For most organizations, today’s work environment is drastically different from what it was a year ago; we spend more time working and connecting virtually than ever before. Such an environment can be isolating and exhausting. The employee experience is so overwhelming these days with the plethora of tools and software. To eliminate the taxing nature of remote work, and increase organizational productivity, Microsoft has introduced Viva.
Why is Microsoft Viva Appropriate for Businesses?
Microsoft Viva is here to reimagine the employee experience by bringing communications, insights, learning, and knowledge into an integrated experience delivered in Microsoft Teams, which can be integrated with MS Outlook and Microsoft Office 365.
Microsoft Viva is slated to bring more cohesion to the Microsoft 365 suite of tools and applications. Many of these capabilities did exist before, but Microsoft is now positioning them together in a single interface for open access to all members of an organization’s Microsoft Teams teams. However, there is much more to Viva than a simple marketing realignment from Microsoft. Viva introduces powerful new capabilities that can be used to create personalized and integrate digital workplaces on Microsoft 365.
Microsoft Viva for a Balanced Personal and Professional Ecosystem
It is all about having that transformed work culture that promotes data-driven well-being for employees and the overall health of the organization. Let’s touch upon the various features and abilities of this holistic tool that is Viva, to become available at your disposal right inside Microsoft Teams.
VIVA CONNECTIONS
Stay engaged and informed no matter where you are with Viva Connections. Your feed gives you access to relevant news, announcements, and conversations. The Viva dashboard connects you to company resources from Viva and across your digital workplace.
Leveraging SharePoint, Yammer, and Stream, Viva Connections provides an integrated experience that can be used to target communications to any role within an organization. The new dashboard feature also has the potential to integrate third-party actionable content that can form a single entry point into an organization’s content.
Although Viva Connections does use existing capabilities in M365 the new Company Feed and Dashboard features could have huge implications for organizations. The company feed can pull in content from SharePoint and Yammer and could function as a central stream of communications content. The Dashboard however is the most interesting and possibly revolutionary feature of Connections. A single stream of targeted, actionable content from within and outside of M365 is the dream of every digital workplace. If Microsoft makes this a reality then Viva Connections will fly.
VIVA INSIGHTS
PERSONAL INSIGHTS
Get personalized reminders to prioritize time for focused work, coaching, learning, and taking regular breaks. Microsoft Viva Insights gives individuals, managers, and leaders personalized and actionable insights that help everyone in an organization thrive.
In addition to new productivity and wellbeing experiences and insights in Microsoft Teams, Viva Insights will, over time, bring the power of Microsoft Workplace Analytics and Microsoft MyAnalytics together under the Microsoft Viva brand. Personal Insights is a great way to help all of us move into the world of remote work in a healthy way. My prediction is that this will be a free application that Microsoft provides for all users of Teams.
INSIGHTS FOR LEADERS
For managers and leaders, insights bring data-backed information to foster healthy teams and build personal and organizational resilience by monitoring areas like burnout risks and suggesting steps to establish healthy work habits. You can even understand the impact of work patterns on people and business, enabling you to drive and measure change over time.
Insights for leaders will provide great metrics for people leading teams and a broader understand of organizational work habits.
VIVA LEARNING
Learning while working is common for digital workplaces and now you can find all your learning resources in one place with Viva Learning. From content that is assigned to you to recommended courses and programs, Viva Learning brings it together in a centralized location. You have the opportunity to learn in the flow of work, along with finding and sharing resources with ease. Managers can even track completion and conduct onboarding processes through Viva.
VIVA TOPICS
Viva Topics connect you to topics and experts. With this feature you do not need to go looking outside of the tool for knowledge, it finds you. Users can find people, resources, and conversations related to a particular topic and raise questions. Viva Topics uses artificial intelligence to build topic pages so they stay relevant and are aligned with the right content.
This feature can be of real value for knowledge or project-based organizations that want to capture best practices, tacit knowledge, or expertise that is currently stored in people’s heads or content. Although Viva topics have a large AI component to it there will still need to be some human involvement to curate and organize content for the best result.
Orchestry for Viva and its Objectives
Microsoft has made it abundantly clear that MS Teams is the new ‘operating system’ of an enterprise, and Orchestry is designed to be MS Teams first, in turn, can natively integrate with MS Teams and Microsoft Viva.
Orchestry for Microsoft Viva helps you govern and adopt the collaboration portion of the employee experience under the Viva banner. In today’s remote work setting, both Orchestry and Viva focus on driving connectivity, engagement, and cultural change across businesses to make the most of your digital workplace.
As mentioned, Viva is useful for driving engagement, plus empowering employee professional/personal growth with learning and wellness capabilities. Additionally, Microsoft Viva delivers impactful insights about the overall health of the organization with data-driven inputs on how to improve the work ecosystem for one and all. Building upon Microsoft Viva’s strengthens, Orchestry adds to its features as a complementary platform that focuses on the same goals and objectives:
Employee Experience: At Orchestry, we believe that the user experience is key and hence, we made Orchestry simple and beautiful not just for end-users, but also for admins. Orchestry is not just a provisioning tool, but a way to help users request, find and build their own workspaces with their needs in mind all through a simplified interface.
Governance: Whilst Microsoft Viva provides many amazing capabilities to truly empower your end-users, you need to have a balance of empowerment and governance. Orchestry does just that by allowing administrators to provide self-service and providing end-users with the ability to request and customize their workspace. There is adequate control within Microsoft Teams without creating any roadblocks for members.
Findability: Using Orchestry as a way to surface Teams teams, SharePoint sites, and Outlook groups in a single interface, complete with additional metadata, helps users understand what is available to them. Orchestry’s Workspace Directoryis vital to effective management across the MS Teams platform as it acts as a repository to all collaboration and communication assets. Even the new Topics site from Viva can be surfaced and promoted to users quickly and easily. By providing a way to navigate the collaborative content in your organization Orchestry fits into the Microsoft Viva ethos of providing a consolidated employee experience.
Integration: Orchestry isn’t a web part surfaced as a Microsoft Teams app, but rather an Azure AD Application just like the various Microsoft Viva applications.
This means that Orchestry can integrate directly with Microsoft Viva to provide the same experience that Microsoft is aiming to achieve. By leverage the power of the Microsoft Graph and Teams directly Orchestry provides the provisioning, governance, and adoption capabilities that a true employee experience platform strives for.
Combining the Power of Two: Orchestry + Viva
Utilizing both Orchestry and Microsoft Viva for your MS Teams setup will provide employees with a complete experience from communication, learning, knowledge, wellness, collaboration, intelligent governance, and smart provisioning.
Orchestry provides the collaboration and governance part of the Microsoft Viva puzzle in Microsoft Teams. With Orchestry, you can help drive the creation of workspaces with governance behind the scenes in an environment that Microsoft has placed all future bets on, Microsoft Teams. Orchestry’s transparent governance capabilities help deal with unwieldy sprawl and promote adoption with engagement across Microsoft Teams. Both Viva and Orchestry enable a standardized experience for all MS Teams users.
Making Orchestry a part of your MS Teams and Microsoft Viva ecosystem will really boost collaboration in your organization. Orchestry enables extraordinary customizations for your MS Teams teams with Workspace Templates that focus on helping with common business goals and driving engagement organization-wide.
In combination with Microsoft Viva, Orchestry brings you a simplified digital workplace. On one hand, Microsoft Viva allows you to monitor the well-being of your employees and on the other, Orchestry ensures that they are operating in an efficient and easy-to-use environment.
Getting started with Orchestry is quick and easy, so why wait when you can test-drive it yourself by requesting free access with us.
