What is Microsoft Viva?
Part of Microsoft’s response in helping businesses manage remote workforces and the wellbeing of their employees was the launch of Microsoft Viva, a new employee experience built on Microsoft 365 in February 2021. Microsoft Viva is an employee experience platform and ecosystem to help to connect and engage with employees as well as to ensure their well-being, drive culture change and upskill teams. Viva also enables you to access learning materials, data and insights along with many other things. Working seamlessly with existing systems such as Teams, Outlook and Office it is highly accessible and has been designed with 4 different modules that empower your employees using Artificial Intelligence, Insights, Connections and Learning. As well as this it is also there to protect your company data with privacy safeguards and protection for employees to respect their privacy.
What are the four different Viva modules and what do they do?
Viva Topics: AI is used to organise company-wide content and expertise into relevant topic categories, enabling the information relating to specific topics to be accessed in one place. Topics enhances Microsoft search by automatically grouping related information together into useful Topic Cards. In addition to this feature, there is also a dedicated Topics application you can access via Microsoft Teams which gives you an overview of recent news, learning courses and relevant topics based on your recent user behaviour. By expanding the Topic Cards within Teams, the AI will list the most relevant contacts with experience on that topic in your organisation, related files and other media.
Viva Insights: Building on My Analytics and Workplace Analytics which analyse working behaviours, Viva Insights gives employees actionable recommendations to help them balance both their efficiency, productivity and wellbeing. Viva encourages employees to prepare in the morning, take regular breaks, schedule time to meditate using the Headspace app and take advantage of the Virtual Commute feature to help unwind at the end of the day. From a Managers perspective, Viva Insights provides a wealth of analytics that can be used to identify stress levels, burnout, promote coaching and development and to help boost engagement and morale.
Viva Connections: based on SharePoint and Yammer’s current capabilities, Viva Connections is a curated employee destination for company communications, news, groups, and more, ensuring that everyone is updated and engaged.
Viva Learning: Viva Learning enables employees to easily search for learning resources such as videos and webinars and share with co-workers. From a Manager point of view, they can share learning resources with their Teams without having to leave Microsoft Teams and search on the web. As well as this they can also track the insights of how their employees are progressing by looking at the status of the assignments they have assigned and track reported completion status’. The ‘My Learning View’ shows available learning content from LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn, a company’s own content and other 3rd party providers.
How do I get Microsoft Viva licenses?
To get Microsoft Viva you need to get new licences.
- In the Microsoft 365 admin centre, under Users, click Active users.
- Select the users that you want to license and click Licenses and apps.
- Under Licenses, select Viva Topics.
- Under Apps, make sure Graph Connectors Search with Index (Viva Topics) and Viva Topics are both selected.
- Click Save changes.
How much does Microsoft Viva cost?
Viva Topics is £3.80 per user/per month, all users who interact with topics need a licence. Microsoft also gives a 30-day trial for up to 25 users.
Infinity Group are Microsoft Gold Partners, if you are interested in deploying Microsoft Viva please get in touch.
