Viva Connections Blog articles

Introducing card personalization for end users in Viva Connections

NancyH2 — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 15:39:56 GMT

We are excited to announce end user customization and personalization support for Viva Connections dashboard. This feature enables end users to adjust the Viva Connections dashboard based on their preference.

Customize your dashboard card layout

There are several customization options available to you on your dashboard. Add a dashboard card to manage a specific task, reorder the dashboard cards in order of your priority, hide cards that you rarely use or show your hidden cards. Any changes you make to the dashboard will apply across your desktop and mobile instances and will only affect your dashboard view.

To begin, select the Customize icon above the dashboard cards.

Add a personal dashboard card

You can add a Quick Links card to your dashboard that will allow you to add a collection of links to your favorite files, apps, and sites.

Select Customize above the dashboard.
Select Add a card (#2).
Select Quick links (#3).

The card will be added to your dashboard and the properties pane will open.
Under links, select + Add link to add a URL, site page, or files. Added links show below the + Add link button. You can add up to 20 links (#5).
Once added, links can be edited in the following ways (#6):

Rearrange – Select and drag to the left of the link to reposition it within your quick link list.
Delete – Select the trashcan to delete the selected link.
Edit – Select the arrow to edit the link URL, title, and icon.

Under Card details, you can edit the size, title, icon, and image displayed on the Quick Links dashboard card.
When finished, select the X in the upper-right of the property pane to close.
Select Save.

Note: To access the settings again for a user added dashboard card, select Customize, then hover over the card and select the edit icon.

Move dashboard cards

Select Customize above the dashboard.
Select and drag the dashboard card to its new location in the dashboard.
Select Save.

In the confirmation, select Save to save your changes to the dashboard for desktop and mobile devices.

Hide dashboard cards

Select Customize above the dashboard.
Select the visible icon in the lower-right corner of a dashboard card. The card will become greyed out, and the visible icon will disappear.

Select Save.
In the confirmation, select Save to save your changes to the dashboard for desktop and mobile devices.

Show hidden dashboard cards

Select Customize above the dashboard.
Select the empty box in the lower-right corner of a dashboard card. The card will no longer be greyed out, and the visible icon will appear.

Select Save.
In the confirmation, select Save to save your changes to the dashboard for desktop and mobile devices.

Reset dashboard cards to default

Select Customize above the dashboard.
Select Reset to default.
Select Save.
In the confirmation, select Save to save your changes to the dashboard for desktop and mobile devices. Your dashboard will be reset to the default view created by your organization.

Features and capabilities mentioned in this blog post, are demonstrated in the following video with Nancy Handa (Microsoft) and Vesa Juvonen (Microsoft).

Frequently asked questions

When will this happen?

This blog post refers to following Microsoft 365 Roadmap item, which should be fully available for customers worldwide in May 2025. Rollout started for first customers during March 2025:

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 472021 - Microsoft Viva: End user cards in Viva Connections

What do you need to prepare?

You do not need to do anything to prepare for this update, but you may want to let your users know about this new capability. Feature will be automatically enabled for all customers and Viva Connections will be automatically shown as an icon in the app bar, if it has been configured.

What is next?

We will be continuously evolving the Viva Connection experiences also in future to provide new capabilities and cards for our customers to take advantage. We are looking on multiple other ways to get the SharePoint and Viva Connections experience more closely integrated together.

Thanks for reading. Let us know any feedback or questions in the comments. Your feedback drives our internal prioritization, so please do not hesitate to share your thoughts 💬

Introducing Folder card for Viva Connections

PoojaG — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 11:26:25 GMT

We are excited to share the availability of the new out-of-the-box card for Viva Connections called Folder.

Viva Connections is the one stop place for all employee service where employees can easily access the relevant company information along with their personal tools and resources. We plan to keep evolving and improving the Viva Connections experiences constantly with new out-of-the-box features and new extensibility opportunities.

The new card to be added in our Out of the Box Connections gallery is the Folder Card. The folder card provides quick access to a document repository on SharePoint site from the Viva Connections Dashboard. This could bring scenarios like troubleshooting manuals, templates, checklists, policies folder with quick access.

The card acts as an easy way finding for Front Line Workers (FLWs) who are looking for quick access to information while they are on the go and an easy access point to our IW workers as well.

Features and capabilities mentioned in this blog post, are demonstrated in the following video with Pooja Gulati (Microsoft), Shivani Sahu (Microsoft) and Vesa Juvonen (Microsoft).

Frequently asked questions

When will this happen?

This blog post refers to following Microsoft 365 Roadmap item, which should be fully available for customers worldwide by end of April 2025.

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 408536 - Microsoft Viva: Document library card for Viva Connections Dashboard

What do you need to prepare?

You do not need to do anything to prepare for this update, but you may want to let your users know about this new capability. Feature will be automatically enabled for all customers.

What is next?

We will be continuously evolving the Viva Connection experiences also in future to provide new capabilities and cards for our customers to take advantage. Next big feature is dashboards in SharePoint sites. This means that you can build engaging dashboards with the cards for any SharePoint site in future.

Thanks for reading. Let us know any feedback or questions in the comments. Your feedback drives our internal prioritization, so please do not hesitate to share your thoughts 💬

Introducing Viva Connections in the SharePoint app bar

Catherine_Chuaga — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 20:14:18 GMT

We are excited to share a new feature to provide more integrated experience between Viva Connections and SharePoint, by exposing Viva Connections features directly in the SharePoint app bar.

When Viva Connections have been configured in the tenant, there will be easy quick links exposed in the SharePoint app bar to access the Viva Connections experience easily.

Initially app bar will expose three links as follows:

Dashboard - This will link to the personalized dashboard in the Viva Connections
News - This will directly link to the Viva Connections news experience to easily access latest updates within the tenant
Resources - This will link to the resources section of the Viva Connections landing page

Viva Connections acts as a company branded front door to employee experiences that allows them to access important apps, tools, resources in one place, surfaces the most important news/updates and enables them to take quick action on work related tasks.

Features and capabilities mentioned in this blog post, are demonstrated in the following video with Cathrine Chuaga (Microsoft) and Vesa Juvonen (Microsoft).

Frequently asked questions

When will this happen?

This blog post refers to following Microsoft 365 Roadmap item, which should be fully available for customers worldwide in March 2025. Rollout started for first customers during February 2025:

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 468290 - Microsoft Viva: Connections on the SharePoint app bar

What do you need to prepare?

What is next?

Thanks for reading. Let us know any feedback or questions in the comments. Your feedback drives our internal prioritization, so please do not hesitate to share your thoughts 💬

Introducing enterprise news reader in Viva connections

DC_Padur — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 09:37:34 GMT

We are excited to launch a new Enterprise News reader experience in Viva Connections. This feature will replace the Feed in Viva Connections across desktop, mobile, and web platforms. This new experience will present SharePoint news from the organizational sites, boosted news, user’s followed sites, frequent sites, and people they work with in an immersive reader experience.

Viva Connections serves as the gateway to your employee experience through a branded company app - surfacing apps, tools, resources, and news to keep everyone connected from wherever they are.

News reader also includes a Copilot powered news summary, available on desktop only in this initial release. Copilot will provide an AI generated summary of top news items in a user’s feed to provide a quick overview of all the latest information.

The news reader features a fresh new grid UX for recommended News with intuitive card design and layout. The news item cards have easy access to Like and Save for later gestures. It also has intuitive visual cues to indicate a News link post type and the original link source domain.

Saved items are available for viewing from the specific “Saved for later” tab.

When user is accessing the news items, they are loaded within the Viva Connections app itself in an immersive reader experience with quick access to sharing gestures and ability to open the same news item in a browser.

The features and capabilities mentioned in this blog post are demonstrated in the following video with Divyachapan (DC) Padur (Microsoft) and Vesa Juvonen (Microsoft).

Frequently asked questions

When will this happen?

The feature has started rolling out to Targeted Release customers and will continue to roll out to all customers through the end of April 2025.

This message is associated with Microsoft Roadmap ID 472018.

What News items are shown to a user?

This is a system driven news feed with SharePoint news posts from the user’s followed sites, frequent sites, trending sites, home site, organization news sites and news posts published by people they work with.

Does admin have any control over the news items shown here?

News posts published on the home site, organizational news sites, boosted news will all be prioritized and will show at the top of the feed experience.

Does this feed support audience targeting?

Yes, News posts are filtered appropriately based on the user’s audience memberships. Additionally, if multilingual news posts are available, the news item for the user’s preferred language is shown.

Will the Copilot summary work for any language?

The Copilot summary experience will respect the end user’s language and works for all languages called out in following article: Supported languages for Microsoft Copilot.

How can Engage content be shown in Viva Connections now?

We are soon rolling out a new Engage card that could be configured and used in the Viva Connections dashboard. Specific posts can be pinned in the Spotlight control. Viva Engage storylines are now natively available in Teams app (see more from What’s new in Viva Engage – Ignite Edition).

Thanks for reading. Let us know any feedback or questions in the comments.

Introducing My sites card for Viva Connections

PoojaG — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 13:01:34 GMT

We are excited to share the availability of the new out-of-the-box card for Viva Connections called My sites.

Viva Connections is the one stop place for all employee service where employees can easily access the relevant company information and their personal tools. We continue evolving and improving the Viva Connections experiences constantly with new out-of-the-box features and new extensibility opportunities.

The My sites card provides quick access to frequently visited and followed sites by the user on the Viva Connections Dashboard. Users see personalized results on the sites list, based on their behavior in SharePoint and you can control the list of Followed sites directly from the card.

Features and capabilities mentioned in this blog post, are demonstrated in the following video with Pooja Gulati (Microsoft) and Vesa Juvonen (Microsoft).

Frequently asked questions

When will this happen?

This blog post refers to following Microsoft 365 Roadmap item, which should be fully available for customers worldwide during early 2025. Rollout started for first customers during December 2024:

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 421617 - Microsoft Viva: My Sites card for Viva Connections Dashboard

What do you need to prepare?

You do not need to do anything to prepare for this update, but you may want to let your users know about this new capability. Feature will be automatically enabled for all customers.

What is next?

We will be continuously evolving the Viva Connection experiences also in future to provide new capabilities and cards for our customers to take advantage. Next card in the roadmap is a document library card to enable easy access on most relevant documents for their role. This will enable easy way finding, for example for front line workers on employee documents, directly within the dashboard.

We are also working on providing the value of Viva Connections dashboard capabilities directly within SharePoint in any site type. This means that you can build engaging dashboards with the cards for any SharePoint site in future.

Thanks for reading. Let us know any feedback or questions in the comments. Your feedback drives our internal prioritization, so please do not hesitate to share your thoughts 💬

Building employee experiences for Viva Connections with Power Apps cards

PoojaG — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 11:30:36 GMT

We are excited to announce general availability for using Power Apps cards as an extensibility option for the Viva Connections. This means that you can surface Power Platform powered experiences directly within the Viva Connections dashboard, making it easy for the employees to access their relevant applications from one centralized location.

Viva Connections is the company branded front door to employee experiences that allows them to access important apps, tools, resources in one place, surfaces the most important news/updates and enables them to take quick action on work related tasks.

Users can develop light weight apps on using Power Apps cards which can be rendered directly in the Viva Connections quick view without user being redirected away from the other relevant applications and functionalities in the dashboard.

Support to publish Power Cards to the Viva Connections

You can create your Power Card experience in the Power Apps. When the experience is ready to be used, you can enable the card to be available in Viva Connections.

This functionality will give you the URL which you can use to surface the Power Card to be visible in the Viva Connections dashboard.

Power Apps card in the Viva Connections dashboard

Viva Connections dashboard operators can include new Power Apps card to be available within the dashboard and they can associate the right Power Card to be initiated for end users.

Example scenarios for Power Cards

Power Cards are great option to build for example form based scenarios which are powered by the Power Platform connectors. We are excited to hear about the feedback from customers on this great new opportunity.

Features and capabilities mentioned in this blog post, are demonstrated in the following video with Pooja Gulati (Microsoft), Supreet Singh (Microsoft) and Vesa Juvonen (Microsoft).

Frequently asked questions

When will this happen?

This blog post refers to following Microsoft 365 Roadmap items which have their unique scheduled, but all features should be fully released during early 2025. Rollout will start with first customers during December 2024:

Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 464999 - Microsoft Viva: Revamped Resources on mobile and tablet

What do you need to prepare?

You do not need to do anything to prepare for this update, but you may want to let your users know about this new capability. Feature will be automatically enabled for all customers.

What is next?

Currently only Dataverse connector is supported with the Power Cards, but we are working on adding new opportunities for the Power Platform developers in the form of connector support and adding more native support also for Power Apps within the Viva Connections. Already currently you can use Power Apps in the Viva Connections using this same card, but depending on the used connectors, the experience can vary.

Thanks for reading. Let us know any feedback or questions in the comments. Your feedback drives our internal prioritization, so please do not hesitate to share your thoughts 💬

What’s new in Viva Connections – Ignite Edition

EdAverett — Mon, 02 Dec 2024 18:42:45 GMT

Viva Connections serves as the gateway to your employee experience through a branded company app -- surfacing apps, tools, resources and news to keep everyone connected from wherever they are. We are committed to building a single, unified experience and reducing friction across products and services. With that in mind, here are some of the latest enhancements to these features announced at Ignite:

New ways to customize the employee app

Organizations all around the world use Connections as their employee app, customizing it to fit the needs of their employees, adding in their own branding and 3^rd party business tools, and delivering it across a variety of formats and devices. Now, it can go even further.

Spotlight capabilities

Earlier this year we announced the hero ‘spotlight’ area at the top of the canvas, together with advanced branding and theming capabilities. As the next step, we’re adding new capabilities to help highlight and emphasize content in the spotlight:

Pin content – pin specific content to increase its visibility. This includes content from any URL and SharePoint News items. Admins can also reorder pinned content.
Further customize spotlight content with images and title text.
Spotlight content from multiple SharePoint sites as sources

New settings in the spotlight allow admins to change images, text, and the order of pinned content.

Branding across all experiences

Company branding is a critical part of company culture. To help your brand shine, we’ve extended branding and theming capabilities throughout Connections experiences to include desktop, mobile, tablet, and of course, your home site in web.

New branding capabilities bring your brand identity across all your app touchpoints.

Unique experiences in the Teams app bar

Viva Connections now supports up to 50 unique “instances” in a tenant, allowing you to have differently branded versions for various groups of employees. Until recently, however, you could only have one app icon for Connections in Teams.

We’ve now released the ability for you to have multiple app customizations for the Connections app in Teams – so for every “instance” of Connections, you can have a distinct app name and icon appear in the Teams App Bar.

Customize branding in Teams for different employee sets

Custom Fonts

Adding custom fonts has been a long-standing request from customers, and we are thrilled to deliver this feature.

Add your own custom font to be used within Viva Connections

New enterprise news reader

The Viva Connections feed experience is being replaced with an immersive SharePoint news experience. This transformation allows for a best-in-class enterprise news reader, providing a uniform and customizable experience across desktop and mobile with features like notifications, and enhanced user engagement. This updated News experience will also leverage Copilot to help you summarize top news and stay connected to what’s happening across your organization.

Summarize your news with the help of Copilot

The Enterprise News reader, along with Copilot capabilities, will be rolling out in early 2025.

What’s new with Adaptive cards

We’re continuing to build new ways for employees to access and take action on the information they need.

Adaptive Card Extensions in Copilot Experiences

When a card is relevant for a specific topic, Microsoft 365 Copilot will understand that a Connections card can address the request, and the card will surface within M365 Copilot chat. This is an exciting step forward for interactive content within Copilot, and will be in public preview this January.

Interact directly with Viva Connections dashboard cards from Copilot

Quick links card

This card shows a set of curated links created for quick access and wayfinding of important items.

Stream Playlist card

The Stream playlist card allows you to quickly view recently updated videos from the Stream app that can be accessed directly from your dashboard.

Files Card

Connected to your OneDrive, this card shows recent, shared and favorite files – keeping the most important files to you only a click or tap away.

Power Apps Card

This card allows you to surface content or directly interact with a Power App enabling quick access to the Power Apps you need.

Deeper integrations with Viva Engage
We are continuing to invest in deeper integration with Viva Engage starting with the Viva Engage Feed card for the dashboard – this new card will surface personalized recent and relevant community discussions directly on the card. From the card, you can quickly catch up on the latest posts, react, take actions, or navigate to the community itself for deeper engagement.

And to better stay connected to company news, Engage announcements will soon show up in the announcements banner at the top of Connections.

Additionally, we will include Engage campaigns and event within the Spotlight carousel.

There are plenty more additions on the horizon as we continue efforts to build a unified, flexible employee app that serves the needs of information workers and deskless employees working on the frontline. For a detailed look at everything on our roadmap, check out our Viva Communications & Communities on-demand session. Thanks for reading! Thanks for reading!

Update | Viva Connections Feed web part and video news link retirement

Rob_Nunez — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 16:47:09 GMT

As a follow-up to our initial announcement on the retirement of the Viva Connections Feed Web Part and Video News Link, we wanted to remind you of the upcoming changes and the actions you need to take.

Progress Update

On September 1, 2024, we successfully removed the Feed for Viva Connections web part from the toolbox and the Video news link from the + New menu in the organizational site. This was the first phase of our plan to streamline and enhance the user experience across our applications.

What's Next?

We are now approaching the second phase of this retirement plan. Starting November 5, 2024, we will end support for both the Feed for Viva Connections web part and the Video news link. This means that any instances of these features that have not been replaced with the recommended alternative solutions will no longer display content and will result in an empty web part or an error message.

Action Required

If you have not yet taken action, we strongly encourage you to do so before November 5, 2024. Site editors should update the affected sites with the recommended alternative solutions, such as the News, Viva Engage, File and Media, and Highlighted content web parts, as well as video pages.

For more detailed information and support guidance, please refer to the Viva Connections Feed Web Part and Video News Link Retirement - Support Guidance.

Improved experience for Viva Connections Resources section

lesliethomas — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 08:37:34 GMT

We are excited to announce recent enhancements to the Viva Connections Resources section that allow operators to personalize the experience even further. Here are some of the updates we have made to the Resources.

Features and capabilities mentioned in this blog post, are demonstrated in the following video with Leslie Thomas (Microsoft) and Vesa Juvonen (Microsoft).

Add Custom Images for Resource Links

Operators can now add their own custom images to their resource links for a more personalized feel that aligns with their brand. To add a custom image as an icon in Viva Connections, follow these simple steps:

On the Resources screen, select Edit.
From the three-dot menu next to the resource link, select Edit and then select Custom to select the custom image, and then select Change
Select image of your choice and then select Insert to add the new image onto the link
Select Edit at the bottom of the screen to implement changes.

No extensive preparation is needed. Operators should start considering which custom images they would like to use as icons for the links in the Resources section. This feature is on by default and accessible to all Viva Connections operators and admins.

Preview Editing Experience and Import Links from Global/Home Site Navigation

In addition, we have revamped the editing experience for the Resources section in Viva Connections. Operators can now edit more than one link at a time before saving their changes, updating from the previous auto-saving capability that existed in Resources. This update provides more flexibility, allowing operators to decide when to save changes to their resources section and make them visible to their organization. Additionally, operators will be able to import their navigational links from their home site and global navigation. TO perform the task, follow these steps:

On the Resources screen, select edit.
After selecting edit, select Import SharePoint Links.
Select which navigation component you want to import your link from. You can import from your home site navigation or your global navigation.
Next, select the number of links you want to import into resources.
Select if you want to keep existing audience targeting settings that you have for links that you’re importing into Resources by turning the toggle on.
Once complete, select Import to import your links into Resources in Viva Connections.

Consistency Across Desktop and Mobile

Lastly, we are bringing parity to the Resources section in Viva Connections desktop and mobile experiences. The updated links in Viva Connections desktop will now appear in mobile, along with the customized icons that the operator has selected. This update ensures a consistent user interface across both desktop and mobile experiences. The mobile UI update will launch in Q4 and is currently rolling out to our customers.

Frequently asked questions

When will this happen?

This blog post refers to following Microsoft 365 Roadmap items which have their unique scheduled, but all features should be fully released by end of October 2024:

What do you need to prepare?

You do not need to do anything to prepare for this update, but you may want to let your users know about this improvement.

What is next?

You can expect a continuous improvement on the Microsoft Viva Connections also in future. We will be sharing updates in the blogs and in the other channels as they are ready. Roadmap looks really exciting, and we are looking forward on your feedback and input around the upcoming features.

Thanks for reading. Please enjoy the new features in the Viva Connections and let us know any feedback or questions in the comments Your feedback drives our internal prioritization, so please do not hesitate to share your thoughts 💬

Extend Viva Connections with pre-built 3rd party Adaptive cards

EdAverett — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 18:00:10 GMT

Viva Connections is the gateway for the employee experience and provides an extensible platform through the dashboard, where employees can see a targeted list of actionable cards that can connect to Microsoft Teams apps, Viva apps and services, partner apps, and custom solutions using the SharePoint Framework (SPFx) framework, internal links, and external links.

A Viva Connections dashboard showing some examples of third party cards.

This blog will explore a few of our diverse third-party card integrations available from the Microsoft store and how these apps can extend the capabilities of Viva Connections. Allowing organizations to incorporate third party external tools, services, and data directly into their flow of work and ensure business critical investments that they have made in other services can be added directly into employee dashboards. There are countless ways to customize or build your own dashboard cards to meet the needs of employees at virtually any organization, but this blog will highlight a few pre-packaged cards from Microsoft partners that can easily be added to your app.

ServiceNow

With the ServiceNow card, enable employees to get support, find answers, and act on tasks across HR, IT, and other departments. Once deployed, the card offers a quick view of their task list by selecting View My Tasks. The ServiceNow Adaptive Card extension also provides a quick entry point into the app by simply selecting Visit Employee Center.

UKG

With the UKG card employees can view their respective pay information and review their work schedules, shifts, and PTO, to see a clearer picture of upcoming priorities.

Achievers

Achievers for Viva Connections extends the Achievers Employee Experience platform into employees’ daily workflows. Members can enjoy some of their favorite activities found on their Achievers program: view upcoming celebrations, recognitions received, the latest trending recognitions, and perform quick actions, all on one dashboard within Viva Connections.

Qualtrics

The Qualtrics card brings experience management into Viva Connections seamlessly. It enables quick access to surveys and feedback tools, allowing organizations to gather valuable insights and act on employee, customer, and product experiences right from the dashboard. The Qualtrics card can link directly to surveys and let employees know when feedback is due, eliminating common barriers to organization-wide feedback.

Workday

With the Workday card, Viva Connections brings Workday data and actions to employees’ fingertips right in the dashboard. With this integration, users can access Workday tasks such as inbox items, time off balances, and more, simplifying HR processes and saving employees time on administrative tasks.

Features:

Customizable Workday® Web part in SharePoint & Adaptive Card extension for Viva Connections dashboard
Seamless Microsoft 365 integration: Get instant access to your Workday® data right within SharePoint using our Web part integration.
Developer-friendly: Easily customize the integration to fit your organization's unique needs.
Streamlined workflows: Enjoy a seamless connection between Workday® and your Microsoft 365 apps for smooth data sharing and collaboration.

Jira

The Jira integration transforms how employees manage tasks, bugs, and user stories by pulling them directly into the Viva Connections card.

Features:

Unified view: Gain a comprehensive overview of your Jira tasks, including tickets, comments, and updates, all within a single SharePoint Web part.
Advanced search: Quickly define your own JQL queries to locate specific sets of tasks, shining a light on your path to productivity.
Real-Time updates: Stay informed with live data synchronization, ensuring you're always up-to-date with the latest project developments.

Zendesk

The Zendesk card for Viva Connections allows users to access and manage their Zendesk tickets directly, facilitating a more efficient customer support workflow.

Features:

Display your Zendesk data right within SharePoint with a custom web part
Enjoy a seamless experience within your Microsoft 365 environment
Redefine productivity by viewing and creating tickets from a single place

Asana

This seamless connection allows for the direct embedding of Asana tasks into your Viva Connections dashboard, creating a unified workspace where you can manage tasks without switching between applications.

Features:

Integrate Asana tasks directly into SharePoint, providing a centralized view of your projects
Utilize advanced search capabilities within Asana's data to generate dynamic views for your SharePoint web part
Ensure a cohesive workflow across the Microsoft 365 suite, enhancing productivity and collaboration
Turn Viva Connections into a project management superhub by adding Asana cards

Many of the third-party cards highlighted in this blog are available through the Microsoft partner Adenin. Check out more about their Viva Connections cards in our recent partner showcase blog.

How to access and install third-party cards

There are a few simple steps to . Anyone can look up the available applications but only IT administrators can install them.

All users can find applications via Microsoft AppSource or the SharePoint store. Installation requires administration permissions in SharePoint.
Select “Get it Now” to request the application is added to the App Catalogue site in your SharePoint environment.
Work with the IT Admin to Deploy the app and add it to your Viva Connections dashboard.
Once Viva Connections is deployed for the organization, all employee users can access the app on their Viva Connections .
Learn how to build your own dashboard cards to meet your business needs.

How to get started with creating custom cards

Viva Connections can be extended with no-code, low-code or pro-code capabilities. All offerings which are available from the store are built using SharePoint Framework (SPFx), which is the most widely used extensibility platform in Microsoft 365.

If you are interested on getting started with creating custom pro-code extensions for Microsoft Viva Connections, please see following guidance:

Overview of Viva Connections Extensibility
Build your first SharePoint Adaptive Card Extension
Extend Microsoft Viva Connections - learning path
Create Adaptive Card Extensions (ACE) for Microsoft Viva Connections - learning path

Take also advantage of the samples, guidance and community calls through our Microsoft 365 & Power Platform community initiative.

Learn more about third-party and adaptive cards

With dozens of third-party partner apps and Microsoft Viva apps to choose from from the store, the opportunities for customization and enhanced productivity are vast. To start leveraging these powerful integrations, visit the SharePoint store and Microsoft AppSource today.

To learn more about the extensibility capabilities within the Viva Connections dashboard. View this course on Microsoft Learn.

For further guidance and resources, check out our comprehensive documentation as well as our latest blog featuring a guide of Viva Connections first-party cards .

Introducing new OneDrive, Quick Links and Playlist cards for Viva Connections

PoojaG — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 07:05:56 GMT

Viva Connections is the one stop place for all employee service where employees can easily access the relevant company information and their personal tools. We keep on evolving and improving the Viva Connections experiences constantly with new out-of-the-box features and on new extensibility opportunities .

We are excited to announce the availability of three new out-of-the-box cards, which are available to be used within the Viva Connections dashboard. These cards are a OneDrive card (files), Quick Links card and the Playlist card.

These new cards are demonstrated in the following video with Pooja Gulati (Microsoft) & Vesa Juvonen (Microsoft).

OneDrive card

The OneDrive card is one such card which appears out-of-the-box without any configuration by the operator (Viva Connections "administrator"). It is a user-based card, and the end user can access the recently accessed, shared, and favorite files from this card. This OneDrive card gives a quick and straightforward way to access commonly used files by the user directly from the dashboard. Files are automatically opened in the most suitable solution in desktop, tablet and mobile devices.

This card is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 388496.

Quick Links card

Quick Links card is used to expose relevant links for the end user. The operator will set up a list of commonly used links by the user based on their role or company objectives. Especially in the case of frontline workers, this comes handy as they are on the go and need relevant information easily accessible through their mobile devices. Quick Links card can be configured for a particular department, using audiences, which then enables relevant links specific to department employees or teams.

This card is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 402189.

Playlist card

The Playlist card displays a list of video files listed in a specific playlist. This card can be, for example, targeted for new employee onboarding which covers a list of videos which the employee should view to complete the onboarding process of the organization. This could also refer to a group of videos to handle a security audit or certain announcements for an event or trouble shoot parts of an appliance. This card needs explicit configuration by an operator and videos can be made available with audience targeting in place if needed.

This card is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 402190.

Frequently asked questions

When are these cards available?

Cards are gradually rolling out in the summer/autumn 2024 timeframe. Each card will be enabled one-by-one for customers, so you can expect them to be fully available within autumn 2024.

What do you need to prepare?

There is no need to prepare for these features as they will be simply available in your tenant automatically. If you have already enabled Viva Connections in your tenant, cards will be available for the operators in the dashboard editing experience, as they are enabled.

What is next?

Lot of new features in the roadmap of the Viva Connections. We are working on numerous new features to improve the Viva Connection experience based on customer and partner feedback. Your feedback and input are invaluable on building these experiences. Got an idea or feedback? - Please add comment below or use the Microsoft Feedback portal.

Thanks for reading. Please enjoy the new configuration options and let us know any feedback or questions in the comments.

Viva Connections Feed Web Part and Video News Link Retirement

Rob_Nunez — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 20:00:00 GMT

The Feed for Viva Connections webpart was a feature that brought personalized content into a user feed, in a single experience. This content included news published in SharePoint, posts in Viva Engage communities, and Stream videos in SharePoint. The Video News Link allowed for Stream videos to appear in the Viva Connections feed. This content was automatically populated in a user's feed based on the communities and sites they followed.

Our focus is to deliver the most efficient and enjoyable experience for our users, which means phasing out certain features is necessary to streamline and enhance the user experiences across our applications. In our efforts to elevate our platform-we will be retiring the Feed for Viva Connections web part and the Video News Link which we announced in our MC post on August 1st.

Starting September 1, 2024, the Feed for Viva Connections web part and the Video news link will no longer be available for SharePoint site editors to add to their sites.

Furthermore, on November 5, 2024, existing instances of the Feed for Viva Connections web parts and Video News Link will no longer display content.

To ensure a smooth transition, site editors and SharePoint admins should update the affected sites with the recommended alternative solutions. Additionally, please update any relevant documentation to reflect these changes.

Explore new alternatives
To continue surfacing feed content on SharePoint sites, the following web parts provide an alternative to the Feed for Viva Connections web part and the Video news link. We encourage you to explore our alternatives to keep employees engaged and informed:

Alternative solution to featuring News posts in SharePoint
- News web part- Allows you to display a collection of news posts from various SharePoint sources. - Use the News web part on a SharePoint page - Microsoft Support

Alternative solution for featuring Viva Engage in SharePoint
- Viva Engage web parts – Allows you to display the Viva Engage conversations and highlights to SharePoint. Use a Viva Engage web part in SharePoint - Microsoft Support

Alternative solutions for featuring Stream videos in SharePoint and videos hosted on a SharePoint site:
- File and media web part – Allows you to feature a single video on a SharePoint page: Featuring a video on a page - Microsoft Stream | Microsoft Learn
- Highlighted content web part – Allows you to feature a list of videos on a page: Featuring a set of videos on a page - Microsoft Stream | Microsoft Learn
- Video Pages – Allows you to create video centric page content with a page template: Create video pages on SharePoint - Microsoft Support

Resources

We understand the importance of a smooth transition and are dedicated to providing support throughout this change. You can learn more and follow our guide for additional help.

Support Guidance

Mid-Year Viva Connections Recap and Highlights

NancyH2 — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 14:00:29 GMT

Viva Connections serves as a gateway to a modern employee experience. From streamlining tasks to enhancing communication, dashboard cards bring in actionable tasks and information from virtually anywhere into a single dynamic app for employees.

We have seen growing adoption of Viva Connections, making us one of the most popular apps in Microsoft Teams. We are continuing to invest in Viva Connections, addressing customer feedback and enhancing capabilities. Here are the latest and greatest highlights.

Staying Connected

Viva Connections is all about connecting you to the things you need, and now, you can get Desktop Notifications to ensure you don’t miss the latest news and announcements. This new capability gives your employees the ability to control which notifications they want to receive within Teams.

To better connect your employees to the resources they need most, we’ve recently rolled out the ability to import global navigation items into the Viva Connections Resources tab. We've also rolled out a new scoped search in Viva Connections which uses the search experience the app provides rather than the default Teams search experience when using the Teams search box.

We’ve also released Viva Connections on the web that brings a dynamic, beautiful app experience directly into the browser.

Enhancing Communication Capabilities
The new customizable Spotlight offers communicators a sleek, above-the-fold section to highlight key news. Up to eleven pieces of news can be added to the Spotlight carousel for announcements and campaigns that need extra emphasis and durability. In case you missed it, read more about Spotlight here.

Announcements
New communication features also enable Regional Announcements, which provides additional attribute-based targeting based on job, title, and location. This is specifically geared for reaching Frontline Workers (FLWs) working in different regions, branches, stores, or departments by using filtering.

Learn more about how to set up regional filtering and using FLW announcements. Note this feature requires Frontline licensing.

Analytics for Admins
Admins can now understand how and when users engage with components of the Viva Connections experience. You can see data on overall traffic, usage, and engagement across each of your organization's Connections experiences. Learn more about how to access usage data here.

Dashboard Card Experiences & Bot Extensions
Dashboard cards in Viva Connections are the building blocks to a modern employee experience. We’ve focused heavily on creating and enhancing cards for all audiences. You can now personalize dashboard cards on desktop allowing your employees to customize their view by adding, removing or reordering the dashboard cards.

Here are some of the top dashboard card updates:

OneDrive Card update
This new card allows organizations to add a OneDrive Files Card to the Viva Connections dashboard, showing recently accessed, shared, or favorite files. This card is now generally available and requires no action for setup.

Pulse Card

The Viva Pulse card in Viva Connections allows you to create Pulse survey (s) via the dashboard, giving employees a quick and targeted way to share feedback and participate in workplace surveys. Once the survey is complete, the owner can view the response rate right on the card.

Assigned Tasks Card

The Assigned Tasks card automatically displays information to users about their assigned tasks to. This information is retrieved from the Tasks app in Teams and enables users to quickly take action and accomplish tasks right from their dashboard.

Learn more about our Viva Connections dashboard cards in this blog.

We hope you’re seeing how these features collectively enhance employee engagement, streamline communication, and provide valuable insights into employee interactions with the app. Keep checking back to see what we do next!

Viva Connections Partner Showcase - Lightning Tools

VesaJuvonen — Thu, 30 May 2024 07:48:18 GMT

We are excited to share a Partner Showcase story on Lightning Tools. Director, Brett Lonsdale from Lightning Tools is highlighting their solutions and extensions which available for the customers from the Microsoft AppSource or directly from their web site.

Viva Connections is a company-branded employee experience destination that seamlessly integrates news, conversations, and resources within the apps and devices you use daily. It is designed to foster a culture of inclusion, allowing everyone’s ideas and voices to matter, while providing employees with the flexibility to engage and participate from anywhere.

Microsoft AppSource is an online store that contains thousands of business applications and services built by industry-leading software providers. It is a platform where you can browse, try, buy, and deploy cloud-ready solutions for Microsoft Power Platform, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and more, helping you drive your business and get more done with the technology you already have.

Presenters - Brett Lonsdale (Lightning Tools) & Vesa Juvonen (Microsoft)

Company - Lightning Tools

Demonstrated solutions in the video:

DeliverPoint - Centralized and De-Centralized SharePoint Permissions Management
Lightning Conductor - Content Aggregation
Data Viewer - Data Visualization
Social Squared - Discussion Forums

References

Have you created an offering for the Viva Connections? - Do you have apps available in the AppSource? - let us showcase your solutions. Please fill in the following form to get us connected with you so that we can plan the right model together - https://aka.ms/viva/connections/partnershowcase.

Providing great employee experience platform with our partner ecosystem!

Introducing spotlight settings in Viva Connections

lesliethomas — Wed, 29 May 2024 08:19:27 GMT

Viva Connections is excited to roll out new features for the spotlight component, giving operators enhanced control and customization on what content appears in spotlight. Now, operators can easily pin important content to the spotlight, edit, reorder, and manage up to 11 pinned items. These pinned items take priority and appear in the spotlight first, while also staying in the spotlight indefinitely (which can be modified at any time).

Additionally, the new spotlight settings in Viva Connections will allow for adding multiple SharePoint sites as news sources for spotlight from Connections directly, ensuring a varied and dynamic content display following the pinned items, while still respecting audience targeting and boosted rankings. Enjoy a more personalized and efficient way to manage and present content in Viva Connections.

Spotlight feature mentioned in this blog post, is demonstrated in the following video with Leslie Thomas (Microsoft) and and Vesa Juvonen (Microsoft).

Frequently asked questions

When will this happen?

The feature is rolling out currently to Targeted Release customers and will continue to roll out to all customers in June 2024.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 392098.

What do you need to prepare?

There is nothing you need to do to prepare, but you can let your users know about this new experience and provide them insights on the different upcoming options for the spotlight feature.

What is next?

Lot of new features in the roadmap of the Viva Connections. We are working on numerous new features to improve the Viva Connection experience based on the customer and partner feedback. Your feedback and input is invaluable on building these experiences. Got an idea or feedback? - Please add comment below or use the Microsoft Feedback portal.

Thanks for reading. Please enjoy the new configuration options and let us know any feedback or questions in the comments.

A guide to Viva Connections 1st party dashboard cards

Catherine_Chuaga — Wed, 15 May 2024 16:00:00 GMT

Viva Connections serves as a gateway to a modern employee experience, and dashboard cards are the building blocks of this experience. From streamlining tasks to enhancing communication, dashboard cards bring in actionable tasks and information from virtually anywhere into a single dynamic app for employees. Here’s a full list of first party dashboard cards released by Microsoft to help you boost productivity and foster a more connected and efficient work environment. If you’re new to dashboard cards or Viva Connections, we recommend you start with this overview before checking out the rest of this blog.

News card

Add the News card to the Viva Connections Dashboard to promote news from a variety of sources that you wish to prominently display, including boosted news from SharePoint. And it works with boosted news posts. If you choose any news posts that have already been boosted, they will display in the News card for the duration of the boost period.

People card

The People Search card will automatically retrieve contact information from members of your organization using Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory). Users can access the People Search card to look up contact information and can jump into chat, email, or a call with the contact directly from the card view.

Events card

Surface any events from the organization on to the Viva Connections dashboard to spread awareness and increase the number of relevant audiences in the event.

Praise card

Site owners/authors of Viva Connections can add the Praise card from Microsoft Viva Insights on the dashboard, allowing employees to send praise to their colleagues. The Praise card shows the same experience as the one available within Microsoft Viva Insights today.

Learning card

The Learning card in Viva Connections serves as a convenient entryway for employees to access their assigned learning resources and training materials. It encourages continuous learning and skill development by providing personalized training content and integrating seamlessly with Viva Learning— it can even show upcoming learning deadlines.

Pulse card

The Viva Pulse card in Viva Connections allows you to create Pulse survey(s) via the dashboard, giving employees a quick and targeted way to share feedback and participate in workplace surveys. Once the survey is complete, the owner can view the response rate right on the card.

• Availability – Coming CY24Q2

Approvals card

The Approvals card allows you to create new approvals, view incoming requests, streamline requests, and access a history of previous approvals—all conveniently in one place. You can select the card type (small, medium, or large) and even target it to specific audiences by adding users or groups in the property pane.

Shifts Card

The Shifts card shows users information about their next or current shift from the Shifts app in Teams. Built with hourly and frontline workers in mind, it allows employees to clock in and clock out and track break time directly from their employee app. Note: this requires Time clock to be enabled in Teams.

Assigned Tasks Card

Teams App card

With the Teams app card, you can create a card for an existing Teams app to drive traffic and create easy access for users. There are a variety of built-in Teams apps and integrations available to choose from.

Web link Card

Add a web link card to integrate any external websites seamlessly into your dashboard. It’s designed to provide quick access to important web resources, ensuring that relevant information is just a click away. The web link card can point to any internal or external URL, and can be a quick way to drive traffic without building or customizing a card.

Card Designer

You can choose the Card designer option to design your own card that includes a quick view, without needing to write code. The new updated card designer allows for advanced dynamic content capability including data pulls from MSGraph and SharePoint APIs.

To design your own cards, you should be familiar with JSON and Adaptive Card templates. There are also templates available to help you get started. For more information, see Adaptive Cards Templating.

Get the most out of your Viva connections dashboard

The Viva Connections dashboard cards are more than just features; they represent a shift towards a more integrated and intuitive work environment where employees can access all of the tools, info, and tasks they need to accomplish their job – all from a personalized in employee app that can be targeted and edited for different employee needs and jobs. The power of Viva Connections lies in its flexibility and user-centric design, so take the time to explore and experiment with these cards to discover the full potential of your dashboard.

Learn more about how to get started with Viva Connections with this quick video and learn more about designing your own cards with Adaptive Cards Templating.

Stay tuned as Microsoft and partners continue to build and release new cards. We’ll be sharing a follow up to this blog that highlights 3rd party and industry cards soon.

Viva Connections Partner Showcase - Persistent

VesaJuvonen — Tue, 07 May 2024 11:43:11 GMT

We are excited to share a Viva Connections Partner Showcase story on Persistent. Presales & Solutions Head, Subhendu Brahmachari from Persistent is showcasing their solutions and extensions which available for the customers from them.

Presenters - Subhendu Brahmachari (Persistent) & Vesa Juvonen (Microsoft)

Company - Persistent

Covered solutions in the video and in the AppSource:

Persistent references

Persistent has a comprehensive 360-degree relationship with Microsoft regarding Viva suite of products. They are not only a distinguished consultancy and implementation services partner, with a dedicated viva practice, but they have also deployed Viva internally in their organization with over 29K+ employees using it for their daily employee engagement activities. In addition, Persistent has been a key engineering partner and supplier for Microsoft Viva Engineering team. This holistic nature of partnership shows the deep expertise and commitment of Persistent towards Microsoft Viva suite of products.

Viva Connections References

Our partner ecosystem improves the out-of-the-box offerings for a better employee experience.

Viva Connections Partner Showcase - iThink 365

VesaJuvonen — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 13:53:22 GMT

We are excited to share a Viva Connections Partner Showcase story on iThink 365. Owner and CTO, Simon Doy from iThink 365 is highlighting their solutions and extensions which are available for customers to enhance the Viva Connections experiences.

Presenters - Simon Doy (iThink 365) & Vesa Juvonen (Microsoft)

Company - iThink 365

Covered solutions in the video and in the AppSource:

References

Providing great employee experience platform with our partner ecosystem

New UX and branding settings now available for the Viva Connections

VesaJuvonen — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 19:48:15 GMT

We are excited to announce new UX and branding capabilities and options for our customers within the Viva Connections enabling customers to adjust the experience based on their company brand and end users to select the best suitable experience for them.

With the latest updates, the change a look feature has been fully released across the world for all Viva Connections instances. This will enable customers to select the theme color based on the company branding with support on custom themes. We are also rolling out a dark mode support for the Viva Connections desktop experience as an option for end users.

Different branding options in the Viva Connections:

Custom icon for Viva Connections - This can be configured in the Viva Connections app settings
Custom name for Viva Connections - This can be configured in the Viva Connections app settings
Hero section image - This can be configured by the dashboard operators in the Viva Connections UI
Theme color - This can be configured by the dashboard operators in the Viva Connections UI
Custom fonts (soon) - This will be coming soon as an option for dashboard operators when the brand center is rolling out
Imaginary used within the dashboard cards - You can configure out of the box and custom cards to use your company images and colors, optimizing the experience for your company brand

Here's an example of the dark mode rending from the Microsoft's own Viva Connections deployment. Dark mode rendering will be automatically adopted based on the Microsoft Teams settings done by the end user.

Resources

Here are the key resources to get started with the Viva Connections and the new capabilities.

Microsoft Viva Connections - Product overview
Overview of Viva Connections - Microsoft Learn documentation
Customize and edit the Viva Connections experience - Microsoft Learn documentation
Introduction to change the look feature in Viva Connections - YouTube video
SharePoint site theming - Microsoft Learn documentation
Fluent UI Theme Designer - Tool to generate custom themes
SharePoint Online PowerShell cmdlets for theme handling - Commands to install themes in tenant level
Overview of Viva Connections extensibility - Build custom experiences for the Viva Connections and integrate it with your Microsoft Teams and SharePoint solutions
Viva Connections partner apps in the Microsoft store / AppSource - available to be installed to your dashboard

Frequently asked questions

Q: Is it possible to use custom theme with the Viva Connections with our company color

A: Yes. Available themes are coming from the SharePoint side, which is also powering Viva Connections. You can create a custom theme based on your company colors and install that to be available within your tenant using SharePoint Online PowerShell.

Q: Can I use our company brand image on the header section?

A: Absolutely. Microsoft is providing set of stock images which can be used, but you can absolutely also upload your custom brand image and use that in the header section. This will be then used within desktop, table and mobile experiences.

Q: I don't see the dark mode yet working in my tenant - when is it rolling out?

A: We are starting this gradually within April 2024, so it can take a while for this feature to be available within your tenant.

Let us know what you think. Your feedback is more than welcome 🧡

Introducing new personalized view option for Viva Connections

VesaJuvonen — Fri, 03 May 2024 17:47:35 GMT

We are excited to announce availability of new personalized view capability for the Viva Connections dashboard. This feature enables end users to rearrange and hide the cards in the Viva Connections based on their personal preferences.

Customers have been already able to take advantage of numerous personalization options within the Viva Connections and this feature introduced one more option to provide optimized end user experience to access the most relevant information from any device user is using.

Different level of supported personalization options in Viva Connections:

Dashboard level targeting - You can have multiple dashboards which are targeted based on audiences
Multilingual dashboards - Viva Connections supports multilingual option based on the user language settings
Card specific targeting - You can define the visibility of individual cards based on audiences
Card feature targeting - Card developers and creators (SPFx) can provide different functionalities based on the user profile attributes and audiences
Personalized views - End users can personalize the experience based on their preference - feature which is covered in this article

You can personalize the view directly within the dashboard view in both desktop and mobile experiences. Support for editing the personalized view is not currently supported with the tablet experience.

Here's how the personalization can be performed in the desktop experience.

Mobile experience is a bit different, but end users can easily rearrange and hide the cards based on their preference there as well.

Resources

Here are the key resources to get started with the Viva Connections and the new capabilities.

Microsoft Viva Connections - Product overview
Overview of Viva Connections - Microsoft Learn documentation
Introducing new personalized view option for end users in Viva Connections - YouTube video
Overview of Viva Connections extensibility - Build custom experiences for the Viva Connections and integrate it with your Microsoft Teams and SharePoint solutions
Viva Connections partner apps in the Microsoft store / AppSource - available to be installed to your dashboard

Frequently asked questions

Q: I'm using tablet view of the Viva Connection and can't find the option to personalize the view?

A: At the time this article was published, this was not yet supported with the tablet view

Q: Can I disable this feature as admin?

A: Yes. You can control if this feature is enabled at the dashboard level. Each dashboard has "Allow users to rearrange and hide dashboard cards" - setting which is enabled by default. This can be controlled by dashboard operator from the "Dashboard details" when the dashboard is modified.

Q: I'd like to have an option to switch between multiple layouts for my personal view, depending on the tasks and time of the day

A: We are exploring this kind of personalization options current, so please add a comment below around the scenario which you have. Will help a lot on our internal discussions.

Let us know what you think. Your feedback is more than welcome 🧡