Viva Connections is the gateway to your company’s employee experience and is critical to creating a more engaged and productive workforce. But the employee experience isn’t static, it is dynamic and ever-changing, so measuring how company news, actions, and resources are actually driving engagement is key to continually improving the experience. To help make data-driven decision about what is working and where there are areas for improvement, Viva Connections is rolling out new analytics capabilities that provide detailed insights into how employees are adopting, using, and engaging with Viva Connections.
Start analyzing engagement today
Today, Viva Connections administrators, corporate communicators, and others, can start analyzing their engagement directly from Viva Connections, through the Viva Connections home experience, as well as SharePoint home sites where a Viva Connections dashboard has been configured. Users with the site member permission or higher will have access to download a report directly to Microsoft Excel. All data is aggregated anonymously to give leaders the right information to make decisions without compromising the individual privacy of users.
Download directly from Viva Connections home experience |
Download directly from SharePoint home site with Viva Connections configured |
This first release of Viva Connections’ analytics will include information from the last 7 and 28 days focused on:
• Overall Traffic - This report provides usage analytics at an app level across all platforms, including:
o Unique active users: Total number of individual viewers across all Viva Connections platforms. This includes viewers who open the app and view the experience.
o Unique engaged users: Total number of individual viewers who interact with Viva Connections experiences. This includes viewers who engage with a dashboard card, a post in the feed, or a link in resources.
o Total visits: Total number of individual visits, aggregated across Viva Connections platforms.
• Usage by Platform - Gain insight into the distribution of visits across desktop, mobile, and SharePoint home sites.
• Usage by Experience - Analyze how employees are engaging with the three core components of Viva Connections (Dashboard, Feed, and Resources).
More analytics capabilities coming soon
Extracting usage and engagement data to Excel is the first step of adding robust analytics to Viva Connections. In the coming months, Viva Connections will begin rolling out deeper, in-app analytics so organizations can measure even more granular data without leaving the app experience.
In addition to the data provided in the first version, future iterations will include:
• A robust analytics dashboard available directly in the Viva Connections app in Microsoft Teams, as well as through SharePoint on a browser.
o Users will have an “at a glance” dashboard view that will allow them to quickly see changes and trends with employee engagement without exporting to another application or tool.
• More metrics to track, including:
o Dashboard card engagement – track the utilization of individual Dashboard cards by employees to determine which are driving engagement.
o User retention – Track the number of employees that have visited Viva Connections at least twice in the same month, as well as the number of new users each month.
• Broader cuts of data
o With the initial release, organizations will be able to see daily, weekly, and monthly metrics. Subsequent releases add data aggregation on a quarterly and rolling month-over-month (for the previous year) basis.
While the initial release of Viva Connections analytics is included in existing M365 subscriptions, some of the forward-looking features may require additional licensing.
How to influence usage and engagement
Simply extracting data from Viva Connections will not necessarily drive adoption, usage, and engagement with employees, so it is critical that organizations think about what the analytics are saying, and course correct as needed.
Based on best practices from leading Viva Connections customers, here are some common questions, as well how to think about solving them, to get the most out of an investment in Viva Connections.
Q: How do we set usage and engagement goals?
A: Each organization will have its own goals and outcomes it is looking to drive, but some good questions to ask before deploying are:
• Will this be easily accessible to my employees? Have we pinned Viva Connections within Microsoft Teams? Have we added the Viva Connections Dashboard and Feed web parts to our SharePoint home site?
• Do we have realistic expectations for usage of each of the Viva Connections components? The Dashboard is designed to house quick tasks and actions that employees frequently use, while the Feed and Resources might provide content that won’t be interacted with daily, so understanding the purpose of each component is critical to setting realistic engagement goals.
• Do we have a content strategy set with Corporate Communications, Human Resources, and other teams, to identify which Feed content should be boosted to reach a greater employee population?
• Find more suggestions on how to increase usage and engagement in the Adoption Recommended Practices from Successful Viva Connections customers document.
Q: We’ve deployed Viva Connections, but the number of views/visitors is below what we were expecting, how can we drive usage of the app?
A: There are a number of reasons why views could be low, but the most common reasons are lack of discoverability and awareness, as well frequent tasks not being centrally housed in Viva Connections. Here are some ways to help drive usage:
• Pin the Viva Connections app directly to Microsoft Teams and ensure Viva Connections web parts are prominently displayed on SharePoint home sites. This will help employees find Viva Connections right in the flow of their work.
• Before, during, and after deployment, build an awareness campaign across the company to let employees know about Viva Connections and how it can help them be more productive throughout their day. Microsoft offers resources to help you get started on your adoption journey.
• Determine during implementation which tasks and actions employees do most frequently and ensure those are available as Dashboard cards when Viva Connections is rolled out. Leverage pre-built cards provide by Microsoft to speed up the process, as well as build custom cards for your organization’s specific needs.
Q: We have a stable number of active users, but we aren’t seeing an increase in engaged users, how can we help drive more engagement?
A: Employees engage with content that is pertinent and useful to them, so it is important that each part of Viva Connections provides employees with information they need, such as:
• Ensuring the Dashboard has the most frequent actions and tasks employees need are available as cards and that completing those tasks and actions is a simple, streamlined experience.
• The Feed is consistently refreshed with the latest personalized news and social content. Having a clear content strategy and editorial calendar will help ensure that the Feed doesn’t become stale.
• Configuring the Viva Connections Resources component to display an employee’s frequently visited SharePoint sites. This will give them a consistent launching point when wayfinding across multiple sites.