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Viva Topics Blog
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July 2023 – Introducing Viva Topics lightweight management in Viva Engage

Tehzeeb's avatar
Tehzeeb
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Jul 05, 2023

Microsoft Viva Topics applies next-generation AI to empower people with knowledge and expertise in the apps they use every day.

Viva Topics automatically organizes content and expertise into related topics like projects, products, processes, and customers.

This month, we are excited to announce lightweight management of manually created topics outside the Viva Topics license.

 

Viva Topics provides a central knowledge base for manually created topics and definitions inside apps like Viva Engage. These topics do not use Viva Topics' AI, topic cards, or pages, but can be selected to classify conversations and posts in Viva Engage.

With this release, we are providing a way for Viva Engage admins to edit, create, and delete these "simple" topics without Viva licensing to make knowledge management more accessible to more users.

We introduce the lightweight management experience of manually created topics to Viva Engage networks that have been migrated from the legacy data store in Viva Engage to Viva Topics. There is no change to the management permission for Viva Topics in Yammer, and we automatically grant it to Viva Engage admins so that they can manage topics as knowledge admins in the Manage topics page.

Updates to this feature can be tracked with Roadmap ID: 118672 and will reach GA in July 2023.

You will need to visit the 'Manage topics' page via the URL below, replace tenants-domain with your company’s name to find new experiences:
https://tenants-domain.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/TopicsManagement.aspx



Management experiences without a Viva Topics license:


We allow those with management permission to access the Manage topics page to govern all “simple” topics, including.


• View the list of all manually created topics inside apps like Viva Engage.
• Search for a specific topic in the list.
• Create a simple topic (with only name and description) on the management page.
• Edit the name and description of an existing topic.
• Remove a topic.

 

Note: Removed topics cannot be restored in the lightweight management page.

 

 

With an active Viva Topics license:


You can also purchase Viva Topics licenses or get a free trial for your tenant to enable advanced management experiences and AI technology to enhance the central knowledge base in your organization.


• After purchasing Viva Topics licenses or getting a free trial, the lightweight management no longer works. When visiting the lightweight management page, we will prompt you to complete Viva Topics setup in your M365 Admin Center to enable premium features.
• Once Viva Topics setup  is completed, we will automatically redirect users to the premium management page in Topics Center from the lightweight management page.

 

 

Preparation:


There is nothing you need to do to prepare, but you can let your admins and knowledge managers know about this new management of manually created topics outside the Viva Topics license.


Closing: 


Join us for an AMA session on July 24, 2023, at 9am PST. Learn more about Microsoft Viva Topics, and join the Viva Community, your destination for best practice guidance, conversations with experts, and peer-to-peer learning. 

 

Updated Jul 05, 2023
Version 2.0

5 Comments

  • jhaleyip's avatar
    jhaleyip
    Copper Contributor

    When I visited the visit the 'Manage topics' page, I don't see the topics previously created in Viva Engage/Yammer. How do we migrate the older topics into the new "Manage topics" page?

  • Raoul_Haagen's avatar
    Raoul_Haagen
    Copper Contributor

    Hi,

     

    we do have a full license of Viva Topics and Viva Engage. My understanding is, that the topics created in Engage are not part of of the data crawling by the AI in Topics due to the lacking connectors right now. Am I right with this assumption? When the engage connector in topics will be available are already created topics from the past in engage part of the crawling?

     

    Thanks in advance

     

    Raoul

  • Hi Roman_Handl, thank you for reaching out - when you are purchasing a Viva Topics license or getting a free trial license, you will be able to access the full Viva Topics experiences and advanced management UX after the Viva Topics setup finished. When the trial expires, it will switch back to the lightweight experience due to no license.

     

    Please find more details in the documentation:

  • Roman_Handl's avatar
    Roman_Handl
    Copper Contributor

    Suppose we decide on activating the trial version of Viva Topic in our productive tenant -> this means, we have to configure the whole shebang of Viva Topics even for the ones, who only wish to administrate topics in Viva Engage?
    What will happen, when the trial expires, will then the experience for the Viva Engage admins switch back to the "lite experience"?

    seems to me that it's not really clearly described by Microsoft under which circumstances the "lite experience" will be available...