provide in this space, we recently worked with one of Australia’s largest financial institutions to develop high-level governance recommendations for their Viva Topics pilot and subsequent organisational rollout, along with adoption recommendations and training materials. We developed our recommendations based on a combination of Microsoft guidance, observations from other organisations, emerging best practices, and input from workshops with key client stakeholders. We covered subjects such as topic discovery and visibility, business and end user readiness, roles and responsibilities, topic management processes and workflows, reporting and analysis, and data and quality standards.
Some of the key outcomes of the engagement that we provided to our client included:
- Documenting guidelines for the scope of topic discovery, aligned with existing content management and publishing rules.
- Defining minimum and optimal business and end user readiness requirements for onboarding new cohorts to Viva Topics, such as communication, training, support, and content alignment.
- Identifying and defining key roles and responsibilities around topic management, tailored to the client’s ways of working, and aligning these roles with existing knowledge management or content ownership roles and processes.
- Establishing standard onboarding and offboarding processes for the identified knowledge management roles.
- Defining business processes and workflows for the different stages of topic management and lifecycle, such as confirming or removing topics, categorising topics, prioritising topics, assigning topics, editing and curating topics, creating topics, reviewing topics, and responding to user requests.
- Creating guidance for Topic Owners and Authors on quality standards and expectations for curated topics in different categories.
- Developing tailored adoption and communications guidance to support the effective rollout of Viva Topics to different cohorts.
- Delivering customised training and resources to support Viva Topics users in various roles.
By implementing our recommendations and guidance, our client was able to successfully launch their Viva Topics pilot and provide their users with a rich and valuable knowledge management experience. They were also able to gather feedback and insights from the pilot participants to inform their ongoing strategy and improvement of Viva Topics.
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If you are interested in learning more about how Engage Squared can help you get the most out of Viva Topics, please contact us today. We would love to hear from you and discuss how we can support your knowledge management goals.
About the author
Thomas Lalor is a principal consultant in the Digital Workplace and Employee Experience practice at Engage Squared. Thomas has been working with Engage Squared for more than seven years, and in that time he’s done a bit of everything, from project management, to change management, graphic design, development and of course consulting. One thing that’s stayed constant through it all has been his commitment to helping organisations enhance the employee experience and get the most out of SharePoint and Microsoft 365.