Microsoft Viva

2023. Copilot integrated into Microsoft Viva's social intranet



Microsoft announced new collaboration capabilities between the Copilot AI assistant for Microsoft 365 and the Microsoft Viva intranet to improve the employee experience. Copilot will work with Viva data and applications as a unified interface, providing employees, managers, and HR leaders with insights and self-service capabilities, such as visualizing team health, identifying new priorities with OKRs, or upskilling for career advancement. The Microsoft Copilot dashboard powered by Viva will show how many employees have access to and can take advantage of Copilot powered by Microsoft 365, customize Copilot use across applications, and provide early signals about Copilot's impact on team productivity based on meeting, chat, email and document statistics.


2023. Microsoft is migrating Yammer users to Viva



Microsoft confirmed that it is finally shutting down Yammer, the enterprise social network it acquired over a decade ago for $1.2B. Despite Microsoft's best efforts to promote Yammer by integrating it into its core Office suite of products, it never gained much traction. Many of the product's users, who relied on it for communications, eventually migrated to Microsoft Teams, which the company integrated with Yammer in 2019. Two years ago, Microsoft launched Viva, billed as an "employee training platform," which later evolved into something of a corporate intranet. Microsoft has been actively developing Viva over the past few months, and last year launched Viva Engage, a module that the developers describe as an "evolution of the Yammer app."


2021. Microsoft Viva now features modules for employee training, forums and meetings



Microsoft Viva, the employee engagement platform, now includes the Insights, Learning and Topics modules. Viva Learning provides simple and convenient access to training materials from wherever employees spend their time. Viva Insights offers new, effective meeting tools and analytics for managers to help employees develop new habits and norms that improve connection, productivity, and well-being. Viva Topics automatically organizes content and expert materials across your organization, making it easy to find the information you need and leverage accumulated knowledge. Additionally, the system now includes out-of-the-box integrations with SAP SuccessFactors, Qualtrics, ServiceNow, Cornerstone OnDemand, and UKG.


2021. Microsoft unveiled employee engagement system Viva.


Recently, a new class of corporate software has been gaining popularity – Employee Experience software – something between good-old intranet portals and HRM. The main functions of such systems are onboarding new employees, training, motivation, burnout prevention, knowledge sharing, and team building. Microsoft also introduced its own similar system – Viva (notably, it was presented by Satya Nadella himself). It consists of four modules with self-explanatory names: Connections, Insights, Learning, and Topics. As Nadella says, the system is designed for new working conditions, where home and office merge into one. Naturally, Viva is tightly integrated with other Microsoft intranet systems – Teams, SharePoint, Yammer – which form a collaboration layer for it.


2020. Microsoft unveiled tool for evaluating remote employee performance



Microsoft has released a new tool, Productivity Score, to help managers determine whether remote employees are productive. It can be found in Microsoft 365, in "Work Analytics." The tool collects behavioral data for each user of their package across 73 metrics. And at the end of each month, it provides managers with an analysis of the quality of their work. Among other things, the collected information includes: whether the employee regularly turns on the webcam during online meetings; how often they send emails; how often the employee adds comments to shared documents or group chats; and how many days they used Word, Excel, Teams, Outlook, and Skype in the last month. Your score can be compared with other companies. There is also a "Recommended Actions" tab, which contains tips on how to train employees to use Microsoft 365 products better to increase productivity.