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Viva Connections Blog
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Introducing Multiple Viva Connections Experiences for Your Organization

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AnshumanGaur
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Jun 21, 2023

Microsoft Viva Connections is your gateway to a modern employee experience and is designed to keep employees engaged and informed. It is a customizable app in Microsoft Teams that gives different audiences in your organization a personalized destination to discover other Viva apps your organization is licensed for, relevant news, conversations, and the tools they need to succeed.

 

We are excited to announce that we are starting the rollout of multiple Viva Connections experiences. With this feature you can create multiple Viva Connections experiences within your tenant to cater to the diverse needs of your employees. This feature is especially useful for conglomerates and subsidiaries who want to set up distinct branded experiences for their different employee groups. For example, you can create a Viva Connections experience for your frontline workers that provides them with easy access to resources, tools, relevant news, and popular destinations. You can also create another Viva Connections experience for your information workers that offers them a different set of content and tools that are more suited to their roles. Here are some other scenarios that are ideal for setting up an additional Connections experience:

 

  • Subsidiaries needing separate content and branding.
  • Employees not needing to visit the experience of another subsidiary.
  • International legal entities needing control over the content or content in a different language that doesn’t overlap.

 

Different Viva Connections experiences can be created for various employee sets

 

The need for multiple Viva Connections experiences is more evident in the current economic situation, where organizations are facing unprecedented challenges and opportunities. By providing tailored and relevant experiences for your employees, you can help them stay connected, productive, and engaged in the hybrid work environment, while centralizing setup and administration of their employee apps.

 

With this update, we are combining the management of multiple Viva Connections experiences with the traditional SharePoint home site management at one place in Microsoft 365 admin center under Viva administration. This enables ultimate flexibility for your setup. You can start setting up a Connections experience without needing a SharePoint intranet portal (home site), however if you already have an intranet portal, you can use that to set up the home site and Connections experience within the same workflow in M365 admin center.

 

Choose to create a standalone Viva Connections experience or build from an existing intranet portal.

 

Once the experience is setup, you can also customize and extend Viva Connections dashboard with a rich set of integrations from our partner ecosystem.


In the first release, you can now create up to 10 Viva Connections experiences in your tenant. Each experience consists of three primary components: the dashboard, the feed, and resources. The dashboard is your employee’s digital toolset that brings together the resources your employees need whether they are in the office or in the field. The feed simplifies communications and keeps people connected with a single, personalized view where employees can explore news and join conversations from across the organization. Resources provide useful company information and actionable tasks in a central, personalized destination.

 

One Viva Connections experience is included in Microsoft 365 plans with SharePoint Online. To create two or more experiences, you will need a Viva suite license (some exceptions apply). For more details on licensing, please visit our pricing page.

 

Manage your Viva Connections experiences from the Microsoft 365 Admin Center

 

We hope you enjoy this new feature, and we look forward to hearing your feedback. To learn more about how to plan, build, and launch multiple Viva Connections experiences for your organization, please visit our documentation page. To learn more about Microsoft Viva and other Viva apps and services, please visit our website.

 

Frequently Asked Questions:


Q: I already have a home site but I haven’t setup Connections dashboard yet. Where do I get started to setup Connections experience?


A: If you already have a home site, you will see that in Microsoft 365 admin center under Setup> Microsoft Viva>Viva Connections> Create and manage Connections experiences. To add a dashboard, visit the site as site admin, owner or member as select Manage Viva Connections from the settings menu.

 

Q: I already have dashboard setup with the card level audience targeting. Will that change?

 

A: No, the card level audience targeting will continue to be supported. This is ideal for targeting a subset of cards for departmental scenarios where most cards are still common across the company.

 

Q: I am looking to setup additional home sites but not ready yet to deploy Viva Connections. What are my options?


A: We are combining Viva Connections and home site administration together in Microsoft 365 admin center. So, if you are only looking to setup additional home site, choose the option to setup Connections and build off an intranet portal. This will designate the intranet portal to be the home site. Enable the experience so the home site can be accessed by others. Each additional home site comes with the default Viva Connections dashboard content so it’s extremely simple to set up Connections. You have the option to setup Connections later and pin the app in Teams for your users.

 

Q: Will the license check be enforced from the get-go, i.e., as soon as the feature is released?


A: Initial feature will display a message on the admin UI stating that all the users will require the license when you setup more than 1 Connections experience. You are expected to setup the required licensing for all your end users. In the future, we plan to enforce the license requirements at the end-user level. We will provide advance notice, prior to the license enforcement in the product.

 

Q: I would like my employees to access more than one Viva Connections experience in Teams. Is that supported?


A: This feature is ideal for subsidiaries and conglomerate who have non-overlapping content for their employees such that employees don’t need to access more than one experience. In Teams, employees will only be able to see the experience that they are targeted to. If the employees are targeted to more than one experience, they will see the one with the highest rank order. On the web, employees will still be able to access more than one home site based on the site access permissions.

 

Q: Can content authors (operators) access more than one experience for updating the content?


A: Yes, content authors can update intranet portal-based Viva Connections experiences directly through the web, if they have the permissions. Additionally, if a content author has owner or member permission to the Connections experience in Teams, they will also be able to switch to a different experience that they have the permission to edit. For this, they will be able to select ‘Switch Experience’ in the overflow menu on the top right corner and switch to another experience for editing purposes.

 

Q: My current home site is setup on the SharePoint root site. Now I want to set up additional home sites. How do I ensure that the employees targeted to the new home site don’t see the news posts from the existing home site (root site)?


A: If your home site is setup on the root site, you will need to be aware of the following – All your employees should have access to the root site for the SharePoint access. This means that if some of your employees are targeted to a new home site, they may still see content in their feed from the existing home site (root site). To avoid this, it is recommended to not use root site as home site, if you plan to setup multiple home sites. Alternatively, you can decide to publish content on the existing home site (root site) that is broadly applicable to everyone.

 

Q: I do not see any experience listed in the Viva Connections experience list, however I still see a dashboard experience in the Connections app in Teams. Why am I seeing this experience?


A: Viva Connections offers a default out-of-the-box experience without any initial setup. This experience shows tailored out-of-the-box dashboard cards to information workers and front-line workers respectively. When a SharePoint admin edits the experience for the first time, a special site container gets created to host the customization and it’s then visible in the Viva Connections experiences list in Microsoft 365 admin center as ‘Viva Home’. Refer to Customize and edit the Viva Connections home experience | Microsoft Learn for more information about editing the out-of-the-box experience.

 

Published Jun 21, 2023
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