If you are unfamiliar with Microsoft Viva, it is a new employee experience platform comprised of several components. Microsoft 365 underpins the Viva experience, which aims to provide a suite of tools across learning, resources, insights, knowledge, and communications. Viva Connections is just one component of the platform, which also so far includes Viva Topics, Viva Learning, and Viva Insights. Back in February, Microsoft debuted Viva Learning and at Ignite 2021 in March, Microsoft said Viva would arrive in preview soon. Viva Connections has been available to just SharePoint customers since then. The second, Viva Insights launched in public preview the same month to give organizations actionable insights into productivity across teams. Viva Learning arrived in preview during April, while Viva Topics is providing the backbone of Project Alexandria data parsing.
Preview Update
Viva Connections is now becoming available to wider customers beyond SharePoint. With the public preview, the service is landing on mobile and desktop. For the PC release, Microsoft is making some changes to what we saw on the SharePoint version. Viva Connections acts as a bridge between companies and their employees. It is a part of Microsoft Teams and allows a connection to give employees access to important content. The company points to the following information regarding the Connections preview:
“Viva Connections mobile app experience – This is the first look at the mobile experience for Viva Connections. It introduces the dashboard, feed, and resources tabs and brings these experiences together into a personalized and actionable employee home base. Once enabled, the Viva Connections app is available for your employees right from within the Teams app, both on mobile and desktop. Viva Connections desktop – This updated version of the desktop experience streamlines installation and deployment for admins in the Microsoft Teams admin center. The new dashboard and feed web parts enable customers to have consistency across the mobile and desktop experiences. For organizations using the existing version of Viva Connections desktop, learn about the differences and how to upgrade to this version. Dashboard web part – In the dashboard, employees can find useful resources and actionable tasks, like submitting expense reports, accessing benefits, requesting time off work, or verifying health checks to return to the office. Feed web part – The feed provides a single, personalized view where employees can explore news and join conversations from across the organization, keeping people connected. It aggregates relevant news and discussions across Microsoft 365 services to keep people informed and make it easy for people to participate, add value, and share their unique perspective and expertise.”
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