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From Leadership Engagement, Town Halls to Communities: Put Viva Engage to Work at Comms Camp

AllisonMichels — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 20:52:43 GMT

The best way to learn Viva Engage is not by watching someone else publish another perfectly prepared demo post. It is by starting with a real communications challenge. Maybe you are planning a leadership campaign and want employees to do more than simply read an update. Perhaps you are trying to build a community with a clear purpose, improve an AMA, make a town hall part of an ongoing conversation, or understand what employee questions are telling you. Bring that challenge to Comms Camp, a free, hands-on workshop taking place October 12–13, 2026, at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington.

Comms Camp is designed for corporate communications teams and the IT, adoption, employee experience, and community partners who support them. Participants will use Viva Engage, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and practical agent patterns to turn real communications scenarios into reusable plans and workflows.

Start with the outcome, not the feature

Viva Engage can support leader visibility, employee conversation, community building, campaigns, events, and knowledge sharing. But successful communications programs rarely begin with a list of product features.

They begin with questions:

Who needs to understand or do something differently?
What does meaningful participation look like?
Which leader, community, or conversation can create trust?
What should happen after employees respond?
Which signals will tell us whether the communication worked?
Where can AI help without replacing the communicator’s judgment?

At Comms Camp, you will start with those questions and use Viva Engage as part of a practical communications plan.

What you will work through

The workshop takes participants through a complete communications scenario, from the original ask to activation and measurement. Choose your challenge and bring a scenario or select a sample. Define your audience, intended outcome, risks, and the action you want employees to take.

Design the Viva Engage activation

Determine how Viva Engage, Copilot and other Microsoft products can support the communication. Depending on your scenario, that could include:

A leader or executive communication
A community activation
A campaign moment
An AMA or event
An employee prompt designed to encourage useful participation
A follow-up plan that keeps the conversation moving

Turn conversations into signals

Publishing is not the finish line. Employee questions, comments, reactions, and event inputs can provide important context about what people understand, what remains unclear, and what should happen next. You will explore how to organize those signals into themes, actions, and a practical measurement approach.

Share what you built

Participants will share their developing playbooks, learn from one another, and get feedback they can apply when they return to their organizations.

Explore Copilot and agent workflows

Identify where AI could save time or improve consistency across planning, drafting, summarizing, and follow-up. You will also explore a simple communicator agent canvas for a repeatable workflow. AI can help make the work faster, but the communicator remains responsible for context, quality, tone, and final judgment. Use Copilot-supported prompts and peer feedback to turn a rough stakeholder request into a more focused communications brief.

What you will take home

Comms Camp is designed to create reusable outputs, not just inspiration. Depending on your chosen scenario, you can leave with:

A strategic communications brief
A Viva Engage activation plan
Copilot prompts and workflows
A leader communication, event, AMA, campaign, or community plan
A communicator agent canvas
A signal and measurement plan
A reusable communications playbook

You will also leave with ideas from other communicators who are navigating many of the same challenges, including channel complexity, leader visibility, responsible AI adoption, employee participation, and demonstrating impact.

Who should attend?

Comms Camp is intended for:

Corporate and employee communications professionals
Leader and executive communications teams
Viva Engage community managers
Change and adoption professionals
Employee experience leaders
IT partners supporting communications and communities

Organizations may send multiple participants, and communications and technology partners are encouraged to attend together.

Participants should have access to Microsoft 365 and Viva Engage. Microsoft 365 Copilot access is recommended.

Register for Comms Camp in Redmond

Join us October 12–13, 2026, at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington. The workshop is free, and registration is required.

Explore the Comms Camp experience:

https://adoption.microsoft.com/comms-camp

Register directly for the Redmond Comms Camp:

https://aka.ms/CommsCamp/Joinus

Cannot join us in Redmond? Comms Camp is planned as a multi-city experience. Visit the Comms Camp site to learn when more locations are announced. Tell us where you want us to bring camp next!

Bring the complicated ask, the half-built campaign, or the community challenge you have been meaning to tackle.

We will help you turn it into something you can use.

Learn. Share. Build.

"View all communities" button does not show all communities

GrahamK — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 13:14:35 GMT

If you're in Viva Engage, and you go to "Communities," and you click "View all communities"

to see all the communities, it doesn't show you all of the communities - it shows you the recommended communities.

If you want to see all of them all at once, you have to click the arrow next to "Recommended" and select "Alphabetical" or "Community size."

Is there any way to make the default view "Alphabetical"?

Most users will a) expect a view all communities option to show all communities, b) not think to use a drop-down filter and choose 'alphabetical' or 'size' as options to show 'missing' communities. This is a direct consequence of the behaviour of the button not matching the button labelling and as a result this is impacting the visibility and discovery of communities in our network.

In trouble with "Articles"

JuliaNicolodi — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 11:50:02 GMT

Hello, everyone! I’ve been using the 'Article' mode in Viva Engage for a while now, and it gets good reach whenever we publish newsletters in this format. However, last week I went onto the platform to schedule an 'Article' post and the option was no longer showing up for me. I’ve already checked with my company's IT team, but it doesn't seem to be related to my license (as far as we could tell). Has anyone experienced this or know what might be causing it? I couldn't find any community articles about this issue.

'External guests' able to join community?

WillFox — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 20:50:53 GMT

Hi,

We have merged two companies, and until we have one tenant, we are having to add one organisation as guests to one tenant instance of Viva Engage.

This means creating a new 'All Company' community for them - everyone will be added.

We are also looking at more optional communities (ie an AI community) - is there a way that the 'external guests' can choose to join this community? What would be the best way instead of adding everyone into it?

Build your own Engage Governance agent

AllisonMichels — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 15:00:00 GMT

The best governance guidance often comes from real conversations with customers: the questions they ask, the decisions they are working through, and the practices they have already built. And organizations already have the answers somewhere: an adoption deck, an admin guide, a community manager checklist, an acceptable use policy, or a launch plan. That is where a Governance for Viva Engage Agent can help. Grounded in Microsoft guidance and your organization’s approved materials, it can give admins, communicators, adoption leads, and community managers quick, practical answers without replacing the people who own governance.

Give each source the right job

Mix Microsoft guidance with your own approved materials but be clear about which source wins. Your internal governance and policy documents should be the authority for organization-specific decisions. Microsoft Learn explains admin capabilities and roles. Microsoft Support covers the end-user experience. Microsoft Adoption offers planning and adoption best practices. The agent should make approved guidance easier to use, not invent policy or replace the people accountable for it.

Useful starting points:

To keep the agent useful and safe, define how it should treat each type of source. This prevents end-user help content from being mistaken for governance policy and helps IT teams understand which source should be used for each type of answer.

Source type	Use it for	Authority level
Internal governance and policy documents	Tenant-specific rules, ownership model, escalation paths, community lifecycle decisions, and approved operating model	Highest authority for organization-specific decisions
Microsoft Learn admin documentation	Admin capabilities, admin roles and responsibilities, admin center guidance, configuration surfaces, and security/compliance options	Authoritative for admin capabilities and product administration
Microsoft Support end-user documentation	User-facing experiences, getting started, Teams app setup, posting, participation, and end-user help	Authoritative for end-user product help, not governance policy
Microsoft Adoption materials	Adoption best practices, planning, launch readiness, community management, and success measurement	Best-practice guidance for planning and adoption

In the agent instructions, explicitly state that internal governance documents take precedence for organization-specific decisions, while Microsoft Learn and Microsoft Support explain product capabilities and user experiences.

How to create the agent

Microsoft Copilot Studio could be a good starter place because it lets you connect approved knowledge, define behavior, test responses, and control publishing. But the instructions below are intentionally builder-agnostic, so you can adapt them to the agent platform they already use.

Copy-and-paste agent instructions

You are the Governance for Viva Engage Agent for this organization.

Your role is to help IT teams, Viva Engage admins, governance owners, adoption leads, corporate communications teams, and community managers understand how to plan, launch, manage, and govern Viva Engage.

Use the connected knowledge sources as your primary source of truth. These may include Microsoft Viva Engage adoption materials, Microsoft end-user support documentation, Microsoft admin documentation, Viva Engage essentials guidance, and this organization's internal governance documentation.

Source authority hierarchy:

1. Approved internal governance and policy documents are the source of truth for tenant-specific or organization-specific decisions.

2. Microsoft Learn admin documentation is the source of truth for admin capabilities, admin roles, admin responsibilities, configuration surfaces, security and compliance options, and Viva Engage admin center guidance.

3. Microsoft Support end-user documentation is the source of truth for user-facing experiences, basic usage, Teams app setup, posting, participation, and end-user help.

4. Microsoft Adoption materials are the source of truth for adoption best practices, planning, community management, launch readiness, and success measurement.

5. Do not treat end-user support documentation as governance policy. Use it to explain how the product works for users, not to decide organizational rules.

Important Microsoft reference areas:

- Viva Engage adoption guidance: https://adoption.microsoft.com/en-us/viva/engage/

- Viva Engage essentials / Monday Masterclass content: https://adoption.microsoft.com/en-us/customer-hub/monday-masterclass-your-guide-to-the-viva-engage-essentials/

- End-user support documentation: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/viva/engage/get-started-with-viva-engage

- Admin support documentation / Engage admin center overview: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/viva/engage/eac-overview

- Admin roles and responsibilities are especially important when answering governance, operating model, ownership, and escalation questions.

You can help users with:

- Viva Engage governance planning

- Community creation standards

- Community ownership and admin roles

- Community lifecycle management

- Moderation and healthy conversation guidance

- Acceptable use guidance

- Launch readiness

- Adoption planning

- Measurement and success metrics

- Escalation paths

- IT operating model considerations

- Admin roles and responsibilities

- End-user setup and participation guidance when it supports governance or adoption planning

- Guidance for leaders, community managers, and champions

When answering:

- Be practical, concise, and structured.

- Assume the audience is technical or IT-adjacent unless told otherwise.

- Reference the relevant source material when possible.

- Distinguish between Microsoft best practices, Microsoft admin capability documentation, Microsoft end-user help, and the organization's own policies.

- Do not invent tenant-specific rules, policy decisions, dates, licensing terms, compliance requirements, or admin settings.

- If the answer depends on the customer's tenant configuration, licensing, legal requirements, HR policy, compliance posture, or internal governance model, say so clearly.

- Recommend that users validate final decisions with the appropriate internal owner, such as IT, compliance, legal, HR, corporate communications, or the Viva Engage governance team.

- Do not provide legal, HR, regulatory, or compliance advice.

Use these as suggested prompts:

What governance decisions should we make before launching Viva Engage?
What roles are needed to govern Viva Engage?
What should IT own versus communications or business owners?
How should we decide when to create a new community?
What should our community lifecycle model include?
How should inactive communities be reviewed or retired?
What should be included in a community manager checklist?
How should moderation and escalation work?
What technical controls should IT consider before rollout?
What metrics should IT and adoption leads monitor?
Create a launch readiness checklist for Viva Engage governance.
Create a sample operating model for Viva Engage governance.

Start small, then make it yours

Before you publish, test with a small group that knows the admin experience, community management, communications, and policy boundaries. Ask the agent to build a governance model, name approvers, explain admin roles, or recommend what to do with inactive communities. A strong response should offer a framework, cite the right source, and ask for context when needed. It should never turn a best practice into a made-up company rule. As you use your agent, continue to edit and improve the instructions and refine your list of knowledge sources to improve responses.

Sample benchmark metrics

The best governance agent is not the one with the longest instructions. It is the one people trust enough to use. Start with your most common questions, connect the sources you already rely on, test the boundaries, and improve it as your governance model evolves.

If you build one, or end up building off of this, I would love to hear how it works for your organization! Let me know in the comments or join our Customer Community and share with others!

Specify SharePoint Description and Thumbnail

Reena_V — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 13:12:27 GMT

Is there a way to check / amend the thumbnail or description for content published in Viva Amplify to SharePoint?

In the same way you can set the Audience for a SharePoint article, it would be useful to be able to see / edit these. As default fields, common across all SharePoint sites, it feels like this should be an option. Even a preview of how it would appear in a SharePoint news feed would be helpful

Customer spotlight: Capgemini is turning comms and conversations into AI-ready knowledge

AllisonMichels — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 16:57:30 GMT

As organizations invest in Microsoft 365 Copilot and AI, many are asking the same question:

What knowledge will AI actually use?

For Capgemini, the answer isn't buried in documents alone. It's found in leadership conversations, employee communities, company events, and knowledge shared every day across the organization. Through Viva Engage, Capgemini is creating a living knowledge layer that helps employees connect with leaders, learn from one another, and build the organizational context that makes AI more useful.

Moving beyond broadcast communications

Capgemini's goal is simple: meet employees where they already work. Rather than adding more destinations and channels, the company is focused on creating a connected experience across Teams, Viva Connections, and Viva Engage that makes it easier for employees to find information, participate in conversations, and learn from their peers.

For Jeanette Vikbacka Castaing, Global Internal Communications at Capgemini, communities are ultimately about helping people connect, learn, and share expertise. Speaking at Microsoft 365 Community Conference, she described the value of bringing together people who are "passionate about engagement, communications, and products" and creating opportunities to learn, grow, and exchange ideas.

Creating the signals Copilot needs

One of the central themes of Microsoft's "Engage Everywhere" session was that AI adoption is not simply a technology challenge. It is a communications and knowledge challenge.

Copilot relies on organizational context to generate grounded responses. That context comes from everyday interactions between employees, experts, and leaders. Communities capture peer learning. Leadership dialogue provides direction and context. Events create shared moments. Conversations preserve institutional knowledge.

At Capgemini, these signals are being created at scale through several key use cases:

Executive leadership communications
Corporate events
Employee challenges and campaigns
AI-focused communities
Ongoing employee conversations and knowledge sharing

Making leaders visible—and discoverable

Leadership visibility became one of Capgemini's key priorities over the past year. What began as an experiment encouraging leaders to post directly evolved into a measurable communications strategy.

"We have really seen now an increase of the views every time a leader posts directly in our all staff community," Jeanette explained. "It's very clear that people want to hear from the leaders. We can see that in the data." Beyond reach, the goal is trust. By making leaders more approachable and accessible through conversation, Capgemini is creating stronger connections between leadership and employees. "When you're approachable, you also build trust," Jeanette shared.

These leadership conversations become more than communications content. They become organizational knowledge that employees can discover later and that AI can reference when surfacing relevant information.

Turning events into lasting knowledge

Capgemini has also embraced events as a way to create connection and generate knowledge before, during, and after a live moment. Instead of treating events as standalone broadcasts, conversations continue around the event experience. Employees ask questions, share perspectives, and contribute ideas that remain available to the broader organization.

Microsoft's vision for Engage events follows the same principle: event conversations create content that can remain discoverable and continue delivering value beyond the live session itself.

The multiplier effect of conversation

Perhaps the most compelling insight from Capgemini's story is what the team calls the “Multiplier Effect of Conversations” For example:

A post creates a conversation.
A conversation creates connections.
Connections inspire action.
Actions drive outcomes.

For communicators, this represents a shift in how success is measured.

The value of a post is no longer limited to impressions or views. The real value comes from the expertise surfaced, questions answered, relationships built, and knowledge created throughout the conversation lifecycle. As communications strategies evolve, measurement becomes increasingly important.

Capgemini has seen this effect firsthand through employee challenges tied to company sponsorships such as the Ryder Cup, America's Cup, and Tour de France. Previously these campaigns relied heavily on email. Today they are powered by conversations in Viva Engage. According to Jeanette, the difference has been "night and day." Employees immediately start commenting, tagging colleagues, sharing excitement, and encouraging others to participate. "We really build momentum," she said. "It's kind of a snowball effect.” Perhaps most importantly, the conversations continue long after the original campaign. Past contest winners often return to encourage future participants, creating a self-sustaining cycle of engagement and peer advocacy.

Capgemini's journey reflects a growing need among communicators to understand not only whether content was delivered, but whether it generated participation, engagement, and meaningful outcomes. The goal is helping communicators measure not just reach, but influence.

Measuring More Than Reach

Capgemini's approach to communications is increasingly data-driven. Whether evaluating leadership visibility, participation in AI communities, or employee engagement with company-wide campaigns, the team looks beyond simple message delivery.

"People want to hear from the leaders. We can see that in the data," Jeanette explained when describing the growth of leadership communications.

The same focus applies to Copilot communities. Capgemini tracks how employees engage, ask questions, and help one another. Jeanette noted that even large, open communities remain productive because employees arrive with a specific purpose: learn, ask questions, and share knowledge.

"You ask a question, you get an answer," she said. "It's really peer-to-peer connection at its best."

For communicators, these interactions represent something more valuable than traditional engagement metrics. They are signals of learning, expertise sharing, and organizational knowledge creation—the same signals that help employees today and help Copilot deliver more relevant answers tomorrow.

Building an AI-ready culture

The most important lesson from Capgemini's story is that successful AI adoption starts with people.

Communities give employees a place to learn together. Experts can share knowledge. Leaders can provide clarity. Questions become answers. Conversations become institutional memory. Over time, those interactions create the organizational context that helps Copilot deliver more relevant, grounded responses.

One of the fastest-growing examples is AI itself. Capgemini has built multiple communities dedicated to Copilot, including a broad Copilot Chat community, a community for licensed Copilot users, and a separate space for certified Copilot champions. According to Jeanette, each has a different purpose and audience, but all are performing well and generating strong participation. "The reach is just amazing. We measure, of course," she explained.

Start, test and, and learn

Asked what advice she would give communicators just beginning their journey, Jeanette's answer was straightforward: "Test, test and learn." There is no single formula for building communities or driving engagement. What works depends on the audience, culture, and goals.

"Failure is also progress," she said. "Test and see what works and build from there."

That mindset reflects Capgemini's broader approach to AI readiness. Create opportunities for people to connect. Encourage leaders to participate. Build communities where expertise can be shared openly. Measure what matters. Over time, every conversation contributes to something bigger: a living body of organizational knowledge that helps both employees and AI work smarter together.

For communicators, the opportunity is clear: every conversation is more than a moment of engagement. It is a chance to create knowledge, build trust, and help the organization become more ready for AI. So, the question becomes: what conversations are you creating today that your employees, and AI, will need tomorrow?

Customer spotlight: How Foot Locker turned AI curiosity into adoption

sarahLundy — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 21:18:32 GMT

When organizations talk about AI adoption, the conversation often starts with technology. At Foot Locker, it started with people.

Like many companies, Foot Locker was exploring how Microsoft 365 Copilot could fit into everyday work. Alex Snyder, Technology Change Management lead at Foot Locker, and a small cross-functional team focused on helping employees become comfortable with a new way of working starting with Copilot Chat. They used Viva Engage as a place to make that learning visible, social, and supported.

Snyder and her team knew that Copilot adoption was not just a technical launch. It was a change in how people think about work, build confidence with AI, and learn from one another. It would take communications skills to translate the change into clear language, reduce uncertainty, and create community spaces where employees could ask questions, share ideas, and try something new.

Start with confidence, not complexity

Early in the journey, Snyder and the team recognized that employees needed more than access to AI tools. They needed space to learn, experiment, and ask questions.

For Snyder, that perspective came naturally. Before moving into product management, she spent years in internal communications and employee experience, and that background shaped how Foot Locker approached Copilot from the start: with the employee experience at the center.

"This is not a tool rollout. This is a different way of thinking about work."

— Alex Snyder, Product Manager for Microsoft 365, Foot Locker

Instead of leading with technical capabilities, the team focused on helping employees understand what AI could do for them. Training sessions emphasized practical examples over product features. Communications avoided jargon. Security guidance was clear and simple.

"We removed fear and demystified AI. People felt safe to try it."

— Alex Snyder

Make learning social

A key part of the strategy was giving employees a place to learn from one another. That approach aligns with Microsoft research—peer influence can be a critical factor in whether AI adoption takes hold across an organization.

That early choice to use Viva Engage became central to Foot Locker's approach. The team created a dedicated community focused on Copilot Chat where employees could share ideas, ask questions, and learn from peers. "Let community do what communications can't," Snyder said.

The Foot Locker team also actively participated in discussions to ensure questions were answered and conversations stayed productive.

Rather than relying solely on top-down communications, employees began sharing their own experiences, prompting tips, and use cases. The result was a steady stream of peer-to-peer learning that helped build momentum across the organization.

Give people one place to start

Alongside the community, Foot Locker created a centralized AI hub in SharePoint that brought together guidance, training resources, security information, prompt examples, and FAQs.

As new training materials, events, and resources became available, employees knew exactly where to find them.

The team also kept training intentionally simple. By demonstrating practical scenarios and real examples, employees could quickly translate what they saw into their own work.

"We didn't focus on everything Copilot could do," Snyder said. "We focused on what someone needed to know to start experimenting."

— Alex Snyder

Build momentum before you scale

Within six months, more than 25% of Foot Locker employees had adopted Copilot Chat, and usage continued to grow. The success created demand for deeper AI capabilities and helped build support for Microsoft 365 Copilot licensing and agent development initiatives.

Today, Foot Locker is testing Microsoft 365 Copilot with employees across multiple functions and building custom agents to solve specific business challenges. One example is a frontline-focused agent designed to help store associates quickly find policies, processes, and operational information.

"Once people trust Copilot Chat, it's a lot easier for these other things to follow."

— Alex Snyder

What communicators can take from Foot Locker

For communicators looking to support AI adoption, Snyder's advice is straightforward: "Don't wait for something to be perfect. Just start somewhere."

Successful AI adoption isn't only about tools, licenses, or training programs. It requires creating opportunities to learn together and making experimentation feel safe. That is where communicators can have real impact: shaping the story, building trust, and turning a technology change into a shared learning journey.

We’ll be sharing blog posts throughout June to recap the Engage Track sessions at the Microsoft 365 Community Conference. Follow along on the Viva Engage Blog | Microsoft Community Hub, and learn about all the new and coming soon experiences in Engage that we highlighted at the conference.

Viva Engage Agent draft not visible

battello — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 15:29:58 GMT

Hi,

I'm verified admin in my company account and I can see and approve the drafts created by the Viva Engage Agent.
My coworker on the other hand cannot see the agent draft and cannot even access the empty page sometimes.
They received notification but cannot see the page to approve them, whether they are community admin or community experts.
Is it because I'm the one who enabled the agent or because I'm a verified admin or because I'm the first one to open the notification?

Thanks

What they see when they click on the Agent Icon :

But I'm the only one to see the drafts :

Customer spotlight: Less inbox, more connection at Nuveen

sarahLundy — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 19:40:15 GMT

Helping leaders reach employees in new ways

At the Microsoft 365 Community Conference, we explored a challenge many communicators are dealing with right now: employees are surrounded by nonstop signals—email, chats, meetings, and posts—and important messages get lost in the noise.

Dan Mulcahey, VP, Internal Comms at Nuveen, a TIAA company, joined us to share how he and his team are evolving their communications approach using Viva Engage to make messages more relevant, visible, and engaging over time.

Mulcahey highlighted how moving away from email to Engage marked a strategic shift in how leaders communicate and build connection with employees.

Why email wasn’t enough

The Nuveen comms team looked at the reality: email volume was high, open rates were going down, and leaders needed a better way to reach employees. From there, they piloted Engage, proved reach first, and built confidence over time. Reach came quickly, while engagement required more patience.

“We proved the reach first… But you need patience for the engagement.”

— Dan Mulcahey, VP, Internal Comms, Nuveen

Create for the channel

One of the biggest lessons from Nuveen was that communicators can’t just copy email content into a social channel and expect different results. The team had to create content for the medium. For example, Nuveen’s CEO launched a recurring “Fun with Facts” series that used humor and short videos to make even routine topics, like compliance training, more engaging.

That shift in content style reflects a broader change toward making communications feel more like what people already consume outside of work: more visual, more direct, and more conversational. What people experience on social platforms and consumer apps shapes what they expect at work, and internal communications need to keep up.

“People don’t come to work and suddenly turn off their brain. They don’t forget the platforms they use in the real world.”

— Dan Mulcahey

Mulcahey reported that since June 2023, for a business unit of around 3,700 employees, that approach generated 2.5 million impressions, 25.5K reactions, and 2K comments on Engage, along with what the team described as “one executive team of believers.”

In a video shared during the session, Josh Shamansky, Chief Human Resources Officer, said Engage had become central not only to communications distribution strategy, but also to content development. He also shared that employees and leaders were engaging in ways that email and the intranet could not support in the same way.

“Viva Engage has become the most important channel for leaders and employees to stay connected across the organization. It is hard to remember that we did it any other way.”

— Josh Shamansky, Chief Human Resources Officer, Nuveen

Start small, build momentum

The Nuveen team described a phased journey that started small in one business area, expanded to a 3,700+ person Nuveen business unit community, then grew to 10 more communities before expanding to the TIAA all-company level. They focused first on the parts of the organization most ready to adopt, used those wins as proof points, and let leadership advocacy help the model spread.

Mulcahey and members of his team — Chris Dickey, Comms Business Partner, and Chris Martin, Communications Operations Lead — talked openly about the importance of “starting small and sending wins up the chain,” democratizing communications operations, and enabling non-communicators to help carry the story forward.

That meant communicators weren’t the only people creating momentum: leaders, advocates, and business-area contributors became part of the engine. That matters even more in an AI era, where the opportunity isn’t just to create more content faster, but to build more distributed participation around the messages that matter.

If there is one takeaway, it’s this: relevance comes from building communications that fit the channel, reflect how people consume content, and unfold over time in a way employees can follow.

We’ll be sharing more blog posts throughout June to recap the Engage Track sessions at the Microsoft 365 Community Conference. Follow along on the Viva Engage Blog | Microsoft Community Hub, and learn about all the new and coming soon experiences in Engage that we highlighted at the conference.

What’s new and next in Engage: June 2026

espnguyen — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 17:59:29 GMT

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.

Launch Demo

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.

Launch Demo

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.

Video links becoming attachments rather than embeds

JordsAU — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 01:18:53 GMT

Since 3 weeks ago, whenever I paste a Vimeo link into Viva Engage it becomes an attachment that, when posted, requires the post to be expanded before it can be watched.

Previously it's always scraped the vid and embedded to the post, so both the player and copy are immediately viewable by the community.

None of my Vimeo settings have changed so I'm unsure why this has occurred.

Could someone please assist?

Leadership communication in the flow of work

samsearth — Thu, 14 May 2026 22:10:44 GMT

Leadership today is less about occasional broadcasts and more about consistent, credible presence. Employees expect leaders to:

Provide clarity amid constant change
Show follow-through, not just direction
Communicate in ways that feel human and accessible

Why this matters

This playbook scales based on a leader’s scope and audience size – from company-wide executives to function and team leaders.

Research from Engage UX Researcher Paula Wellings, shared during our Masterclass series, outlines what employees expect from leader communications. This research (and our internal experience) consistently show that visible, two-way leadership communication is a key driver of trust, engagement, and successful change. When leaders participate directly, downstream employee engagement increases.

Ongoing dialogue—through posts, responses, and visible follow-through—is the foundation of leadership presence on Engage. Structured moments such as ask-me-anything (AMA) sessions and organization-wide events can reinforce that dialogue and deepen trust at scale.

At the same time, leaders face real constraints: limited time, channel overload, and high scrutiny.

Engage is designed to help leaders communicate once, in the right place, and stay visible in the flow of work without adding meetings or increasing email.

Where Engage fits in the flow of work

Leaders communicate across many channels today, including email, meetings, and the intranet. Each has a role, but not all support visibility, persistence, or two-way engagement at scale.

Engage is designed for leadership communication that benefits from reach, context, and dialogue—where updates need to travel beyond immediate teams and employees can respond, not just receive.

Read about Microsoft executive Ravi Vedula’s Viva Engage adoption journey, and chart your own course.

Choosing the right surface based on intent

Engage gives leaders two complementary avenues for communication. Each serves a different leadership intent. The choice between storyline and communities depends on the leader’s scope, audience size, and communication intent.

Storyline

Storyline enables leaders to reach both their intended audience and people across teams and hierarchies, making it well suited for visibility, alignment, and leadership presence.

Share perspectives, priorities, or decisions
Recognize people or progress publicly
Cascade or amplify important updates
Close the loop in a visible way

Communities

Communities bring together people organized around a shared variable (org, role, region, topic). They typically feature multiple voices, curated content, and ongoing discussion aligned to the purpose of the community.

Use communities when you want to:

Engage a specific group or function
Invite discussion, Q&A, or feedback
Go deeper on a topic over time
Build shared understanding within a domain

Communities are ideal when the goal is conversation rather than broadcast.

How leaders typically use both

Leaders do not choose between storyline and communities based on title or level. They choose based on audience scope and communication intent.

Storyline is typically used when the goal is broader visibility:

Sharing perspective or context that benefits cross-team awareness
Reinforcing leadership presence beyond a single org
Public recognition or commentary that should travel widely

Communities are typically used when the goal is focused dialogue:

Communicating with a defined audience (org, region, function, topic)
Hosting discussion aligned to the purpose of that group
Sustaining ongoing conversations within a curated space

In practice, leaders often use both surfaces together — for example, sharing a visible update on storyline and continuing deeper discussion within a community.

Leadership presence isn’t just posting

Leaders often pair posting with lightweight engagement—replying to comments, acknowledging questions, or reacting—to reinforce trust and dialogue.

Building blocks for effective leadership communication

To ensure clarity and reach, two things need to be in place:

Leader identification

Leaders must be identified as such in the system. This enables:

Appropriate visibility across Engage
Access to leader-level insights and analytics
A consistent experience for audiences

This ensures that leadership communication is surfaced and measured correctly.

Delegates enabled

Leaders can designate delegates to support their communication on Engage. Delegation is about support, not outsourcing leadership voice.

Delegates can:

Draft posts on behalf of the leader
Publish updates with the leader’s voice and attribution
Help manage cadence, timing, and follow-up
Help leaders stay engaged by surfacing conversations, questions, and moments worth responding to

This allows leaders to maintain an authentic presence while scaling communication – especially during busy periods or major moments.

Audiences built in (no set up required)

Engage provides built-in audiences based on organizational data, such as the reporting hierarchy, so leaders can reach the right people by default from their Storylines. Leaders and delegates can define audiences when they publish, with no setup required. Audiences provide:

A built-in followership
Confidence that messages are seen
Less reliance on follow-up email
Clear expectations for who an update is for

Core leadership use cases

Engage helps leaders put leadership behaviors into practice in a way that’s visible, consistent, and part of the flow of work.

Narrate what’s happening

Share priorities, decisions, and context at the appropriate scope so teams stay aligned.

Keep updates concise and focused on what changed, why it matters, and what’s next.

Acknowledge people and progress

Recognize wins, milestones, and contributions publicly to reinforce morale and culture.

Specific recognition lands better than generic praise. Call out teams, behaviors, or moments.

Close the loop

Reflect back what you heard, what changed, and what’s next. This is a key driver of trust.

Follow-up posts that reflect what you heard build trust and increase engagement. Even brief responses signal listening and build credibility, especially during change or uncertainty.

Host interactive leadership moments

In addition to ongoing posts and dialogue, leaders strengthen trust through live and structured interaction.

Ask-me-anything (AMA) sessions and broadcast events are powerful ways to:

Provide clarity in moments of change
Address questions transparently and at scale
Demonstrate accountability
Reinforce alignment across teams

A common pattern is to use Engage end-to-end:

Solicit questions in advance on storyline or in communities
Host the live broadcast event
Follow up with key takeaways or clarifications

Interactive moments often become anchor points in a leader’s communication strategy, complementing regular posts and dialog.

For setup guidance and event mechanics, refer to Ask me anything events in Engage.

Measuring leadership impact

Engage provides leadership analytics to help leaders understand how their communications land.

Leaders and delegates can view:

Reach: how many people saw a post
Engagement: reaction, replies, and sentiment to understand the tone and quality of responses, not just volume.
Conversation signal: whether people are responding, not just reacting
Trends over time: consistency and momentum in leadership communication

These insights are not about scoring or ranking leaders. They are designed to help leaders:

Understand what resonates
Know when follow-up is needed
Communicate with more intention over time

Leaders who consistently respond and engage tend to see stronger momentum over time, not just higher reach.

Getting started (10 minutes)

Choose the right surface:

Storyline for broad context and visibility
Communities for focused dialogue

Confirm your audience and delegates
Writing guidance:

Quality over quantity: Consistency matters more than volume. One thoughtful post a month is better than frequent updates if there isn’t something meaningful to say.
Sound human: write conversationally. Share perspectives – not corporate language.
Be timely and relevant: Address what’s top of mind for your audience right now.
Invite engagement: Ask a question or prompt reflection when appropriate.
Use visuals when possible: Images or short videos help posts stand out and travel further.
Choose the right tone: Use announcements, polls, or praise intentionally based on your goal.
Plan time to engage after posting: even a few replies can meaningfully increase trust and participation.

Example posts that leaders can model

Employees value leaders who show up, respond, and follow through — not just those who post.

Team recognition: “Proud of the team for delivering this milestone. The collaboration across groups really showed up in the final result. Thank you for the focus and persistence.”
Leadership reflection: “This month I’ve been reflecting on how we balance speed with quality. Both matter, and I’m encouraged by the conversations I’m seeing across the org.”
Amplifying an announcement: “Today’s company announcement is an important step forward. I appreciate the work behind it and encourage everyone to take a look at the full update.”
Culture and values: “One thing I consistently see here is people showing up for each other. Those moments define our culture more than any slide ever could.”
Change and transparency: “As we move through this transition, I want to acknowledge the adaptability I’m seeing across teams. I’m committed to keeping communication open as we go.”

The bigger picture

When leaders use Engage intentionally:

Important context travels faster
Teams feel more informed and connected
Reliance on broadcast email goes down
Leadership presence becomes more continuous and human

Note: Storyline announcements, targeting, the ability to identify leaders, some advanced analytics, 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).

Resources

Relevance is the new reach: modern leadership communications in Viva Engage

evelynchan — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 15:48:33 GMT

Leadership communication has never been more important... Or more complex. Leaders want to communicate clearly and consistently, but every message comes with a risk. Broadcast it broadly, and employees tune out. Narrow it manually, and someone important gets left out.

This isn’t a leadership or strategy gap. It’s a tooling gap.

Most platforms still force you to choose between reach and relevance. But research from Viva Engage UX Researcher Paula Wellings, shared during Viva Engage Masterclass Season Two: Session 3 – Campaigns & Storytelling, confirms what corporate communicators have long suspected: Employees don't ignore leadership communication because they're disengaged. They ignore it because it doesn't apply to them.

When messages aren't tied to an employee's role, location, or reporting chain, they're not just ignored. They create active disengagement and information anxiety. That's why precision targeting is no longer optional. It's a prerequisite for engagement.

That insight is exactly why Viva Engage is investing in a next generation of capabilities designed specifically for leadership communication through Storyline.

How Storyline targeting changes the game

By enabling Leaders, and their Delegates, to define audiences directly at publish time using existing organizational attributes like reporting chain, department, or role, Storyline announcements make it easier to confidently notify the right audience without relying on static distribution lists or organization‑wide alerts. This allows leadership teams to move from volume‑based communication to relevance‑based reach — ensuring that the most important updates are delivered with precision, not noise.

Storyline announcements = Precision, not volume

Real‑world example: targeted HR updates without the overhead

Scenario: HR needs to share a benefits update that applies only to employees in the United States.

Before

Build and maintain a US-only distribution list
Or send org-wide and create confusion for EMEA/APAC teams
Rely on email, with no visibility into reach or engagement

With Storyline announcements:

Select Country = United States at publish time
2,400 relevant employees notified automatically, with optional notification channel delivery customization (Engage, e-mail, Teams)
Engagement tracked through analytics
No list management required

Targeting isn’t just about who sees a message, it’s also about how they’re notified and whether that audience can be reused. With Storyline Announcements, leaders and their delegates can customize notification channels and save audiences for reuse, making repeat communications faster and more consistent over time.

And soon with smart notifications for Storylines, Engage will send alerts to an employee’s preferred delivery channel first, helping reduce duplicate notifications across Teams, email, and Engage.

Why use Storyline announcements (instead of sending another email)?

Storyline gives Leaders a direct, measurable channel for communicating with their audiences, while still supporting dialogue and participation.

Unlike email broadcasts, Storyline posts:

Appear across Teams, Outlook, mobile, and desktop

Support engagement and feedback

Can be measured using audience analytics

Allow Delegates to manage communications on behalf of the Leader

Leaders’ Storyline posts can complement community‑based communications, and the same principle applies more broadly across corporate communications: the best tool depends on both the audience and the level of amplification a message needs.

Cascading messages with added relevance

Reinforcing organizational priorities

Sharing context and perspective

Building leadership visibility and authenticity

This makes Storyline an ideal channel for business updates, organizational changes, initiative rollouts, policy notifications, campaign reinforcement, event reminders, or action‑oriented leadership messages - all delivered to the people who actually need them.

To explore these upcoming Storyline announcement targeting capabilities, sign up for the public preview and read more about Storyline announcements.

Another way to increase reach without extra noise

Featured conversations offer another way to increase reach without adding noise.

For posts in public communities, communicators can now choose whether to feature a conversation to everyone in the network or to community members only. That makes featuring a useful option when the goal is to increase visibility without defaulting to a broad notification for every message.

Featured conversations and storyline announcements are separate capabilities in Viva Engage, but they reflect the same principle: giving communicators more control over how broadly a message is amplified. Storyline announcements remain the right fit for targeted leader communications, while featured conversations give corporate communicators another way to match reach to relevance in community-based campaigns and updates.

Learn more about featuring a conversation in Viva Engage.

How analytics help communicators measure leader reach

Analytics in Viva Engage help communicators understand whether a message reached the right audience and resonated once it got there.

Understand a post’s reach across audiences and platforms
Measure reactions, replies, and shares to understand engagement
Extract important themes and sentiment from comments

Now, the Frequent contributors leaderboard view in network analytics can help communicators understand which leaders’ posts are catching employee attention and compare engagement trends across leaders and top creators.

Note: Storyline announcements, targeting, frequent contributors, 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).

Unable to tag distribution lists (DLs) in Viva engage posts

gibhnovo123 — Mon, 11 May 2026 03:58:13 GMT

Dear All,

It would be helpful to have a feature in Viva Engage posts that allows us to tag DLs when needed. While planning a post, I noticed that cross functional teams are not part of the community for specific reasons, which I understand. Instead of reposting in their community, it would be useful if we could tag DLs so the original message reaches everyone intended.

Issue with notifications in external network

MaciejO — Thu, 07 May 2026 10:22:34 GMT

I am having problems with seeing notifications from external network (Microsoft's network to be exact).

I can see the notification count all right:

However upon clicking the bell, I get this error 90% of the time:

What is really weird, is that every now & then it works just fine - it might take 10 times trying the bell icon, or 50, but those notifications will at some point be shown to me all right.

I seem to be in tiny minority of people having this issue.

Does anyone have any guidance or troubleshooting approach? Is this a setting in my home tenant, or Microsoft tenant? Account permissions?

Does a log or telemetry exist anywhere where I could start asking the right questions how to resolve this.

If anyone has any insight, that would be greatly appreciated

Thanks,
Maciej

Planning for Communities in Teams: What Admins and Communicators Should Do Next

AllisonMichels — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 16:12:03 GMT

Imagine if employees could spend less time sorting through messages and more time engaging with what actually matters, whether it’s a leadership update, a company announcement, or an important change…all in one place where they can understand, react, and respond.

Communities are becoming a more visible part of Teams, making now the right time for admins and communicators to align on readiness, governance, and content. This 3-step post helps you plan your rollout:

How to get ready
How to reset All Company
How to address concerns about noise as adoption grows

You’ll also learn the key decisions admins and corporate communications teams should make to ensure Communities add clarity, not noise as adoption increases.

And in case you missed it, the Teams blog covers what’s new and why it matters. (If you haven’t read the announcement yet, start here:
Introducing communities in Teams: Unifying company communication and connection)

What’s changing... and what’s not

What’s new:

Communities are easier to discover and access in Teams
Visibility of posts and announcements increases

What’s not changing:

Governance is still in your control
Communities still follow your existing structure and purpose

The opportunity isn’t to rebuild everything, it’s to refine what already works.

Start from where you are

We recognize that not every customer is starting from the same place. For organizations already using Viva Engage, Communities in Teams is less about reinventing your strategy and more about extending it into the flow of everyday work. Communities are now easier to find and engage with inside Teams, raising the stakes for clarity, governance, and content design. As access becomes simpler and participation grows, it’s important to have your policies, onboarding, and launch plan in place.

"Bringing our Viva Engage communities into Teams was an instant win for our organization. By standardizing on a single pane of glass, inside of Teams, we've made it easier and more enjoyable for staff to communicate with other, using a trusted tool that requires no additional enablement overhead. Cognizant has over 350,000 employees - and managing communities at scale requires us to leverage Viva Engage - by now having those live inside of Teams, we get the best of both worlds: the ability to participate in communities with 30k+ employees while still maintaining the notification and organization we've come to depend upon inside of ad-hoc Teams groups and more traditional Teams channels. This further reinforced the idea that Viva Engage Communities are where work gets done - they aren't an optional location for employees - and staying on top of groups and communities together helps make us better at supporting our clients! Best of all - we like to say we "drink our own champagne" here at Cognizant - we can now go to those clients and use our story to show them how an integrated Teams/Viva environment can drive positive business outcomes and enhanced employee experiences."

Reed Wiedower, Cognizant, Innovation and Enablement Leader

If you are new to Viva Engage, or have not used it strategically in some time, start by defining a few high-value communities, setting clear governance, and giving employees simple guidance on where to go, what to expect, and how to engage.

Start by understanding where your organization is today:

What governance looks like the next 30 days:

Revisit All Company and determine if its purpose or usage should change.
Define “official communities” strategy. Start with a small set (e.g., employee news, leadership updates, IT help, communities of practice), seed them with content, and actively promote them.
Establish a naming convention to support discovery as Communities become visible in Teams.
Define governance and moderation: who creates communities, who can post announcements, and how moderation works.
Communicate these changes to community admins and encourage them to activate or refresh key communities.

Not using Viva Engage yet? Start here.

If you’re unsure where to start, start small: define the purpose, set expectations, and publish a simple guide for employees on how to follow, post, and manage notifications. With a few well-run communities in place, you’ll have the proof, and the playbook, to expand with confidence.

Once you’ve defined your starting point and aligned on governance, the next critical step is resetting how your most visible community, All Company, should be used. If you need more guidance or a starting point, check out the Communities in Teams Playbook!

Reset All Company for the Teams experience

As Communities become more visible in Teams, All Company becomes even more important. This is the moment to reset its purpose: one place for company-wide updates that matter to everyone.

For Admins (IT / Network Admins): Set the guardrails

Your role isn’t just to enable Communities, it’s to prevent noise before it starts.

Start here:

Limit who can post (e.g., Corp Comms + delegated leadership voices)
Document what qualifies as a post vs. what belongs elsewhere
Define when announcements should be used (not every post needs one)

For Corporate Comms: Reset how you use All Company

Think of All Company as your broadcast + engagement layer inside Teams.

Use it for:

Leadership narratives and context (not just links)
Major moments that need visibility and dialogue
Posts that invite reaction, questions, and discussion

Decide:

What qualifies as a new post vs. a reply
Who moderates, and when to step in
Expected cadence (not every update = an announcement)

Write for Teams behavior:

Lead with “what this means” (not just “what’s new”)
Keep posts scannable (short, clear, structured)
Use announcements sparingly—overuse reduces trust

Once All Company is clearly defined, look for follow-on communities (like Copilot Adoption Community) where more targeted conversations can happen.

Address concerns about noise early

As Communities expand in Teams, one concern comes up quickly: Will this create more noise? Done right, the answer is no. Start with this mindset: more posts ≠ more value. Engagement doesn’t mean more content. It means more relevant content, in the right place. If everything is posted everywhere, or if everything is an announcement employees will tune out.

Admins: Control where content shows up

Next Steps:

Ensure communities are purpose-driven (not duplicates of the same topic)
Guide teams to use the right community for the right audience
Review the Governance of the network and Watch session: Mastering admin and governance in Viva Engage for community management, moderation capabilities and more.
Review moderation and theme moderation in Viva Engage

Corporate Comms: Be intentional with reach

More visibility is powerful, but only when used carefully. Clarity reduces noise more than volume control ever will.

Reminders:

Use announcements for high-signal moments only
Reserve broad reach for content that applies to most employees
Let smaller or targeted communities carry more specific conversations

The goal is trust, not volume

As Communities become easier to access in Teams, the priority is making them feel useful, intentional, and worth employees’ attention. Done well, Communities don’t add noise, they make important communication easier to find, easier to understand, and easier to trust.

Continue the journey

PS. Want access now? Communities in Teams is available now for Engage customers who opt into public preview, with no migration required. All existing community content, permissions, and governance settings carry over automatically.

Review the network and tenant requirements to ensure your network meets the criteria.
Make sure the engage experiences in Teams toggle is on for your tenant.
Opt-in to the public preview through Teams.
Learn more about the full experience for communities in Teams.

Viva Engage for recognition feels limited, what are you all using?

HarryP — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 04:51:45 GMT

We rolled out Viva Engage hoping the praise feature would help build a recognition culture but honestly its kinda buried and most employees forget its there. Our managers want something where giving recognition is part of the daily flow, like right inside a Teams chat or after a meeting. Are you running into difficulties with praise? Any best practices you can recommend so we can use it better? Or are you using something else?

Effective, engaging events in communities and storylines

tricialybrook — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 16:03:56 GMT

Whether you’re running a company-wide broadcast, a training session, a Reddit-style “ask me anything” (AMA) or an in-person gathering, Viva Engage and Microsoft Teams help you host and manage more effective and engaging events.

Events have always been central to employee communications. Viva Engage and events play a critical role in building trust, encouraging authenticity, and listening at scale. From highly produced hybrid all-hands to asynchronous AMAs, the new Viva Engage features are helping our leaders connect with employees, address what matters most, and build trust—all in one platform.

- John Cirone, Senior Director of Global Employee and Executive Communications

We are upgrading existing community live events and storyline AMA features with a simple model: three event types—broadcast, meeting, async—from any community or storyline, super-powered with a long list of event features you have asked for. The result: improved experiences for organizers, presenters and attendees both before, during and after the event. This blog post will detail what this means for you!

These new events features start rolling out April 27^th. And guess what? All of these new features will be available to all Microsoft 365 commercial customers with access to Engage and Teams—no “premium” license will be required for events up to 10,000 attendees.

New features: the highlights

The new capabilities of Engage events—particularly the moderated feed with support for anonymous questions and upvotes—has transformed the way we empower our leaders to listen and respond to questions from employees.

- Alexander Bradley, Senior Director of Executive Communications

With that in mind, let’s start by exploring the new features for every event in every community and storyline:

Events listing: Each community and storyline has a calendar of upcoming and past events—a destination for people to register for future events and catch up with events they missed.
Event page: The home for your event is a branded landing page with a custom cover photo (coming soon), the event details and description. This is the “micro site” for your event to which you drive attendees. They can learn about the event, engage with it, join the live session, and catch up with the event if they missed it.
Event feed: A new event feed enables you to share updates, solicit questions, ideas and feedback, and support engagement between attendees and presenters. The new event feed introduces support for optional anonymous posting and moderation which allows organizers to approve posts before they are made visible to attendees. The feed allows you to tune the event experience for the engagement you want to encourage and support; you can enable or disable questions, comments, reactions, and upvoting; and you can change the settings at any time. The event feed is available before, during and after the event, showing up on the event landing page in Engage and in the “Q&A” panel of Teams.
Event recording: After the event, the recording is available on the event page, so attendees can review both the recording and the feed. You can now update the recording link, allowing you to make edits to the video.

Calendaring options: Events in Engage support two models to support your efforts to drive demand and attendance. First, you can invite attendees directly from Outlook, putting an invitation directly in their calendar. This model supports scenarios where their attendance is expected. Or, you can drive attendees to the event page where they can add to calendar, supporting an “opt-in” model that gives attendees control of what is on their calendar. Or you can mix and match, inviting those attendees who really need to have it on their calendar and letting others opt in.
Event analytics: You’ll have access to analytics throughout the lifecycle of your event. You’ll be able to see how many people attended, how they engaged in the event feed, and how people consumed the recording after the event. For broadcasts, you can also access Teams insights.

Mobile app choice: Attendees can join events from either the Teams or Engage mobile apps, across both iOS and Android.

Integration with enterprise search and Copilot: Content from public events serves as grounding for Microsoft 365 Copilot and enterprise search, amplifying the reach and impact of the knowledge and information you share in your event.

Event types

Now, let’s explore the three event types and what is different.

BROADCAST is best for company-wide or large-scale events, launches, keynotes and organizational “town hall” or “all hands” events. Key characteristics:

Deliver a high‑quality live stream that scales to large audiences
Organizers control what appears on screen
Attendees watch the event and participate using Q&A and reactions

This experience is an upgrade to the legacy “live event” broadcast, with an advanced feed and a rich suite of production features.

MEETING is best for collaborative sessions, presentations, training workshops, expert panels, and all of the regular “rhythm of business” events your team or department conducts. Key characteristics:

Share camera, microphone, and screen in real time
Organizers can control who can present and share
Up to 1,000 people can participate in the live event

A collaborative event can feel exactly like a Teams meeting, where anyone can share. Or it can be like a presentation or webinar, where only presenters can share. Or anything in between.

ASYNC is best for soliciting questions, collecting feedback, and crowdsourcing ideas from employees.

Conduct an offline, asynchronous event with no live presentation or video stream
Host an "ask-me-anything" (AMA) during which leaders or experts answer questions
Enhance an in-person event by engaging your audience before and after

This experience features an event page and event feed, but no real-time video experience powered by Teams. You can gather questions, ideas and feedback before an in-person event, or host a text-only (asynchronous) event like a Reddit-style AMA that can connect people with experts even over longer periods of time.

Why host events in a community instead of creating them from your calendar?

Until now, you’ve had one way to create events: From your Teams or Outlook calendar, you can create a Teams meeting, a Teams webinar, or a Teams Town Hall. Why would you want to change where you create and host events?

An event isn’t just a calendar entry; its impact continues outside of the event confines. New event features help employees who missed the live event catch up quickly, help moderators engage attendees, and help leaders close the loop by responding to remaining questions. The result is a richer, more durable record of the event, so your organization benefits from the information and knowledge long after the event ends.

Here’s the short list of what you can do better when you create your event from a community:

Provide a calendar of upcoming and past events.
Communicate effectively to drive awareness and attendance.
Engage your audience before, during and after the event.
Leverage event analytics to measure and improve effectiveness.
Amplify information and knowledge shared at the event, after the event.
Integration with community objectives and experiences.

If you have experience with Microsoft 365 and events, think of it this way: By creating an event in a community, you’re taking a Teams event and wrapping it with the superpowers of Engage to reach and engage your audience at scale, before, during and after your event.

And remember communities are not just for Engage anymore! Communities (powered by Engage) will be available in Teams Chat, alongside your chats, channels, and meetings; so, your events and their content will be seamlessly integrated into the flow of work in Teams.

Preview customers have used these new event capabilities at scale, for company-wide “all hands” events, departmental rhythm-of-business meetings, and an extraordinary number of internal AI learning events. We look forward to celebrating your successful events as you apply these features to share news and information, train people, and engage employees.

Resources

Viva Engage Explained: Search

RamyaRajasekhar — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 18:53:46 GMT

Every person's search results are different. Just like the home feed, Engage search is personalized. When you search, we don't just look at the words you typed - we consider who you work with, which communities you're active in, and what content is most likely to be useful to you specifically.

So how does search work? What happens when you type a query and press Enter? And how can you search more effectively? Let's take a closer look.

The search experience

Search in Viva Engage has two stages: suggestions as you type and full search results. Each is designed to help you find what you need as quickly as possible.

Stage 1: Instant suggestions

Even before you start typing anything, when you click on the search bar, you are presented with suggestions based on your previous searches. As soon as you start typing in the search box, Engage shows you instant suggestions before you even press Enter. These suggestions are organized by type:

Query suggestions - popular and related search terms that help you refine your query
Ask Copilot - an option to have Copilot answer your question directly using knowledge from Engage
Communities - matching communities you can navigate to directly
People - matching users so you can jump straight to their profile
Campaigns - campaigns that match your search terms

As you type "copilot," Engage instantly shows related query suggestions, matching communities like "Microsoft Global Hackathon 2025," and relevant people - all before you press Enter.

These suggestions are designed to save you time. If you see the community, person, or campaign you're looking for, you can click it directly - no need to go to the full search results page.

When to use Ask Copilot

You'll notice that the autosuggestions include an "Ask Copilot" option at the top. This is especially powerful when your search goes beyond simple keywords and becomes a full question or request.

Here's a good rule of thumb: if you're typing more than a couple of keywords, consider using Ask Copilot. When your query looks more like a sentence or question than a keyword search, Copilot is often the faster path to an answer.

What you're typing	Best approach
"hackathon"	🔍 Regular search - a simple keyword, great for browsing posts
"hackathon winners 2025"	🔍 Regular search - specific keywords will surface the right threads
"who won the hackathon last year"	🤖 Ask Copilot - this is a question; Copilot can synthesize the answer from multiple posts
"how do I set up a community in Engage"	🤖 Ask Copilot - a how-to question; Copilot can assemble step-by-step guidance
"what was discussed in the last leadership town hall"	🤖 Ask Copilot - a summarization request; Copilot can pull together key points from recap threads
"what are the latest AI tools people are using"	🤖 Ask Copilot - an exploratory question; Copilot can aggregate insights from across the network

How it works: When you click "Ask Copilot," your query is sent to Microsoft 365 Copilot, which searches across conversations in your Engage network and generates a natural-language answer with citations. You'll see a summarized response with links to the source threads - so you can always verify and dig deeper.

License requirement: Ask Copilot is available only to users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. If you don't have a Copilot license, the "Ask Copilot" option will not appear in the search suggestions. All other search features - keyword matching, meaning matching, personalized ranking, and filtering - are available to all Viva Engage users.

Think of it this way: regular search helps you browse and discover. It's ideal when you want to see a list of posts and scan through them yourself. Ask Copilot helps you get answers. It's ideal when you have a specific question and want a synthesized response instead of scrolling through dozens of results.

Both options are available in the same search box - start typing and choose the path that matches your intent.

Stage 2: Full search results

When you press Enter (or click the search icon), you land on the full search results page. Results are organized into tabs so you can focus on exactly what you're looking for:

Tab	What it shows
Conversations	Thread results with full post previews, author info, community name, and highlighted matching terms
Answers	Questions and answers that match your query
Communities	Communities with matching names or descriptions
People	Users matching by name, job title, or email
Campaigns	Active and past campaigns matching your query
Files	Documents and files shared in Engage posts
Topics	Topics used across the network

The full search results page for " copilot" - notice how the matching keywords are highlighted in the post preview, and results show the community name, author, date, and reply count.

You can further narrow your results using the filter bar at the top of the results page. Filters include Date, Posted by (a specific person), Posted in (a specific community), and an All filters option for advanced filtering.

How search finds your results

When you search in Viva Engage, a lot happens behind the scenes - all in less than a second. Here's a simplified view of what happens:

Keyword matching + meaning matching

Viva Engage uses hybrid search - two fundamentally different approaches that run at the same time and complement each other:

Keyword matching finds posts that contain the exact words you typed. This uses a proven information retrieval technique that considers not just whether your keywords appear, but how often they appear and how distinctive they are. A rare, specific word like "hackathon" carries more weight than a common word like "team." This is great for specific terms like project names, acronyms, or someone's name. If you search for "FY26 Q3 OKRs," keyword matching finds posts that use those exact terms.

Keyword matching also draws from two pools of content: exploration results (discovery-focused, across all content you can access) and affinity results (personalized, weighted toward people and communities you interact with most). These two pools are merged to give you both breadth and personalization right from the start.

Meaning matching uses AI to understand the intent behind your query. Your query text is converted into a mathematical representation of its meaning (called an "embedding"), and then compared against embeddings for all threads in the network. Posts with similar meaning are surfaced - even if they use completely different words. For example, if you search for "team morale ideas," meaning matching can surface a post titled "Fun Activities to Boost Team Engagement" - there's no word overlap, but the meaning is the same. Only results that meet a minimum similarity threshold are included, ensuring quality.

Why both? Keyword matching is precise and predictable. Meaning matching helps you discover content you might have missed. Together, they cast a wide net - typically evaluating hundreds of candidate posts - before narrowing down to the most relevant results for you.

Privacy and permissions

Engage applies strict permission checks. You will only ever see content you have access to. Posts from private communities you haven't joined, or threads that have been deleted, are never shown. Note that content from communities you've muted will still appear in search results - muting affects your feed, not search.

Personalized ranking

After finding all the potentially relevant posts, Engage uses a machine learning model to re-rank results specifically for you. The model evaluates each candidate post across over 100 different signals, organized into several categories:

Text relevance - how well the post content matches your query, measured through multiple dimensions including term frequency, term importance, match density, and which part of the post the match appears in (title, body, or replies)
People affinity - how much you interact with the person who wrote the post, across Engage, Outlook, Teams, and other Microsoft 365 tools. The system computes a personalized affinity score between you and every author in the result set
Community affinity - how active you are in the community where the post was shared, based on your visits, replies, and engagement history with that community
Semantic similarity - three separate AI-computed similarity scores: how close your query meaning is to the post content, to the post author, and to the community where it was posted
Recency and time signals - when the post was created, how much time has elapsed, and time-decay factors that naturally boost newer content
Engagement signals - view counts, reply counts, reactions, and the user's own search and click history help predict what they'll find valuable
Highlight quality - where in the post the matches appear, how concentrated they are, and how prominent the matching sections are

This is why two people searching for the same thing may see different results. If you work closely with someone in the engineering team and they posted about "hackathon," their post will naturally rank higher for you than for someone who has never interacted with them.

Speed and performance

All of this - hybrid candidate generation, feature computation across 100+ signals, machine learning ranking, and permission filtering - happens in under a second. Several techniques make this possible:

Parallelism - keyword and meaning matching run simultaneously, not one after the other, so the total time is the duration of the slower search, not the sum of both
Smart caching - when you view the first page of results, Engage pre-fetches and caches the next page in the background. This means pagination feels instant - clicking to page 2 or 3 serves cached results with no delay
Batch processing - signals like engagement history and community metadata are fetched and computed in optimized batches rather than one at a time

The result is a search experience that feels instant while doing sophisticated work behind the scenes.

Searching for people

Viva Engage search isn't just for conversations - it's also a powerful way to find people across your organization. When you search for a person, Engage matches against:

Display name - first name, last name, or both (e.g., "Rajesh Jha")
Job title - search by role (e.g., "engineering manager" or "principal PM")
Email or alias - search by email address or alias prefix

People results appear in both the instant suggestions dropdown and the People tab on the search results page. Each result shows the person's name, profile picture, job title, and email - so you can quickly identify the right person even when there are multiple matches.

Tip: If you know someone's email alias, searching for it (e.g., "chrzeng") is often the fastest way to find them. Searching by job title (e.g., "product manager Engage") helps you discover people you may not know by name.

Searching for communities

Looking for a community to join? Search matches against community names and descriptions. This means you can search by topic (e.g., "accessibility," "onboarding," "women leadership") and find relevant communities even if the exact word isn't in the community name.

Community results also appear in the instant suggestions as you type, making it easy to navigate directly to a community without visiting the full results page.

A few examples of how community search works:

You search for...	You'll find communities like...
"accessibility"	Engage Accessibility, Accessibility Connected Community, Accessibility Leadership Community
"women leadership"	SME&C Women in Leadership, Women's Leadership Community (WLC), Technical Women at Microsoft
"Azure DevOps"	Azure DevOps / 1ES, and related Azure engineering communities
"onboarding"	Onboarding, Alchemy Onboarding, New Employee Onboarding

Keyword highlighting

When you land on the search results page, you'll notice that your search terms are highlighted in the post previews. This helps you quickly scan results and understand why each post was returned.

Highlighting appears in:

The thread title (if the post has one)
The body text preview - Engage shows the most relevant snippet of the post with your keywords highlighted
Replies - if a reply matches your query, it's shown with highlights below the original post

For example, searching for "AI tools and copilot" highlights each matching word in the results, making it easy to see how the post relates to your query at a glance.

A note on highlighting: We’re aware that keyword highlighting may not appear consistently across all result types. For instance, topic names and community names are indexed and searchable but are not currently highlighted in the search results. We’re actively working to improve highlighting consistency across the search experience.

Search on mobile - the same engine, designed for your pocket

Search in Viva Engage works the same way whether you're at your desk or on the go. The mobile apps (iOS and Android) use the same search engine, ranking, and personalization as the web experience - so the results you see on your phone are the same quality you'd get on the web.

On mobile, the search results page is optimized for touch and smaller screens: result cards are streamlined, tabs let you tap between Conversations, People, Communities, and more, and tapping any result takes you straight into the full thread. Use search on mobile to stay connected with your organization's conversations on the go - catch up on town hall recaps, hackathon updates, or announcements from anywhere.

Feature	Web	Mobile
Search engine & ranking	✅ Full hybrid search with personalization	✅ Same engine and ranking
Search tabs	✅ Conversations, Answers, Communities, People, Files, Topics	✅ Same tabs
Autosuggest	✅ Communities, People, Campaigns, Ask Copilot as you type	— Not available
Filters	✅ Date, Posted by, Posted in	— Not available
Keyword highlighting	✅ Yellow highlights on matching keywords	✅ Same highlighting
Result cards	Rich cards with hero images, inline replies	Streamlined cards optimized for smaller screens
Search operators	✅ AND, OR, NOT, "exact phrase", wildcards	✅ Same operators

What impacts your search results?

Your search experience improves over time as Engage learns from your activity. These actions directly influence the quality and personalization of your results:

Join communities. Joining relevant communities and leaving ones you're not interested in helps search understand what topics matter to you. Results from communities you've joined receive increased weight.
Interact with posts. Liking, replying to, and viewing posts tells search which content and authors are relevant to you. The more you engage, the better your people and community affinity scores become.
Follow people. Following leaders and colleagues is one of the strongest signals for search personalization. Posts from people you follow get a natural ranking boost.
Join relevant communities. Being a member of communities helps search understand your interests and can surface more relevant content from those communities.

Good to know: Engage uses the same affinity signals as the home feed. If you've been improving your feed experience by following people and joining communities, your search results are benefiting too.

Tips for more effective searching

Engage search learns from the signals you provide. Here are some ways to get better results:

Be specific

Instead of “strategy,” try “FY26 company strategy.”
Adding context like dates, team names, or product names helps search find exactly what you need.

Use the tabs

If you’re looking for a person, click the People tab.
If you’re looking for a community, click Communities to focus results on the right content type.

Filter by date

Use the Date filter to narrow results to a specific time period.
Especially useful if you roughly remember when something was posted.

Filter by author

Use the Posted by filter if you remember who posted it.
Helps narrow results to a specific person’s posts.

Filter by community

Use Posted in to limit results to a specific community.
Helpful when you know where the conversation happened.

Ask Copilot

When you see Ask Copilot in the suggestions dropdown, click it.
You’ll get an AI-generated answer drawn from Engage conversations.

Use search operators

Use AND to require all terms e.g., safety AND store
Use OR to broaden results e.g., hackathon OR innovation
Use NOT to exclude terms e.g., hackathon NOT 2026
Use quotes for exact phrases.
Operators can be combined e.g., (hackathon OR innovation) AND 2025

Search by hashtag

If you know the topic or campaign tag (e.g., #CopilotStories), search for it directly.
The Topics tab shows all matching hashtags and their associated threads.

We're always improving

The Viva Engage search team is continuously improving the search experience. As you use search, you're helping it get smarter. Your interactions - the results you click, the posts you engage with, and the communities you join - all contribute to a better experience for everyone.

Have feedback on search? Send an email to rarajase@microsoft.com - we're listening.

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From Leadership Engagement, Town Halls to Communities: Put Viva Engage to Work at Comms Camp

Start with the outcome, not the feature

What you will work through

Design the Viva Engage activation

Turn conversations into signals

Share what you built

Explore Copilot and agent workflows

What you will take home

Who should attend?

Register for Comms Camp in Redmond

"View all communities" button does not show all communities

In trouble with "Articles"

'External guests' able to join community?

Build your own Engage Governance agent

Give each source the right job

How to create the agent

Microsoft Copilot Studio could be a good starter place because it lets you connect approved knowledge, define behavior, test responses, and control publishing. But the instructions below are intentionally builder-agnostic, so you can adapt them to the agent platform they already use.

Copy-and-paste agent instructions

Start small, then make it yours

Specify SharePoint Description and Thumbnail

Customer spotlight: Capgemini is turning comms and conversations into AI-ready knowledge

Moving beyond broadcast communications

Creating the signals Copilot needs

Making leaders visible—and discoverable

Turning events into lasting knowledge

The multiplier effect of conversation

Measuring More Than Reach

Building an AI-ready culture

Start, test and, and learn

Customer spotlight: How Foot Locker turned AI curiosity into adoption

Start with confidence, not complexity

Make learning social

Give people one place to start

Build momentum before you scale

What communicators can take from Foot Locker

Viva Engage Agent draft not visible

Customer spotlight: Less inbox, more connection at Nuveen

Helping leaders reach employees in new ways

Why email wasn’t enough

Create for the channel

Start small, build momentum

What’s new and next in Engage: June 2026

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

Intelligence

Available now: Copilot in Engage

Public preview: agents in communities with grounded answers

Available now: Communities to support AI adoption

Context

Public preview: Communities in Teams

Public preview: Smarter communication and targeting

Available now: Events that extend beyond the moment

Coming soon: Community membership auto-enrollment

Coming soon: End-to-end leader communications

Available now: New analytics

Coming soon: SharePoint News cross-post to Engage

Available now: Article improvements

Trust

Available now: Updated admin experiences

Coming soon: Company branding

Catch up on all the Microsoft 365 Community Conference news

Video links becoming attachments rather than embeds

Leadership communication in the flow of work

Why this matters

Where Engage fits in the flow of work

Choosing the right surface based on intent

Storyline

Communities

How leaders typically use both

Leadership presence isn’t just posting

Building blocks for effective leadership communication

Core leadership use cases

Measuring leadership impact

Getting started (10 minutes)

Example posts that leaders can model

The bigger picture

Resources

Relevance is the new reach: modern leadership communications in Viva Engage

How Storyline targeting changes the game

Storyline announcements = Precision, not volume

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