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Delve for admins

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Important

Delve will be retired in December 2024. For more information, see Guidance for retiring Delve in your organization.

The more you and your colleagues use Microsoft 365 to work together, by viewing, editing, and sharing each other's documents, the more useful Delve is for all of you. Learn more about how you as an admin can help users get the most out of Delve.

Delve is powered by the Microsoft Graph and shows users the most relevant content based on who they work with and what they're working on. The information in Delve is tailored to each user. Delve doesn't change permissions and users will only see what they already have access to.

As an admin, you can make sure that you allow your organization to access Delve, and that you have set up other Microsoft 365 services that Delve uses, such as SharePoint and OneDrive. You can also help people get started with Delve, and address questions that users might have.

What you need to get Delve

Delve is available for Office 365 Enterprise (E1, E3, and E5), Office 365 Education (E1, E3, and E5), Office 365 Government (E1, E3, and E5), Microsoft 365 Business Basic, and Microsoft 365 Business Standard.

Regardless of which Microsoft 365 or Office 365 subscriptions you have, you need to activate the SharePoint service and assign users a SharePoint license before they can start using Delve. You also have to set up Exchange Online if you want attachments to show up on users' Home pages in Delve. If you set up Microsoft Teams, users can start Microsoft Teams conversations directly from Delve.

Important

Microsoft 365 apps and services ended support for Internet Explorer 11 on August 17, 2021 (Microsoft Teams ended support for Internet Explorer 11 earlier, on November 30, 2020). Learn more. IE mode enables backward compatibility and will be supported through at least 2029. Additionally, Microsoft will provide notice one year prior to retiring IE mode. Please follow the Lifecycle Policy for the product on which it is installed.

The Delve app is also enabled for modern authentication. For more information, see How modern authentication works.

Control access to Delve

You control access to Delve from the SharePoint admin center. By default, users in your organization have access to Delve.

  1. Go to Settings in the SharePoint admin center, and sign in with an account that has admin permissions for your organization.

    Note

    If you have Office 365 operated by 21Vianet (China), sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center, then browse to the SharePoint admin center and open the Settings page.

  2. At the bottom of the page, select classic settings page.

  3. Under Delve, select one of the following:

    • Enable Delve

    • Disable Delve

Note

Previously, when turning Delve on or off in the SharePoint admin center, it also had an impact on a few other insights-driven experiences in Microsoft 365. Starting July 1, 2021, the Delve setting is decoupled from the back end and will only impact Delve. Use the item insights privacy settings to control item insights in Microsoft 365.

For more information on disabling Delve, see What is the effect of enabling or disabling Delve.

Control access to documents in Delve

Users can limit their Delve experience to only show profile information by turning off Show documents in Delve under Settings > Feature settings in Delve. As an admin, you can also remove documents from Delve through the item insights privacy settings. For more information on item insights privacy settings, see Customizing item insights privacy in Microsoft Graph (preview).

Introducing Delve in your organization

Here are some resources that you can use to get your organization started with Delve.

Before you announce Delve

Using Delve on a day-to-day basis

Data and geographic region

  • When users go to Delve, for example by entering delve.office.com in a browser, they're automatically redirected to the geographic region where your organization's environment is located. After the redirect, a three letter prefix indicating the region is added to the URL, for example https://nam.delve.office.com for North America, or https://eur.delve.office.com for Europe.

Help users troubleshoot Delve

To help troubleshoot issues with Delve, see the following info.

Users don't see Delve in the Microsoft 365 app launcher

There are a few things you should check if one or more users in your organization don't see Delve in the app launcher. All these things need to be in place for your organization before people can start using Delve.

Solutions

Check that you allow your organization to access Delve

  1. Go to Settings in the SharePoint admin center, and sign in with an account that has admin permissions for your organization.

    Note

    If you have Office 365 operated by 21Vianet (China), sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center, then browse to the SharePoint admin center and open the Settings page.

  2. At the bottom of the page, select classic settings page.

  3. Under Delve, make sure that you've selected Enable Delve.

    Note

    If you have a SharePoint standalone service (SharePoint Plan 1 or SharePoint Plan 2) you'll see the Delve setting in the SharePoint admin center. However, users won't be able to use Delve or see Delve in the app launcher, because Delve is not available for standalone services yet.

Check that you're using a subscription that supports Delve

  1. Sign in to https://admin.microsoft.com as a SharePoint Administrator and above. (If you see a message that you don't have permission to access the page, you don't have Microsoft 365 admin permissions in your organization.)

    Note

    If you have Office 365 operated by 21Vianet (China), sign in at https://login.partner.microsoftonline.cn/. Then select the Admin tile to open the admin center.

  2. In the left pane, select Billing > Licenses.

  3. Verify that you have one of the following subscriptions:

    • Office 365 Enterprise (E1, E3, or E5)

    • Office 365 Education

    • Office 365 Government (E1, E3, or E5)

    • Microsoft 365 Business Basic

    • Microsoft 365 Business Standard

    • Microsoft 365 Business Premium

Check that you've assigned the correct user licenses

  1. Sign in to https://admin.microsoft.com as a as a SharePoint Administrator and above. (If you see a message that you don't have permission to access the page, you don't have Microsoft 365 admin permissions in your organization.)

    Note

    If you have Office 365 operated by 21Vianet (China), sign in at https://login.partner.microsoftonline.cn/. Then select the Admin tile to open the admin center.

  2. Select Users > Active users.

  3. Select the box in front of the name of the user who you want to check the licenses for.

  4. Verify that the user has one of the following combinations of licenses:

    • Office 365 Plan E1 plus SharePoint (Plan 1 or Plan 2)

    • Office 365 Plan E3 plus SharePoint (Plan 1 or Plan 2)

    • Office 365 Plan E5 plus SharePoint (Plan 1 or Plan 2)

    • Microsoft 365 Business Basic plus SharePoint (Plan 1 or Plan 2)

    • Microsoft 365 Business Standard plus SharePoint (Plan 1 or Plan 2)

    • Microsoft 365 Business Premium plus SharePoint (Plan 1 or Plan 2)

    For more information about how to manage licenses, see Assign licenses to users.

Users see incorrect colleagues in Delve

If Microsoft Entra ID has outdated information or hasn't been synced with the SharePoint user profiles, Delve may not show the most relevant colleagues.

Delve uses information from user profiles to determine who users in your organization work with most closely. These profiles contain information from Microsoft Entra ID and from SharePoint user profiles. Every 24 hours, people information from Microsoft Entra ID is automatically added to SharePoint user profiles.

Solutions

  • Check and clean up your Microsoft Entra ID, and wait for the information to sync to SharePoint user profiles.

  • If you're an academic organization, the sync between Microsoft Entra ID and user profiles is not automatic. Your users will need to sign in to SharePoint at least once to create user profiles.

  • If you have an on-premises Active Directory and if you've set up Active Directory synchronization, make sure it's synced correctly with Microsoft Entra ID.

Users don't see user pictures in Delve

The user pictures in Delve are from the SharePoint user profiles. If there's no picture for a user in their SharePoint user profile, Delve has no picture to show.

Solution

Users see documents from other users who have turned off documents in Delve

Users can turn off documents in Delve, which means that they won't see any documents in Delve, and their activities and relationships won't be included in Microsoft Graph.

However, if other users still have access to documents from a user who has turned off documents, they can still see those documents in Delve, just as they can search for them in SharePoint.

Other information that's available to everyone in the organization will also be visible even if a user has turned off Documents, such as information from the Microsoft Entra ID.

Solution

  • No action needed.

Users see little or no content in Delve

The content in Delve comes from different content sources such as Exchange Online, SharePoint, and OneDrive.

If users don't have any recently modified or viewed content in these content sources, and they don't have access to other users' content, Delve may have little or no content to show. Users also need to have licenses to Microsoft 365 and Office 365 services and they need to have the item insights privacy settings enabled.

Solutions

  • Encourage your users to store and share documents in SharePoint and OneDrive. For more info, point users to Store your documents where Delve can get to them.

  • Check the permission settings on SharePoint sites to make sure that the user has access to the correct sites and their content.

  • Check that the user is in Active Directory and a member of the correct Active Directory groups. To verify, go to Microsoft 365 admin center > Users > Active Users.

  • Make sure that the user allows Delve to show documents. To verify, have the user go to App launcher > Delve > Feature settings and make sure that Show documents in Delve isn't turned off.

  • Make sure that you've assigned users a license to access to the Microsoft 365 services that you've activated.

Users can't find a specific item in Delve

Delve doesn't change any permissions and users will only see what they already have access to. Not all content types will appear in Delve, and it can take up to 24 hours for new documents to show up. Also, Delve prioritizes content that's been modified or viewed in the last three months.

Solutions

Users are concerned that private or sensitive documents are available in Delve

Any document that a user can view or edit in Microsoft 365, can also appear in Delve. Delve doesn't change any permissions and users will only see documents they already have access to. However, there are times when you may want to prevent a document from appearing in Delve.

Solution(s)

  • Check the permission settings for the documents, sites and libraries and make sure that only the intended users have access to the content.

  • If you want to prevent specific documents from appearing in Delve, follow the steps in Hide documents from Delve. You can keep storing the documents in Microsoft 365, and people can still find them through search - they just won't show up in Delve.

What is the effect of enabling or disabling Delve?

Changing the Delve setting in the SharePoint admin center will enable or disable the full Delve experience for all users in the tenant. If Delve is enabled, users in your organization will have Delve in the app launcher and they can use all the functionality in Delve. Selecting a person in Delve will open that person's page. The person page contains user profile information such as contact information and org chart details, and also documents relating to the person.

If you choose to disable Delve for your organization, Delve will be removed from the app launcher for all users. When users visit a person's page, for example by clicking on a person in OneDrive, that person's page will contain only user profile information. No documents will be shown. Users can still search for other people, but not for documents or boards. If the Delve setting is disabled, users will not see the frequent sites and suggested sites in the SharePoint start page.

Note

Disabling Delve does no longer disable Microsoft Graph or insights services generated on top of it. This level of control is now available from the item insights privacy settings. For more information about the item insights settings, see Customizing item insights privacy in Microsoft Graph. For more information about Microsoft Graph, see Overview of Microsoft Graph.

Additional resources

End users

Admins