Leadership communication in the flow of work
Leadership today is less about occasional broadcasts and more about consistent, credible presence. Employees expect leaders to: Provide clarity amid constant change Show follow-through, not just direction Communicate in ways that feel human and accessible Why this matters This playbook scales based on a leader’s scope and audience size – from company-wide executives to function and team leaders. Research from Engage UX Researcher Paula Wellings, shared during our Masterclass series, outlines what employees expect from leader communications. This research (and our internal experience) consistently show that visible, two-way leadership communication is a key driver of trust, engagement, and successful change. When leaders participate directly, downstream employee engagement increases. Ongoing dialogue—through posts, responses, and visible follow-through—is the foundation of leadership presence on Engage. Structured moments such as ask-me-anything (AMA) sessions and organization-wide events can reinforce that dialogue and deepen trust at scale. At the same time, leaders face real constraints: limited time, channel overload, and high scrutiny. Engage is designed to help leaders communicate once, in the right place, and stay visible in the flow of work without adding meetings or increasing email. Where Engage fits in the flow of work Leaders communicate across many channels today, including email, meetings, and the intranet. Each has a role, but not all support visibility, persistence, or two-way engagement at scale. Engage is designed for leadership communication that benefits from reach, context, and dialogue—where updates need to travel beyond immediate teams and employees can respond, not just receive. Read about Microsoft executive Ravi Vedula’s Viva Engage adoption journey, and chart your own course. Choosing the right surface based on intent Engage gives leaders two complementary avenues for communication. Each serves a different leadership intent. The choice between storyline and communities depends on the leader’s scope, audience size, and communication intent. Storyline Storyline enables leaders to reach both their intended audience and people across teams and hierarchies, making it well suited for visibility, alignment, and leadership presence. Share perspectives, priorities, or decisions Recognize people or progress publicly Cascade or amplify important updates Close the loop in a visible way Communities Communities bring together people organized around a shared variable (org, role, region, topic). They typically feature multiple voices, curated content, and ongoing discussion aligned to the purpose of the community. Use communities when you want to: Engage a specific group or function Invite discussion, Q&A, or feedback Go deeper on a topic over time Build shared understanding within a domain Communities are ideal when the goal is conversation rather than broadcast. How leaders typically use both Leaders do not choose between storyline and communities based on title or level. They choose based on audience scope and communication intent. Storyline is typically used when the goal is broader visibility: Sharing perspective or context that benefits cross-team awareness Reinforcing leadership presence beyond a single org Public recognition or commentary that should travel widely Communities are typically used when the goal is focused dialogue: Communicating with a defined audience (org, region, function, topic) Hosting discussion aligned to the purpose of that group Sustaining ongoing conversations within a curated space In practice, leaders often use both surfaces together — for example, sharing a visible update on storyline and continuing deeper discussion within a community. Leadership presence isn’t just posting Leaders often pair posting with lightweight engagement—replying to comments, acknowledging questions, or reacting—to reinforce trust and dialogue. Building blocks for effective leadership communication To ensure clarity and reach, two things need to be in place: Leader identification Leaders must be identified as such in the system. This enables: Appropriate visibility across Engage Access to leader-level insights and analytics A consistent experience for audiences This ensures that leadership communication is surfaced and measured correctly. Delegates enabled Leaders can designate delegates to support their communication on Engage. Delegation is about support, not outsourcing leadership voice. Delegates can: Draft posts on behalf of the leader Publish updates with the leader’s voice and attribution Help manage cadence, timing, and follow-up Help leaders stay engaged by surfacing conversations, questions, and moments worth responding to This allows leaders to maintain an authentic presence while scaling communication – especially during busy periods or major moments. Audiences built in (no set up required) Engage provides built-in audiences based on organizational data, such as the reporting hierarchy, so leaders can reach the right people by default from their Storylines. Leaders and delegates can define audiences when they publish, with no setup required. Audiences provide: A built-in followership Confidence that messages are seen Less reliance on follow-up email Clear expectations for who an update is for Core leadership use cases Engage helps leaders put leadership behaviors into practice in a way that’s visible, consistent, and part of the flow of work. Narrate what’s happening Share priorities, decisions, and context at the appropriate scope so teams stay aligned. Keep updates concise and focused on what changed, why it matters, and what’s next. Acknowledge people and progress Recognize wins, milestones, and contributions publicly to reinforce morale and culture. Specific recognition lands better than generic praise. Call out teams, behaviors, or moments. Close the loop Reflect back what you heard, what changed, and what’s next. This is a key driver of trust. Follow-up posts that reflect what you heard build trust and increase engagement. Even brief responses signal listening and build credibility, especially during change or uncertainty. Host interactive leadership moments In addition to ongoing posts and dialogue, leaders strengthen trust through live and structured interaction. Ask-me-anything (AMA) sessions and broadcast events are powerful ways to: Provide clarity in moments of change Address questions transparently and at scale Demonstrate accountability Reinforce alignment across teams A common pattern is to use Engage end-to-end: Solicit questions in advance on storyline or in communities Host the live broadcast event Follow up with key takeaways or clarifications Interactive moments often become anchor points in a leader’s communication strategy, complementing regular posts and dialog. For setup guidance and event mechanics, refer to Ask me anything events in Engage. Measuring leadership impact Engage provides leadership analytics to help leaders understand how their communications land. Leaders and delegates can view: Reach: how many people saw a post Engagement: reaction, replies, and sentiment to understand the tone and quality of responses, not just volume. Conversation signal: whether people are responding, not just reacting Trends over time: consistency and momentum in leadership communication These insights are not about scoring or ranking leaders. They are designed to help leaders: Understand what resonates Know when follow-up is needed Communicate with more intention over time Leaders who consistently respond and engage tend to see stronger momentum over time, not just higher reach. Getting started (10 minutes) Choose the right surface: Storyline for broad context and visibility Communities for focused dialogue Confirm your audience and delegates Writing guidance: Quality over quantity: Consistency matters more than volume. One thoughtful post a month is better than frequent updates if there isn’t something meaningful to say. Sound human: write conversationally. Share perspectives – not corporate language. Be timely and relevant: Address what’s top of mind for your audience right now. Invite engagement: Ask a question or prompt reflection when appropriate. Use visuals when possible: Images or short videos help posts stand out and travel further. Choose the right tone: Use announcements, polls, or praise intentionally based on your goal. Plan time to engage after posting: even a few replies can meaningfully increase trust and participation. Example posts that leaders can model Employees value leaders who show up, respond, and follow through — not just those who post. Team recognition: “Proud of the team for delivering this milestone. The collaboration across groups really showed up in the final result. Thank you for the focus and persistence.” Leadership reflection: “This month I’ve been reflecting on how we balance speed with quality. Both matter, and I’m encouraged by the conversations I’m seeing across the org.” Amplifying an announcement: “Today’s company announcement is an important step forward. I appreciate the work behind it and encourage everyone to take a look at the full update.” Culture and values: “One thing I consistently see here is people showing up for each other. Those moments define our culture more than any slide ever could.” Change and transparency: “As we move through this transition, I want to acknowledge the adaptability I’m seeing across teams. I’m committed to keeping communication open as we go.” The bigger picture When leaders use Engage intentionally: Important context travels faster Teams feel more informed and connected Reliance on broadcast email goes down Leadership presence becomes more continuous and human Note: Storyline announcements, targeting, the ability to identify leaders, some advanced analytics, and related capabilities described in this blog post are available with a Premium Viva Engage license (for example, Viva Employee Communications & Communities or Viva Suite). Resources Case study: Authentic leadership at scale Identify and manage leaders View analytics for posts and engagement Leadership corner Engage adoption resourcesRelevance is the new reach: modern leadership communications in Viva Engage
Leadership communication has never been more important... Or more complex. Leaders want to communicate clearly and consistently, but every message comes with a risk. Broadcast it broadly, and employees tune out. Narrow it manually, and someone important gets left out. This isn’t a leadership or strategy gap. It’s a tooling gap. Most platforms still force you to choose between reach and relevance. But research from Viva Engage UX Researcher Paula Wellings, shared during Viva Engage Masterclass Season Two: Session 3 – Campaigns & Storytelling, confirms what corporate communicators have long suspected: Employees don't ignore leadership communication because they're disengaged. They ignore it because it doesn't apply to them. When messages aren't tied to an employee's role, location, or reporting chain, they're not just ignored. They create active disengagement and information anxiety. That's why precision targeting is no longer optional. It's a prerequisite for engagement. That insight is exactly why Viva Engage is investing in a next generation of capabilities designed specifically for leadership communication through Storyline. How Storyline targeting changes the game By enabling Leaders, and their Delegates, to define audiences directly at publish time using existing organizational attributes like reporting chain, department, or role, Storyline announcements make it easier to confidently notify the right audience without relying on static distribution lists or organization‑wide alerts. This allows leadership teams to move from volume‑based communication to relevance‑based reach — ensuring that the most important updates are delivered with precision, not noise. Storyline announcements = Precision, not volume Real‑world example: targeted HR updates without the overhead Scenario: HR needs to share a benefits update that applies only to employees in the United States. Before Build and maintain a US-only distribution list Or send org-wide and create confusion for EMEA/APAC teams Rely on email, with no visibility into reach or engagement With Storyline announcements: Select Country = United States at publish time 2,400 relevant employees notified automatically, with optional notification channel delivery customization (Engage, e-mail, Teams) Engagement tracked through analytics No list management required Targeting isn’t just about who sees a message, it’s also about how they’re notified and whether that audience can be reused. With Storyline Announcements, leaders and their delegates can customize notification channels and save audiences for reuse, making repeat communications faster and more consistent over time. And soon with smart notifications for Storylines, Engage will send alerts to an employee’s preferred delivery channel first, helping reduce duplicate notifications across Teams, email, and Engage. Why use Storyline announcements (instead of sending another email)? Storyline gives Leaders a direct, measurable channel for communicating with their audiences, while still supporting dialogue and participation. Unlike email broadcasts, Storyline posts: Appear across Teams, Outlook, mobile, and desktop Support engagement and feedback Can be measured using audience analytics Allow Delegates to manage communications on behalf of the Leader Leaders’ Storyline posts can complement community‑based communications, and the same principle applies more broadly across corporate communications: the best tool depends on both the audience and the level of amplification a message needs. Cascading messages with added relevance Reinforcing organizational priorities Sharing context and perspective Building leadership visibility and authenticity This makes Storyline an ideal channel for business updates, organizational changes, initiative rollouts, policy notifications, campaign reinforcement, event reminders, or action‑oriented leadership messages - all delivered to the people who actually need them. To explore these upcoming Storyline announcement targeting capabilities, sign up for the public preview and read more about Storyline announcements. Another way to increase reach without extra noise Featured conversations offer another way to increase reach without adding noise. For posts in public communities, communicators can now choose whether to feature a conversation to everyone in the network or to community members only. That makes featuring a useful option when the goal is to increase visibility without defaulting to a broad notification for every message. Featured conversations and storyline announcements are separate capabilities in Viva Engage, but they reflect the same principle: giving communicators more control over how broadly a message is amplified. Storyline announcements remain the right fit for targeted leader communications, while featured conversations give corporate communicators another way to match reach to relevance in community-based campaigns and updates. Learn more about featuring a conversation in Viva Engage. How analytics help communicators measure leader reach Analytics in Viva Engage help communicators understand whether a message reached the right audience and resonated once it got there. Understand a post’s reach across audiences and platforms Measure reactions, replies, and shares to understand engagement Extract important themes and sentiment from comments Now, the Frequent contributors leaderboard view in network analytics can help communicators understand which leaders’ posts are catching employee attention and compare engagement trends across leaders and top creators. Note: Storyline announcements, targeting, frequent contributors, and related capabilities described in this blog post are available with a Premium Viva Engage license (for example, Viva Employee Communications & Communities or Viva Suite).Planning for Communities in Teams: What Admins and Communicators Should Do Next
Imagine if employees could spend less time sorting through messages and more time engaging with what actually matters, whether it’s a leadership update, a company announcement, or an important change…all in one place where they can understand, react, and respond. Communities are becoming a more visible part of Teams, making now the right time for admins and communicators to align on readiness, governance, and content. This 3-step post helps you plan your rollout: How to get ready How to reset All Company How to address concerns about noise as adoption grows You’ll also learn the key decisions admins and corporate communications teams should make to ensure Communities add clarity, not noise as adoption increases. And in case you missed it, the Teams blog covers what’s new and why it matters. (If you haven’t read the announcement yet, start here: Introducing communities in Teams: Unifying company communication and connection) What’s changing... and what’s not What’s new: Communities are easier to discover and access in Teams Visibility of posts and announcements increases What’s not changing: Governance is still in your control Communities still follow your existing structure and purpose The opportunity isn’t to rebuild everything, it’s to refine what already works. Start from where you are We recognize that not every customer is starting from the same place. For organizations already using Viva Engage, Communities in Teams is less about reinventing your strategy and more about extending it into the flow of everyday work. Communities are now easier to find and engage with inside Teams, raising the stakes for clarity, governance, and content design. As access becomes simpler and participation grows, it’s important to have your policies, onboarding, and launch plan in place. "Bringing our Viva Engage communities into Teams was an instant win for our organization. By standardizing on a single pane of glass, inside of Teams, we've made it easier and more enjoyable for staff to communicate with other, using a trusted tool that requires no additional enablement overhead. Cognizant has over 350,000 employees - and managing communities at scale requires us to leverage Viva Engage - by now having those live inside of Teams, we get the best of both worlds: the ability to participate in communities with 30k+ employees while still maintaining the notification and organization we've come to depend upon inside of ad-hoc Teams groups and more traditional Teams channels. This further reinforced the idea that Viva Engage Communities are where work gets done - they aren't an optional location for employees - and staying on top of groups and communities together helps make us better at supporting our clients! Best of all - we like to say we "drink our own champagne" here at Cognizant - we can now go to those clients and use our story to show them how an integrated Teams/Viva environment can drive positive business outcomes and enhanced employee experiences." Reed Wiedower, Cognizant, Innovation and Enablement Leader If you are new to Viva Engage, or have not used it strategically in some time, start by defining a few high-value communities, setting clear governance, and giving employees simple guidance on where to go, what to expect, and how to engage. Start by understanding where your organization is today: What governance looks like the next 30 days: Revisit All Company and determine if its purpose or usage should change. Define “official communities” strategy. Start with a small set (e.g., employee news, leadership updates, IT help, communities of practice), seed them with content, and actively promote them. Establish a naming convention to support discovery as Communities become visible in Teams. Define governance and moderation: who creates communities, who can post announcements, and how moderation works. Communicate these changes to community admins and encourage them to activate or refresh key communities. Not using Viva Engage yet? Start here. If you’re unsure where to start, start small: define the purpose, set expectations, and publish a simple guide for employees on how to follow, post, and manage notifications. With a few well-run communities in place, you’ll have the proof, and the playbook, to expand with confidence. Join our upcoming webinar Tuesday, June 2, 8:00 AM PST to start strong with Communities in Teams. Once you’ve defined your starting point and aligned on governance, the next critical step is resetting how your most visible community, All Company, should be used. Reset All Company for the Teams experience As Communities become more visible in Teams, All Company becomes even more important. This is the moment to reset its purpose: one place for company-wide updates that matter to everyone. For Admins (IT / Network Admins): Set the guardrails Your role isn’t just to enable Communities, it’s to prevent noise before it starts. Start here: Limit who can post (e.g., Corp Comms + delegated leadership voices) Document what qualifies as a post vs. what belongs elsewhere Define when announcements should be used (not every post needs one) For Corporate Comms: Reset how you use All Company Think of All Company as your broadcast + engagement layer inside Teams. Use it for: Leadership narratives and context (not just links) Major moments that need visibility and dialogue Posts that invite reaction, questions, and discussion Decide: What qualifies as a new post vs. a reply Who moderates, and when to step in Expected cadence (not every update = an announcement) Write for Teams behavior: Lead with “what this means” (not just “what’s new”) Keep posts scannable (short, clear, structured) Use announcements sparingly—overuse reduces trust Once All Company is clearly defined, look for follow-on communities (like Copilot Adoption Community) where more targeted conversations can happen. Address concerns about noise early As Communities expand in Teams, one concern comes up quickly: Will this create more noise? Done right, the answer is no. Start with this mindset: more posts ≠ more value. Engagement doesn’t mean more content. It means more relevant content, in the right place. If everything is posted everywhere, or if everything is an announcement employees will tune out. Admins: Control where content shows up Next Steps: Ensure communities are purpose-driven (not duplicates of the same topic) Guide teams to use the right community for the right audience Review the Governance of the network and Watch session: Mastering admin and governance in Viva Engage for community management, moderation capabilities and more. Review moderation and theme moderation in Viva Engage Corporate Comms: Be intentional with reach More visibility is powerful, but only when used carefully. Clarity reduces noise more than volume control ever will. Reminders: Use announcements for high-signal moments only Reserve broad reach for content that applies to most employees Let smaller or targeted communities carry more specific conversations The goal is trust, not volume As Communities become easier to access in Teams, the priority is making them feel useful, intentional, and worth employees’ attention. Done well, Communities don’t add noise, they make important communication easier to find, easier to understand, and easier to trust. Continue the journey Join Us live via Start Strong Webinar Deep Dive with the Engage Masterclass Series Modern Employee and Corp Comms Resources Click Through Demo Join our customer community! PS. Want access now? Communities in Teams is available now for Engage customers who opt into public preview, with no migration required. All existing community content, permissions, and governance settings carry over automatically. Review the network and tenant requirements to ensure your network meets the criteria. Make sure the engage experiences in Teams toggle is on for your tenant. Opt-in to the public preview through Teams. Learn more about the full experience for communities in Teams.Effective, engaging events in communities and storylines
Whether you’re running a company-wide broadcast, a training session, a Reddit-style “ask me anything” (AMA) or an in-person gathering, Viva Engage and Microsoft Teams help you host and manage more effective and engaging events. Events have always been central to employee communications. Viva Engage and events play a critical role in building trust, encouraging authenticity, and listening at scale. From highly produced hybrid all-hands to asynchronous AMAs, the new Viva Engage features are helping our leaders connect with employees, address what matters most, and build trust—all in one platform. - John Cirone, Senior Director of Global Employee and Executive Communications We are upgrading existing community live events and storyline AMA features with a simple model: three event types—broadcast, meeting, async—from any community or storyline, super-powered with a long list of event features you have asked for. The result: improved experiences for organizers, presenters and attendees both before, during and after the event. This blog post will detail what this means for you! These new events features start rolling out April 27 th . And guess what? All of these new features will be available to all Microsoft 365 commercial customers with access to Engage and Teams—no “premium” license will be required for events up to 10,000 attendees. New features: the highlights The new capabilities of Engage events—particularly the moderated feed with support for anonymous questions and upvotes—has transformed the way we empower our leaders to listen and respond to questions from employees. - Alexander Bradley, Senior Director of Executive Communications With that in mind, let’s start by exploring the new features for every event in every community and storyline: Events listing: Each community and storyline has a calendar of upcoming and past events—a destination for people to register for future events and catch up with events they missed. Event page: The home for your event is a branded landing page with a custom cover photo (coming soon), the event details and description. This is the “micro site” for your event to which you drive attendees. They can learn about the event, engage with it, join the live session, and catch up with the event if they missed it. Event feed: A new event feed enables you to share updates, solicit questions, ideas and feedback, and support engagement between attendees and presenters. The new event feed introduces support for optional anonymous posting and moderation which allows organizers to approve posts before they are made visible to attendees. The feed allows you to tune the event experience for the engagement you want to encourage and support; you can enable or disable questions, comments, reactions, and upvoting; and you can change the settings at any time. The event feed is available before, during and after the event, showing up on the event landing page in Engage and in the “Q&A” panel of Teams. Event recording: After the event, the recording is available on the event page, so attendees can review both the recording and the feed. You can now update the recording link, allowing you to make edits to the video. Calendaring options: Events in Engage support two models to support your efforts to drive demand and attendance. First, you can invite attendees directly from Outlook, putting an invitation directly in their calendar. This model supports scenarios where their attendance is expected. Or, you can drive attendees to the event page where they can add to calendar, supporting an “opt-in” model that gives attendees control of what is on their calendar. Or you can mix and match, inviting those attendees who really need to have it on their calendar and letting others opt in. Event analytics: You’ll have access to analytics throughout the lifecycle of your event. You’ll be able to see how many people attended, how they engaged in the event feed, and how people consumed the recording after the event. For broadcasts, you can also access Teams insights. Mobile app choice: Attendees can join events from either the Teams or Engage mobile apps, across both iOS and Android. Integration with enterprise search and Copilot: Content from public events serves as grounding for Microsoft 365 Copilot and enterprise search, amplifying the reach and impact of the knowledge and information you share in your event. Event types Now, let’s explore the three event types and what is different. BROADCAST is best for company-wide or large-scale events, launches, keynotes and organizational “town hall” or “all hands” events. Key characteristics: Deliver a high‑quality live stream that scales to large audiences Organizers control what appears on screen Attendees watch the event and participate using Q&A and reactions This experience is an upgrade to the legacy “live event” broadcast, with an advanced feed and a rich suite of production features. MEETING is best for collaborative sessions, presentations, training workshops, expert panels, and all of the regular “rhythm of business” events your team or department conducts. Key characteristics: Share camera, microphone, and screen in real time Organizers can control who can present and share Up to 1,000 people can participate in the live event A collaborative event can feel exactly like a Teams meeting, where anyone can share. Or it can be like a presentation or webinar, where only presenters can share. Or anything in between. ASYNC is best for soliciting questions, collecting feedback, and crowdsourcing ideas from employees. Conduct an offline, asynchronous event with no live presentation or video stream Host an "ask-me-anything" (AMA) during which leaders or experts answer questions Enhance an in-person event by engaging your audience before and after This experience features an event page and event feed, but no real-time video experience powered by Teams. You can gather questions, ideas and feedback before an in-person event, or host a text-only (asynchronous) event like a Reddit-style AMA that can connect people with experts even over longer periods of time. Why host events in a community instead of creating them from your calendar? Until now, you’ve had one way to create events: From your Teams or Outlook calendar, you can create a Teams meeting, a Teams webinar, or a Teams Town Hall. Why would you want to change where you create and host events? An event isn’t just a calendar entry; its impact continues outside of the event confines. New event features help employees who missed the live event catch up quickly, help moderators engage attendees, and help leaders close the loop by responding to remaining questions. The result is a richer, more durable record of the event, so your organization benefits from the information and knowledge long after the event ends. Here’s the short list of what you can do better when you create your event from a community: Provide a calendar of upcoming and past events. Communicate effectively to drive awareness and attendance. Engage your audience before, during and after the event. Leverage event analytics to measure and improve effectiveness. Amplify information and knowledge shared at the event, after the event. Integration with community objectives and experiences. If you have experience with Microsoft 365 and events, think of it this way: By creating an event in a community, you’re taking a Teams event and wrapping it with the superpowers of Engage to reach and engage your audience at scale, before, during and after your event. And remember communities are not just for Engage anymore! Communities (powered by Engage) will be available in Teams Chat, alongside your chats, channels, and meetings; so, your events and their content will be seamlessly integrated into the flow of work in Teams. Preview customers have used these new event capabilities at scale, for company-wide “all hands” events, departmental rhythm-of-business meetings, and an extraordinary number of internal AI learning events. We look forward to celebrating your successful events as you apply these features to share news and information, train people, and engage employees. Resources Organize an Engage event - Microsoft Support Attend an Engage event - Microsoft Support Monday Masterclass Season 2 – Week 4 Designing Events Employees Remember | Microsoft Community Hub
Viva Engage Communities Integration Not Available
Does anyone know if Engage Communities Teams integration is still rolling out in Public Preview? I know that the GA rollout has been delayed to May. I have some users in Targeted Release and some others with Public Preview turned on, and none of them sees this feature. I've followed the steps in "Admin requirements for Viva Engage experiences in Teams" and "How to Set Viva Engage experiences in Teams" in this https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-viva-experiences to no avail.
Viva Engage Explained: Search
Every person's search results are different. Just like the home feed, Engage search is personalized. When you search, we don't just look at the words you typed - we consider who you work with, which communities you're active in, and what content is most likely to be useful to you specifically. So how does search work? What happens when you type a query and press Enter? And how can you search more effectively? Let's take a closer look. The search experience Search in Viva Engage has two stages: suggestions as you type and full search results. Each is designed to help you find what you need as quickly as possible. Stage 1: Instant suggestions Even before you start typing anything, when you click on the search bar, you are presented with suggestions based on your previous searches. As soon as you start typing in the search box, Engage shows you instant suggestions before you even press Enter. These suggestions are organized by type: Query suggestions - popular and related search terms that help you refine your query Ask Copilot - an option to have Copilot answer your question directly using knowledge from Engage Communities - matching communities you can navigate to directly People - matching users so you can jump straight to their profile Campaigns - campaigns that match your search terms As you type "copilot," Engage instantly shows related query suggestions, matching communities like "Microsoft Global Hackathon 2025," and relevant people - all before you press Enter. These suggestions are designed to save you time. If you see the community, person, or campaign you're looking for, you can click it directly - no need to go to the full search results page. When to use Ask Copilot You'll notice that the autosuggestions include an "Ask Copilot" option at the top. This is especially powerful when your search goes beyond simple keywords and becomes a full question or request. Here's a good rule of thumb: if you're typing more than a couple of keywords, consider using Ask Copilot. When your query looks more like a sentence or question than a keyword search, Copilot is often the faster path to an answer. What you're typing Best approach "hackathon" 🔍 Regular search - a simple keyword, great for browsing posts "hackathon winners 2025" 🔍 Regular search - specific keywords will surface the right threads "who won the hackathon last year" 🤖 Ask Copilot - this is a question; Copilot can synthesize the answer from multiple posts "how do I set up a community in Engage" 🤖 Ask Copilot - a how-to question; Copilot can assemble step-by-step guidance "what was discussed in the last leadership town hall" 🤖 Ask Copilot - a summarization request; Copilot can pull together key points from recap threads "what are the latest AI tools people are using" 🤖 Ask Copilot - an exploratory question; Copilot can aggregate insights from across the network How it works: When you click "Ask Copilot," your query is sent to Microsoft 365 Copilot, which searches across conversations in your Engage network and generates a natural-language answer with citations. You'll see a summarized response with links to the source threads - so you can always verify and dig deeper. License requirement: Ask Copilot is available only to users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. If you don't have a Copilot license, the "Ask Copilot" option will not appear in the search suggestions. All other search features - keyword matching, meaning matching, personalized ranking, and filtering - are available to all Viva Engage users. Think of it this way: regular search helps you browse and discover. It's ideal when you want to see a list of posts and scan through them yourself. Ask Copilot helps you get answers. It's ideal when you have a specific question and want a synthesized response instead of scrolling through dozens of results. Both options are available in the same search box - start typing and choose the path that matches your intent. Stage 2: Full search results When you press Enter (or click the search icon), you land on the full search results page. Results are organized into tabs so you can focus on exactly what you're looking for: Tab What it shows Conversations Thread results with full post previews, author info, community name, and highlighted matching terms Answers Questions and answers that match your query Communities Communities with matching names or descriptions People Users matching by name, job title, or email Campaigns Active and past campaigns matching your query Files Documents and files shared in Engage posts Topics Topics used across the network The full search results page for " copilot" - notice how the matching keywords are highlighted in the post preview, and results show the community name, author, date, and reply count. You can further narrow your results using the filter bar at the top of the results page. Filters include Date, Posted by (a specific person), Posted in (a specific community), and an All filters option for advanced filtering. How search finds your results When you search in Viva Engage, a lot happens behind the scenes - all in less than a second. Here's a simplified view of what happens: Keyword matching + meaning matching Viva Engage uses hybrid search - two fundamentally different approaches that run at the same time and complement each other: Keyword matching finds posts that contain the exact words you typed. This uses a proven information retrieval technique that considers not just whether your keywords appear, but how often they appear and how distinctive they are. A rare, specific word like "hackathon" carries more weight than a common word like "team." This is great for specific terms like project names, acronyms, or someone's name. If you search for "FY26 Q3 OKRs," keyword matching finds posts that use those exact terms. Keyword matching also draws from two pools of content: exploration results (discovery-focused, across all content you can access) and affinity results (personalized, weighted toward people and communities you interact with most). These two pools are merged to give you both breadth and personalization right from the start. Meaning matching uses AI to understand the intent behind your query. Your query text is converted into a mathematical representation of its meaning (called an "embedding"), and then compared against embeddings for all threads in the network. Posts with similar meaning are surfaced - even if they use completely different words. For example, if you search for "team morale ideas," meaning matching can surface a post titled "Fun Activities to Boost Team Engagement" - there's no word overlap, but the meaning is the same. Only results that meet a minimum similarity threshold are included, ensuring quality. Why both? Keyword matching is precise and predictable. Meaning matching helps you discover content you might have missed. Together, they cast a wide net - typically evaluating hundreds of candidate posts - before narrowing down to the most relevant results for you. Privacy and permissions Engage applies strict permission checks. You will only ever see content you have access to. Posts from private communities you haven't joined, or threads that have been deleted, are never shown. Note that content from communities you've muted will still appear in search results - muting affects your feed, not search. Personalized ranking After finding all the potentially relevant posts, Engage uses a machine learning model to re-rank results specifically for you. The model evaluates each candidate post across over 100 different signals, organized into several categories: Text relevance - how well the post content matches your query, measured through multiple dimensions including term frequency, term importance, match density, and which part of the post the match appears in (title, body, or replies) People affinity - how much you interact with the person who wrote the post, across Engage, Outlook, Teams, and other Microsoft 365 tools. The system computes a personalized affinity score between you and every author in the result set Community affinity - how active you are in the community where the post was shared, based on your visits, replies, and engagement history with that community Semantic similarity - three separate AI-computed similarity scores: how close your query meaning is to the post content, to the post author, and to the community where it was posted Recency and time signals - when the post was created, how much time has elapsed, and time-decay factors that naturally boost newer content Engagement signals - view counts, reply counts, reactions, and the user's own search and click history help predict what they'll find valuable Highlight quality - where in the post the matches appear, how concentrated they are, and how prominent the matching sections are This is why two people searching for the same thing may see different results. If you work closely with someone in the engineering team and they posted about "hackathon," their post will naturally rank higher for you than for someone who has never interacted with them. Speed and performance All of this - hybrid candidate generation, feature computation across 100+ signals, machine learning ranking, and permission filtering - happens in under a second. Several techniques make this possible: Parallelism - keyword and meaning matching run simultaneously, not one after the other, so the total time is the duration of the slower search, not the sum of both Smart caching - when you view the first page of results, Engage pre-fetches and caches the next page in the background. This means pagination feels instant - clicking to page 2 or 3 serves cached results with no delay Batch processing - signals like engagement history and community metadata are fetched and computed in optimized batches rather than one at a time The result is a search experience that feels instant while doing sophisticated work behind the scenes. Searching for people Viva Engage search isn't just for conversations - it's also a powerful way to find people across your organization. When you search for a person, Engage matches against: Display name - first name, last name, or both (e.g., "Rajesh Jha") Job title - search by role (e.g., "engineering manager" or "principal PM") Email or alias - search by email address or alias prefix People results appear in both the instant suggestions dropdown and the People tab on the search results page. Each result shows the person's name, profile picture, job title, and email - so you can quickly identify the right person even when there are multiple matches. Tip: If you know someone's email alias, searching for it (e.g., "chrzeng") is often the fastest way to find them. Searching by job title (e.g., "product manager Engage") helps you discover people you may not know by name. Searching for communities Looking for a community to join? Search matches against community names and descriptions. This means you can search by topic (e.g., "accessibility," "onboarding," "women leadership") and find relevant communities even if the exact word isn't in the community name. Community results also appear in the instant suggestions as you type, making it easy to navigate directly to a community without visiting the full results page. A few examples of how community search works: You search for... You'll find communities like... "accessibility" Engage Accessibility, Accessibility Connected Community, Accessibility Leadership Community "women leadership" SME&C Women in Leadership, Women's Leadership Community (WLC), Technical Women at Microsoft "Azure DevOps" Azure DevOps / 1ES, and related Azure engineering communities "onboarding" Onboarding, Alchemy Onboarding, New Employee Onboarding Keyword highlighting When you land on the search results page, you'll notice that your search terms are highlighted in the post previews. This helps you quickly scan results and understand why each post was returned. Highlighting appears in: The thread title (if the post has one) The body text preview - Engage shows the most relevant snippet of the post with your keywords highlighted Replies - if a reply matches your query, it's shown with highlights below the original post For example, searching for "AI tools and copilot" highlights each matching word in the results, making it easy to see how the post relates to your query at a glance. A note on highlighting: We’re aware that keyword highlighting may not appear consistently across all result types. For instance, topic names and community names are indexed and searchable but are not currently highlighted in the search results. We’re actively working to improve highlighting consistency across the search experience. Search on mobile - the same engine, designed for your pocket Search in Viva Engage works the same way whether you're at your desk or on the go. The mobile apps (iOS and Android) use the same search engine, ranking, and personalization as the web experience - so the results you see on your phone are the same quality you'd get on the web. On mobile, the search results page is optimized for touch and smaller screens: result cards are streamlined, tabs let you tap between Conversations, People, Communities, and more, and tapping any result takes you straight into the full thread. Use search on mobile to stay connected with your organization's conversations on the go - catch up on town hall recaps, hackathon updates, or announcements from anywhere. Feature Web Mobile Search engine & ranking ✅ Full hybrid search with personalization ✅ Same engine and ranking Search tabs ✅ Conversations, Answers, Communities, People, Files, Topics ✅ Same tabs Autosuggest ✅ Communities, People, Campaigns, Ask Copilot as you type — Not available Filters ✅ Date, Posted by, Posted in — Not available Keyword highlighting ✅ Yellow highlights on matching keywords ✅ Same highlighting Result cards Rich cards with hero images, inline replies Streamlined cards optimized for smaller screens Search operators ✅ AND, OR, NOT, "exact phrase", wildcards ✅ Same operators What impacts your search results? Your search experience improves over time as Engage learns from your activity. These actions directly influence the quality and personalization of your results: Join communities. Joining relevant communities and leaving ones you're not interested in helps search understand what topics matter to you. Results from communities you've joined receive increased weight. Interact with posts. Liking, replying to, and viewing posts tells search which content and authors are relevant to you. The more you engage, the better your people and community affinity scores become. Follow people. Following leaders and colleagues is one of the strongest signals for search personalization. Posts from people you follow get a natural ranking boost. Join relevant communities. Being a member of communities helps search understand your interests and can surface more relevant content from those communities. Good to know: Engage uses the same affinity signals as the home feed. If you've been improving your feed experience by following people and joining communities, your search results are benefiting too. Tips for more effective searching Engage search learns from the signals you provide. Here are some ways to get better results: Be specific Instead of “strategy,” try “FY26 company strategy.” Adding context like dates, team names, or product names helps search find exactly what you need. Use the tabs If you’re looking for a person, click the People tab. If you’re looking for a community, click Communities to focus results on the right content type. Filter by date Use the Date filter to narrow results to a specific time period. Especially useful if you roughly remember when something was posted. Filter by author Use the Posted by filter if you remember who posted it. Helps narrow results to a specific person’s posts. Filter by community Use Posted in to limit results to a specific community. Helpful when you know where the conversation happened. Ask Copilot When you see Ask Copilot in the suggestions dropdown, click it. You’ll get an AI-generated answer drawn from Engage conversations. Use search operators Use AND to require all terms e.g., safety AND store Use OR to broaden results e.g., hackathon OR innovation Use NOT to exclude terms e.g., hackathon NOT 2026 Use quotes for exact phrases. Operators can be combined e.g., (hackathon OR innovation) AND 2025 Search by hashtag If you know the topic or campaign tag (e.g., #CopilotStories), search for it directly. The Topics tab shows all matching hashtags and their associated threads. We're always improving The Viva Engage search team is continuously improving the search experience. As you use search, you're helping it get smarter. Your interactions - the results you click, the posts you engage with, and the communities you join - all contribute to a better experience for everyone. Have feedback on search? Send an email to rarajase@microsoft.com - we're listening.Sensitivity Labels Are Coming to Viva Engage Communities Here's What You Need to Know
If you've seen MC1250283 in your Message Center and have questions, you're not alone. In the past few weeks we've heard from customers across industries — financial services, manufacturing, healthcare, government — all asking variations of the same questions. This post is our attempt to answer them all in one place. You can find out more via this article Sensitivity labels in Viva Engage. | Microsoft Learn What's changing Starting March 31, 2026 sensitivity labels will be available in Viva Engage community creation. When someone creates a new community, they'll see a sensitivity label picker, the same kind of label selector that already exists in Microsoft Teams and SharePoint. This is Engage joining the rest of Microsoft 365. Sensitivity labels for groups and sites have been supported in Teams, SharePoint, and M365 Groups for years. Engage communities, which are built on top of M365 Groups and SharePoint sites, are now part of that ecosystem. How it works Labels come from Purview, not Engage. There is no new admin setting in the Viva Engage admin center to turn this on or off. Your sensitivity labels are configured and published in Microsoft Purview, and those settings now apply to Engage communities the same way they apply to Teams and SharePoint. Labels are synced across all three surfaces. An Engage community's sensitivity label is shared with its linked M365 Group and SharePoint site. When a label is applied to one, it synchronizes across all three. This means your label governance is consistent — not fragmented. Existing communities are not automatically labeled. Communities created before this rollout will remain in an unlabeled state. They won't have a label auto-assigned. Admins can apply labels to existing communities in bulk using existing PowerShell scripts against the linked M365 Groups or SharePoint sites, no new tooling is needed. Applying a label via those surfaces will trigger the sync to Engage. Labeling can be mandatory or optional. Whether users must pick a label when creating a community is controlled by your Purview label policy. In the label policy publishing flow, under "Groups and sites > Settings," there's a checkbox to make site labeling mandatory. If you check it, users will be required to select a label when creating a community. If you don't, the label picker appears but community creation is still allowed without a selection. Default labels are set in Purview. If mandatory labeling is enabled and a user hasn't picked a label, the creation flow pre-populates a default. That default is determined by your label policy settings in Purview — Purview suggests the lowest-priority label with the right scope, but you can configure a different one. On Day 1, before an Engage-specific default is configured, the existing site default label (if set) will pre-populate. Community admins and owners can change labels after creation. This isn't locked to tenant admins. Community admins and owners will be able to update the label via community settings in Viva Engage or through the M365 admin center group listings. ttings. Programmatic community creation still works. If you create communities via the Graph API's /community endpoint, the label won't be set through that call — there's no Graph API support for setting labels directly on communities in this release. However, after creation, you can apply the label via PowerShell targeting the linked M365 Group or SharePoint site, which will sync to Engage. Your existing automation flows won't break; they just need a label-setting step added if you need one. The governance tension we've heard The most substantive concern we've received, and it's a legitimate one, comes from organizations that have configured their Purview label policies to enforce private-only labels for groups and sites. These organizations allowed public Engage communities precisely because Engage wasn't subject to sensitivity label governance. When Engage joins that ecosystem, their Purview policy will apply — and if their policy only permits private-supporting labels, new Engage communities will only be creatable as private communities. We want to be direct about this: Purview sensitivity label policies are tenant-wide and can't be scoped to individual workloads. There is no way to say "apply this policy to Teams and SharePoint but not Engage." Engage communities are built on M365 Groups and SharePoint sites, and they share the same label scope in order to stay in sync. If your organization has strict private-only governance and you need to continue creating public Engage communities, the practical path is: Create a public-supporting sensitivity label (e.g., "General - Internal Communications") Publish it to admins only — not your entire user base — so it doesn't accidentally appear in Teams or SharePoint creation flows for end users Apply this label to Engage communities via the admin center or PowerShell scripts Optionally, publish the label to your entire user base and use automated scripts to monitor Groups and Sites for misuse of that public label and correct them This is a workaround, not an ideal solution. We've heard the feedback clearly: Engage's use case — broad internal communication and knowledge sharing, is fundamentally different from SharePoint or Teams collaboration, and a one-size-fits-all label scope creates real tension. We're tracking this as a design consideration and have raised it with the Purview team. If you want to formally register this feedback, submit a Design Change Request (DCR) with your Microsoft Account team asking for per-workload label scoping support. What sensitivity labels do NOT change Community discoverability. All Engage communities remain discoverable to all users regardless of sensitivity label. Labels don't create "hidden" communities. A private community is visible in search — users just can't read the content without being a member. What users can see in search. Search results are governed by access control lists (ACLs), not sensitivity labels. Users will only see content they have permission to access. Your custom label taxonomy. Labels like "Confidential" or "Highly Confidential" are defined by your organization in Purview. There's no universal label structure — your configuration is yours. Frequently asked questions Can I test this in a staging tenant before it hits production? This rolls out to production tenants starting March 31. There isn't a separate staging path for this feature. We recommend using this window before rollout to review your Purview label policies, identify any communities where label assignment may create issues, and prepare admin and end user documentation. What happens if we have no sensitivity labels configured in Purview at all? If you don't use sensitivity labels for groups and sites, this change will have no impact. Community creation will support the privacy picker as it always has. Will this affect Copilot? Yes, and this is worth thinking through. Verified answers and content in private communities are scoped to members of that community. If your governance pushes more communities to private, that content becomes less accessible to Copilot for org-wide knowledge retrieval. If broad knowledge sharing is a goal, this is a factor to weigh in your label policy decisions. Will there be any visual change for end users? Users creating communities will see a sensitivity label dropdown in the creation flow. If your organization has labels published to users, they'll be able to select from those labels. If mandatory labeling is not enabled, they can leave it blank. If a community has a label, it will be visible in the community header. What to do before March 31 Review your Purview label policies. Specifically check whether you have mandatory labeling enabled for groups and sites, and what default label is configured. This will determine what your users see in community creation. Check for existing communities with label mismatches. If your linked Groups or SharePoint sites already have labels applied, confirm that those labels are ones that make sense for public community use. Prepare your community admins. Let them know the label picker is coming and what they should (or shouldn't) select. Prepare end user guidance if needed. For most organizations this will be low-friction. But if you have a complex label taxonomy or strict governance, proactive communication helps.Monday Masterclass Season 2 – Week 4 Designing Events Employees Remember
Great events don’t just deliver information — they create moments people remember, return to, and build on. In Week 4 of the Viva Engage Monday Masterclass Season 2, we wrapped up the series by focusing on how to design events that drive participation, trust, and momentum before, during, and after the moment. This session brought together product insights, customer examples, and practical guidance to help communicators and community leaders turn events into ongoing engagement engines. If you’ve ever hosted an event that felt successful in the moment — but fizzled right after —or if you had questions on how to drive engagement beyond the event... this session was for you. Why host events in Viva Engage? Instead of treating events as one-off calendar invites, hosting them in Viva Engage creates a single, continuous experience. When you host events within a community, you target the audience for the event and discovery happens across your network. Before the event: Build awareness and anticipation with announcements, pinned posts, and seeded questions. During the event: Centralize participation through questions, discussions, reactions, and upvotes — all in one place. After the event: Keep the conversation alive with recordings, recaps, followups, and searchable knowledge people can return to. This approach helps events support broader goals like leadership visibility, culture building, learning, and community connection — not just attendance. Event formats that fit your goals The session walked through how different event formats support different outcomes, including: Broadcasts Ideal for large, one-to-many moments like town halls or major announcements. Meetings Better suited for learning sessions, office hours, and interactive discussions. Inperson or textonly events Flexible options that still keep the conversation anchored in Engage. Choosing the right format isn’t about feature checklists — it’s about optimizing for the experience you want attendees to have. Before, during, after: designing the full event lifecycle The session emphasized thinking about events as a connected journey, not a single time slot. Before the event Promote early with clear value and calls to action Share teaser posts tied to key themes Seed conversation with openended questions During the event Guide participation clearly Use moderation and upvotes intentionally Keep conversation focused in the event feed After the event Share recordings and highlights Publish a recap that’s skimmable and actionable Continue answering questions and extending the discussion This is where events shift from “done” to durable. Customer spotlight: turning events into learning rhythms We also highlighted how customers are using Viva Engage events to create repeatable learning moments, not just onetime sessions — from biweekly Copilot learning hours to office hours that build steady adoption momentum. The common thread: Events work best when they’re part of a rhythm, not a reaction. Keep learning with the Viva Engage Masterclass This session capped off Season 2 of the Viva Engage Monday Masterclass, which covered: Week 1: Beyond the basics – roles, moderation, and community configuration https://adoption.microsoft.com/en-us/customer-hub/monday-masterclass-your-guide-to-the-viva-engage-essentials/session-7/ Week 2: AI-powered engagement in Viva Engage https://adoption.microsoft.com/en-us/customer-hub/monday-masterclass-your-guide-to-the-viva-engage-essentials/session-8/ Week 3: Campaigns and storytelling https://adoption.microsoft.com/en-us/customer-hub/monday-masterclass-your-guide-to-the-viva-engage-essentials/session-9/ Week 4: Designing events employees remember All session slides and recordings can be found here Broadcast and meetings require Microsoft Teams, available as part of the suite or as a standalone. Learn more: Licensing updates extend access to advanced capabilities in Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Places | Microsoft Community Hub"
