Viva Learning Blog articles

Microsoft Copilot Academy now available to all Microsoft 365 users

John_Mighell — Thu, 01 May 2025 17:09:01 GMT

We are pleased to announce that all Microsoft 365 users can now access Microsoft Copilot Academy to improve their AI and Copilot skills. This academy – curated by Microsoft experts – provides a comprehensive, structured learning experience designed to help users master the use of Copilot through hands-on learning activities and experiences. Click here to learn more about what Copilot Academy includes.

Last year, we announced the academy was available to all Microsoft 365 Copilot users. We have now lifted the Copilot license requirement, giving immediate access to any user with a Microsoft 365 license. No additional registration or administrative action is required to start using Copilot Academy. Please see appendix 1 for an updated table that lists the licenses that grant access to Copilot Academy.

Use Copilot Academy to train users before assigning Copilot licenses

The new licensing structure for Copilot Academy unlocks a new scenario for administrators – ensuring users commit to Copilot training through the academy before receiving a Copilot license. Administrators can now use Copilot Academy as a tool to teach users how to leverage Copilot before a license has been assigned. This allows users to see the value of Copilot and learn how it can maximize their productivity throughout the workday. Upskilling before receiving a license encourages faster time-to-value with Copilot and helps identify workstreams where Copilot will have the greatest impact.

View of Microsoft Copilot Academy. The academy is accessed through the Academies tab on the menu bar.

Microsoft 365 users can access the Copilot Academy by navigating to the Academies tab in Viva Learning and selecting Microsoft Copilot Academy or accessing the academy link directly at https://aka.ms/copilotacademy. Additionally, the AI & Copilot Resources provider options help users easily browse or filter Copilot Academy content. Users can browse Copilot Academy materials on the Viva Learning homepage or filter searches with the Provider filter option.

Admin experience

All learning administrators can configure the visibility of Microsoft Copilot Academy – this includes Knowledge Admins, Knowledge Managers, and users with administrator access provided by feature access management. The tenant-wide default for Copilot Academy access is set to everyone but can be changed to Microsoft 365 Copilot Licensed Users – restricting the academy to only those with the Copilot license.

Administrators can control the content provider that powers Copilot Academy through a dedicated provider called AI & Copilot Resources, accessible in the Admin tab in Viva Learning under Manage Providers. This will now appear alongside other default learning providers like Microsoft Learn, Microsoft 365 Training, and LinkedIn Learning. The AI & Copilot Resources provider can be added or deleted in the Manage Providers tab, and provider permissions can be managed in the Manage Permissions tab under the Admin menu. Additionally, the AI & Copilot Resources provider can be disabled, which will disable all learning paths within Copilot Academy.

For an in-depth feature breakdown, click here to review the complete documentation on Microsoft Learn.

Administrators can manage permissions for the– AI & Copilot Resources content provider powering the Microsoft Copilot Academy.

Looking ahead

Upcoming functionality the team is currently working on to enhance the Microsoft Copilot Academy includes:

Support for custom group access to Copilot Academy – this would enable administrators to provide access to the academy through security groups
Notification settings – administrators will have the option to configure (and disable if desired) the default monthly notifications.

Appendix 1: Users with any of the licenses below can now access Copilot Academy

Microsoft 365 A3 for faculty	Office 365 A1 for faculty
Microsoft 365 A5 for faculty	Office 365 A3 for faculty
Microsoft 365 Business Basic	Office 365 A5 for faculty
Microsoft 365 Business Premium	Office 365 E1
Microsoft 365 Business Standard	Office 365 E3
Microsoft 365 E3	Office 365 E5
Microsoft 365 E5	Office 365 F2
Microsoft 365 F1	Office 365 F3
Microsoft 365 F3	Microsoft Viva Suite for faculty
Microsoft Viva Suite	Microsoft Viva Suite with Glint for faculty
Microsoft Viva Suite with Glint	Microsoft 365 Copilot
Microsoft Viva Learning

Microsoft Copilot Academy extensibility features now generally available

John_Mighell — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 17:19:26 GMT

We are extending the capabilities of the Microsoft Copilot Academy to provide more users with targeted resources to upskill on Microsoft 365 Copilot through structured learning. Learning administrators can now customize the Copilot Academy with content tailored to their industry or organization without creating a new academy from scratch.

Last September, we announced that this academy is available to everyone with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. No additional registration or administrative action is required to start using Copilot Academy. Click here for a Copilot Academy feature breakdown.

While access to Copilot Academy does not require a premium license, the new Copilot Academy extensibility features require both a Copilot for Microsoft 365 license in addition to a Viva Learning paid license or Viva suite paid license.

Copilot Academy extensibility features simplify customization

While customers continue to upskill on Copilot using the out-of-the-box Copilot Academy experience, we identified an opportunity to provide a tailored academy that incorporates industry specific materials and learning paths alongside Microsoft-curated content. This approach helps customers leverage the academy to upskill Copilot knowledge in an organization or industry-specific context.

An admin can save time creating a custom Copilot Academy by duplicating the existing Copilot Academy, which can then be modified to their specifications. Accessing this new functionality is simple and doesn’t require admins to gain additional permissions or learn new systems.

Customizing the Copilot Academy

Learning admins can customize the Copilot Academy in the manage academies tab by selecting the academy and duplicating it. From there, the duplicated academy can be visually overhauled with a custom logo and background image.

Next, the admin identifies areas of the Copilot Academy that would benefit from specialized content and uploads the desired materials from SharePoint to the academy. When organizing new learning paths into sections, additional organization through subsections is now possible, providing admins greater control to create guided experiences. Existing learning paths and content can be edited just as easily, giving admins complete content curation capabilities.

The academy can be further customized with new options to hide components of the learning academy including the featured courses carousel or the Learner Profile Card for admins preferring a streamlined appearance.

Customized Copilot Academy in action

The screen below shows an example of what is achievable with the new extensibility features for Copilot Academy. In this example, a company in the healthcare industry has created a Copilot Academy and tailored the content as well as the appearance to align with their organization’s needs. Each number correlates to new functionality that is now generally available. Click here for a detailed breakdown of Copilot Academy capabilities, including extensibility features.

A screenshot showing an example of an industry-specific Copilot Academy. The example above is a Healthcare Copilot Academy experience with key features highlighted.

Features shown in the screen shot:

Customized logo – this can be any image the admin uploads when the academy is being edited.
Custom background image – as with the logo, this can be any image the admin uploads. This feature allows admins to achieve further brand alignment of their customized Copilot Academy.
Tiered sections and subsections – this area displays learning paths within the academy. These can now be nested into sections, and further into subsections to provide seamless discovery and quicker learning path navigation for users.
Hide specific academy components – the ability for admins to hide the learner profile card or the featured content provides the option to create a sleeker academy experience.
Editable learning paths – admins can now edit learning paths after they have been published to adjust their metadata or content.

Looking ahead

The Viva Learning team is already working on the next set of improvements to the academy experience. We expect to make the following features generally available in calendar year 2025:

Ability to preview courses in an academy without navigating to the learning path details page.
Contextual search within academies will help users with discoverability of content.
Alphabetical sorting of academies in the academy dropdown menu for a more intuitive experience.

Transforming learning and engagement with Viva Learning: A Microsoft Customer Success Story

NachoMSFT — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 16:00:00 GMT

In today's fast-paced digital world, organizations are constantly seeking innovative ways to enhance their learning and development processes. Here, we’ll highlight how a global financial institution partnered with Microsoft to transform their learning journey using Viva Learning. This initiative not only improved their employees’ learning experience, but also significantly boosted employee engagement and productivity.

The challenge

The customer, a publicly traded savings and investments manager with operations across the globe, faced significant challenges in their learning journey. With around 15,000 employees, they struggled with fragmented learning content spread across multiple platforms, including Workday, LinkedIn Learning, and Go1. This led to low engagement, difficulty in finding relevant content, and reduced time to complete their learning, for employees who were already pressed to find time for mandatory training and learning.

The solution

The customer decided to implement Viva Learning due to its seamless integration with Microsoft Teams, personalized content, and a simplified, one-stop-shop learning experience. This decision was driven by the need to provide a unified and engaging learning platform that aligned with their digital strategy.

Implementation journey

User research and feedback collection: The customer conducted workshops to understand employee pain points, which included overwhelming content, scattered resources, and lack of time for learning. These insights informed the design and implementation of Viva Learning, ensuring a user-centric solution.
Technical configuration and integration: The customer worked on integrating Viva Learning with their existing LMS (Workday) and other content providers like LinkedIn Learning and Go1. This involved resolving content duplication, ensuring smooth synchronization, and maintaining a seamless user experience.
Launch and engagement strategy: The rollout was done in phases, starting with a pilot group of 75 super users, followed by people managers, and then all employees. A teaser campaign and dedicated Viva Engage communities were used to drive engagement and adoption.

Results

The pilot program showed impressive results, with a 3000% increase in mandatory learning completions on day one in Q2 compared to Q1. The customer also saw increased consumption of LinkedIn Learning and Go1 content, optimizing resources for employees’ own internal mobility.

Next steps

The customer continues to work with Microsoft to develop Viva Glint surveys and provide feedback for new features through Microsoft’s NDA Viva Customer Connection Program. They view Viva Learning as a transformative tool for ongoing learning and skill development, which has led to integrating other Microsoft Viva and Copilot projects into their ecosystem as they continue to empower and engage their employees.

Conclusion

This success story demonstrates the power of Viva Learning in transforming learning and engagement within an organization. By leveraging a unified and personalized learning platform, the customer was able to overcome their challenges and drive significant improvements in employee engagement and productivity.

Leverage the same assets Microsoft used with this customer for your own business transformation journey:

Workshop assets:

Discovery workshop: https://aka.ms/VivaLearning/DiscoveryWorkshop
Empathy map quick start guide: https://aka.ms/VivaLearning/EmpathyMap

Technical configuration assets:

Viva Learning envisioning document: https://aka.ms/VivaLearning/EnvisioningDocument
Stakeholder and Plan document: https://aka.ms/VivaLearning/StakeholderDocument
Viva Learning Workday integration template: https://aka.ms/VivaLearning/WorkdayIntegrationTemplate

Viva Learning 2024 Q4 feature releases and roadmap

John_Mighell — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 16:00:00 GMT

The team has been hard at work innovating and improving Viva Learning. As we approach the end of 2024, below is a roundup of recently released features and look ahead to 2025.

A couple highlights you might have seen:

We recently released the much anticipated completion record bulk export functionality
Earlier this year we made it possible for Microsoft 365 Copilot license holders to access Microsoft Copilot Academy.

However, there are a few features the team has recently completed you may have missed, as well as upcoming features right around the corner you likely haven’t heard about yet!

Admin self-serve improvements for SAP SuccessFactors (generally available now)

Integrating SAP SuccessFactors with Viva Learning is easier than ever with the new streamlined configuration process. This self-serve process takes place entirely in the Viva Learning admin tab, rather than splitting operations between Viva Learning and SAP surfaces. Many of the configuration steps have been automated, leading to a decrease in manual-entry errors, less reliance on help desk intervention, and quicker setup times.

Add external content links to Viva Learning tabs and featured sets (generally available now)

External content from providers like YouTube, Vimeo, and Stream can now be included in two new areas within Viva Learning – featured sets and learning tabs. This functionality requires a Viva Learning premium or Viva suite license to access.

Featured sets are curated sets of courses that an organization can choose to display prominently to the entire organization. Featured sets previously leveraged content solely from SharePoint, connected learning management systems (LMS), and third-party providers. Admins can now include external URLs as part of these sets.

Learning tabs allow users to find, curate, and share content in Teams channels or chats. The content available for learning tabs can include any content available to the organization, and now includes the option to insert links to external content providers.

Adding content to learning tabs now features an option to add linked content, shown in the box on the right side below “add content to your tab”

New sort options in Viva Learning search (generally available now)

Viva Learning search functionality continues to improve, providing learners with relevant results and sorting options to expedite content discovery. The latest improvement is the newly launched dropdown menu. Now, users can sort search results in Viva Learning by relevance, number of views, or ratings. These sorting options require a Viva Learning premium or Viva Suite license to access.

A dropdown menu displayed at the top right of a search result in Viva Learning now shows the following sorting options for Premium Viva Learning or Viva Suite customers: relevance, highest rating, most viewed.

App bar integration (generally available now)

The Viva Learning webapp saw navigation improvements through the implementation of the Viva app bar that takes users directly to various Viva modules based on their license. This simplifies access to other Viva modules and provides a consistent navigation experience.

The Viva app bar is shown in the webapp along the lefthand side of the image. This helps users quickly navigate to other Viva modules they use.

More features coming soon

The following features are scheduled to release in early 2025.

Error framework messages: These descriptive, actionable messages help admins work through failures in the sync or setup process without needing to raise a support ticket from the Viva Learning support team.
Descriptive error messages shown for a sample Workday integration.
LMS sync logs: Logs featuring granular details of LMS data ingested in Viva Learning will help admin troubleshoot data-related issues like missing assignments or completion data.
Admin experience for accessing logs in the “Manage providers” tab.

User mapping: Admins will be able to add and edit the user mapping for LMS integrations directly from the admin experience in Viva Learning. This feature will be backward compatible for existing customers.

User mapping can be done from the admin tab in Viva Learning. Image shown for Workday user mapping.

On-demand sync: This feature will allow admins to manually trigger sync for a specific period. This gives admins more control to troubleshoot and resolve synchronization errors quickly.
On demand sync feature in the admin tab of Viva Learning

Bulk export of learner completion records is now generally available in Viva Learning

John_Mighell — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 16:00:00 GMT

The Viva Learning team is excited to announce learner completion records can now be exported in bulk! The new functionality is built upon an existing feature that allows admins to export learner completion records for individual learners within a customer tenant. This can now be done for multiple users or groups at once. Customers with a paid license for either Viva suite or Viva Learning can access this feature now.

Learner completion records

Viva Learning records all completed courses from any source integrated in Viva Learning, as well as any course that a user has manually marked complete. The information shown on a learner completion record includes the content title, completion status, whether the course was recommended or assigned, and other details captured in the table below. Previously, admins in Viva Learning were required to access a new report for each individual user. Now, admins are able to download reports that feature completion records for multiple individuals or groups.

Feature breakdown

To access this feature, users will need admin permissions in Viva Learning.

Enabling this feature does not require any additional action and the process to download these reports is simple. See the following steps for a detailed guide of how to access learner completion record.

Decide which users or groups you want in your report: Navigate to the Viva Learning admin tab and select Learner Records. Use the search field to select individuals, or groups. Microsoft 365 groups and security groups are supported.

Admins in Viva Learning will see names or groups to be included on the learner record export that match terms they enter in the search field on the top right.

Select a date range for your report: The report can provide up to 6 months of records at a time, but is not limited to only the most recent 6-month period.

Selecting dates in the date range fields will trigger the calendar drop down where dates for the report can be selected.

Wait for the report to be generated: Processing the report can take up to 24 hours depending on the size of the report.

Once the groups or users are chosen and a date range has been specified, clicking the export button will start the report generation process.

Download the report: When finished, the report will be available as a downloadable CSV file.

Once the report is processed, it will be available to download as a CSV file.

Learner records in action

These detail-rich, multi-user records provide powerful new insights for Viva Learning customers. Here are a few ways that this new reporting capability provides immediate value:

Admins can leverage these reports to see which employees have completed a particular piece of learning content. Since these reports are now exportable in bulk, a single report can provide total completion rates for any piece of learning content.
Any given course can be evaluated for performance as it relates to completion rate. Admins can determine which courses are being completed, and which courses are not.
Organizations can use bulk completion record reports to determine the top 10 completed courses across the enterprise. This can help admins identify which courses are the most relevant or useful to learners, and can be used to identify completion gaps for critical courses.

Upcoming capabilities

In addition to the scenarios listed above, this report will expand further in the new year. In Q1 2025, a new column will be included as part of the data captured in the learner completion record – duration. This will allow organizations to analyze how much learning time users are spending completing learning courses based on a course’s duration in the completion record.

A compelling use case for the addition of duration to the report is to help European customers satisfy the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). Customers will be able to average the number of hours spent on learning activities per employee using learner record reports. In one early implementation, the ability to have this information as part of a bulk export has saved an estimated 200+ hours of internal data gathering.

Microsoft Copilot Academy now available to all Microsoft 365 Copilot users

John_Mighell — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 15:31:03 GMT

In our effort to enable more customers to upskill their Copilot capabilities, we are excited to announce the Microsoft Copilot Academy is now available to everyone with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. This academy – curated by Microsoft experts – provides a comprehensive, structured learning experience designed to help users master the use of Copilot through hands-on learning activities and experiences. Click here to learn more about what Copilot Academy includes.

To access the academy in Viva Learning, users must have an assigned base Microsoft 365 or Office 365 license (in order to launch the free version of Viva Learning – see appendix 1 for a complete list of licenses that grant Viva Learning access) and a Microsoft 365 Copilot license (in order to view the academy). A paid Viva license is no longer required to access Copilot Academy. No additional registration or administrative action is required to start using Copilot Academy.

How to access Copilot Academy

There are two ways to access Copilot Academy – directly through the Viva Learning webapp, or from the Viva Learning Teams app by using the Academies dropdown navigation menu. Copilot Academy is available in 8 languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese and Chinese.

Admin setup and configuration

Copilot Academy does not require registration or special steps to configure tenant access for users. While there is no access enablement necessary, for admins and knowledge managers that prefer to disable the Copilot Academy, they can do so in the admin tab of Viva Learning.

Looking ahead

We are continuing to enhance the Copilot Academy end-user experience. The following improvements are being made to improve the experience for all Microsoft 365 Copilot license holders:

Academy content updates and refinement: We continually assess the value and impact of individual courses. We will periodically add new content as it becomes available, and are always working to ensure the materials provided are helpful and of the highest quality.
Copilot Academy nudges (2024 Q4): these Teams notification nudges will encourage new users to try Copilot Academy and keep existing users in the loop for new Copilot Academy updates on a monthly basis.

The current Copilot Academy experience is the same whether or not you have a paid Viva Learning license. However, we plan to offer a few additional features for paid Viva Learning licensed organizations looking to customize their Copilot Academy experience. See below for a sneak peek at some upcoming premium features:

Copilot Academy duplication (2024 Q4): the ability for admins to duplicate and customize Copilot Academy. This will allow admins to copy the default Copilot Academy, customize the content according to their needs (including removing content and adding net-new content), and re-publish to their organization as a customized academy. This will also allow admins to duplicate learning paths and featured sets within the academy.
Multi-layer structuring (2025 Q1): the ability for the Copilot Academy to organize content and learning paths under multiple levels or tiers. This allows for a greater level of control and structure in the Copilot Academy experience.

Appendix 1: License plans that include a free version of Viva Learning

License plans
Microsoft 365 E3	Office 365 E1	Microsoft 365 A3 - Unattended License for faculty
Microsoft 365 E5	Office 365 E2	Microsoft 365 A3 for faculty
Microsoft 365 E5 without Audio Conferencing	Office 365 E3	Microsoft 365 A5 for faculty
Microsoft 365 F1	Office 365 E5	Microsoft 365 A5 with Calling Minutes for Faculty
Microsoft 365 F3	Office 365 E5 without PSTN Conferencing	Microsoft 365 A5 without Audio Conferencing for faculty
Office 365 A1 for faculty	Office 365 Education E1 for Faculty	Microsoft 365 Business Basic
Office 365 A1 for faculty (for Device)	Office 365 Education E3 for Faculty	Microsoft 365 Business Basic - Prepaid Legacy
Office 365 A1 Plus for faculty	Office 365 Education for Homeschool for faculty	Microsoft 365 Business Premium
Office 365 A3 for faculty	Office 365 F2	Microsoft 365 Business Standard
Office 365 A5 for faculty	Office 365 F3	Microsoft 365 Business Standard - Prepaid Legacy
Office 365 A5 with Calling Minutes for Faculty
Office 365 A5 without Audio Conferencing for faculty

Microsoft Copilot Academy now generally available

John_Mighell — Fri, 07 Jun 2024 20:43:10 GMT

Recognizing the need to develop a new skillset around AI tools, we are excited to introduce Microsoft Copilot Academy, a new addition to our Viva Learning platform designed to help customers effectively utilize Copilot experiences through guided upskilling. Copilot Academy is generally available now from your Viva Learning Teams app or webapp.

To utilize the academy today, customer tenants must have access to Copilot for Microsoft 365, and individual users must be assigned a paid license of either Viva Learning or Viva Suite. Starting in 2024 Q3, Copilot Academy will be available to all Copilot for Microsoft 365 customers at no additional cost and will not require a Viva license.

Please contact your Microsoft sales representative with questions, to see a demo, or to get started with a trial of Viva Learning.

Now let’s take a look at Copilot Academy in more depth, and see what’s coming next.

Academy structure and content

The Copilot Academy features structured learning experiences crafted by Microsoft experts, enabling users to learn about, discover, and use Copilot effectively. As an academy in Viva Learning, your central hub for learning, it’s easy for users to access within the Microsoft 365 tools they’re already using.

Navigate to Microsoft Copilot Academy from the dropdown menu in the Viva Learning app

Content within the academy is curated into a series of learning paths that guide users on a journey starting with “Meet Copilot” and “Intro to prompts”. We then dive into details of how to use Copilot for Microsoft 365 across a series of use cases from “Save time”, “Create & transform”, and “Collaborate & engage” learning paths. We finish the user journey with a “Put it together” learning path to help bring your new skills to light with end-to-end Copilot scenarios. There is also an admin learning path covering implementation guidance, security, compliance, and other important considerations.

Microsoft Copilot Academy is a centralized location to help with the basics of Copilot learning and upskilling

The individual learning objects comprising the building blocks for the learning paths in Copilot Academy feature a combination of standard generative-AI learning content (i.e. “Intro to prompts”) and content specific to Copilot for Microsoft 365 (i.e. “Summarize email threads with Copilot in Outlook”). The content is freely available to customers from our Copilot skilling platforms like Copilot Lab and Microsoft Learn. We are already using Copilot Academy ourselves to upskill Microsoft employees, in addition to a set of early-access customers.

Notifications

As a solution built natively into Teams, it’s easy to stay on track with your AI learning from the Teams notification center. Users with access to Copilot Academy will receive a one-time notification highlighting the availability of Copilot Academy, and additional monthly reminders to complete in-progress content. Users can disable notifications through Teams notification settings.

Receive Microsoft Copilot Academies in the Teams notification center

Admin setup and configuration

Copilot Academy requires no admin setup and is default-on. All content in Copilot Academy is freely available to all customers and requires no additional licensing to access. Admins can choose to disable Copilot Academy for their organization from the Admin tab in the Viva Learning app.

Admins can disable Microsoft Copilot Academy from the Admin tab in the Viva Learning app

Currently the Copilot Academy is an out-of-the-box experience. Please see our Copilot Academy documentation page for additional information, including guidance on creating your own custom academy with Viva Learning.

Looking ahead

As we gather user feedback and new content becomes available, we will update Copilot Academy to ensure it stays up to date with the latest in generative AI skilling and Copilot readiness. Recently released features include:

On May 15^th: We introduced support for 7 additional languages beyond English – French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, and Japanese.
On May 15^th: Copilot Academy now supports new hands-on prompt guidance from Copilot Lab. These exercises, combined with the guidance and documentation in Copilot Academy allow learners to uplevel their Copilot skills all in one place.

In our next development phase, targeted for 2024 Q3, we plan to deliver further customization and extensibility options.

Stay tuned for more news about Microsoft Viva and Microsoft Copilot and check out our hero blog for all the latest announcements.

Viva Learning feature announcements at Ignite 2023

John_Mighell — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 16:00:00 GMT

As part of our Viva announcements at Ignite 2023, we’re excited to share a new set of Viva Learning features that are generally available, as well as some upcoming features we’re looking forward to delivering soon.

Generally available features

Academies

As mentioned during our Viva Summit in April, academies in Viva Learning are now generally available, enabling organizations to curate role- and line-of-business-specific experiences and provide individuals with highly engaging and relevant learning opportunities through a facilitated learning experience.

Learning academies display in Viva Learning as a new tab within the top navigation bar, alongside Home (for your learning homepage), My Learning (for your personalized learning snapshot), Manage (for managing learning recommendations), and Admin (for admins functions). Academies are configurable by admins, knowledge admins, and knowledge managers and build upon previously released learning path and featured set capabilities.

Admins can provide access permissions to academies via Microsoft 365 groups – for example you may want a Finance Academy just for your finance team, a Sales Academy just for your sales team, and a Culture Academy for everybody. Individuals can receive access to multiple academies and navigate between them as a drop down selection.

Learn more about this feature from our documentation page. This feature requires a Viva Learning or Viva Suite license to access.

Web endpoint

Viva Learning can now be accessed from your preferred web browser at https://aka.ms/VivaLearningWeb. The web endpoint allows you to access all the features of Viva Learning in an alternative way to the Viva Learning app in Microsoft Teams. In addition to the features of the Viva Learning app in Teams, the web endpoint has Microsoft Shell to easily switch between Microsoft 365 applications, as well as personalized in-app help for new features.

Feature access management

With this feature, Microsoft 365 admins and knowledge admins can delegate certain admin features to non-admin users through M365 groups. This allows admins to share some of their responsibilities and tasks with other trusted users in the organization. For example, your Microsoft 365 admin may want to delegate the ability to create learning paths in Viva Learning to specific members of the L&D team, without granting them other admin permissions. These are the specific permissions controlled by this feature: feature set, learning path, manage academies, reports, manage permissions, learner records, language preferences, search preferences, manage interests.

Learn more about this feature from our documentation page. This feature requires a Viva Learning or Viva Suite license to access.

Advanced language configuration

This feature allows admins to personalize Viva Learning aligned to the languages used in their tenant. Admins can set a default language for Viva Learning, select the preferred content language experience for users, and choose all available languages in Viva Learning for their tenant.

Learn more about this feature from our documentation page. This feature requires a Viva Learning or Viva Suite license to access.

Admin reporting

Viva Learning now includes a set of out-of-the-box analytics for you to track engagement, adoption, and social learning trends. This reporting is exportable and is available to Microsoft 365 admins, knowledge managers, and knowledge admins. Using the previously mentioned feature access management tool, these rolls can also grant report access to users via established Microsoft 365 groups.

The metrics below are available now and we will be adding more soon. Learn more about this feature from our documentation page. This feature requires a Viva Learning or Viva Suite license to access.

Metric	Description
Monthly Active Users	Total number of unique users who have launched the Viva Learning personal app in the last 30 days.
Daily Active Users	Total number of unique users who have launched the Viva Learning personal app on that day.
Monthly Engaged Users	Total number of unique users who have taken five or more intentional actions. The intentional actions are: Search, Bookmark, Share, Copy Link, Recommendation, Add to calendar, Interest selection, Ratings, and Playing content.
Engaged Quality Learners	Total number of unique users who have taken two or more elective(non-assigned) courses in a month.
Content Played	Total number of courses played by learners in a month.
Content Bookmarked	Total number of courses bookmarked by learners in a month.

Metric	Description
Learning Paths Viewed	Total number of learning paths viewed by learners in a month.
Learning Collections Viewed	Total number of learning collections viewed by learners in a month.
Content Shared	Total number of courses shared by learners in a month.
Content Recommended	Total number of courses recommended by learners in a month.
Searches on Personal App	Total number of searches in the Viva Learning personal app in a month.

Roadmap features coming soon

Skills in Viva Learning

As announced in October, we are excited to introduce AI-powered skills in Viva. This horizontal service across the Viva platform will provide a new way to understand and empower your workforce. Skills will show up first in Viva Learning, and then in other Viva apps and services. Stay tuned for availability information, and watch our 90 second explainer video below to see how we’re building this solution.

Skills in Viva will require a Viva Learning or Viva Suite license to access.

Catalog permissions by provider

This feature allows admins to control access to learning content by specific providers. Many of the large enterprise customers we work with have complex backend learning infrastructure, and often the entire company is not evenly licensed for all content sources. This feature provides admins an easy way to ensure users only see the learning content that they have access to consume within Viva Learning.

We expect this feature to be available by the end of 2023. This feature will require a Viva Learning or Viva Suite license to access.

Embedding site URLs in Learning Paths and Collections

This feature will enable employees to add links of content stored within their company’s intranet (SharePoint, Stream, etc.) or found online (YouTube, etc) as learning content in learning collections and learning paths in Viva Learning. This allows the creation of collections and paths that position formal learning content (like a LinkedIn Learning course) alongside informal learning content (like a YouTube video showing a current events application) to round out the approach to specific learning topics.

We expect this feature to be available by the end of 2023. This feature will require a Viva Learning or Viva Suite license to access.

Recommend to Microsoft 365 user groups

This feature enhances the current recommend capability in Viva Learning by enabling users to recommend content via Microsoft 365 user groups.

We expect this feature to be available by the end of 2023. This feature will require a Viva Learning or Viva Suite license to access.

Advanced admin reporting dashboard

This feature builds on our existing set of admin reports, to empower L&D leaders to identify learning trends in their organization. This dashboard will include information about quality learners (a metric we track closely internally at Microsoft), top content being consumed, providers with the highest engagement, and more.

We expect this feature to be available in H1 of 2024. This feature will require a Viva Learning or Viva Suite license to access.

We’re looking forward to delivering the above roadmap items and hearing your feedback on our newly generally available features. Below are some handy resources links, and please feel free to add any questions in the comments.

As always we’ll see you learning in the flow of work!

Resources:

• To learn more about our pricing and packaging, or to start a trial, please visit our Viva Learning website or contact your Microsoft representative.
• Visit our support pages for step-by-step guides and videos on how to use Viva Learning features
• Read our technical documentation pages for details on all our generally available features
• Access our free adoption kit to help roll out Viva Learning to your organization
• Read and watch how Grundfos has used Viva Learning to build their organization’s culture of learning

3 Ways Viva Learning Is Helping Organizations Improve Employee Growth and Development

Lisaryv — Fri, 29 Sep 2023 19:00:32 GMT

This blog will showcase the success of Viva Learning for customers like Grundfos, Avanade and Music Tribe. Viva learning has made it possible for them to consolidate learning content and tools into a single hub for easy access, offer personalized search and discovery features that enable employees to curate their own learning collections and make learning accessible from any device and location.

1. “One-Stop Shop for Learning”

Learning content comes in many forms, and there’s nothing more frustrating than having to switch between several windows and platforms to learn. Viva Learning consolidates a wide range of learning content and tools from various formats and sources into a single platform so that employers can have one central hub for employee learning.

A customer of ours, Grundfos, had an abundance of learning opportunities for their employees but lacked structure. The result was that their employees found it difficult to navigate through the learning resources they had available, creating confusion. Employees found themselves struggling to store their learning courses of interest and had to revert to doing things like manually saving links of courses they’d like to revisit later. To address this, the company chose to invest in Viva Learning to consolidate their learning opportunities into an organized single destination in Microsoft Teams.

"We need to make sure our employees have as few barriers to learning as possible. We used Microsoft Viva Learning to achieve that vision by creating a one-stop shop for learning in the flow of work."

-Marcus Jøhnck Bendt Haure: Product Owner for Learn & Grow Technologies at Grundfos

Avanade faced similar challenges with learning across their organization due to their learning resources being scattered in too many different places.

"Learning was a challenge across our organization because we had so many places to access learning."

-Art Holladay: Director, IT Go-To-Market Services Lead at Avanade

With Viva Learning, Avanade will be able to create a centralized learning hub, where all learning resources are available in one place. Avanade also has plans to use Viva Learning to share recorded training sessions on new products, which is a much better alternative to the previous method they had of searching through emails or SharePoint pages to find a session recap.

Already a Viva Learning Customer? To learn more about how to organize your learning content on Viva Learning, read about how to create a learning collection here and how to save content for later by bookmarking here.

Not a customer yet? Read more about how Viva Learning works here.

2.Catered to You

Personalized search and discovery on Viva Learning means that you’ll have access to a wide variety of content that is tailored to your interests. This ensures that you are able to find the most relevant and appropriate content for your learning goals. You have the ability to select topics of interest that will then help populate the curated learning recommendations Viva Learning offers to you.

Another one of our customers, Music Tribe, made a commitment to employee learning, by giving everyone in their organization one day per month of dedicated learning time. Since then, they’ve had an increase in employee engagement and employees are now spending an average of 10 hours per month on learning. One of the requests made by their employees was to have the capability to curate their own learning collections. This would allow them to have personalized course recommendations readily available for them to sort through on their designated day of learning each month. Viva Learning has made this possible.

"People don’t want to be told what they need to learn,” says Stubbs. “They want to create their own learning journeys, and Viva and Go1 have created an amazing platform for them to be able to do that."

- Lorna Stubbs: Chief Human Resources Officer at Music Tribe

To ensure Viva Learning curates the right recommendations for your learning content, make sure to select your interests. Read more about how to do that here.

To read more about how to create a learning path go here.

3. Learning in an Accessible Way

Viva Learning's ability to facilitate learning from anywhere is a popular benefit. This feature is particularly appealing to employees with diverse lifestyles, as it can be accessed on laptops, desktops, or mobile devices. Whether an employee is working from home, on the go, or in the office, they have easy access to Viva Learning.

"Viva Learning in Microsoft Teams will give our employees a chance to engage with a learning path that is very accessible, for example via the Teams mobile app for learning on the go."

-Art Holladay: Director, IT Go-To-Market Services Lead at Avanade

"The anytime, anywhere access that Teams provides has been another popular feature, even encouraging employees to share courses with family members."

-Lorna Stubbs: Chief Human Resources Officer at Music Tribe

This flexibility and accessibility of Viva Learning helps to ensure that learning remains a priority for employees, regardless of their location or schedule. This is important because it allows individuals to access learning materials and resources at their convenience.

For learning on the go read more about the Microsoft Viva Learning mobile app here.

Read more about how Grundfos, Avanade and Music Tribe have used Viva Learning to improve their employee growth and development below:

• Grundfos Extends Its Culture of Learning to Every Area of it’s Business with Microsoft Viva Learning
• Avanade Strengthens Its Focus on Employee Experience with Microsoft Viva
• Music Tribe Tunes in to a Culture of Learning with Microsoft Viva Learning

Accelerating employee growth with Viva Learning

John_Mighell — Thu, 20 Apr 2023 15:13:13 GMT

As part of our first Viva Summit, we’re excited to announce a set of new features and engagement opportunities with Microsoft Viva Learning. You can watch the full session at aka.ms/MicrosoftVivaSummit to see how Viva can help you grow and engage your workforce, including a panel discussion with Johann Laville – Chief Learning Officer at Merck and John George – Chief Information Officer at ICF.

Announcing Academies in Viva Learning

We’re excited to announce a new way of organizing and delivering learning resources within Viva Learning. Announced today and available soon, academies enhance organizations’ ability to curate role and line-of-business specific experiences to target individuals with highly engaging and relevant learning opportunities.

Learning academies will show up in Viva Learning as a new tab within the top navigation bar, alongside Home (for your learning homepage), My Learning (for your personalized learning snapshot), Manage (for managing learning recommendations), and Admin (for admins functions). Academies are configurable by admins, knowledge admins, and knowledge managers and build upon previously released learning path and featured set capabilities.

Admins can provide access permissions to academies via Microsoft 365 groups – for example you may want a Finance Academy just for your finance team, a Sales Academy just for your sales team, and a Culture Academy for everybody. Individuals can receive access to multiple academies and navigate between them as a drop down selection.

Multiple teams at Microsoft are already using academies – it’s proving to be a great method to discover relevant learning opportunities in a way that’s easily accessible, expert curated, and available within the flow of everyday work.

Academies will be generally available by mid-2023.

Announcing new API availability

We’re also excited to announce two new updates related to our set of publicly available Microsoft Graph APIs, which enables any learning system to integrate with Viva Learning.

First, our employee learning API is now generally available. The employee learning API in Microsoft Graph enables apps to make content from a learning management system (LMS) or learning provider available in Viva Learning. Use the following resources to integrate with Viva Learning:

Learning provider to manage learning providers, including registering, enabling, disabling, or deleting providers.
Learning content to upload and manage learning content metadata from your LMS or learning provider in Viva Learning.

Second, our course activity API will enter into public preview on May 1st. The course activity API synchronizes learners' records like assignments, recommendations, self-initiated courses, and completion statuses into the Viva Learning user experience.

As part of our private preview, LMS365 utilized this new set up APIs to bring assignments and course activity records into Viva Learning so users can easily access as part of their everyday workflow.

“By bringing together LMS365 and Microsoft Viva Learning, we’re able to facilitate and support more intuitive ways of learning. Learners can browse a centralized catalog view of learning opportunities that display LMS365 coursework alongside content from separate learning systems via Viva Learning. This extends the LMS365 experience beyond the existing native integration with Microsoft Teams and into Viva Learning, which supports the continuous learning movement in organizations and empowers individual employees to grow,” says Flemming Goldbach, Chief Product Officer.

We’re excited to continue working with LMS365, our other partners in preview, and the rest of the learning partner ecosystem as we continually expand our API offerings to deliver an extensible platform with Viva Learning.

Announcing Viva Learning web endpoint

We’re also announcing today a new way to access Viva Learning. Now generally available, you can use Viva Learning to accelerate your growth and learning journey directly from your web browser. Accessible at https://aka.ms/VivaLearningWeb, this web endpoint provides all the same features users have available to them in the Viva Learning app for Teams.

The Webapp auto signs users into their Viva Learning account and personalizes the experience by adapting to preferred theme and language settings, and is available to all users with access to the Viva Learning app for Teams. The Webapp is currently compatible with Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome and in preview in Safari.

Announcing the new Viva Learning Community

We’d like to invite you to join our newly launched Viva Community – at Aka.ms/vivacommunity/VivaLearning. As a member, you will have access to all our content in the Community, curated just for you, conversations with experts, and a forum for asking questions.

If you are joining us during the Viva Summit event livestream, we have a couple great ways for you to continue engaging with our amazing speakers. You can join the live Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) session on the Viva Learning Community today (April 20^th) from 10:30-11:30AM PST. We'll have a group of Learning Culture Champs online from both Microsoft and partner organizations to answer your questions about all things learning. These live AMAs will also be available in the Viva Community afterwards.

We look forward to talking with you soon, and make sure to stay tuned for additional exciting updates in May.

As always we’ll see you learning in the flow of work!

The business value of investing in employee growth

Andrea_Lum — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 15:41:34 GMT

As organizations try to cut costs in response to a challenging economic outlook, it’s crucial for them to narrow their investments to those that provide a tangible return. We’ve conducted a handful of studies looking at the business impact of investing in employee experience, specifically with Microsoft Viva. The results provide evidence that the Viva apps are effective in driving better business outcomes.

In this blog, we are focusing on one particular aspect of the employee experience: growth. Employee growth encapsulates everything from training and upskilling your workforce to connecting people with the right experts and expertise at your organization. Investments in this area include learning platforms and learning management systems, as well as content and knowledge management systems.

Retain your workforce and save money

Investing in employee growth impacts organizations in two main ways: improving employee retention and reducing costs. In the Total Economic Impact study that we conducted with Forrester, we found that improved employee retention is worth $13.1 million to the composite organization¹. Providing development opportunities to employees is one of the main factors in getting them to stay. Employees consider opportunities to learn and grow as the #1 driver of great work culture. In the Work Trends Index study that Microsoft conducted last fall, 76% of employees said that they would stay at their company longer if they could benefit more from learning and development support.

On the topic of reducing costs, people spend about an hour a day – or seven weeks a year – searching for or recreating information. Employees lose productive time when they look through resources and search for the right experts, often pausing work for hours or putting it off for days. Focusing on effective content and knowledge management can therefore have great payoffs. According to the Total Economic Impact study, the reduction in search effort for the right content and experts is worth a three-year present value of $9.3 million to the composite organization¹.

Organizations and HR leaders are listening to these trends and making them an imperative. In an article published by Josh Bersin last month, he cites a handful of categories in the HR technology market that will be white hot this year, including talent marketplaces, capability academies, employee experience platforms, and mid-market talent suites. While other areas of HR spending are decreasing in response to today’s economic landscape, organizations are still prioritizing finding new ways to improve learner experience and skills development.

The impact of Microsoft Viva on employee growth

While it’s clear that investing in employee growth benefits the business, the challenge is in delivering the right kinds of growth opportunities so that these benefits are realized. One way to ensure this is by investing in solutions that will meet employees where they are, like Microsoft Viva. The Viva solutions that relate to employee growth are Viva Learning, Viva Topics, and Answers in Viva. They disrupt the learning and knowledge management industries by surfacing relevant information, content, and expertise in the flow of work through deep integrations with Microsoft 365.

Viva Learning centers learning around the employee experience, bringing personalized learning content into people’s daily workspaces. Employees can discover and share learning directly in Microsoft Teams, or add learning to their Outlook calendars to prioritize time for growth.

Viva Topics applies artificial intelligence to identify knowledge and experts at the company, organizing them and surfacing them when relevant. Topic cards will pop up for highlighted words, names, or phrases as they show up in a Teams chat or email, providing a description and links to related resources and experts.

Answers in Viva leverages subject matter expertise captured in Viva Topics to help employees to get their questions answered, connecting them with experts and increasing their overall learning. Access Answers in Viva in the Answers tab in the Viva Engage app.

The proof of this new method’s ROI is clear. Often, barriers to learning like lack of time and difficulty navigating resources keep people from fully taking advantage of their organizations' learning investments. Viva Learning breaks down these barriers by intertwining opportunities to upskill and grow throughout the work tools that people use daily. Since launching Viva Learning, the audio manufacturing company Music Tribe saw an 80% increase in the number of employees actively engaging with learning content. On the knowledge management side, professional services firm Real Foundations saw 30,000 hours saved after taking advantage of AI in Viva Topics. This is the equivalent of 15 full-time employees dedicated solely to knowledge classification for an entire year.

In the Total Economic Impact study Microsoft conducted with Forrester last fall, we interviewed customers who had been using Viva long enough to start seeing real results. Customers saw a 50% reduction in time to full productivity via accelerated onboarding as a result of deploying Viva. In addition, there was a 20% reduction in employee attrition. Customers saw total benefits of $55M to $150M from improved productivity and onboarding after deploying Viva Topics. There was a projected return of investment for Viva Topics of 104% to 458% across interviewed customers.

"Viva Learning helps employees focus, which saves them time. People are accessing it 24 hours per day."

- COO at electronics company, The Total Economic Impact of Microsoft Viva

"Onboarding has improved. We have curated training depending on position. New hires also like to see that we are a technology-driven company."

- COO at electronics company, The Total Economic Impact of Microsoft Viva

You can learn more about Viva Learning, Viva Topics, and Answers in Viva, as well as tips on driving a modern employee growth strategy, in the new webinar: Helping Employees Learn, Grow, and Succeed. Register through the link to watch the on-demand webinar for free.

More Resources

In case you missed it, here is a recap of upcoming events and new resources:

Upcoming events

Register for the Viva Summit on April 20^th! The Viva Summit is an all-digital event featuring research findings, expert insights, panel discussions, a technology showcase, and a thriving community focused on empowering the workforce for accelerated business impacts. There will be a digital breakout session on employee growth, featuring Viva Learning, Viva Topics, and Answers in Viva updates too.

Resources

5 ways Microsoft Viva helps businesses save time and money: Blog featuring results from the Total Economic Impact of Microsoft Viva report done by Forrester.
Work Trends Index report: 2022 research study by Microsoft on work trends for employees and organizations.
The Future of Employee Learning blog and webinar: Blog and webinar on employee learning trends and tips for driving a modernized learning strategy.
Viva Learning interactive demo: Learn how to use Viva Learning with this updated interactive demo, including new features like creating learning collections and learning paths.
Answers in Viva Overview: Learn about this new conversational experience for asking questions and connecting employees to crowdsourced answers.
Watch Topics Demos: Get a glimpse of how Viva Topics works and access tools to support your adoption.

¹ Based on the interviews, Forrester constructed a TEI framework, a composite company, and an ROI analysis that illustrates the areas financially affected. The composite organization is representative of the eight interviewees, and it is used to present the aggregate financial analysis of the study. More information on methodology can be found on page 8 in the study.

Reach your learning goals with learning paths and collections

Andrea_Lum — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 16:30:00 GMT

In January, many of us are thinking about our goals, priorities, and aspirations for the new year. An important aspect of this is personal growth and development: what new skills do we want to develop, or experiences do we want to have? Unfortunately as the year goes on, people often forget to prioritize learning. As we get caught up in day-to-day work tasks, we put activities for longer-term growth and development on the back burner. That’s why it’s crucial for companies to create a culture of learning by embedding employee learning into everyday tools and experiences where people spend time at work.

Led by people, facilitated by technology

A culture of learning should be led by people and facilitated by technology. On the technology side of the equation, we’re pleased to announce new capabilities now available in Viva Learning with learning paths and learning collections. These new features allow the Viva Learning experience to become even more personalized and relevant to everybody in the organization – more details below.

On the people side, it’s important for leadership to set the tone from the top, and empower their teams to make learning a priority. Luckily, there are a few tried-and-true ways that organizations can make growth and development top of mind for their employees:

Encourage employees to outline growth opportunities and goals each year or half-year. This can include new experiences and skills they want to develop in the coming period.
Include a social aspect to company-provided learning opportunities. According to the 70-20-10 learning theory, 20% of learning occurs through interactions with others, versus 10% from formal learning. Set up learning cohorts and peer mentoring programs, invest in social learning tools so employees can share courses and growth plans with their peers, and make goal-setting transparent between employees and managers to hold accountability.
Communicate a culture of learning from top-down. For example, have leadership share examples with their teams of how they plan to prioritize learning this year. Or, establish a few team or company-wide “Learning days” where employees are encouraged to cancel meetings and focus on personal development.

At Microsoft, our company culture is grounded in growth mindset principles. That means trying new things without fear of failure and being open to learning from others around you. The rollout of Viva Learning has played a large role in supporting these values, as evident by the 58% increase in engaged elective learning at Microsoft since deployment. With learning paths and learning collections now in Viva Learning, we’re continuing to make it easier for everyone to progress on their learning journeys.

Announcing learning path creation

Learning path creation is now Generally Available in Viva Learning. Learning paths are a set of ordered learning objects aligned to a subject or goal. Learning admin roles (M365 admin, knowledge admin, and knowledge manager) can create a learning path in the Admin tab in the Viva Learning app. Learning paths can consist of learning objects from any connected learning source, including Learning Management Systems (LMS), 3^rd party content providers, custom content sources, SharePoint, or any of the free content libraries included in Viva Learning – Microsoft Learn, Microsoft 365 Trainings, and 125 courses from LinkedIn Learning. Admins can customize the learning paths by adding a name, description, thumbnail, and sections. The learning path will be discoverable and searchable in Viva Learning for all employees, and anyone can share and recommend learning paths too.

With delegation flows, coming soon, learning admins will also be able to give permissions to others at the company to create learning paths even if they do not have other admin permissions. For example, a business program manager or someone on the learning and development team can be permitted to create learning paths as well.

For more information on learning paths, read the documentation.

Announcing learning collections

Learning collections are another great way to prioritize learning, generally available later this month. While learning paths can only be created by admins and a designated group of people, any employee can create a learning collection. A learning collection is an unordered grouping of learning objects. Collections can center around a common subject or be completely random. They can be for personal use or to share with others. Like learning paths, collections are made up of learning objects from any connected learning source. Coming soon, employees will also be able to upload personal files from SharePoint or external links as objects in a learning collection.

To create a learning collection, go to the collections tab in the My Learning view in the Viva Learning app. There are options there to create a new collection. Once created, employees can share and recommend their collections with colleagues, or choose to keep the collection private for themselves. Collections are not searchable or visible to others unless shared directly.

For instructions on creating learning collections, read the support article.

Learning paths and collections in action

Learning paths and collections can be used to advance learning for employees in many scenarios and roles across the company. Some popular examples are:

Your knowledge administrator creates an onboarding learning path in Viva Learning for new employees joining the company. The learning path consists of a section on company culture, featuring a video recorded by the CEO and a few internal sites on the company mission (uploaded through the SharePoint integration), and a section on diversity and inclusion, with ally training from your LMS and a few providers. The onboarding learning path is published to everyone at the company, and managers are encouraged to share or recommend the learning path to new members on their teams to help accelerate onboarding and demonstrate company values.

You work in Human Resources and manage the onboarding and learning development for your company’s retail workers. Your company knowledge manager has granted you Viva Learning permissions to create learning paths for the company. You create a Retail 101 learning path consisting of internal resources from your company’s training catalog hosted on SharePoint and formal courses on merchandising and store communications from your LMS. You showcase the learning path in the Featured banner in Viva Learning for all retail employees at the company.

You are a designer at a consulting agency and have goals to become a manager. You create a personal learning collection with courses on management skills, management communications, and career development. You share the collection with your mentor who suggests you add a course on executive presence to round out your skillset.

You’re a marketing manager chatting with someone on your team in a 1:1. They mention that they want more experience giving presentations and getting better at public speaking. To support their goals, you create a collection in Viva Learning titled “Presentation skills”. The collection features a handful of communication, PowerPoint, and public speaking courses from several different learning providers. You recommend the collection to your team member, who can view and make progress on it from their “My Learning” tab in Viva Learning.

Getting started

With tools like Viva Learning and a plan to empower everyone in the organization, 2023 can be the year to finally prioritize upskilling and start developing your own unique learning culture.

If you’re already using Viva Learning, start sending communications to your company about learning paths and collections so they can take advantage of the learning opportunities available to them. Share examples of how employees can leverage learning paths and collections like the ones above.

If you’re not yet using Viva Learning, you can get started today with the free version available to all Microsoft 365 users with access to Teams. Simply click the ellipses in Teams and search for “Viva Learning” to access the app, already preloaded with thousands of courses from Microsoft Learn, Microsoft 365 Trainings, and LinkedIn Learning.

Note: If you don't see Viva Learning in Microsoft Teams, it might be disabled by your organization. Contact your admin for more information.

Let’s start the year strong with a focus on growth and development!

New resources

In case you missed them, there are a handful of new Viva Learning resources available online to further drive company-wide learning adoption. Check them out below:

New Viva Learning guided demo
New Viva Learning adoption resources: Action GIFs, Quickstart guide, and support pages
Future of Learning infographic
Microsoft’s Viva Learning and LinkedIn Learning adoption story

The Future of Employee Learning

Andrea_Lum — Fri, 18 Nov 2022 16:41:58 GMT

Across the board, organizations want to provide innovative and effective learning and development opportunities for their employees. This leads to a more talented workforce and better business results; not to mention money saved by reducing employee churn.

The question is: how? How do we promote learning in a way that resonates with employees? As the world of work evolves around us, the way that we deliver learning is going to have to evolve as well.

In this webinar we hosted, Andrea Lum (Viva Learning product team) and Laura Becker (Viva employee experience analyst) share Microsoft’s latest research on the future of employee learning and tips for driving a modern learning strategy.

Watch the webinar on-demand (link here).

At a summary:

The learning solutions market is hot, with record-breaking venture capital investments and several recent acquisitions in the market in an attempt to innovate.
Learning is crucial for employee retention and satisfaction. Employees consider learning and growth opportunities to be the #1 driver of a great work culture.
Meanwhile, people don’t feel that their learning and development is being prioritized at work; 48% of all employees feel that neither their manager nor leadership at their company prioritize learning and development.
Companies need to build learning into their culture in a way that resonates with employees. They can do this by leveraging experiential and social aspects of learning along with formal learning investments.
People that see how learning applies directly to their work are 2.2x as likely to engage in professional learning and development. Companies must bring learning into the context of work activities. Project-based learning and microlearning (in the time of need) can help here.
Companies must give space for employees to become creators of learning content and knowledge. With the explosive popularity of the creator market, people expect corporate learning to follow suit.
Social learning is one of the most effective ways that adults learn. Companies should leverage peer-to-peer recommendations and cohorts in their learning programs (and invest in learning systems that incorporate this). In other words, companies can’t rely on employees to be motivated by corporate-assigned learning courses to upskill!
61% of employees would be more engaged with learning if it was intertwined throughout their work and collaboration platforms. We must incorporate learning into the tools that people are already using at work (“learning in the flow of work”). This eliminates barriers to accessing learning, like taking time to navigate to a separate platform or browse through cluttered content libraries.
Viva Learning was built with all of this in mind. As part of an employee experience platform, it is centered around the employee’s wants and needs by blending formal and informal learning sources into one platform. It’s built directly into Microsoft Teams (collaboration platform) – and by extension, the employee’s work activities, groups, and interactions.
Since rolling out Viva Learning to Microsoft employees, Microsoft’s HR department has seen a 58% increase in engaged learners at the company.

For a snapshot of all of Microsoft’s learning research, check out the Future of Employee Learning Infographic.

Viva Learning announcements at Ignite 2022

John_Mighell — Wed, 19 Oct 2022 18:34:33 GMT

It’s been almost a year since we announced general availability of Viva Learning at Ignite 2021. In the last 11 months we’ve made huge strides in product capability and – of course – learned a lot from customers, partners, and our own internal adoption.

Today we’re happy to announce an exciting set of capabilities, new and deepened partner integrations, and share a look into our own deployment of Viva Learning at Microsoft. To get all the details and see these new features in action, make sure to watch our new announcement video for Ignite 2022 embedded here. You can also keep reading below for a recap of announcement highlights.

New capability announcements

Please note that some of the features listed below are available now (tagged with “GA”) and some will be available by the end of this calendar year (tagged with “preview”).

Learning Paths (preview) allow Admins, Knowledge Managers, and Learning Program Managers to create sequenced sets of learning resources from any of the sources configured within their Viva Learning tenant, and publish them to employees in their organization. Learning Paths can be created around any topic relevant to the organization; for example, how to set up an in-store display for retail employees. Learning Paths can be discovered, recommended, and shared by end users as a structured way to dive deep into a specific topic of interest.

Learning Collections (preview) allow individual users to create personal collections of learning content aligned to their interests or learning goals from any of the sources configured within their Viva Learning tenant. Anyone can create a learning collection, and either keep it private or choose to share and recommend it to colleagues within their organization. Collections are a great way to structure learning for specific groups or goals; for example, a manger could create a collection of helpful learning courses to share with new hires to accelerate onboarding. Collections can be found in the new “Collections” section of the My Learning tab.

Updates to the Viva Learning mobile app (GA) include notifications for assigned and recommended trainings, the ability to consume content directly within the app, and improved capability to search and filter through catalogues of connected learning providers.

We’re also announcing a new home page experience on Viva Learning mobile (preview) which will make it easy to see mandatory trainings along with personalized learning experiences for users. See the recent Viva Learning mobile update blog for details.

New capabilities in the Viva Learning Admin Tab (preview) enhance the Admin experience to include a number of new features – including the ability to see ingestion status and error logs for configured content sources, build learning paths, and configure user permissions for learning objects so people only see the content they have access to consume.

The capabilities described above are in addition to the ability to create and publish featured content sets, which is already available in the Admin Tab.

Integration with Viva Connections (GA) will now surface required trainings in the new Viva home experience in Connections, so employees can see a snapshot of their learning tasks at-a-glace right at the top of the page.

Integration with the daily briefing email from Viva Insights (preview) will send employees personalized learning reminders to set aside time to complete mandatory assignments or trainings from their organization. With one click, employees can add time to their calendar for completing assigned courses that are upcoming or overdue.

Make sure to check out our latest blog for more information about how we’re unifying the employee experience with Viva.

New and deepened partner integrations

Viva Learning now offers deeper integration with SAP SuccessFactors (GA), including:

• Single Sign On (SSO), which lets users access SAP SuccessFactors hosted content through a seamless authentication experience without needing to sign in.

• In-app playback, which allows users to consume SAP SuccessFactors hosted content directly within the Viva Learning app for Teams.

• Permissions inheritance, which allows Viva Learning to read user permissions from SAP SuccessFactors and apply those same access permissions within Viva Learning.

• Learning path inheritance, which allows programs configured on SAP SuccessFactors to display within Viva Learning as learning paths.

“I’m really excited for our in-app playback integration. Not having to exit your daily work in order to get the answer to a question, watch a video, or consume another form of instruction really helps reduce that friction in getting people the right information at the right time. Along with the other enabling technology integrations we’ve built, I’m happy to help announce this deepened partnership as we work together to bring learning to every part of the employee experience.”
-Nate Hurto, Global Vice President, Solution Go-to-Market

We’re also excited to announce a set of new partner integrations with Viva Learning enabled through our publicly available employee learning API for Udacity, LMS365, SumTotal, and KPMG. These integrations allow connection of the content catalogs for these partners so users can search for, discover, share, and recommend their content natively within the Viva Learning app for Teams. To learn more about our employee learning API, read our API announcement blog or visit the technical documentation page for employee learning API.

Microsoft runs on Viva: Viva Learning deployment and usage

To help develop a learning culture, Microsoft HR made the decision to leverage Viva Learning as our primary employee experience interface for learning activities. We rolled out Viva Learning earlier this year, including a connection with our Learning Management System – SAP SuccessFactors – in order to provide our employees with a seamless learning experience natively embedded in Teams, where they already spend much of their time.

In just a few short months we’ve seen powerful usage trends with 169,000 active users in August – that’s almost 80% of all Microsoft employees! The Viva Learning mobile app has seen strong usage as well, with 40,000 employees using the app for learning activities in August.

One final statistic that points to the influence Viva Learning is having on creating a culture of learning here at Microsoft. Since rollout of Viva Learning, we’ve seen a large increase in a metric we track called “Engaged Quality Learners,” which looks at individuals who have consumed 2 or more elective courses in a given month – so this doesn’t count any required or mandatory content. We’ve seen a 58% increase in this number – which was already high to begin with. We didn’t introduce any new content, we simply reduced the barriers for our employees to find relevant learning courses, consume them, and participate in social learning activities with Viva Learning.

To us, that’s pretty good evidence for the value of learning in the flow of work. You can read the full case study here: Microsoft upgrades its employee learning experience with Viva.

Viva Learning has really grown up in the last year, and we couldn’t have done it without the feedback and suggestions from this community and others – thank you! We’re excited to share the above announcements with you, and we’re looking forward to even bigger and better things over the coming year.

To learn more about other Viva news and announcements for Ignite, watch the Ignite session Microsoft Viva: Latest innovations and roadmap for the new digital employee experience and read the blog post by Seth Patton.

Learn on the go with Viva Learning mobile app updates

Andrea_Lum — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 22:34:28 GMT

Learning and upskilling is top of mind for everyone, whether they are information workers or part of the frontline workforce. No matter how your employees work – from a desktop computer, tablet, or mobile phone – Viva Learning makes it easy to learn seamlessly in the flow of work. In this blog, we’ll dive into the Viva Learning mobile app and how it’s optimized for on-the-go learning.

The Viva Learning mobile app features most of the same capabilities available on desktop in a mobile-friendly and intuitive interface. Employees can access Viva Learning through the Microsoft Teams mobile app – just select the ellipses to expand the app menu and find the Viva Learning icon. Employees can reorder and pin the apps in their Teams mobile app so Viva Learning appears by default.

The Viva Learning mobile app provides employees the flexibility to complete their assigned training anytime and anywhere without having to sit at a workstation. It also enables employees to view and access learning content from a wide variety of catalogues spread across multiple content providers. Employees can share learning content in a Teams message from the course itself or a chat composition, and they can view curated content in learning tabs created for their teams. Especially for frontline workers who may be on their feet and working outside of a nine to five desk job, the last thing they want to do is sit at a computer after a long shift and go through their trainings. Providing a mobile solution gives them the flexibility to learn in a way that best fits their work styles – for example, on a commute or in between shifts.

A free version of Viva Learning comes included with any Microsoft 365 subscription. This version automatically provides employees access to content from Microsoft Learn, Microsoft 365 trainings, and 125 LinkedIn Learning courses (or the entire catalog with a LinkedIn Learning enterprise subscription) on their desktop and mobile devices. They can also discover and share company content through the SharePoint integration, including employee-uploaded content in the learning tabs (learn more about the SharePoint integration and bring your own content here).

If the organization purchases Viva Learning or Viva Suite licenses, employees can access their required trainings and assignments from connected providers and learning management systems like SAP SuccessFactors and Go1 through the Viva Learning mobile app as well. See details on Viva Learning pricing and packaging here.

New to the Viva Learning mobile app

With new notification features, employees will receive a notification in the Activity section of the Teams app when they receive learning assignments and recommendations or if a deadline is approaching. Notifications will show up in the phone’s notification center if Teams notifications are enabled on the mobile device.

The Viva Learning mobile app also now supports in-app consumption, so employees are no longer brought out of the Teams app into browser to view learning content. Instead, a viewing window will pop up within the mobile app, making learning a seamless experience.

Additionally, the Viva Learning mobile app has a new search and filter experience. Employees can filter search results in Viva Learning by interest, provider, and course duration to better find the type of content they are looking for.

Coming soon

Currently, the Viva Learning mobile app has one view for all your learning content, assignments, recommendations, and bookmarks. Next month, the app will have a new look – featuring both Home and My Learning tabs to make navigating the app even easier. Just like in the desktop app, the mobile Home tab lets you browse featured and trending content, a snapshot of your upcoming assignments and recommendations, suggested content based on your interests, and content by subject, provider, and duration. The pop-out Search button lets you search for courses no matter where on the page you are.

Switch to the My Learning tab to see your assignments, bookmarked content, content recommended to you, and recently viewed and completed content.

With a robust mobile learning solution, we become closer to our goal of empowering every employee to learn, grow, and achieve. Check out the Viva Learning mobile app on your phone and try out the new features today!

Announcing employee learning API for Viva Learning

Andrea_Lum — Tue, 26 Jul 2022 15:52:46 GMT

The employee learning API in Microsoft Graph is now available in public preview. With this API, customers can discover content from any Learning Management System (LMS) or learning provider in Viva Learning. This aligns with our vision to make Viva Learning a fully extensible learning platform, bringing all your learning investments and tools into the flow of work through a single solution.

LMS or learning providers can use the API to display courses on Viva Learning, just like any of our pre-integrated learning partners (SAP SuccessFactors, Skillsoft, Coursera, etc.). Employees can send a course from the LMS or provider in a Microsoft Teams chat message, add it to a Teams learning tab, search for the course in the Viva Learning Home view, recommend the course to a colleague, and much more. Actual consumption of the course occurs in the source platform; so, when a user clicks a course in Viva Learning to watch it, it will launch the course in the LMS/provider platform. Consumption records will be recorded there if available.

As part of the public preview, partners and providers can now start building scenarios with these APIs. We’ve published instructions in the documentation pages on how to use the employee learning API to make content from your LMS or learning provider available in Viva Learning. We will continue to monitor feedback and iterate on the API to improve the experience before announcing them as generally available.

Following the API release for content integration, we are also building the capability to integrate learner records from connected LMS's. This will sync learning assignments and completed course records into Viva Learning, where employees will be able to view and access their assignments and recently completed courses in Viva Learning. The learner record integration will go into preview later this year.

You can learn more about the employee learning APIs and how they work in the on-demand Inspire session. In the session, we also talked with two of our partners who were involved in the API private preview program – Joe Farrell, Managing Director at KPMG, and Flemming Goldbach, Chief Product Officer at LMS365.

“Our whole vision around bringing learning to the workflow is shared with Microsoft, and the APIs deliver or accelerate that vision to our clients… giving that single entry point into the learning ecosystem in the flow of work for the learner.”

- Joe Farrell, Managing Director, Advisory Learning Strategy and Digital Transformation, KPMG

“Viva Learning makes [our learning platform] more broadly available. We believe that Viva Learning, with integrations to LMS365 and other learning management systems, will help push the continuous learning movement in organizations.”

- Flemming Goldbach, Chief Product Officer, LMS365

KPMG and LMS365 have successfully used the employee learning API to connect their LMS's to Viva Learning. Check out the session recording to hear directly from them about their experiences with the APIs and what they’re looking forward to now that the connections are available.

Watch the Inspire session recording here.

Ready to start connecting your learning sources to Viva Learning? Follow the instructions at aka.ms/VLGraphAPIdocumentation to start using the API.

Read more about our recently released SharePoint integration improvements, our new features like Microsoft 365 search and add to calendar, or watch a 5 minute end-to-end demo video.

Viva Learning SharePoint updates

Andrea_Lum — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 17:11:30 GMT

Sometimes, the most relevant and effective learning content comes from within your organization rather than from external providers or libraries. This can mean company-specific resources or even content from internal subject matter experts. That’s why the Viva Learning SharePoint integration is so powerful – and why we’re making a handful of updates to improve the experience.

Through the current SharePoint integration, organization administrators can connect a SharePoint folder to Viva Learning in the Microsoft 365 admin center. Items in the folder will automatically be converted to learning objects and appear in Viva Learning for employees to discover, share, and access. And we just released two additional features, part of the SharePoint experience: bring your own content and metadata tagging.

Bring your own content to Microsoft Teams learning tabs

Employees can now upload their own resources as learning content in a Microsoft Teams learning tab. A learning tab can be added to any Teams channel as a shared space to pin and access team learning content. With bring your own content, members of a team can add user-generated content to the learning tab in addition to formal learning courses from connected providers. File types supported include .doc, .ppt, .xls, .pdf, .jpeg, .pdf, .mov, .mp4, .avi, and .png, and are uploaded via SharePoint file URL. The set of 'Bring your own content' features require a Viva Learning or Viva Suite license. Learn how to use this new feature in the support pages.

Screenshot of bring your own content in Viva Learning learning tab

Customize metadata for SharePoint content

With SharePoint metadata tagging in Viva Learning, company-generated content now mimics a more formal learning experience. Administrators can edit metadata columns in SharePoint to add a description, thumbnail, content duration, author, and skill tags to SharePoint items connected to Viva Learning. Employees can search and filter for company content by these details across Viva Learning.

Learn how to set up SharePoint metadata in the documentation.

Screenshots of SharePoint metadata tagging and searching SharePoint content by skill tag in Viva Learning

In addition to these recent updates, we have more features coming soon to the SharePoint integration in the next several months. This includes URL support and auto-generated thumbnails.

SharePoint URL support (coming soon)

Likewise, administrators will be able to add URL links as items in a connected SharePoint folder. This will allow webpages, YouTube videos, SharePoint Pages, etc. to be supported as learning objects in Viva Learning for employees to discover, share, and access.

Screenshots of SharePoint URL support and YouTube item in Viva Learning

Auto-generated thumbnails (coming soon)

Viva Learning will display automatically-generated thumbnail images for learning objects that do not have a thumbnail. This will include both content from SharePoint and also any content from third party learning providers or LMS.

Screenshot of auto-generated thumbnail for course in Viva Learning

We're so excited to see these new features in use and the scenarios you end up leveraging the SharePoint integration for. Happy learning!

What’s new in Viva Learning – May 2022

John_Mighell — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 14:43:48 GMT

We’re excited to share a set of new features and functionality for Viva Learning. Our development teams are hard at work delivering on our roadmap so we can help individuals upskill and grow, and organizations to build a culture of learning. Everything listed below is available today.

If you have any questions or ideas for future capability, please drop them into the comments.

Let’s get to the good stuff!

Add to calendar

Easily prioritize time for learning by adding learning objects as time blocks on your Outlook and Teams calendar. Viva Learning intelligently suggests a time slot that fits the duration of the learning object chosen and matches with free time on your calendar. The add to calendar feature can be initiated from a course detail page, or a course thumbnail from the Home or My Learning tabs.

Surface learning content in Microsoft Search

Find learning objects across Microsoft 365 endpoints like Office.com, SharePoint.com, and Bing.com. Use the ‘Learning’ tab within search results to filter to results powered by Viva Learning.

Indicator for content that requires a subscription

We heard your feedback! A visual indicator (key icon) is now included in the UI to clarify which

content is free to users, and which requires a separate subscription in order to consume.

In-line playback for LinkedIn Learning content on mobile

LinkedIn Learning content now plays natively imbedded in the Teams mobile app experience with Viva Learning. This allows mobile users to complete the learning journey from discovery, to selection, to consumption without leaving Teams.

See how it all works end-to-end

Watch our new demo video to see what learning in the flow of work looks like through the eyes of Megan Bowen, a manager at Contoso Electrics.

Viva Learning news and feature update

John_Mighell — Tue, 08 Mar 2022 17:00:00 GMT

As we celebrate the first year of Microsoft Viva, it’s exciting to see so many companies seeking to foster human connection, align on a sense of mission, ensure employee wellbeing, and retain their best people. These are areas of critical important for business of any size as we collectively navigate the new world of Hybrid Work.

Since Microsoft Viva Learning’s general availability in November 2021 we’ve seen how employee upskilling, growth, and learning is becoming a top priority for organizational leaders. If you missed it, make sure to watch our announcement at Ignite.

But as we look back with pride, we also look forward with excitement. And there’s plenty on the horizon to be excited about with Viva Learning! Below we have a set of partner announcements, early adopter evidence, and new resources to share.

Let’s get to the good stuff!

Partner Announcements

In addition to the Viva Learning partner integrations we’ve previously announced, we’re thrilled to add another big name to the list – Workday. With the planned integration of Viva Learning and Workday, we’ll deliver a personalized learning experience right in the flow of work with Viva and Microsoft 365. We expect this integration to be live in the coming months.

“Together, Workday and Microsoft will empower employees with a simpler, more connected learning experience in their natural flow of work for greater engagement and productivity.”

-Stuart Bowness, Vice President, Software Development, Experience Design & Development, Workday

We’re also pleased to announce that our existing Learning Management System (LMS) integrations have reached a new milestone with learner record and assignment syncing. This means assignments and completion records from Cornerstone OnDemand, Saba Cloud, and SAP SuccessFactors now surface directly in Viva Learning. This builds on our existing content catalog integration which provides users the ability to search, discover, recommend, and share content hosted on their LMS right within Teams.

For detailed setup instructions to integrate your LMS with Viva Learning, visit the Viva Learning docs page.

Finally, we’re excited to share that our integrations with Edcast and OpenSesame are live in Viva Learning! This means you can now import content libraries from Edcast and OpenSesame into Viva Learning so users can search for, discover, share, and recommend their content throughout the platform.

In addition to the dedicated integrations mentioned above, we’re also hard at work building our APIs to deliver an open and extensible Employee Experience platform with Viva. Expect more details on Viva Learning APIs in the coming months.

Early adopter spotlight – Music Tribe

Music Tribe is a multi-national leader for professional audio products and musical instruments with operations across the globe. Recognizing the importance of learning in attracting and retaining talent, Music Tribe decided to prioritize the growth and development of their Tribers’ (employees’) by seeking a personalized, social, and easy to use learning system.

Music Tribe already uses Teams, so bringing learning to their users within their existing platform was a key decision point to deliver an engaging, inclusive, and inspiring learning experience aligned to their core values.

By deploying Viva Learning and Go1 together, Music Tribe employees are now able to define their own learning journeys in a social and collaborative experience – seamlessly integrated into their flow of work.

“As part of our Vision "We Empower. You Create", we wanted to empower our Tribers (employees) by means of learning and self-improvement. We looked for tools that would aggregate content from different providers and deliver it to our Tribers in an easily accessible way. The Go1 + Viva Learning solution does exactly that, with Go1 bringing the content together and Viva Learning delivering it as a natural part of the workday. This tremendously helped our Tribers sourcing content while giving more time developing their learning pathways and making the most of their professional development on our Employee Experience platform,”

-Uli Behringer, Founder and CEO, Music Tribe

“We are thrilled to deliver the world's largest workplace online learning library to Music Tribe employees in the flow of their work, via Microsoft Viva Learning. With Go1 and Viva Learning together, Music Tribe's employees are able to access relevant learning content from hundreds of different learning providers, all from the Microsoft tools like Teams that they use every day.”

-Andrew Barnes, CEO, Go1

Data from Go1 shows that in less than a month from launch over 40% of Music Tribe employees engaged in learning content, well over the industry standard for levels of employee engagement in learning content. Read more about Music Tribe’s Viva Learning journey in Go1’s blog.

New Viva Learning resources

For a comprehensive product walkthrough, see our guide at aka.ms/VivaLearningDemo

For setup and admin documentation, see our docs pages at aka.ms/VivaLearningDocs

For the list of 125 free LinkedIn Learning courses included with Viva Learning, see this page

For adoption guidance and best practices, see our new page at aka.ms/VivaLearningAdoption

For overview and license and pricing, or to start a free trial, see aka.ms/VivaLearning

Please add your questions and thoughts in the comments section and as always we will see you soon – learning in the flow of work!

Viva Learning now generally available!

John_Mighell — Mon, 08 Nov 2021 19:24:48 GMT

Today we are excited to announce the general availability of Microsoft Viva Learning!

The Viva Learning capabilities included in your existing Microsoft 365 or Office 365 subscription started rolling out on Nov 1^st, and will continue rolling out over the next few weeks until all tenants have access (details below).

Since our initial announcement back in February of this year, we have committed ourselves to designing and building a fundamentally new way to learn at work. During that time we received invaluable insights and feedback from dozens of partner and analyst organizations, hundreds of preview customers, and thousands of internal Microsoft beta users.

On behalf of the whole team, I want to thank everybody who provided these insights, suggestions, and encouragements that led us to build a learning product that will lead the charge over the next horizon of enterprise learning.

The next generation of enterprise learning solutions

So what is that next horizon? We believe it is learning in the flow of work. Instead of asking employees to visit point solution apps for siloed learning activities, with Viva Learning we’re bringing those learning experiences to where they spend their workday – in Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365.

We know the services and resources employees need are often undiscovered or locked up in systems of record rather than a natural part of people’s daily communication and workflow. The problem is not insufficient content – most organizations have already invested in massive volumes of learning resources – it’s facilitating easy access to that content. When you solve for that, you also answer a burning question on the mind of many CLOs: Am I maximizing the ROI on my existing learning services? If you’re not bringing those services into the flow of work the answer is simple: No, you’re not.

With Viva Learning, the next generation of enterprise learning goes beyond the traditional structure of LMS or LXP – instead seamlessly integrating the critical learning capabilities your employees need into their existing work platform.

But you don’t have to take my word for it. With Viva Learning now publicly available, you can experience for yourself what it really means to bring learning into the flow of work.

Viva Learning access and licensing

Beginning today, you can get started using the full set of Viva Learning features with the purchase of one of the SKUs listed below. This includes the app in Teams (desktop & mobile), core social learning features, search/discover/share capabilities, interest based personalization, Microsoft content integration, and advanced features including admin featured content, LMS integration, 3^rd party content integration, and recommendation capabilities.

Microsoft Viva Learning SKU
Microsoft Viva SKU
Microsoft Viva with Glint add-on SKU

In addition, a subset of Viva Learning capabilities is included at no cost in the Microsoft 365 and Office 365 SKUs listed below. With these SKUs you will be able to use the Viva Learning app in Teams, but your content access will be limited to just Microsoft sources (LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn, Microsoft 365 Training, and SharePoint). You will also not be able to recommend content, or access advanced admin features.

Microsoft 365 F1/F3/E3/A3/E5/A5
Office 365 F3/E1/A1/E3/A3/E5/A5

For pricing details, a comprehensive list of what’s included in your existing subscription, and what’s unlocked with Viva Learning SKU or Viva suite SKU purchase, see this page.

For details on how to start rolling out Viva Learning in your tenant, visit our docs page for step-by-step configuration and admin guidance.

You can also get started today with a Viva Learning trial. Ask your Microsoft account representative, your Cloud Solution Provider, or sign up yourself at aka.ms/VivaLearning.

Viva Learning capabilities

Now let’s take a look at some of the features that deliver learning in the flow of work with Viva Learning. We will continue to add more exciting capabilities to this list in the future. Make sure to watch the Viva Learning session at Microsoft Ignite for a product demo, roadmap discussion, admin walkthrough, and complete feature breakdown.

Viva Learning app in Teams for desktop & mobile

Simply search for “Viva Learning” in the Teams app menu, pin to your nav rail, and start using today!

Discover and browse content in the Home view

The home page for learning in your organization focused on discovery, inspiration, and staying up to date on learning activities. This view is personalized for you and provides an access point to all the content sources your admin configures for Viva Learning.

Personalize your learning experience with selected interests

Select learning interests to cater your Viva Learning experience to help you upskill and grow – both personally and professionally.

Search across all connected sources

Search for learning items from all the learning libraries connected to Viva Learning. You can filter by interest, provider, or duration to quickly and easily find the right content at the right time.

See your personal learning snapshot with the My Learning view

My Learning is your personalized window to track learning activities, see assigned learning from your connected LMS, check recently viewed and recommended content, and stay in control of your learning journey.

Share learning content in chat

A recent LinkedIn study found that 30x more hours of learning content was consumed by learners who use social features. Infuse learning into the natural conversations already happening throughout the workday by embedding learning into chats.

Recommend learning content

Spark conversations and strengthen connections with built-in tools to recommend content to others. This is a helpful scenario for managers and leaders to promote important learning topics with their teams.

Note: You’ll need to have Exchange Online enabled in order to recommend content and manage recommendations.

Manage recommendations

See the recommendations you’ve made to others to keep track of learning connections. Filter by status, and see the reported completion rate by individual.

Add a dedicated learning tab to existing Teams channels

Bring a curated set of learning resources into the space where work is happening. With Viva Learning tabs alongside your Teams files and conversations, it’s easier than ever to bring learning into the flow of work.

Integrations

We previously announced a great set of learning partners we’re working with to build out-of-the-box integrations for Viva Learning. I’m pleased to share that the following integrations are live today:

Cornerstone OnDemand
SAP SuccessFactors
Saba
Skillsoft
Coursera
Pluralsight
edX
Go1
Josh Bersin Academy
Infosec
Udemy Business

Note that all 3^rd party and LMS integrations require a separate subscription with that 3^rd party or LMS company.

The integrations above are in addition to the Microsoft owned content sources included with Viva Learning:

Microsoft Learn (full library included)
Microsoft 365 Trainings (full library included)
Your organization’s custom content stored on SharePoint
LinkedIn Learning (125 courses included; separate subscription required for full library integration)

Let's hear from a couple of our out-of-the-box integration partners. You can hear more from Sam and Potoula by watching the Viva Learning session at Microsoft Ignite:

“It has become more important than ever to place learning in the immediate context of employees’ day-to-day activities. Learning while working is the new normal, and we want to support our customers to foster greater productivity and collaboration through learning in the flow of work. We look forward to evolving the SAP and Microsoft partnership in this area.”

Sam Passman, Viva President Product Management-Talent, SAP SuccessFactors

“We all know that learning in the flow of work is the next horizon in enterprise learning, but the question has been how? Microsoft is answering that question with Microsoft Teams and Viva Learning. And that’s why we’re so excited to be part of this partnership and why our clients are so excited for this partnership.”

Potoula Chresomales, Senior Viva President Product Management, Skillsoft

We’ll have more exciting partner news in the next few months, including details on the Graph APIs we're building to enable connection with any learning provider, or even your own custom-built learning platform.

In addition, we expect the following integrations to be available soon:

Harvard Business Publishing
Edcast
Udacity
OpenSesame

For details on how to configure and manage content sources within Viva Learning, please visit our Viva Learning docs page.

For more details on Microsoft Viva extensibility, please read our Viva extensibility blog.

Let’s get started!

Enterprise learning is a challenging space, with employees spending less than 1% of their week on formal learning. We think it’s time for a new approach to position personal development along with formal work and embed learning into daily functions – making it easier to focus on learning throughout the work week.

We hope you’ll join us on this journey to help individuals learn and grow, as a foundational aspect to our mission of empowering every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

We’ll see you soon, learning in the flow of work!

To stay up to date on the latest with Viva Learning, see details on features & licensing, and get started with a trial, visit aka.ms/VivaLearning