Published April 2023
Last month, we shared everything you can use for free with Microsoft Viva. In this blog, we break down everything you need to know about Microsoft Viva premium suite and answer the all-important question of ‘is it worth the investment’?
We think it is. But don’t take our word for it, keep reading to find out more!
What apps make up the Microsoft Viva suite?
At its core, Microsoft Viva is powered by the tools your organisation currently uses today. It leverages the power of the Microsoft Graph and M365 to help you better integrate systems, improve the flow of information, and tackle common problems ranging from learning & development, to culture, and employee wellbeing.
Overall, Microsoft Viva is currently made up of seven applications (and counting) – each designed to solve a specific challenge. These include:
- Viva Connections (the overarching application of the Viva suite – designed to provide users with a central portal to access relevant information)
- Viva Engage (previously known as Yammer)
- Viva Learning (designed to improve skilling and growth)
- Viva Insights (providing personalised and org-wide insights on work patterns)
- Viva Topics (designed to improve knowledge and expertise by leveraging the power of AI)
- Viva Goals (an OKR tool, to better align the efforts of your people with organisational goals)
- Viva Sales (a tool for sales professionals to enhance the sales process)
On top of this, there are a few new applications which will be launching soon, including Viva Amplify, Viva Pulse, and Viva People.
With so many applications available today, and new ones on the way, let’s have a look at some of the features you can access with a premium subscription.
Viva Engage
With premium licensing, you’ll get access to rich features designed to streamline internal communications processes and enhance two-way engagement between leaders and employees. With Viva Engage, you can take advantage of two new features, designed to make connection and communication easier:
Leadership corner
A space for leaders to encourage open dialogue and feedback across communities and teams. This feature makes it easy for employees to engage directly with content from leaders, including discussions, events, campaigns, and recent activity.
Internal virtual events
Take advantage of new platform features to facilitate ‘ask me anything’ or Q&A style events within your organisation.
Create organisation-wide campaigns
Internal communicators get access to ‘back of house’ features to manage communication campaigns and distribute information across multiple communities.
Publish stories on behalf of another user
This has been a highly requested feature among many people! Now you can post a story on behalf of leaders or other employees within your organisation.
Find the right answer
Take advantage of AI capabilities in Viva Engage by easily searching for answers that already exist, or rout questions to people who can provide an answer.
Viva Insights
Premium personal insights
Dive deeper into your personal working habits by accessing insights on how to run more effective meetings, view plans and recommendations on how to improve collaboration and make more space in your day.
Leadership organisational insights
Use the power of Viva Insights to see working patterns across the organisation. Identify areas of the business which may be at-risk of burn out, view collaboration trends, meeting habits, and calculate the cost of meetings across your organisation. Improve productivity and reduce the risk of burn out.
Custom analytics
Generate custom analytics and connect other data sources to enhance insights and get a better, more wholistic understanding of trends across your organisation.
Viva Learning
Course recommendation and tracking
With premium licensing, you’ll have the ability to recommend learning courses to individuals and track course completion.
Integration with partner content providers and your learning management system
Seamlessly integrate learning content from your LMS and 3rd party sources like Go1, LinkedIn Learning, Coursera (and many more) to simplify and centralise the learning experience for your employees.
Surface learning content across M365
Give your employees the ability to share or find learning content ‘in the flow of work’
Integration with LinkedIn Learning Hub, consolidated admin experience
Learning & development professionals can access an improved administrator experience, making it easier to manage and curate learning pathways for your people.
Viva Goals
Built on-top of Ally.io, Viva Goals is an objective & key results (OKR) application designed to help improve alignment across teams and connect your people to the vision and mission of your organisation. Viva Goals is only available with premium licensing and gives you the ability to:
Create, manage, and align OKRs
Take advantage of templated workflows and automated check ins. Develop and align OKRs at the company, team and individual level so you can easily monitor progress and track success.
Integrate 1st and 3rd party data to track progress
Access Viva Goals directly from Microsoft Teams. Easily connect information from complimentary data sources, for example, PowerBI dashboards, excel spreadsheets, or 3rd party systems like HubSpot.
Viva Topics
Viva Topics is like Wikipedia with AI superpowers! With premium licensing, you’ll get access to everything Viva Topics has to offer including:
- Search connectors (index items)
- Expertise finding
- Topic cards and pages
- Topic highlights in SharePoint, Office, Viva Engage, and Microsoft Search
- Answer concierge and contextual search
Just like Viva Goals, Topics is only available with premium licensing.
Viva Sales
Viva Sales is a tool for sales professionals that uses AI to automatically create content and meeting summaries. Sellers can benefit from:
AI generated content
Focus on building relationships by automating the creation of content such as emails, meeting summaries, data collection and entry.
Connect data
Benefit from actionable insights, connect data from across M365 apps and virtually any CRM system.
Access analytics
Get access to AI-driven analytics that provide sellers with recommendations on specific deals and reminders on sales tasks.
PLUS! Coming soon to the Viva Suite…
Viva Amplify
Centralise and streamline the distribution of communications, improve tracking and elevate messages using Viva Amplify. Internal communicators will get access to:
- A centralised campaign publishing and management hub, available in Microsoft Teams
- Ability to develop communications and distribute messages across multiple changes and groups
- Access to AI with tips to improve message resonance.
- Access campaign performance metrics
Viva Pulse
Viva Pulse gives managers the ability to request regular and confidential feedback from their team. It will provide managers with:
- The ability to send confidential pulse surveys to members of their team
- Access to sentiment analysis and trends
- Recommended actions to address feedback
- Recommended learning content
About the author
Claudia Piscitelli is the CXO of Engage Squared. For more than 12 years, she has worked in communications and change management, drawing on her qualifications in behavioural science to support large-scale change programs with some of the biggest enterprise companies in Australia. She is a certified Workplace Analytics Practitioner and mum of two.
