What’s new in Viva for Communicators at Microsoft Ignite
As organizations prepare for AI business transformation, communicating effectively across the workforce, fostering community and driving leadership engagement has become increasingly significant. Today we’re excited to introduce innovations that empower communicators, business leaders and employees with tools to connect, while improving end-user experiences and integrations across Microsoft 365, Teams and Copilot. Watch our On-Demand Ignite session for full details of what’s new for communications and communities, but here is an overview of key announcements: Publishing improvements Earlier this year, we announced that Copilot in Viva Amplify as an AI-powered assistant for to create drafts, rewrite, summarize and adjust your publications. This Copilot tool is now generally available. And to help you manage and streamline all of your campaigns, you can now require approval from team members to ensure you have the right sign off before sending. Additionally, we’re adding Viva Engage as a publishing channel which will enable you to publish to Viva Engage communities and storylines and reach frontline audiences. Communicating in the employee app Viva Connections combines news, tools, resources, and actionable dashboard cards into a single, customizable employee app. This year, we’ve added a new Spotlight section to aggregate key news and added communications-specific features like pinning and editing images to highlight campaigns and announcements. We are also deeply integrating Viva Engage announcements and adding leadership corner and feed dashboard cards to drive engagement directly within the app. Bringing it into a single place Continuing the theme of integration, we announced that Storyline will be natively integrated into Microsoft Teams, so you can share updates and narratives from leaders seamlessly to everyone in the organization. New community experiences powered by Viva Engage will be built natively into Teams in the coming months. Copilot Innovation for communications and communities Microsoft Copilot is your companion to inform, entertain, and inspire and we are adding some new capabilities that help put Copilot to work for you. Coming soon, Adaptive Cards Extensions (ACE) will surface with Microsoft 365 Copilot chat, meaning that your Viva Connections dashboards will soon be able to appear as interactive cards in Copilot. Q&A from public Engage communities will be available in Microsoft 365 workplace search. This brings a vast source of Engage knowledge into Microsoft 365 Copilot to help ground common knowledge, giving your Copilot uses increased accuracy and consistency as it draws from the collective knowledge of employees. Admins will also be able to verify knowledge and denote experts to ensure information is coming from a trustworthy source. Within Engage, Copilot's skills are expanding to help find information, summarize community content, and catch up on important conversations. Enhanced Analytics Gain deeper insights into your campaigns with new ways to track and measure analytics. In Viva Amplify, campaign owners can now set campaign goals to track progress and access click-through rates and dwell time to better understand how audiences are engaging with campaigns. In Viva Engage, AI can now help you keep up with prevailing themes and conversations through sentiment analysis, theme extraction, and content summarization. Admins can view detailed employee retention metrics in the Network Analytics dashboard. This new stat shows the difference in the 28-day retention rates between employees who use Viva Engage and employees who don't. Advanced moderation Sometimes community conversations can elevate unwanted distractions, especially during times of controversy. To give admins more control over what content is shared in your network, we are introducing new AI powered moderation tools as part of our digital safety efforts to search, manage and mute themes and keywords proactively. These content alerts mitigate controversial topics and block them from Engage Feeds & Digests. We are enhancing our keyword detection capabilities and will be bringing real-time analysis to ensure content adheres to company policies. Want to learn more about these updates? Watch the AI for Communications session and Ignite and to check out our dedicated blogs for each feature: Viva Amplify Ignite Blog Viva Connections Ignite Blog Viva Engage Ignite Blog Please Note: Many of these advanced communications and AI features are only available to customers that have a Viva Suite or an Employee Communications and Communities license. In some cases, a Microsoft 365 Copilot license is required. As always, keep an eye on our roadmap for ongoing updates and exact timing for features. Stay tuned for more updates and insights from the Viva team. - Michael Holste Senior Product Marketing Manager, Microsoft Viva
