Microsoft Viva Modules

What are Viva modules?

Microsoft Viva is an employee experience platform that brings together communications, knowledge, learning, resources, and insights in the flow of work. Powered by Microsoft 365 and experienced through Microsoft Teams, Viva fosters a culture that empowers people and teams to be their best from anywhere.

Microsoft Viva is a suite of 7 modules:

What is Viva Connections & How to Get Started?

Viva Connections is a gateway to a modern employee experience designed to keep everyone engaged and informed. It is first an app that allows you to bring your SharePoint based intranet inside Microsoft Teams, making it easier for your employees to access your intranet and engage with all the content that is posted in there. Furthermore, Viva Connections allows you to create a dashboard that is adapted to mobile interfaces. You can create cards that enable a user to consume information briefly, as well as even interact with data, such as requesting a day off, for example. Microsoft Viva Connections comes with built‑in cards, as well as an extensibility platform, allowing you to create your own integrations with line of business systems or even third‑party systems, making Viva Connections the go‑to place for employees.

Viva Connections was previously announced as the SharePoint Home Site. Simply put, it will bring the Intranet in SharePoint as an app to Microsoft Teams. Viva Connections is available as part of existing Microsoft 365 and SharePoint license. If you have a Microsoft 365 plan already, you should be able to use Viva Connections at no additional costs.

Permissions

• user setting up Viva Connections app for Teams should have SharePoint Service Admin or higher permissions and Teams Service Admin or higher permission to upload and approve the app in Teams admin center.

Configuration

Here are the steps to get your Viva Connections module up and running:

1. Prepare your intranet – modernize and prioritize content and experiences.
2. Set a Home Site – create a new one or choose an existing site to act as the Home Site.
3. Create a dashboard – create a dashboard, add cards and apply audience targeting.
4. Prepare content for the Feed – prioritize content that will appear in the Feed on the mobile app.
5. Add the app in Teams – add the Viva Connections app in the Teams admin center.
6. Choose mobile settings – pre-install and pre-pin your branded app in the Teams mobile app bar.
7. Launch with end-users – Inform and educate end-users in your organization.

1. This is essentially the 1-click button opening your SharePoint Home Site in Teams, all under your branding.

2. This is the navigation on the Home Site of your intranet, or also known as the Global Navigation in SharePoint terms.

3. These are the Dashboard apps that your organization has created and targeted for the signed-in user.

4. This is where the personalized feed can be added to your Home Site.

What is Viva Insights & How to Get Started?

Viva Insights is a collection of features and tools that provide you with insights about your workplace with the main goal of using those data‑driven insights to improve:

• productivity
• employee well‑being
• financial decisions

There are three types of dashboards, all giving different information to different audiences:

• The first one is the personal insights, which every user has access to, and this provides insights around your own productivity and well‑ This is personal to you. Only you can see it, and it’s meant to give you a better employee experience. You might also get suggestions such as inviting you to book focus time, learning time, or even meditation sessions with the Headspace integration.
• The second dashboard is manager insights, which are insights for people who manage teams. You will see different dashboards and programs such as making sure you have frequent one‑on‑ones with your team members, ideas such as setting up a shared no‑meeting day with your team, as well as anonymized statistics under productivity.
• The last one is organizational insights, which are for enterprise leaders who can have high‑level insights around organizational resilience, employee engagement, organization agility, and more.

On the Home tab of Viva Insights, you can see personal cards like How you feel today and Send praise to your colleagues. I can also go and do mindfulness exercises, which are powered by the integration with Headspace that Viva Insights has. As you can see, you can have some guided meditations, as well as focus music for background if you wnat to. Or, you can Book focus time for yourself, Viva Insights is checking your calendar and telling you when you have a time slot without any meetings.

On Stay connected tab you can see the last messages in Microsoft Teams or the last emails from Outlook. There is also the option to send praise to your colleagues.

In the Protect time tab you have an option to set a focus time, connect with community to help you wrap up and mindfully disconnect from the workday or just set quite time, the time when you won’t receive any notifications.

Inspirational library tab is the new one added by Microsoft recently, still in Preview. You can find different articles from wellbeing, culture, impact and resilience topics:

What is Viva Learning & How to Get Started?

Viva Learning is available as an app in Microsoft Teams; you can also access it from additional Microsoft 365 experiences like office.com, SharePoint, and other Microsoft Viva experiences. In the app, you’ll see learning content in sections, such as recommended, trending, recently viewed, bookmarked, and by content providers, such as LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn, Microsoft 365 Training, your organization’s own custom content, and third-party content providers. Microsoft Search will also surface learning content from across your Microsoft 365 experiences, helping you discover learning. Microsoft and LinkedIn learning content and your organization’s content library are available to view directly in the Viva Learning app, while third-party content can only be watched through their native experience online.

Microsoft Viva Learning is also benefiting managers. If you leading a team, you can keep your team engaged and up to date with necessary skills without the need to coordinate learning across platforms. You can recommend learning content to individuals, share content with your team, and track the reported completion status of learning that you’ve recommended.

Permissions

To set up learning content sources in Viva Learning and manage individual licensing, you’ll need these permissions:

• Microsoft Teams Services Admin
• SharePoint Servies Admin or higher (Microsoft 365 global Admin)
• Knowledge Admin

Knowledge Admin is a new Azure AD role in the Microsoft 365 admin center that can be assigned to anyone in the organization. This role manages the organization’s learning content sources through the Microsoft 365 admin center. The Knowledge Admin should be moderately technical and have existing SharePoint Admin credentials.

In the Home tab of Viva Learning you can see brief information about you in the company suc as your position, bookmarked and recently viewed courses. You can browse courses by interests. Down on the same page you can find different learning providers e.g.  LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft 365 Training, Microsoft Learn and third-party providers if you have setup one.

In My Learning tab you will see your bookmarked, recommended to you, recently viewed and completed courses.

To ensure Microsoft brings learning to all users on the move, Viva Learning is to be also available on Teams Mobile client.

What is Viva Topics & How to Get Started?

Microsoft Viva Topics is an add-on for Microsoft 365 plans for commercial customers to address a key business issue by providing information to users when they need it. Viva Topics uses advanced AI and topic technology that help your people to learn, find knowledge, engage, and work for their wellbeing and the organization’s success. Viva Topics discovers content through Microsoft Graph, a graph database in Microsoft 365. Microsoft Graph connects topics, content, and people across Microsoft 365 apps. Then Viva Topics organizes content into topics, to build summaries and connect them to people who are related to the Topics.

At the start, the following types of topics can be identified:

• Project
• Event
• Organization
• Location
• Product
• Creative work
• Field of study

Checklist for launching Viva Topics in the company:

What is Viva Engage & How to Get Started?

Viva Engage is a new employee experience that connects people across the company wherever and whenever they work so that everyone is included and engaged. The Viva Engage app in Teams helps organizations build community, spark engagement with leadership, harness knowledge and answers, and build personal networks. Viva Engage builds on Yammer, and brings together Yammer’s communities, open conversations, and personalized discovery with new capabilities for self-expression and sharing through storyline and stories, and upcoming innovations.

With Microsoft Viva Engage you can:

• Connect people across the company to strengthen professional relationships and build social capital.
• Build communities that support diversity, shared interests, and business initiatives.
• Spark engagement between leaders and employees to amplify vision and shape culture.
• Exchange knowledge, find answers, and crowdsource ideas.
• Activate people to contribute their experience and expertise.

By connecting people to openly share, engage in communities, ideate, problem solve, and contribute across organizational boundaries, Viva Engage empowers people to have a voice, to connect with coworkers and leaders, and to contribute their best.

On Communities tab you can find all the communities you are in and all available in your organization communities you can join:

On the Storylines tab you can find updates, thoughts, and experiences from people across your organization

What is Viva Goals & How to Get Started?

Microsoft Viva Goals is a goal setting and management solution that aligns teams to your organization’s strategic priorities, driving results and a thriving business. We help business leaders build higher performing teams, HR leaders improve employee experience, and employees feel a sense of purpose and belonging at work.

And how?

• Creating clarity: With one centralized source of truth for goal setting, monitoring progress, and assessing success across your organization, you create clarity for your team, connect daily work to outcomes and align at all levels
• Focusing teams on impact, not output: Shift focus from effort and activity to impact and outcomes, share progress across your organization with customizable dashboards that turn data into insights, and stay agile ​at scale
• Bringing goals into the flow of everyday work: Keep goals top-of-mind by bringing data and actions into the spaces your team is already using, like Microsoft Teams, ADO, and the most popular data and project management tools.
• Today, Viva Goals supports the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) goal-setting framework, popularized at Google, Intel, and other Fortune 500 companies for alignment it naturally creates between the work teams are doing and an organization’s top business priorities.

Because Viva Goals is a part of Microsoft Viva, it integrates into the employee experience, empowering people and teams to be their best from anywhere with both a seamless Teams integration and web app.

Viva Goals also supports integration with tools you use today, so you can stay connected to progress without adding another layer of work for your team.

Viva Goals Access and Licensing

Now, you can start using the full set of features in Viva Goals with the purchase of one of the following SKUs:

• Microsoft Viva Goals SKU
• Microsoft Viva SKU

Viva Goals is available as an application in Microsoft Teams and as a web application. The Viva Goals web application has no prerequisites; customers can purchase and use Viva Goals with the web application without any other Microsoft product or subscription.

A Microsoft Teams product license is a prerequisite to use the Viva Goals application in Teams. Teams can be licensed with Microsoft 365 F1, F3, E3, A3, E5, A5; Office 365 F3, E1, A1, E3, A3, E5, A5; Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Business Standard, Business Premium; or Microsoft SharePoint K, Plan 1, or Plan 2 license.

What is Viva Sales & How to Get Started?

Microsoft Viva Sales is a seller experience application designed to get sellers out of the mundane work and in front of the customers. It fundamentally transforms the way you interact with your CRM using the applications you know and love. You can get back to what you enjoy, which means less churn and better results. Now, whenever you interact with a customer on Microsoft 365 and Teams applications, that customer engagement is automatically captured and updated in customer profiles. So, you can stop collecting and start connecting. Let productivity soar and make the most of every customer exchange with detailed insights delivered to each interaction. Afterward, make sure to keep the ball rolling with AI-driven, follow-trough suggestions and reminders. It is like having a digital personal assistant helping you close the sale. And the best part is? It is included in the Microsoft apps that you use every day. There is nothing standing between you and your customer, and you can get back to doing what is most important.

What is included in Microsoft Viva Sales?

Viva Sales will offer read-write capabilities back to your CRM tool (Dynamics 365 Sales or Salesforce CRM) within the Microsoft 365 and Teams applications you already use. Viva Sales also offers unlimited conversational intelligence capabilities, eliminating the need for note taking in meetings and providing you sentiment analysis and next-best actions. Viva Sales connects your CRM customer list automatically into your Office applications reducing the need to add customers already in your CRM tool. Viva Sales also helps you collaborate more efficiently within Teams by sharing contact cards and identifying coworkers that have had meaningful interactions with your customers. This allows you to connect and gain insights from your colleagues.

A Microsoft 365 license is required to use the Viva Sales app in Outlook and Microsoft Teams.

At the time of writing this article, Viva Sales is available in English, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish languages.

How to Combine Microsoft Viva Modules?

Microsoft Viva modules can be combined to create powerful employee experiences for common business scenarios. In this article we will show 2 scenarios of combined Viva modules that cover specific needs.

• Wellness and work-life balance
• Training and onboarding

Wellness and work-life balance

Help your employees manage their time effectively and create a healthy workplace culture with Viva Insights, Viva Learning, and Viva Connections. First, use Viva Insights to gain an understanding of the work habits accross the team. Then, create or source learning content to encourage healthy workplace practices. Finally, add Viva Connections to share communications and resources about wellness and workplace practices.

Viva Insights: Understand your organization’s workplace habits and how your team spends their time.

 Viva Connections: share resources and communications about wellbeing, work-life balance, and workplace culture. Create a dashboard and add cards so your users can quickly and easily access communications and resources. Use what you learned from Viva Insights to determine what content can help your workforce.

Viva Learning: Use what you learned from Viva Insights to determine where your workforce has opportunities for learning. For example, your employees might benefit from training, on time management, effective communication, or stress management.

Training and onboarding

Onboard new employees or volunteers and encourage upskilling with the combination of Viva Learning and Viva Connections. Create a training experience that can be accessed on desktop and mobile devices and can be targeted to specific audiences. Consider adding Viva Topics to help your organization manage internal projects, subject matter experts, and terminology.

Viva Learning: Create and store custom training and onboarding content that your employees can access in Microsoft Teams.

Viva Connections: Make it easy for your employees to access content in Viva Learning through their dashboard.

Viva Topics: Enhance your training and onboarding process by helping your employees learn more about important topics in your organization.

Conclusion

In thee last couple of years, Microosft have invested a lot of resources into Viva modules with only one idea – to improve your organization from bottom-up, from field workers to top-level executives and fundamentally change your day-to-day work. The values behind the Viva modules are connection, insight, purpose, and growth, empowering people and teams to be their best.

If you are just finding about Microsoft Viva or want to learn more about each module, evaluate them and find out which ones you need, feel free to reach out to us at Impactory, your trusted Microsoft 365 and SharePoint partner. We will help you with the business case for Microsoft Viva, analyze the requirements and be on your side during the implementation, launch and even training and support phases.

Additional Resources

1. Now you know about all the Viva Modules. Since you probably already have an Intranet to base Viva on, you might want to learn about the Top 5 SharePoint (and Intranet) must have features & benefits.
2. No Intranet? No Problem. Find out How to get Started with SharePoint & Document Management.
3. You have the feeling your SharePoint Intranet is not maximizing its potential? Find some tips to get the most of it in our Ultimate Guide on How to Use SharePoint (and Intranet).
4. Our fist take on Microsoft Viva – Employee Experience Platform shortly after it was released.