Viva Licensing

[Msevarino1]

I searched because I figured there would be other threads about this, and while there are some, they all appear to be pretty old, Jan 2021, or too narrow in scope, or unanswered. The licensing for Viva is still entirely unclear to me. I have E5 licenses. In my MS365 admin portal in the MS365 E5 License Management blade, when you go to available add ons, there is the option to add on Viva Topics. However, there is also the option to purchase Viva Learning and Viva insights as individual modules, as well as Viva Suite, which I believe has all four modules, Learning, Insights, Topics and Connections, however, only Topics is shown as an add on for the E5 license, giving the impression that the E5 license includes all modules, with full features for Learning, Insights and Connections, and Topics sort of tops it off if you will. This would also seem to give the same impression: Microsoft Viva service description - Service Descriptions | Microsoft Docs.

However, this would seem to indicate that E5 licenses come with a limited feature set for Learning, Insights and Topics: Employee Experience Platform Plans and Pricing | Microsoft Viva as would this PDF: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2139145.

And then to top it off, throughout the documentation and in some blog posts and comments throughotu the tech community, there is mention of "Workplace Analytics," seemingly as a standalone offering that is possible to purchase, however, I thought this was being deprecated and rolled into Viva.

Edit: This documentation answers this question: Assigning licenses overview | Microsoft Docs Workplace Analytics is being rolled into Viva Insights. There is reference to My Analytics and Workplace Analytics as legacy licenses. So my question becomes: is this Viva Personal Insights and Viva Manager/Workplace Insights and the former is included with E5 and the latter is not?

I understand Connections is included with most/all licenses, so that isn't really the focus here. However, it is entirely unclear to me if there is any benefit to purchasing the Viva Suite for $9.00/mo per license on top of the E5 license, or if only the Topics add on provides additional functionality, thus providing the full suite of capabilites (and Syntex of course, but this is clearly not included with E5 and also not part of the VIva Suite). It is only a difference of $5.00, so its seems worth it to just add the Suite if it will round out the feature set, however, it also seems stupid to be paying for features that are already included in the E5 license. 

Can anyone provide any insight on this?

Thanks.

[#2 · Accepted solution]

I don't work for Microsoft so this is just my understanding. However, what you described makes sense to me. All of the Viva modules EXCEPT Viva Topics have a "seeded value" capability that is included in the base E3\E5 license. For example, see https://www.clearpeople.com/blog/viva-learning-features-and-licensing for a description of the capabilities for Viva Learning that are included for all licensed users. However, Viva Topics has no comparable "seeded value" available without a separate add-on license.
So, yes you do need to purchase the premium licenses for Viva if you want anything not included in the "seeded value". Regardless, all users will require the Viva Topics add-on in order to access Viva Topics regardless of their current licensing level.

[#3]

Yea that is what it looks like. There are just a couple of places in the documentation that make it seem like there is nothing to add for, at a minimum, Insights, specifically here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/microsoft-viva-service-description. And I think the learning module and the topics module add ons would be $8.00 a month, and the normal pricing for the suite is $12.00, although now it is $9.00 so not much of a difference. But it does seem like there is conflicting information about what features are included in the documentation.

I think the conclusion however is adding the Suite as an addon to E5 would not be duplicative entirely, and at $9.00, its less of a worry because at a minimum Topics is clearly not included and Learning is not the full feature set in E5.