Microsoft VIVA Series – What is Microsoft Viva & How Can I Use it Today?
What is Microsoft Viva and How Can I Use it Today?
Back in February 2021 Microsoft announced Microsoft Viva with fanfare, but months later, we’re all still a bit fuzzy on the details. What is available to use today? What are the costs involved? How does it fit in with other Microsoft 365 tools? And how can I start using Viva right now to improve my digital workspace?
In this series, we walk through each of Viva‘s four components: Viva Connections, Viva Topics, Viva Insights, and Viva Learning. You’ll walk away with a clear understanding of what Viva is, what’s available to you now, and how you can leverage it for your Microsoft 365-powered digital workspace today.
We’ll begin with a primer on each:
{Last updated 11/02/2021}
Viva Connections
Launch status: Generally available
What is it?
Microsoft describes Viva Connections as, “A curated, company-branded experience that brings together relevant news, conversations, and resources in the apps and devices you use every day.” But what does this actually mean in practice today? Connections is currently made up of two facets: a Viva Connections Desktop App and a Dashboard. Essentially, Microsoft declares Viva Connections brings your intranet to Teams.
Viva Connections Desktop—formerly known as the Home Site App—allows you to surface your SharePoint intranet homepage in a Teams tab, removing frustrating context switching and empowering your team to consume intranet content in their flow of work.
The dashboard allows the organization to display a series of cards that show snippets of high-value content to users.
What does it cost?
Free with a Microsoft 365 license
Viva Topics
Launch status: Generally available
Licensing: $4/user/month
What is it?
Microsoft says, Viva Topics is designed to “connect people with knowledge and experts.” What does that mean in practice? Viva topics, powered by AI and your knowledge managers, serve up critical organizational information to your users in their flow of work. For example, I’m a new employee reading a news story on the SharePoint intranet about a new initiative called Operation Joy. Viva Topics will have crawled all available information on Viva Joy and determined that it is something that deserves a topic card. A knowledge manager can then review the AI suggested topic and push it out so that I can just click on that phrase in the news article and read what the project is and see vital information like who is assigned to it, and how I might get involved. Essentially, the whole point of Topics is to make it easier for people in your organization to find the information they need in context and put that knowledge to work today.
Viva Insights
Launch status: Generally Available
What is it?
Viva Insights empowers users to take charge of their day, protect important focus time, reflect, send praise, and stay connect, while providing managers and leaders insights to head off frustrations and prevent burnout. Viva Insights is broken into two distinct modules: Viva Insights for Individuals (Microsoft 365 Plan) & Viva Insights for Leaders & Managers (Microsoft Viva Insights Plan).
What does it cost?
Microsoft 365 Plan:
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- Personal Insights
- Free with Microsoft 365 License
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Microsoft Viva Insights Plan:
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- Manager and leader insights, plus advanced insights with custom analysis tools and accelerators- $4/user/month
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Viva Learning
Launch status: Generally available as of 11/2/2021
What is it?
According to Microsoft, Viva Learning is designed to “Empower employees to discover, share, recommend, and learn from content libraries across your organization with this center for learning in Microsoft 365.” Essentially, it’s an In-line upskilling application that crosses learning-center boundaries. You should be giving your team the ability to upskill and Viva Learning allows them to access training that’s recommended specifically for them where they are spending most of their day, Microsoft Teams. Viva learning aggregates learning resources from across the Microsoft 365 platform as well as other third party learning tools.
What does it cost?
Viva Learning Free Version:
- Grants you access to 125 free courses and resources from LinkedIn Learning and Microsoft.
Viva Learning Premium: $4/month per user
- With Premium, you can connect to third-party learning tools as well such as Skillsoft or Pluralsight.
Coming soon…
Microsoft announced their acquisition of Ally.io—an OKR (objectives and key results) company—to power a new fifth module that will become generally available in the second half of 2022.
With a little background on these four components, let’s deep dive into each, starting with Viva Connections.
Have questions about Microsoft Viva? Join us on November 11, 2021 for a free webinar where our President will walk you through what you can do with all Viva modules right now. Register today!
