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- What new fancy features are to come which justify a complete name rebranding? What can we expect?
- danholme
Microsoft
We added storyline to Viva Engage--a new way for individuals to reach and engage followers and audience, to share updates, experiences and perspectives. In addition, we're adding new features for Microsoft Viva customers: https://danholme.substack.com/p/viva-engage-features-for-leaders Most importantly, we're now investing more than ever in Viva Engage as part of Microsoft's broader investments in employee experience. You'll see LOTS more. - jamestyerHi Peter. I would start with our recent rebrand blog, which outlines the rebrand and our new capabilities such as leadership corner, AMAs, campaigns and Answers. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/yammer-blog/yammer-is-evolving-to-viva-engage/ba-p/3738825
- Petra 😉
- I rolled out Viva Engage in my Dev environment, I didn't realize that it was just an app that was added to MS Teams. I was expecting a lot of configuration but it's a different front end to Yammer. Will there be any differences in between the two?
- jamestyerHi Alex. Yammer and Viva Engage are the same thing. The app in Teams is a way to access your Yammer network from within Teams. If you take a look at this blog, it explains how we are evolving Yammer fully into the Viva Engage brand: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/yammer-blog/yammer-is-evolving-to-viva-engage/ba-p/3738825
- Does Microsoft have any materials created for socializing this change to our colleagues? Any talking points or decks we can use?
- We are working on publishing a rebrand kit! Should be published soon to the blog and the Viva Engage Adoption Center https://adoption.microsoft.com/en-us/viva/engage/. Also highly recommend Melanie's blog post here - great tips to get started with! https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/still-dead-now-what-melanie-hohertz/?trackingId=7EhiGYg1R7Wf0LE7qkOuWQ%3D%3D
- I would be very interested in this too Katie. We use Yammer extensively and are keen not to lose any traction as a result of this change.
- For now, the only feature available on my Viva Engage Admin Center is Storyline. Will the rest of features still be added - Leadership Corner, AMAs, Campaigns etc? Is having Storyline available on my network a prereq so I can get the other features?
- jamestyerHi Leonardo. The new capabilities are available but require additional Viva licenses. I would recommend talking to your Microsoft account team about the new capabilities and trialling them.
- danholmeThe features you list are available to Microsoft Viva customers. If you're not licensed for Viva, you won't see those options. For a description of features for Viva customers: https://danholme.substack.com/p/viva-engage-features-for-leaders For a descripiton of features available to all M365 customers: https://danholme.substack.com/p/yammer-is-engaged-get-to-know-viva
- Changes look exciting. Would be good to understand more on the roll put timeline. So far some of the Admin items have surfaced but not much else that I can see
- jamestyerHi Andrew. A great place to start is our recent blog announcing the rebrand and new capabilities. This has our most up to date timeline: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/yammer-blog/yammer-is-evolving-to-viva-engage/ba-p/3738825
- Hi James, I see a timeline in there for the re-branding but not some of the features being rolled out. These features are listed as rolling out Today - but I don't see any of them yet Newly-released features for Viva suite customers include: Storyline Announcements for leaders Leadership Corner for employees Ask Me Anything Events Social Media #Campaigns Advanced Analytics Answers in Viva
- I would like to know if the new viva would still be accessible as a standalone application (like https://www.yammer.com/) or do we have to use Teams in order to get to Viva Engage Also would the Yammer APIs be still available? And finally any plans to get this ResourceProvisioningOptions property populated for Yammer/Viva Engage groups?
- Jason_MayansYes, it will still be available through a web interface. The existing "Yammer" interface will eventually be rebranded to Viva Engage. The existing feature set and experiences will still be part of your standard M365 subscription, just with a new name.
- EmilyPerina
Community Manager
Welcome to the Microsoft Viva Engage Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA)! This live hour gives you the opportunity to ask questions directly to the Microsoft team. Please post any questions in a separate, new comment thread on this event. Thanks!
iakandeHello! My name is Wole and I am a Product Manager focused on Viva Engage adoption efforts. Looking forward to the answering your questions!
- Jason_MayansHellooooo everyone, I'm Jason Mayans and Director of Product for the Viva Engage team. Look forward to hearing your questions!
- Paul_BarrHi all, and welcome! Thanks for seeding us already with great questions for discussion today. I'm Paul Barr, Group Product Manager on the Viva Engage engineering team.
- Many people are not comfortable with Yammer as using social media-like tools have been discouraged during work. What do you recommend to get people comfortable trying Viva Engage and posting?
- iakandeGetting people comfortable with using enterprise social media is certainly tricky. However, there are a few ways that I recommend that you do this: 1. Establishing clear company guidelines on how Viva Engage would be used in the workplace. 2. Promoting a positive culture where employees feel comfortable and safe to express themselves and can help encourage participation. 3. Encourage employees to start small with clear distinct topics - updates, news, ideas etc. This would help them build confidence and gradually increase their comfort level with the platform.
- jamestyerI would recommend taking a look through our adoption materials here: https://adoption.microsoft.com/en-us/yammer/#use-cases-and-scenarios and here: https://adoption.microsoft.com/en-us/viva/engage/ In particular, you might want to watch some of our customer best practice sessions, many of which touch on this: https://adoption.microsoft.com/en-us/yammer/best-practice-brainstorms/ It all depends on having a clear purpose for using Viva Engage - why do you want people to post, to connect etc. The outcomes are powerful: strong engagement with leaders, increased retention, silo-crossing, learning, powerful new ideas and many more.
- Yammer, now Viva Engage is for work, especially networking. As one of my good friends says: Viva Engage is the one place you can ask your entire company a question. Agree with James above, there are great resources for Viva Engage. Leader engagement is critical.
- How will the Yammer transition impact the SharePoint web part functionality? Rename of the webparts and potential reconfiguration?
- Jason_MayansWe are continuing to support these, and they will continue to work. The rename of these, and other integrations with Yammer, will come after we rename the core experiences (web, mobile).
- espnguyenThe Yammer transition will mainly impact the name of the web part. We don't anticipate any functional changes to the web part itself.
- Fabulous!
- Our primary use of Yammer is with full O365 licensed users within the org. However, as a non-profit, the External Network for large groups of users we work with closely but who are not part of our org's O365 domain (or any other O365 domain as the majority are small non-profits themselves), has been really useful. With the move to Native Mode it sounds like External Networks will no longer work. Looking for clarity on the question (T/F external networks go away with native mode), documentation for moving away from the Yammer-specific guest approach and suggested resources to quickly get External Network users up to speed.
- It also seems like the guest access for Yammer is limited. Based on what I saw from the admin settings, it looks like it is either on or off for ALL communities (all or nothing). I didn't see any community specific settings where a community admin could decide if a community should allow guests or not. Due to that, we have not been able to enable the guest access feature for Yammer yet because some communities are going to be internally sensitive. The Sensitivity Labels for Containers also don't apply to Yammer Communities...so there are definitely some gaps 😞
