Discover skills used by employees – and how to act on them – with the new Skills landscape report
Given the diversification of skill sets in today’s global workforce, it’s more important than ever for business leaders to stay informed about the skills used by their employees. This information can be difficult to ascertain, given today’s broadly distributed workforce, the variety and complexity of HR information management systems, and the lack of unifying connectors between them. To that end, we’re excited to announce the general availability of the Skills landscape Power BI report for advanced analysis in Viva Insights. With this new reporting capability, organizations can gain a much broader set of insights about the skills used by their employees, including but not limited to AI skills such as machine learning, prompt engineering, and Generative AI. With this information, business leaders are empowered to make more informed decisions when it comes to workforce planning, talent management, and skilling initiatives. The report integrates skills data from People Skills to help analysts and business leaders learn more about the specific types of skills people are using at their organizations. In addition to AI skills, the report can identify a broad range of other skill sets held by employees such as business development, content creation, marketing research, and IT accessibility. Top skill areas insights This section of the report provides an interactive way for users to explore their organization’s capabilities with greater depth and structure. Users can drill up to broader skill areas or drill down to view the specific top skills based on their selection. This hierarchy-based navigation provides both a high-level bird’s eye view and the ability to uncover the underlying strengths that contribute to each skill area. Areas of specialization These insights highlight skills that are highly prevalent within a small number of groups in the organization, helping users uncover top areas of skills concentration within the organization and drill into key strengths of a particular group, for decisions around talent deployment, workforce planning, and learning investments. Customization options The Skills group customization feature empowers users to define critical skill areas based on evolving business priorities. Users can now tailor a group of skills from a default grouping, to include or exclude certain skills and ensure the new grouping reflects core organizational needs. Additionally, the report offers a variety of customization options to give users greater flexibility to tailor the insights to their organization’s needs. For example, users can either exclude confirmed skills or AI-inferred skills to zoom into the insights based solely on AI inferences, or people’s input. Interactive Skills hierarchy exploration This report offers a focused, intuitive view of the skills hierarchy, allowing users to easily search for and explore the hierarchy of specific skills, such as Machine Learning. On-page guidance further supports users in navigating these skills connections effectively. These insights facilitate decisions in shaping skills architecture and designing targeted learning strategies. Skill descriptions When users hover over skills in the report, they’ll see a clear, concise description of that specific skill to help them understand the underlying capability. This feature provides the right context, so users can interpret skills accurately. Since the skill name can carry different meanings depending on timing or organizational context, these descriptions help ensure that decisions are made based on a precise understanding of what each skill represents. Skills landscape report playbook Users can download a playbook directly from the report query setup page, which provides an introduction to the integration with People Skills and lays out sample scenarios with step-by-step instructions tied to common organizational business questions. It also includes a breakdown of the data output, along with high-level instructions on how to join datasets for users who want to perform custom analyses, build their own reports, or combine the data with additional sources. This resource enhances the usability of the report for users, whether they’re first starting to explore the insights or conduct deeper analytical work. Tutorial and scripts on GitHub for connecting People Skills to Viva Insights data The tutorial helps users take the next step by connecting the People Skills dataset with other datasets such as Copilot and collaboration data in Viva Insights to answer big business questions to go beyond what the out-of-the-box report provides. The guide walks through practical, real-world scenarios, from identifying subject-matter experts in specific skill areas to mapping broader capability clusters and uncovering gaps in skills, such as: How many people are using Prompt Engineering skills in our organization, and which departments have them? Are employees with AI-related skills more likely to adopt Copilot? Each scenario includes clear explanations and is supported by ready-to-use R and Python code samples. This makes advanced analysis more accessible by letting users focus on the business questions while the provided scripts take on the heavier technical work. Publishing the report to the Viva Insights web app Analysts can publish the Skills landscape report directly to leaders in the Viva Insights web app. Leaders can view the aggregate report with data automatically scoped to their team, making the insights more relevant and easier to consume and act on. This capability streamlines delivery, reduces manual data sharing, and ensures leaders have timely, relevant insights to support decision-making. Learn more about publishing reports. The Skills landscape report is available to all customers who have eligible licenses to access People Skills and Viva Insights. Learn more about this exciting new report, how to set it up, and access and interpret its insights.Benchmarks to compare Copilot adoption coming to Copilot Dashboard
We’re excited to announce the initial rollout of Benchmarks in the Microsoft Copilot Dashboard in Viva Insights. This new feature lets organizations compare Copilot usage internally across different company groups, as well as externally against similar companies. These insights help identify adoption trends and provide broader context and new opportunities to improve Copilot engagement. With these changes, the Microsoft Copilot Dashboard will include: Internal benchmarks to compare cohorts within your company based on manager types, regions, and job functions: Percentage of active Copilot users Adoption by app Returning user percentage External benchmarks to compare your percentage of active Copilot users with: Top 10% and Top 25% of companies like yours Top 10% and Top 25% overall benchmarks FAQs What are cohort benchmarks? The cohort benchmark is based on a comparison cohort of employees within your company who share similar job functions, regions, or manager roles. The calculation uses Job function, Region, and Manager attributes to determine expected values by role. The cohort result looks at the role composition of the selected group, and constructs a weighted average expected result based on matching roles across the tenant. What are external benchmarks? External benchmarks represent results for other companies that use Copilot or a group of companies like yours. Benchmarks based on “companies like yours” can include companies that share the same industry, size tier, and/or headquarters region as your own company. Industry and headquarters region are descriptive values that your company provides to Microsoft when using Microsoft services and can be updated through your sales representative. Any external benchmark represents at least 20 companies. How does Microsoft ensure privacy when calculating external benchmarks? External benchmarks are calculated using randomized mathematical models to ensure privacy. Each benchmark group includes at least 20 companies and is derived from approximations to prevent the use of any single company’s actual data. Are you planning to add more benchmarked metrics? We’re carefully assessing the quality of external benchmarks and plan to incorporate user feedback as we evaluate adding additional benchmarks. Benchmarks in the Copilot Dashboard are currently only available to private preview customers. Learn more about how to use the Copilot Dashboard.What's new in Viva Insights
As we approach the end of the year, we’re excited to announce a variety of new exciting functionalities for Viva Insights which make it easier to access deep insights related to Copilot and your organization, as well as entirely new ways to import your organizational data and act on its insights. Let’s dive in. Migration of manager insights to the Viva Insights web app We recently unified all manager insights into a single destination: the Viva Insights web app. As part of this update, many manager capabilities previously available in the Viva Insights Teams app are now part of the web app. Most notably, this change expands the reach of the Copilot Dashboard and Reports page in the app to include managers. Managers now have default-on access to a team-scoped view of the Copilot Dashboard and related Reports page. These updates provide deep insights into Copilot adoption, impact, and learning, all tailored to managers’ teams. Learn more about these exciting changes. Enhanced data quality visibility for Viva Insights Administrators and Analysts We’ve added enhanced data quality visibility for admins and analysts in the Viva Insights web app, which enables them to better understand and act on the quality of organizational data used in Viva Insights and Microsoft 365 Copilot. With this new functionality, admins and analysts can now access additional data quality indicators such as user counts, manager hierarchy consistency, and data freshness. With this new data, admins and analysts can: Identify and troubleshoot data gaps that affect reporting Collaborate more effectively with admins to resolve data issues Build more reliable custom and Power BI queries with confidence This new data can be found within the Data Quality and Data Hub pages in Viva Insights. Learn more about how to use data quality for advanced analysis in Viva Insights. General availability of new tool for importing business data, and Copilot business impact report When you import business data into Viva Insights, you can gain a greater understanding of how Copilot usage influences the business outcomes that matter most to your organization. These business outcomes might include productivity metrics at both the task and job levels, such as the number of emails sent by your sales team or the number of closed deals. To facilitate this, we’re excited to announce the general availability of business data upload via .csv file. This functionality lets you import your business data directly to Viva Insights through individual .csv files. Once you’ve uploaded the data, you can run advanced analysis reports such as the new Copilot business impact report to help you understand how Copilot usage has impacted your business outcomes. Learn how to get started with the import process, and learn more about how you can do more with Copilot with the Copilot business impact report. New guidance for uploading data through the Microsoft 365 admin center We’re in the process of gradually migrating all Viva Insights customers to manage their data uploads through the Microsoft 365 admin center, instead of through Viva Insights. This platform utilizes Organizational data in Microsoft 365, which centralizes organizational data uploads across Viva and Microsoft 365 apps, making it faster to reuse your organizational data across apps without needing to upload data for each app individually. Some customers have already transitioned, while others are still using the Viva Insights web app until they receive communications about their transition. To make this process easier and smoother, we’ve recently published new guidance about this change, including detailed instructions on this new process for uploading and managing organizational data, plus frequently asked questions and answers based on our customer conversations. You can get prepared and find answers to your questions using this MS Learn resource. Expanding the scope of the exclusion list for the Copilot Dashboard The user exclusion list has allowed admins to specify which employees’ data should not be shown in the Copilot Dashboard. Now, we’re excited to announce that we’re expanding this capability to also include Viva Insights reports. With this change, admins can exclude employees not just from the Copilot Dashboard’s analyses, but also from Viva Insights behavior collaboration reports and from advanced analysis more broadly. Your organization might want to exclude certain users from being included in aggregated insights for various reasons, such as legal, compliance, or ethical concerns. Admins can exclude employees individually using a .csv file, or groups of people can be excluded using Microsoft Entra ID. Learn how.Manager insights coming to Viva Insights web app, with new team view for Copilot Dashboard
We’re expanding the reach of the Copilot Dashboard and Reports page in Viva Insights to include managers, in addition to the senior leaders, delegates, and analysts supported today. Starting late September, managers will have default-on access to a team-scoped view of the Copilot Dashboard and related Reports tab, providing rich insights into Copilot adoption, impact, and learning, all automatically tailored to their teams. In addition, analysts will be able to publish from their library of available reports directly to managers. These reports will also appear in the Viva Insights web app and be scoped to the manager’s own team, making it easier to surface relevant, actionable insights based on manager need. This change also unifies all manager insights into a single destination: the Viva Insights web app. As part of this update, the manager capabilities currently available in the Viva Insights Teams app, such as Organizational behavior insights and Copilot chat insights, will no longer be supported. Managers will soon see a banner in the Teams app notifying them of the upcoming change. Once the rollout is complete, manager insights will only be available in the Viva Insights web app. Broader Copilot insights for managers Managers will gain a dedicated Copilot Dashboard scoped to their own teams, showing adoption, impact, and learning insights. They’ll also have access to the Reports page, which provides out-of-the-box Copilot reports with no setup required. Managers will have access to the Copilot for Sales adoption report, with more reports becoming available over time. Publishing to managers We’re extending the Viva Insights’ publishing capability so analysts can share reports directly with managers, in addition to senior leaders. This can give managers access to a broad library of reports automatically scoped to their own teams, covering topics like Copilot, collaboration, meeting effectiveness, and more. Published reports appear prominently on the Reports page as cards, making it easy for managers to explore detailed, team-specific insights with no setup required. This feature will launch in public preview at the same time as the above capabilities. Insight admins must enable it (if they haven’t already) before analysts can start publishing. No action needed to gain access to Copilot Dashboard team view There’s nothing managers or admins need to do to take advantage of these changes. If admins have previously modified manager settings, those settings will continue to apply. This includes any minimum group size thresholds you have set or any managers you have enabled for manager insights. Any delegates currently assigned to a manager will also continue to have the same access in the new experience. For organizations that haven’t made modifications, managers with the default minimum team size (10 members) will automatically gain access to the new capabilities in the Viva Insights web app. Managers will still need either a Viva Insights license or a Microsoft 365 Copilot license to access the new team-scoped dashboards. Your organization also needs to have at least 50 of these licenses to be eligible for Manager insights.What's new in Viva Insights
We’re excited to announce a variety of new features for Viva Insights, which include a unified experience for accessing the Copilot Dashboard and advanced analysis tools in the new Viva Insights web app, and newly available Power BI reports for measuring Copilot Studio agents adoption and impact and employee learning. Let’s dive in. New unified Viva Insights web app for Copilot Dashboard and advanced reporting now generally available We’ve streamlined access to strategic reports in Viva Insights by combining the Copilot Dashboard with the additional Copilot advanced reporting tools in the Viva Insights web app. This new unified experience provides broader access to Copilot reports and offers new report publishing functionality. Learn more. Refer to our documentation on MS Learn to learn more about the various elements of the new Viva Insights web app, as well as the new Copilot Analytics reports. Copilot Studio agents Power BI report now in public preview With the public preview launch of the Copilot Studio agents report, customers can now understand the adoption and impact of custom agents built using Microsoft Copilot Studio, and measure agent-driven productivity gains and user satisfaction. With this new report, customers can learn more about how agents are being used across various channels within their organization, and gain other high-value insights. Learn more. Refer to our documentation on MS Learn to learn how to set up and run the report. Introducing the Learning Culture Report in Viva Insights: A new lens on organizational learning As organizations continue to invest in upskilling and reskilling their workforce, understanding how employees engage with learning content is more important than ever. That’s why we’re excited to introduce the Learning Culture report in Viva Insights—a new Power BI template designed to help HR professionals and business leaders measure and foster a culture of continuous learning across their organizations. Why learning culture matters A strong learning culture is a key driver of employee engagement, innovation, and long-term business success. The new Learning Culture report enables that by providing organizational-level actionable insights into how employees are using Viva Learning—beyond just assigned training. What’s new: A purpose-built report for learning engagement The Learning Culture report is part of the Viva Insights advanced analysis experience and is available to analysts with the Viva Insights Analyst role. It offers three core insights: Learning Usage: Understand how many employees are launching the Viva Learning app and how usage varies across departments and time periods. Learning Culture: See how often employees engage with non-assigned learning content—an important signal of self-directed learning behavior. Content Played: Track the total number of videos played in Viva Learning to identify popular content and trends. These insights help leaders identify where additional support or encouragement regarding organizational learning might be needed. How to get started To use the Learning Culture report: Learning Knowledge admins must first enable data sharing from Viva Learning to Viva Insights. Viva Insights Analysts can then create the report using the Power BI template available in the analyst experience. Reports are updated weekly ensuring timely and relevant insights. For a step-by-step guide, see our Learning Culture report documentation. A broader vision for insights-driven learning The Learning Culture report is part of our broader effort to empower organizations with data-driven tools that support employee growth and development. By combining organizational data with learning engagement metrics, Viva Insights and Viva Learning helps leaders make informed decisions about how to cultivate a culture that values continuous improvement. We’re excited to see how organizations use this new report to unlock the full potential of their learning ecosystems. Skills landscape report in public preview Powered by Viva Insights and People Skills data, the new Skills landscape report helps leaders and analysts explore top skills in the organization, uncover areas of specialization, and identify distribution of critical capabilities. This report provides customizable insights through filters and drilldowns to support organizations in talent management, resource allocation, upskilling, or other strategic initiatives. This report is available to Insights analysts through advanced analysis. People Skills need to be set up and the option to share data with Viva Insights needs to be enabled to set up and run the report. Learn more about Skills landscape report.Unifying the Viva Insights app for Copilot Dashboard and advanced reporting
Copilot Analytics helps customers measure AI to drive usage and business impact. In fact, customers using the Copilot Dashboard have increased Copilot usage more than twice as much as those who have not 1 .What gets measured, gets managed, and we’re seeing this come to life with Copilot Analytics. Reports focused on AI strategy, adoption and business impact can be found in the Copilot Dashboard and in Viva Insights, while operational reports for IT pros are available in the Microsoft 365 admin center and Power Platform admin center to enable better management and deployment of AI across the organization. Starting this month, we’re streamlining access to our strategic reports by combining the Copilot Dashboard with the additional Copilot reporting available in the Viva Insights web app. This unified experience will provide broader access to Copilot reports and also offer a new report publishing functionality to bring custom published reports to those who need them. In addition, the Microsoft 365 admin center is offering AI admins and adoption managers a growing set of usage reporting and insights on Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and agents. Let’s look at the new unified experience, its key benefits and improved functionality. Getting set up in the new unified experience With the new unified experience, the Copilot Dashboard is integrating with the Viva Insights web app. Prior to the integration of the dashboard, users will be alerted with a notification banner displayed, signaling the upcoming transition from Viva Insights in Teams to the web app for advanced reporting in Insights. On the integration date, the legacy location of the Copilot Dashboard in the Viva Insights Teams app will be updated with a splash page informing the user about the unified experience and providing a button to link the user to the new location. It’s important to note that all Copilot Dashboard and Viva Insights settings and permissions will move over to the new experience so that customers do not need additional configuration. Users clicking through the redirect button will land on the Copilot Dashboard hosted in the unified experience with a “product walkthrough” to help orient the user. A wider range of Copilot reporting access The Copilot Dashboard provides detailed reports on usage, adoption, and business impact to senior leaders and their delegates. These users can view aggregated insights such as the number of active Copilot users, Copilot license user readiness data, and AI usage adoption scores. The Viva Insights advanced analysis app, meanwhile, offers a wider selection of prebuilt reports, and the ability to create custom reports and data sets. Only users with the Analyst role have had access to the advanced analysis workbench and this deeper library of reports and tools. By consolidating these insights and analytics into a single interface, leaders and delegates can now access a set of the Copilot analytics reports that had previously only been available to analysts. Additionally, analysts now will be able to view the Copilot Dashboard. As a result, leaders, delegates and analysts will operate within a single tool with broader access to the insights they need to drive AI transformation in their organizations. The new Reports page within the unified experience will provide users with an immediate value-add via out-of-the-box access to additional Copilot reports. These reports are available without any setup requirements and contain aggregated insights that previously had only been available to analysts. At launch, the below set of reports will be available on the Reports page. Additional reports will be graduated to leaders and delegates through this experience over time, thereby enabling even more access to reporting value that will enable users to make informed decisions and drive organizational success. Copilot Studio agents Copilot for Sales adoption Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption* Microsoft 365 Copilot impact* Copilot business impact* * Report is only available to Analysts with Copilot Analytics access In addition to their new access to the Copilot Dashboard and the new Reports page, analysts will maintain access to the complete set of legacy advanced analysis tools, within this unified experience. Seamless and impactful report publishing Along with this release, the ability for analysts to publish out-of-the-box and customized reports to the Reports page of this unified experience will be available in public preview. Published reports will appear as a card on the Reports page in the unified experience for the recipient audience to enable easy access and discoverability of relevant content. The published cards will contain a customized entry point where recipients can click to view the custom published report with no additional setup required. Summary of which experiences are available across roles This additional access for analysts is available in the Global partition only Learn more about additional Copilot Analytics updates.What's new in Viva Insights
We’re excited to announce a variety of new features for Viva Insights, which include new collaboration insights for analysts running organizational network analysis (ONA) queries, new tools to search for manager licensing status and their access to insights, a newly launched functionality to share analyst reports, and another option to upload organizational data aimed at improved accuracy of insights. Let’s dive in. New Organizational Network Analysis insights As part of the Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) Change Management query template for analysts, a new third insights category is now available. This category of insights is focused on highlighting employee groups deemed to be “brokers of information flow.” Groups identified as top information brokers often serve as central hubs dictating the flow of information throughout the employee network. But these groups could also give rise to collaboration overload, because a significant proportion of information is flowing through the group(s). With these insights, therefore, business leaders can now identify which groups within their companies might be acting as information bottlenecks, and take the appropriate steps to adjust the flow of information or collaboration. In the screenshot below, for instance, the Finance-Corporate group is ranked as the #3 top information broker, and the up arrow indicates that it moved into the top five information brokers. The down arrow for the Human Resources group, meanwhile, means it moved out of the top five information brokers. And IT-East is the #4 information broker with no arrow, which means it was in the top five information brokers in both the “before” and “after” periods of the analysis timeframe. With the addition of this new insights category, ONA now encompasses three main types of insights: Cross-group collaboration: How are groups/departments/teams collaborating before and after a change event at the company? Insular collaboration: Which groups/departments/teams are showing an increased tendency towards “within-group” collaboration who could become siloed? Brokers of information flow: Which groups are acting as central hubs dictating or controlling the flow of information in the collaboration network? Learn more about ONA in the analyst workbench, and the new insights category. Search for managers/new manager hierarchy search feature To help customers troubleshoot issues related to managers’ access to insights, and to get a quick look at their licensing status, team size, and direct and indirect reports, the Viva Insights Admin portal now includes a manager hierarchy search function. This new feature allows customers to use the Viva Insights app to search for specific managers and see their related licensing and team information. Customers can then use this information to cross-reference against their own records, and troubleshoot any licensing issues that might arise. Learn how to use the search tool. Publish reports public preview launch To help streamline the communication process between Viva Insights analysts and leadership, we’re excited to announce the public preview launch of Publish reports. This new feature lets analysts share insights and reports directly with leaders, decision-makers, or even an entire organization in the recipient’s Viva Insights app. A “report” can refer to: Any Power BI report within Viva Insights A custom report stored outside of Viva Insights that includes Viva Insights metrics or other types of metrics like surveys or Microsoft 365 Copilot metrics When recipients receive a shared report, it will appear as a prominently displayed card on the recipient’s Viva Insights home page. Learn more about how to set up and publish a report. Use Entra plus .csv files for “parallel” data uploads For added flexibility, Viva Insights Administrators can now set up an organizational data upload using both Microsoft Entra ID and manual .csv files simultaneously, in parallel. Typically, Viva Insights ingests data from either Entra or manual .csv file uploads. Using this new parallel data ingestion method helps ensure that critical data such as the ManagerId and Organization attributes can be retrieved from Entra, while additional fields can be fetched from .csv files or automated connectors. This method, therefore, can help improve reporting accuracy by combining other attributes from Entra and .csv uploads. Moreover, this data ingestion method can improve the accuracy of insights in the Copilot Dashboard, leader reports, and the analyst workbench. This feature can be used by tenants whose current data source is uploaded data, either in the form of manual .csv files or through connectors. Learn how to set up this new parallel data ingestion method.Introducing the Copilot Analytics Advanced Analysis Playbook
For customers looking to run custom analyses to create more tailored, actionable interventions around Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption and impact, we’re now providing a new set of resources in the form of a playbook. This playbook is designed to be used like an analysis recipe book, to help an analyst put together an analysis plan based on the most pressing questions and context of their particular organization. It's designed for our technically savvy customers, specifically analytics leaders and analysts who have already been utilizing the Copilot Dashboard and Power BI reports and are eager to take their analysis to the next level. What is it? This playbook is intended for analytics leaders or analysts who have used available resources to assess Copilot adoption and impact, and seek further guidance for an in-depth analysis plan. This playbook provides analysis and visualization examples to measure the progress and impact of Copilot adoption. It also helps analysts identify opportunities to accelerate cultural transformation around AI. What’s inside? The playbook covers 15 different analysis and visualization views focused on assessing Copilot adoption and impact. Each analysis is focused on a business question and includes business implications and code examples. Some of the analyses featured in the playbook include: Usage segmentation Ranked exploration of groups on Copilot usage Profiling adoption and readiness sentiment with Pulse Assessing equality of usage with the Gini coefficient You can access this playbook here.What's new in Viva Insights
This month, we’re excited to announce new features that include improved usability of the Copilot Dashboard, new controls for managing and requesting access to insights, and a sample code repository to help analysts model and structure their queries. First, a wider set of metrics for the Copilot Dashboard now lets customers analyze the frequency of employee usage patterns of Microsoft 365 Copilot. Let’s dive in for more details. Copilot Dashboard usage and retention metrics In response to customer requests for deeper insights into how often employees use Copilot, we’ve expanded the capabilities of the Copilot Dashboard, to now include usage intensity and retention metrics. With usage intensity, customers can see which groups of employees are using Copilot one to five times per time period, six to 10 times per time period, and 11 times or more. Customers can also see how consistently employees are using Copilot on a monthly basis, based on the number of weeks employees are actively using Copilot each month. Customers can also see a ranking of the most active employee groups. The new retention metrics, meanwhile, let customers see the number or percentage of active Copilot users who return to using Copilot on a weekly or monthly basis. Employees who take at least one Copilot action in both the current and preceding time periods are deemed to be “returning users.” Like the usage intensity metric, customers can also filter the insights by employee group. These new metrics can be found on the adoption page of the Copilot Dashboard. Learn more about how to access the metrics and customize the filters. Expanded controls for excluding employees from the Copilot Dashboard The Copilot Dashboard’s exclusion list feature allows Microsoft 365 global admins to exclude certain employees from the dashboard’s aggregated insights. Admins might want to exclude specific employees for legal, compliance or ethical concerns. Previously, admins could only exclude employees individually by using a .csv file. Now, we’re excited to announce that admins can also exclude employees by identifying groups of people they’d like to exclude using Microsoft Entra ID. This method streamlines the exclusion list process for admins. Learn more. New functionalities for “delegate access” in Viva Insights With delegate access, those with access to organizational insights or the Copilot Dashboard can “delegate” that access to others in their company on their behalf. Now, an expansion of this capability allows employees who don’t have that access to request it from their group manager. (Employees can request access to organizational insights, but not the Copilot Dashboard.) Once the employee is given access by the group manager, they’ll have the same view of organizational insights as the manager who approved their request. Learn more about how to request delegate access to organizational insights. In addition, Viva Insights admins can now assign delegate access to both organizational insights and the Copilot Dashboard using Powershell cmdlets. There are three applicable cmdlets, depending on whether the admin is assigning access, viewing existing access, or removing access. Learn more. Viva Insights sample code repository Customers who already use R or Python for analyzing data from Viva Insights might already be familiar with the open source libraries (R, Python) that are designed for creating visuals and analyses from flexible queries. The Viva Insights Sample Code repository is an expansive new resource that contains vignettes and example code for more complex scenarios, including: Top Performers modelling Information Value and Weight-of-Evidence calculations Pairwise Chi-square tests – for org attributes and survey variables Unlike the R and Python libraries, the scripts in the sample code repository are designed to serve as reference scripts to be modified and tailored for the customer’s own specific needs. This allows scripts to be easily integrated into any existing HR analytics or data science workflow, and enable maximum flexibility on controlling for filters, groups, and input variables for predictive modelling. If you have any questions about the new repository, please contact Martin Chan (martin.chanmicrosoft.com). Expanded insights for the Skills landscape report (private preview) We’ve broadened some of the insights and capabilities available in the Skills landscape Power BI template. These enhancements help customers search for and discover the top skills amongst their employees, identify skill groups based on subskills and adjacent skills, and facilitate discussions on resource allocation and skilling initiatives. This report is currently only available to private preview customers. With the report, customers can discover the top employee skills being used in their organization, see how critical skills might be distributed across employee groups, and explore other insights such as skills grouping and connections. The insights are powered by Skills in Viva. One of the report’s insights is focused on skills distribution. This insight category lets customers see how skills are distributed between employee groups, as determined by organizational attributes. Customers can then use these insights to understand the skill profile for a group, compare differences across groups, and identify potential gaps in skills. Now, as part of this update, customers can also identify other relevant skills, such as subskills or adjacent skills, after they select a primary skill. Customers can then drill down further into the skillset for distribution insights across different employee groups. If you’d like to participate in the Skills landscape report private preview or want to learn more, please indicate your interest through this form.How one Microsoft team streamlines Viva Insights data upload and analysis
Microsoft’s HR Business Intelligence (HRBI) team has long used Viva Insights to enhance decision-making, productivity, and operational efficiency across the company. By adopting recently released tools for automating data upload in Viva Insights, Microsoft HRBI has reduced the time and manual effort required to use Viva Insights to uncover timely workforce trends, including the impact of Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption. This blog post describes their automation journey. Automated (API-based) data upload in Viva Insights In November 2024, Viva Insights launched in public preview API-based org data upload capabilities. This method is ideal for consolidating HR data that lives in multiple locations. It’s also a great option for scenarios when data transformation is required prior to upload. Learn more. The case study that follows is based on that functionality. A summary of existing and planned Viva Insights data upload options can be found at the end of this post. Microsoft’s HR Data Automation Journey Before the advent of automated connectors, the Microsoft HRBI team undertook a time-consuming, manual process for managing HR data. Each week and month, dedicated team members meticulously extracted, transformed, and loaded essential HR data, providing accuracy and compliance. This manual operation not only placed significant demands on time but also introduced potential delays and errors inherent in any human-dependent process. With the new API-based automation, Microsoft HRBI has substantially simplified the data upload process, reducing the manual time and coordination required while maintaining stringent privacy and compliance standards. This API-based import option allows customers to decide what data is sent to Viva Insights and how frequently it’s refreshed, offering Microsoft the flexibility and security essential for optimal performance. This automated method helps customers’ HR data stay current and accurate for reporting. With a strong logging strategy and proactive data issue resolution, Microsoft has fresh HR data without extra manual effort. Here’s a more detailed look at the team’s setup process: 1. Set up Communication between Data Source and Viva Insights Microsoft set up a secure connection between the storage location and Viva Insights using Managed Identities. Other options include: API Keys Certificates 2. HR Data Gathering and ETL Setup Sources: Microsoft’s HR data originated from multiple sources, including: Four SQL Server databases. A mix of Azure-hosted and on-premises systems. Process: Collaborated with HR business analysts to identify required data sources. Used Azure Data Factory (ADF) to consolidate and manage diverse datasets. Handled on-premises data through ADF’s integration runtimes and native connectors. 3. Data Preparation Format Requirements: Data must be in a compressed ZIP file containing: data.csv: Tabular representation of HR data with one row per employee. metadata.json: Defines dataset type, bootstrap status, and column mapping. Implementation: Used Azure Data Factory to: Aggregate data into a single data.csv file stored in Azure Blob Storage. Store the metadata.json file in a separate blob container. Leveraged an Azure Function App to package the files into a ZIP and ensure API compatibility. 4. Data Export via Viva Insights Push API Azure Function App Development: Accessed file streams using BlobTrigger and BlobInput bindings. Compressed files into a ZIP format with .NET’s System.IO.Compression. Authenticated API requests via Azure’s DefaultAzureCredential. Submitted the ZIP file as multipart form data to the Viva Insights Push API. Learn how to set up this automated data import method, which requires some coding to call the Viva Insights API. Other automated data import methods in development In addition to the API-based method described above, we’re also working to roll out two other automated data ingestion methods, currently in private preview. One of these methods lets Viva Insights retrieve data directly from the customer’s storage location, while the other retrieves data from the customer’s human capital management system like Workday. Use this form to sign up for the preview. And, for a refresher on our existing data import methods apart from the newly automated options, refer to the table below. HR Data Ingestion Option Details Entra Required attributes are pulled directly from Microsoft Entra. Learn more. CSV Upload via Viva Insights HR data is consolidated into a .csv file and uploaded via Viva Insights. Learn more. CSV Upload via Microsoft 365 admin center HR data is consolidated into a .csv file and uploaded via the Microsoft 365 admin center. Via Microsoft 365 admin, it is possible to upload HR data from a SharePoint site. This method is rolling out gradually to customers. Learn more.
