Microsoft Viva Enhanced Teams as A Platform

You’ve invested in your SharePoint for many years and Teams has been your life blood for employee productivity, communication, and collaboration it only makes sense to bring them together even more and Microsoft Viva is that spice to the marriage of Teams and SharePoint. You’ve been wondering if Intranets are dead with all this modern collaboration in Teams and modern work… No, what’s been missing are the individual and enterprise pivots and employee engagement and personalization in all of this. Our ADD/ADHD brains can handle the distractions of chats and working with our Teams in a few channels, but add a ton of Teams and dozens of SharePoint sites and we’re lost.

Microsoft Teams has become the de facto, irreplaceable way to get work done with brilliant chat, meetings, and channels for collaboration. In addition, Teams delivers on a platform of communication with productivity solutions, app catalog, and a customizable app platform, enhanced by the Viva employee experience for engagement.  

The out-of-the-box features really put it in a great position to show a wealth of rich collaboration and communication features that not only blow away the competition but set up teams for modern team work.  The Office online productivity suite that’s built into Microsoft 365 snaps right into teams seamlessly, even better than native SharePoint. 

Next, the app platform is a gold mine for hundreds of first- and third-party apps with rich integration from the likes of Salesforce and ServiceNow, and so much more.  The pure scale and repeatability of business solution building starts with templating from the new Microsoft Lists app in Teams (which is SharePoint under the hood.  You’ve got templates in Teams itself for taking your best practices in your tabs, apps, and channels structures, and then rich extensibility expends seemingly, endlessly, with the Power Platform of development tools from the likes of Power Automate and Power Automate desktop for workflow, and don’t forget the connectors from hundreds of repositories and line of business applications.  Seriously… What can’t you connect or automate and streamline now?  Power Apps are the low-code, no-code powerhouse of app building and construction for mobile, desktop and cloud construction of solutions that really span worlds. Bring Power BI for charting and reporting right into your Teams workspace channels, tabs and feeds along with Power Virtual Agents for construction of chat bots.  Let’s not forget the star of the show…Viva!

The new Viva killer apps from Viva Connections, the plumbing for bringing the latest and greatest investments from Microsoft and your intranet on SharePoint into Teams. The new SharePoint and Teams app bar incorporates the intranet and employee experience of Hubs and introduces a more integrated SharePoint experience in Teams all with a PowerShell script, a roadmap and a price that’s sure to please. 

It’s time to get serious about your information architecture from Hubs along with your terms and topics to support Viva Topics and SharePoint Syntex, which bring knowledge and expertise to search and the Topic Center to Teams. Viva Learning brings an enterprise of just-in-time learning management into an integrated platform in Teams. Microsoft learning and skilling in any Team can be shared in the channels.  Recommended, smaller bits of learning and courseware can be integrated daily rather than force feeding. 

Viva Insights rounds out the most recent, but please don’t count it as the last as we are already being promised more, rich engaging Microsoft employee experiences. Viva Insights app provides the individual information on productivity and well-being, and based on a large enough organization, it can provide a comprehensive anonymized look at large teams, groups and divisions, with productivity recommendations for the organization.  You may be surprised!  Maybe you haven’t been taking enough breaks or 45-minute meetings may be better, as meetings aren’t starting on time.  

Teams as a Platform has been enhanced with the Viva employee experience, and it’s a fantastic opportunity to get your enterprise communication and collaboration platform in order! Where is that architect anyway? Some may find that they had oversight and guidance during an intranet release and deployment, but this VIVA wave is a fantastic time to revisit the employee experience of your M365 solution as an integrated whole for your employees.  Seriously DO NOT take Viva as simply a short sighted set of products that don’t relate to your enterprise.  These are killer apps that are purposefully built to engage, connect, skill up, and provide the glue, the stickiness and delight, but not by pressing the setup button…  they do need thought, planning, and consideration for your industry, your architecture, your world.  

Many intranets may not be modern, communications and news focused, or hierarchical with information Hubs. It is time for a health check to evaluate employee engagement in context of the new solutions. The Viva enhancement (especially Connections and Topics) is not be ignored, as it is really an upgrade to SharePoint and Teams.  Now is the time to look at this release as the upgrade we’ve all been waiting for and not as another off-the-shelf feature. It’s time to roll up your sleeves and get to work on a long, overdue employee-first strategy.  

Join host Valo Solutions for an information webinar on July 29, 2021. Valo is a Microsoft gold solutions partner and provides complete solutions for turnkey, modern intranets, extranets, connections and engagement platforms for Teams and SharePoint solution management along with many products to fill in the gaps.

Wanting to learn more about Teams as Platform or how Viva enhances the employee experience providing rich engagement, connection and insights? Join me in an upcoming webinar hosted by Valo:

Join the upcoming webinar

Valo Solutions, the host for this 07/29 Information Webinar, registration below, is a gold solutions partner to Microsoft providing many offerings related to, not only, filling gaps, but complete solutions, for turn-key modern intranets, extranets, connections, and engagement platforms for Teams and SharePoint solution management.

It is time for this core essential strategy and awareness to kick-off! It is fundamental for corporate communication, intranet teams, extranet solutions, marcom, and Human Resources, to get on board with this latest wave of Teams as a Platform and the Viva Enhanced Employee Experience… all in a platform you invested in long ago.

Join me, Joel Oleson for an information Webinar on this Topic and More! If you liked what you saw here and want more… You can join me on a Webinar where I will dig into Viva Enhanced, Teams As A Platform.

Webinar: Viva Enhanced, “Teams As A Platform”
Date: July 29th, 2021 at 10 am or 1 pm (Pacific Time)
More information and topic summary here, with two session coverage options to choose.

What are you waiting for? Join us already! We can’t wait to see you there!

>> REGISTER NOW 10 AM PT / 1PM ET

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It’s time to kick off this core essential strategy and awareness that is fundamental for corporate communication, intranet teams, extranet solutions, marcom, and human resources to get on board with this latest wave of Teams-as-a-Platform and the Viva-enhanced employee experience, all in all a platform you have invested your enterprise employee experience and modern teamwork.

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