What’s new in Viva Connections
The world has changed, and anyone who thinks we’re going back to the way we worked in 2019 is sorely mistaken. A new approach to employee engagement, one that embraces the digitally connected, distributed workforce, realigns employees to business priorities and re-onboards them to the company culture and mission. In our latest Work Trend Index Pulse Report released last month, we offer three urgent pivots leaders must make to bridge the divide — and help employees not only do their best, but be their best.
To help organizations meet these challenges last month, we introduced a new home experience in Viva Connections. Today we’re excited to announce five new capabilities of Viva Connections to help customers farther adapt to the future of work.
Pre-pin Viva Connections for frontline workers
Over the past two years since the pandemic, frontline workers haven’t gone home to work, they have been the “face” for most companies. While they have demonstrated they’re the backbone of companies and economies around the world, many frontline workers haven’t had their technology needs prioritized.
These critical employees are often the ones reporting the least amount of connections and engagement with their company. With the tight labor market and economic uncertainty, it’s critical to connect with and retain these employees.
Pre-pinning Viva Connections can help frontline workers feel supported and informed as soon as they log in. With Viva Connections as the default screen in Microsoft Teams across desktop and mobile, frontline workers can stay connected with critical corporate tasks, news, and resources throughout their day with zero setup required from admins.
The pre-pinned Viva Connections is enabled in a special version for F-SKU customers. It’ll be generally available in early 2023, along with the new home experience in Viva Connections for all employees.
Inline setup right from the Viva Connections app in Teams
The new out-of-the-box experience saves ITs’ time from mastering complex configuration and setup across SharePoint and Teams but still offers the flexibility to customize Connections to fit your organization. It provides minimal setup from admins and a streamlined editing experience for operators who create and maintain content. Moreover, Viva Connections will provide admins access to richer usage data of Connections at a tenant level. The inline setup capability will be generally available in early 2023.
Integrate Viva Learning and Topics cards in Connections
Displaying Viva Learning card on the Connections dashboard keeps employees aware of upcoming and available training helping to encourage them to upskill and thrive. Employees can personalize their learning experience with selected interests. Admins can set cards to assign targeted training to selective business groups. The Viva Learning card is available now to private preview customers.
The Viva Topics card encourages employees to explore corporate knowledge areas and contribute to topics. Topics and knowledge areas are dynamically displayed in the card based on an employee’s interests, current projects, and expertise. The Viva Topics card will roll out by the end of 2022.
Add Viva Engage and Yammer content to the feed
The Feed in Connections will bring employees richer content by providing relevant information from Viva Engage and Yammer, such as Storylines, Praise, and Q&A. When employees share their experiences on Storylines, praise colleagues with a kind message, or route questions through Q&A, their coworkers can see and engage with this content via the Feed. By integrating more content from across Microsoft 365, the Feed in Connections can further enhance the employee experience in a hybrid work world.
Suggested dashboard cards
Dashboards come alive with third-party cards. As part of the new editing experience for Viva Connections, we will automatically show suggested cards from the SharePoint store which can be installed or requested depending on permissions. This is a huge opportunity for you to discover new cards and for card developers to allow potential new customers to learn about their offerings straight from the Connections experience once the solutions have been submitted to AppSource.
Stay connected
We look forward to your feedback about Viva Connections! Please stay tuned to the Viva Blog to keep up with the latest news about Viva Connections enhancements. To learn more about other Viva news and announcements for Ignite, watch the Ignite session Microsoft Viva: Latest innovations and roadmap for the new digital employee experience and read the blog post by Seth Patton.
