The Next Wave Is Viva… Are You Ready?

Microsoft Viva is not well understood by most. Many are confused… Is it a product? it is a service? Is it a series of products? Why do they call them modules?

Microsoft Viva is a Wave. Microsoft has announced the first four modules, but they aren’t licensed together or bundled together. In the beginning back in February I was calling Viva “Marketecture.” Maretecture is when the marketing team owns the strategy and architecture. I’m saying this a little tongue in cheek, as Viva is a series of products that originally weren’t designed to be together, but with a big enough drum and a marketing powerhouse like Microsoft. The product teams are falling in line and the first four modules of this Viva wave has been announced.

Alone customers are used to SAAS services simply being upgraded along the way. Microsoft Viva is different. Each of these modules needs to be looked at individually and considered as new rich functionality. The positioning around Employee Experience along with Employee Engagement provides an opportunity to engage a number of new business unit technology focused groups such as Intranet teams, Marcom, corporate communications, HR IT, and HR services groups, HR University LMS teams focused on learning and instruction along with CXOs focused on employee services. Imagine executives who may pick up on any of these modules as truly pluggable in Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft Viva is a wave of pluggable modules that need internal campaigns so the right business groups can be aware of them. I’ve put together a graphic to help provide some visibility around these new modules.

If you like the infographics, feel free to download them and share them in your powerpoints with your organization. I’m working to improve the education and awareness on Microsoft Viva.

I’m working on a series of webinars to help provide more background and depth on Microsoft Viva and how to approach it for your organization.

It’s important again that you not just simply think of these as simple apps that you can add optionally to Teams. These are a major investment from Microsoft and this wave is a great opportunity for IT to get closer to the business units and in providing additional functionality to your organizational business solutions. Microsoft recently featured the Viva wave in Microsoft Mechanics. I put together a couple of their screenshots into one. You can quickly see here these are not simple apps, but designed to provide rich integration across the Microsoft 365 apps and services with additional extensibility. I hope you can join me in these upcoming free webinars. 1) Introduction to Microsoft Viva 2) Vivafy – A tactical deeper dive into Viva Connections and Viva Topics.

The first webinar is:
Introducing Microsoft Viva

Microsoft announced Viva in February 2021, it is a movement toward employee experience that brings together communications, knowledge, learning, resources, and insights. Powered by Microsoft 365 and experienced primarily through Microsoft Teams. Viva fosters a culture where people and teams are empowered to be their best from anywhere. Viva itself has four main components: – Viva Connections – as the enabler for plugging your SharePoint Intranet into Teams formerly known as Teams Home Site App. – Viva Topics – one of the products from the Project Cortex initiative. It is focused on connecting knowledge and experts. – Viva Insights  – delivers focus on employee engagement with consideration for health and wellbeing. – Viva Learning is an aggregation of your skilling across the enterprise with LMS platform integration and just-in-time delivery in the your Teams. We’ll dive into each of these tools and help you better understand availability, licensing, and enterprise positioning and roadmap. Audience: Marketing, Communications, HR IT, IT Managers, Directors, Microsoft 365 Admins, and Teams Administrators Level: 100 & 200 : Introduction and Assumes Basic Microsoft Teams Experience

Register for this free webinar

Tue, Aug 10, 2021 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM PDT

>> Register Now<<

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“VIVAFY” Your SharePoint Intranet with Teams and Viva

Most companies are using Teams for chat, meetings, and basic collaboration.  SharePoint Online has been a neglected investment who have invested in Microsoft 365 with many companies still running their Intranets in classic or even in SharePoint on premise.  What is to be done?

How do you take advantage of this Viva wave? Agenda: In this session we’ll break down the tactical steps to take your SharePoint Intranets in whatever phase you are in, into your modern Teams environment for an improved experience. Some may simply be ready to create the powershell package and get Viva Connections deployed to take advantage of the app bar, search, and targeting, but others will need to prepare and should prepare.  Here are some of the topics: – Get Your Intranet, Corporate Communications and Org News to Modern SharePoint Online – Design your Branding, Header/Footer, Site Design & Look Strategy – Design your Global Navigation, Information Architecture, and Hubs – Create and Deploy Powershell Package including Icons – Set your Root site and Official News – Manage your Taxonomy, M365 Groups, and Audience Targeting

Audience: Marketing, Communications, HR IT, IT Managers, Directors, Microsoft 365 Admins, and Teams Administrators Level: 100 & 200 Introduction and Assumes Basic Microsoft Teams Experience

>>Register Now<<