Microsoft Viva is Teams’ attempt to replace your company’s intranet.

Microsoft Viva is a new platform that integrates with Teams to provide a modern and engaging digital workplace for employees. It aims to replace the traditional intranet, which is often outdated, cluttered and difficult to navigate. Microsoft Viva offers four modules: Connections, Insights, Learning and Topics. These modules help employees stay connected, informed, productive and knowledgeable about their work. Here are some of the benefits of using Microsoft Viva:

– Connections: This module allows employees to access company news, policies, benefits, resources and communities from within Teams. It also allows leaders to communicate with their teams and foster a culture of inclusion and belonging.

– Insights: This module helps employees and managers improve their well-being, productivity and performance by providing personalized and actionable insights based on their work patterns and habits. It also integrates with third-party tools such as Headspace and LinkedIn Learning to provide wellness and learning opportunities.

– Learning: This module helps employees discover and access relevant learning content from a variety of sources, such as Microsoft Learn, LinkedIn Learning, Skillsoft, Coursera and more. It also allows managers to assign and track learning objectives for their teams and measure the impact of learning on business results.

– Topics: This module uses artificial intelligence to automatically create topic pages that display relevant information and experts from across the organization. It helps employees find answers to their questions, learn new skills and collaborate with others who share their interests.

Microsoft Viva is designed to enhance the employee experience and empower employees to thrive in the hybrid work environment. By integrating with Teams, it provides a uniform and seamless user interface that reduces the need to switch between multiple applications and websites. Microsoft Viva is the future of the intranet and is now available to all Microsoft 365 customers.

Viva, Microsoft’s new employee experience platform, is coming soon to Teams users. Viva aims to improve the way employees work, learn and collaborate in the digital workplace. Here are some of the features Viva offers:

– Viva Connections: This feature helps employees stay connected and informed with their organization’s news, events, policies and communities. Employees can access Connections from within Teams and customize their dashboard with relevant content and resources.

– Viva Topics: This feature helps employees find and share knowledge across the organization. Topics uses AI to automatically create topic pages that display relevant information and experts on various topics. Employees can discover and follow topics from Teams or the web, and contribute their own knowledge and comments.

– Viva Learning: This feature helps employees develop their skills and careers with customized learning opportunities. Learning aggregates content from a variety of sources, including LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn, third-party providers and custom courses created by the organization. Employees can explore and access Teams learning content, track their progress and share their achievements with others.

– Viva Insights: This feature helps employees and managers optimize their productivity and well-being with recommendations and data-driven insights. Insights uses data from Teams and other Microsoft 365 applications to provide personalized suggestions for improving focus, balance and collaboration. Insights also helps managers and leaders understand the work patterns and trends of their teams and organizations, and take action to foster a healthy and engaged workforce.

Viva is designed to integrate seamlessly with Teams, the hub for teamwork in Microsoft 365. By bringing these four features together in one platform, Viva aims to empower employees to thrive in the new world of work.

With Viva, Microsoft aims to address the workplace challenges of the pandemic era. Before the pandemic, Microsoft had already envisioned a future in which online collaboration would be the next stage with individual employees working on individual documents such as Word and PowerPoint. Then, the pandemic forced many workers to move to remote work and Microsoft adjusted its message accordingly. Now, Microsoft is pitching Viva as a kind of online community center: a place for new employees to familiarize themselves with the company, its policies, their colleagues, and their areas of expertise, similar to the intranets that some companies already use.

Microsoft sees Viva as the online equivalent of an office that workers can’t physically access right now. «We need to stop thinking about work as a place and start thinking about how to maintain culture, connect employees and leverage human ingenuity in a hybrid world,» said Jared Spataro, corporate vice president of Microsoft 365, in a prerecorded statement. Briefing video for journalists.