The Microsoft 365 Community Conference Viva Engage track demonstrated how communications are changing: for many organizations, leaders are more visible, connection is stronger, and everyday communication is becoming a useful source of organizational knowledge for AI.

Examples from Capgemini, Nuveen, Foot Locker, AdventHealth, and Takeda showed how organizations are using Engage to create two-way dialog with leaders, support Copilot adoption, run employee events, and improve communication in the flow of work.

When product and people come together, the impact is real.
We saw what happens when customer stories, product teams, and community energy meet in the same room. 

 

Communications meetup at the Microsoft 365 Community Conference

Engage everywhere: communities, events, and Storylines in Teams, powered by AI​

In our “Engage Everywhere” session, the Engage leadership team explained why leadership communication works better when it is visible, relevant, and interactive in the tools employees already use. It matters for employee connection, and it matters for AI too: in organizations using AI, leadership communication gives Copilot more of the context it needs to return useful answers. In case you missed it, to catch the highlights, hear what we learned, and see how these conversations are shaping what’s next, take a look at the recording the roadmap webinar we hosted! 

 

Jeanette Vikbacka Castaing from Capgemini shared how her team is using Engage to make leaders more visible, bring corporate events into the flow of work, and create more participation through employee challenges and community conversation. Her examples showed how communities can spark dialogue, strengthen connection, and turn everyday engagement into lasting organizational knowledge.

 

 

The Engage team demonstrated the new and coming-soon experiences that bring this vision to life across three categories of intelligence, context, and trust.

Intelligence

Available now: Copilot in Engage

For organizations with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, Microsoft 365 Copilot in Engage helps people quickly catch up and contribute in Engage. Smart catch-up helps employees see what happened recently across their communities and network. Scoped search makes it easier to find relevant information within Engage, and writing assistance helps people draft and refine posts with better context.

 

 

Private community content is planned next. That is a meaningful step because some of the most valuable knowledge in an organization lives in smaller, role-based, or more sensitive communities.

The Engage team is also exploring more agentic experiences in Engage to help leaders, communicators, and employees keep up with what matters and take the right next step more easily. The team is considering support for actions like deciding where to respond, what to acknowledge or share, and what may need a closer look, all based on configurable instructions.

Public preview: agents in communities with grounded answers

If you’re a community admin or contribute as an expert in a busy community, it can be hard to keep up with questions. Answering them can feel like a demanding side hustle. Agents in communities can answer questions posted in a community using content from both community conversations and SharePoint sites, so responses are based on internal context instead of generic information.

Admins and experts can review, edit, or verify answers before they are posted, helping organizations scale expertise without sacrificing trust. For companies dealing with repeated questions, distributed knowledge, or hard-to-find answers, this could become one of the most practical ways to reduce effort and connect people with expertise faster.

 

 

Available now: Communities to support AI adoption

We know from our research that peer connection and learning is a critical part of scaling your AI transformation efforts. The Copilot Adoption Community gives organizations a starting point for peer learning, questions, shared prompts, and ongoing education. Instead of relying only on one-way communication about AI, organizations can create spaces where employees learn from each other and build habits over time.

Microsoft’s own data shows that adoption is more sustainable when people have a place to ask questions, compare experiences, and share what is working. Communities help turn individual experimentation into collective learning, which benefits employees and strengthens the knowledge base that AI can draw from later.

 

Context

Public preview: Communities in Teams

One of the biggest changes coming up is the move to bring communities into Microsoft Teams. As communities become part of the flow of work in Teams, leadership dialogue will become more visible, knowledge sharing will be more habitual, and expertise will be easier to find.

 

Public preview: Smarter communication and targeting

Communicators need options for reaching specific audiences with targeted messages while reducing overall noise. Our roadmap includes several investments designed to help communicators reach the right audiences with less manual effort, including audience storyline announcement targeting based on organizational data such as reporting structure, department, country, role, and group membership.

 

 

The team also highlighted smart notifications and delivery tracking. Available now for announcements, replies, and reactions in communities, smart notifications in Teams, mobile, and Outlook start in a user’s most frequented channel first, followed by the secondary channel if they don’t see the notification in the primary channel.

Delivery tracking gives communicators more visibility into whether announcements were sent across channels like Teams, Outlook, and Engage. Together, those updates point to a broader focus on relevance, reach, and measurable communication outcomes.

Available now: Events that extend beyond the moment

The new events in Viva Engage experience is now generally available and supports conversation before, during, and after an event. Hosted in communities or storylines, events give people one place for updates, discussion, questions, and follow-up.

These events are easier to discover, easier to revisit later, and better connected to the broader conversation in the community. This also helps turn event participation into lasting organizational knowledge.

 

Coming soon: Community membership auto-enrollment

Customers tell us that you'd like greater flexibility in managing community membership right within Engage. Community membership auto-enrollment helps communities stay current without manual list management. Admins can define rules based on org data or existing groups, so the right people are added automatically as teams and roles change.

 

Coming soon: End-to-end leader communications

For high-stakes communications, communicators need a more durable way to coordinate planning, drafting, and timing for multiple posts. The team is working on a concept for managing complex communication campaigns from end to end. Think planned message cascades, coordinated timing, and shared visibility for teams working across large leadership announcements or org-wide changes, all supported by Copilot.

 

Available now: New analytics

You've told us that your leaders love some healthy competition, which is why we're introducing a frequent contributors view. We're also adding click-through rate reporting so communicators can measure responses to link-based calls to action.

 

Coming soon: SharePoint News cross-post to Engage

Do you spend time crafting a beautiful SharePoint News post, only to see it reach a limited audience? We’re working to extend the reach of your SharePoint news by bringing it into Engage. Cross-posting brings SharePoint and Engage together in a more connected publishing flow. You’ll be able to publish a news article once and have employees engage with the same conversation across SharePoint, Teams, and Engage.

 

 

Available now: Article improvements

Articles in Engage now offer a more polished reading experience with cleaner layouts, better navigation, and richer formatting. Updates like table of contents, improved previews, multi-column layouts, and inline media make long-form communication easier to publish and easier to read.

 

 

Trust

Available now: Updated admin experiences

Admins are getting a more modern and consistent management experience across Engage. Updates include support for sensitivity labels, a new Engage email domain, improved admin workflows, and stronger governance options to help organizations manage communication with more confidence.

 

 

Coming soon: Company branding

Company branding lets organizations bring more of their visual identity into Engage. With support for custom colors and logos across web and mobile, the experience feels more familiar, more on-brand, and more connected to company culture.

 

 

Catch up on all the Microsoft 365 Community Conference news

Look out for blog posts to recap the Viva Engage Track sessions, including videos. More to come like:

• Authentic leader communications with Nuveen
• Playbook for a Viva Engage deployment
• Copilot adoption with Footlocker
• And more!

 

Note: Network analytics frequent contributors; announcement delivery tracker; click through rates; predictive analytics for reach; guided flows for leader posts, announcements, and cascades; and related capabilities described in this blog post are available with a Premium Viva Engage license (for example, Viva Employee Communications & Communities or Viva Suite). Engage private content in Copilot, Community Agent, and other Copilot experiences in Engage require a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.