As part of our Viva announcements at Ignite 2023, we’re excited to share a new set of Viva Learning features that are generally available, as well as some upcoming features we’re looking forward to delivering soon.
Generally available features
Academies
As mentioned during our Viva Summit in April, academies in Viva Learning are now generally available, enabling organizations to curate role- and line-of-business-specific experiences and provide individuals with highly engaging and relevant learning opportunities through a facilitated learning experience.
Learning academies display in Viva Learning as a new tab within the top navigation bar, alongside Home (for your learning homepage), My Learning (for your personalized learning snapshot), Manage (for managing learning recommendations), and Admin (for admins functions). Academies are configurable by admins, knowledge admins, and knowledge managers and build upon previously released learning path and featured set capabilities.
Admins can provide access permissions to academies via Microsoft 365 groups – for example you may want a Finance Academy just for your finance team, a Sales Academy just for your sales team, and a Culture Academy for everybody. Individuals can receive access to multiple academies and navigate between them as a drop down selection.
Learn more about this feature from our documentation page. This feature requires a Viva Learning or Viva Suite license to access.
Web endpoint
Viva Learning can now be accessed from your preferred web browser at https://aka.ms/VivaLearningWeb. The web endpoint allows you to access all the features of Viva Learning in an alternative way to the Viva Learning app in Microsoft Teams. In addition to the features of the Viva Learning app in Teams, the web endpoint has Microsoft Shell to easily switch between Microsoft 365 applications, as well as personalized in-app help for new features.
Feature access management
With this feature, Microsoft 365 admins and knowledge admins can delegate certain admin features to non-admin users through M365 groups. This allows admins to share some of their responsibilities and tasks with other trusted users in the organization. For example, your Microsoft 365 admin may want to delegate the ability to create learning paths in Viva Learning to specific members of the L&D team, without granting them other admin permissions. These are the specific permissions controlled by this feature: feature set, learning path, manage academies, reports, manage permissions, learner records, language preferences, search preferences, manage interests.
Learn more about this feature from our documentation page. This feature requires a Viva Learning or Viva Suite license to access.
Advanced language configuration
This feature allows admins to personalize Viva Learning aligned to the languages used in their tenant. Admins can set a default language for Viva Learning, select the preferred content language experience for users, and choose all available languages in Viva Learning for their tenant.
Learn more about this feature from our documentation page. This feature requires a Viva Learning or Viva Suite license to access.
Admin reporting
Viva Learning now includes a set of out-of-the-box analytics for you to track engagement, adoption, and social learning trends. This reporting is exportable and is available to Microsoft 365 admins, knowledge managers, and knowledge admins. Using the previously mentioned feature access management tool, these rolls can also grant report access to users via established Microsoft 365 groups.
The metrics below are available now and we will be adding more soon. Learn more about this feature from our documentation page. This feature requires a Viva Learning or Viva Suite license to access.
| Metric | Description |
| Monthly Active Users | Total number of unique users who have launched the Viva Learning personal app in the last 30 days. |
| Daily Active Users | Total number of unique users who have launched the Viva Learning personal app on that day. |
| Monthly Engaged Users | Total number of unique users who have taken five or more intentional actions. The intentional actions are: Search, Bookmark, Share, Copy Link, Recommendation, Add to calendar, Interest selection, Ratings, and Playing content. |
| Engaged Quality Learners | Total number of unique users who have taken two or more elective(non-assigned) courses in a month. |
| Content Played | Total number of courses played by learners in a month. |
| Content Bookmarked | Total number of courses bookmarked by learners in a month. |
| Metric | Description |
| Learning Paths Viewed | Total number of learning paths viewed by learners in a month. |
| Learning Collections Viewed | Total number of learning collections viewed by learners in a month. |
| Content Shared | Total number of courses shared by learners in a month. |
| Content Recommended | Total number of courses recommended by learners in a month. |
| Searches on Personal App | Total number of searches in the Viva Learning personal app in a month. |
Roadmap features coming soon
Skills in Viva Learning
As announced in October, we are excited to introduce AI-powered skills in Viva. This horizontal service across the Viva platform will provide a new way to understand and empower your workforce. Skills will show up first in Viva Learning, and then in other Viva apps and services. Stay tuned for availability information, and watch our 90 second explainer video below to see how we’re building this solution.
Skills in Viva will require a Viva Learning or Viva Suite license to access.
Catalog permissions by provider
This feature allows admins to control access to learning content by specific providers. Many of the large enterprise customers we work with have complex backend learning infrastructure, and often the entire company is not evenly licensed for all content sources. This feature provides admins an easy way to ensure users only see the learning content that they have access to consume within Viva Learning.
We expect this feature to be available by the end of 2023. This feature will require a Viva Learning or Viva Suite license to access.
Embedding site URLs in Learning Paths and Collections
This feature will enable employees to add links of content stored within their company’s intranet (SharePoint, Stream, etc.) or found online (YouTube, etc) as learning content in learning collections and learning paths in Viva Learning. This allows the creation of collections and paths that position formal learning content (like a LinkedIn Learning course) alongside informal learning content (like a YouTube video showing a current events application) to round out the approach to specific learning topics.
We expect this feature to be available by the end of 2023. This feature will require a Viva Learning or Viva Suite license to access.
Recommend to Microsoft 365 user groups
This feature enhances the current recommend capability in Viva Learning by enabling users to recommend content via Microsoft 365 user groups.
We expect this feature to be available by the end of 2023. This feature will require a Viva Learning or Viva Suite license to access.
Advanced admin reporting dashboard
This feature builds on our existing set of admin reports, to empower L&D leaders to identify learning trends in their organization. This dashboard will include information about quality learners (a metric we track closely internally at Microsoft), top content being consumed, providers with the highest engagement, and more.
We expect this feature to be available in H1 of 2024. This feature will require a Viva Learning or Viva Suite license to access.
We’re looking forward to delivering the above roadmap items and hearing your feedback on our newly generally available features. Below are some handy resources links, and please feel free to add any questions in the comments.
As always we’ll see you learning in the flow of work!
Resources:
• To learn more about our pricing and packaging, or to start a trial, please visit our Viva Learning website or contact your Microsoft representative.
• Visit our support pages for step-by-step guides and videos on how to use Viva Learning features
• Read our technical documentation pages for details on all our generally available features
• Access our free adoption kit to help roll out Viva Learning to your organization
• Read and watch how Grundfos has used Viva Learning to build their organization’s culture of learning