Viva Engage Update: Enhanced Admin Center & New Features

Microsoft's Viva Engage Update: Evolving Yammer and New Capabilities

In the present economic landscape, hybrid work is compelling leaders to consider effective ways to enhance engagement among their teams. The latest update of Viva Engage, formerly known as Yammer, is designed to foster these connections, given the importance of social capital for workplace culture.

For more than a decade, Yammer has been integral to Microsoft’s productivity cloud, serving as a cornerstone for conversations and community engagement. Acknowledging the essential role of community Engagement in the distributed work environment, last year, Microsoft took the initiative of evolving Yammer Communities app in Microsoft Teams into Viva Engage.

As per user feedback, starting March 2023, all functions of the Yammer brand will transition into Viva Engage. The transition promises enhanced capabilities like leadership engagement, and knowledge discovery, among others.

The Evolution: From Yammer to Viva Engage

As part of the first phase of the transition, updates will be released for the Communities app for Outlook, and Yammer mobile apps for both iOS and Android. These enhancements aim to create a unified environment while maintaining consistency for users. The goal is to simplify features, resources, training, and support for customers and streamline engagement throughout the web, mobile, and other endpoints.

Apart from rebranding, Microsoft 365 customers need not worry about any changes to the features, capabilities, or investments. With continued improvements, the update aims to enhance corporate communication, knowledge sharing, and community Engagement.

This progressive change intends to establish a unified experience, introduce new possibilities, and maintain the holistic performance of Viva Engage without a break in the workflow.

Features and Capabilities of Viva Engage

Viva Engage is adding new experiences that encourage leadership engagement, genuine expression, events, and knowledge discovery. The Leadership Corner enables leaders to interact with employees, highlighting employee resource groups, hosting discussions, storyline posts, events, and more. This provides a platform for leaders to launch and promote initiatives in a single location.

Leadership Corner also introduces a new event style – Ask Me Anything (AMA) events, essentially modernizing the standard town hall experience with features like upvoting, Q&A, and engaging discussion platforms.

Remote work has affected knowledge transfer across distributed teams. Hence, answers, a new tab in the updated platform, are designed to counter these challenges using AI to surface and match employee questions to answers and experts, enabling access to collective knowledge for everyone

Expanding Viva Engage and Looking Forward

Microsoft is preparing expansions for Viva Engage in Outlook and mobile platforms, bolstering its hybrid work model in March 2023. Users can experience Viva Engage directly from Outlook, whether in the desktop app or web interface.

The Yammer mobile apps will also update to Viva Engage to provide a more mobile-friendly experience. This carries the aim of optimizing social sharing and rich media content for users. However, users can still avail of Viva Engage through the Teams mobile app.

Existing customers can start to avail of the new features from today. Microsoft sincerely thanks its users for their journey together and eagerly looks forward to building a cohesive future with Viva Engage.

Frequently Asked Questions

• Yammer will continue as an integral part of Viva Engage, retaining its function, value, and pricing for existing Microsoft 365 customers.

• There will be no changes to features or functionality as a result of the transition to Viva Engage.

• Support for setting up Viva Engage will be provided for interested customers through FastTrack, account managers, or the Viva Engage adoption space.

• All administrative policies and capabilities will remain intact, post-transition to Viva Engage.

Conclusion

In summary, Microsoft's Viva Engage is an evolution from the well-known Yammer platform to a robust, versatile tool aiming at bolstering community engagement and knowledge sharing in the hybrid work era. This involves ensuring seamless transitions, preserving existing capabilities, and introducing new features to enhance the user’s experience. It is an approach tailored to modern work challenges, cultivating employee interaction, and sustaining company culture in a distributed work environment.

Read the full article Latest Viva Engage Update: New Features Including Admin Center

Learn about Latest Viva Engage Update: New Features Including Admin Center

The rise of hybrid work in fluid economical circumstances is pushing many corporate chiefs to rethink their idea of successfully maintaining meaningful connections among their dispersed workforce. The changes in interpersonal dynamics are significant, considering that according to our Work Trend Index, 51% of employees believe that relationships outside their immediate work groups have weakened. For leaders, building social capital becomes a key component to a successful workplace culture. As many as 68% of business decision-makers consider fostering cohesion and social connections within teams a moderate to high challenge due to the shift to hybrid work.

In the current distributed work environment, keeping everyone at your organization connected through communities and conversations has become more crucial than ever. As the social fabric for Microsoft's productivity cloud for over a decade, Yammer has played a crucial role in bringing together communities and conversations right into daily work apps. Responding to the increased need for community engagement and its essential role in uniting both individuals and teams, last year saw the introduction of Microsoft Viva Engage (Yammer).

This innovative platform that represents an evolution of the Yammer Communities app in Microsoft Teams, is an integral part of Microsoft Viva. The shift stems from the company's strategy to enhance its employees' experience by providing new capabilities that promote leadership involvement, authenticity, events participation, and knowledge discovery. As a result, Yammer will be retiring and Viva Engage will emerge as the main platform, providing new experiences for all.

These transformations will be effective from March 2023, where updates will start rolling out for the Communities app for Outlook and Viva Engage mobile apps for iOS and Android. Branding changes will not affect the current features, capabilities, and investments for Microsoft 365 customers. Still, the continuity of the experience and benefits from the power of Viva Engage will be maintained.

Despite the hybrid work era challenges, innovative responses in the form of new experiences will be provided by Viva Engage. This will start with the September 2022 wave of capabilities that ignite leadership engagement, authentic expression, events, and knowledge discovery. These improvements involve worldwide roll-outs for suite and Microsoft Viva Topics customers. Among the key features are Leadership Corner, which offers leaders a place to connect with employees, promote group resources, and foster culture through discussions, storylines posts, events, and more.

• Figure 1. The new Leadership Corner tab in Viva Engage is available to Viva suite customers.
• Figure 2. A look at the new Ask Me Anything event experience in Viva Engage.
• Figure 3. Campaigns bring your company initiatives to life for employees.
• Figure 4. Answers in Viva helps to match employee questions with answers and experts.
• Figure 5. See recommended questions, trending content, and badges you've earned.

For Outlook and Mobile users, changes will be visible in the existing Communities app from March 2023 under Viva Engage branding. This change will be automatic and will require no customer action. The new Viva Engage app will provide community and conversation activities directly from Outlook, whether using desktop or web applications.

Fittingly, Yammer mobile apps for iOS and Android will be updated to Viva Engage to provide a native mobile-first experience optimized for social sharing and media content. For customers to see and enjoy the new experience, app updates will be required. The Viva Engage application can also be accessed through the Teams mobile application.

The transformation of the Yammer platform to Microsoft Viva is a continuous journey towards better customer service. New features for leaders, communicators, and employees that were announced are available to Microsoft Viva customers and start to roll out now.

The Microsoft Viva platform aims to support connection, insight, purpose, and growth to help individuals and teams achieve their best. With high expectations for Microsoft Viva in the coming year and beyond, the team sincerely wishes to thank all Yammer and Viva customers who have been part of this journey. You can expect more information about these exciting changes and timings on the Yammer Tech Community blog. It is important to note that these changes will not impact the current pricing or capabilities available to existing Microsoft 365 customers.

Please join us on February 23, 2023, to learn more about the changes during an AMA session with the product leaders from the Viva Engage team.

For further explanation about the total rebrand of Yammer, how it affects the platform, the continued capabilities and value, Amens in Viva for the Viva suite customers, Viva Topics customers, and any unavailability of current Yammer functionality as part of this change to Viva Engage, please visit the Microsoft Viva Tech Community blog and Viva Engage Adoption.

Last but not least, looking into the future, we are thrilled about the upcoming evolution of Viva Engage, and we are looking forward to continue building towards the future of Viva Engage in collaboration with our valued customers.

More links on about Latest Viva Engage Update: New Features Including Admin Center

What's new in Viva Engage Admin Center

Apr 24, 2023 — We are excited to announce that we are releasing three new features that support admins in managing Viva Engage more effectively within their ...

Viva Engage Admin center overview

May 31, 2023 — The admin center is located in the Viva Engage app on Teams and on the web. In the admin center you can: Manage admin roles to determine who ...

Releasing the Web version of Viva Engage Admin Center

MC534738 – The Viva Engage admin experience currently available within the Teams application will soon be available within the Yammer web surface (being ...

Keywords

Viva Engage Update, New Features Viva Engage, Viva Engage Admin Center, Latest Admin Center Features, Viva Engage Update Features, New Viva Engage Features, Latest Viva Engage Enhancements, Viva Engage Admin Update, Upgraded Features Viva Engage, Admin Center Viva Engage.