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SharePoint enterprise social experience - Viva Engage and Newsfeed

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Microsoft 365 includes two options for enterprise social features in SharePoint: Viva Engage and Newsfeed. The SharePoint administrator selects which option users see when they click Conversations in SharePoint. By default, users see Newsfeed.

You can turn Viva Engage off or on for conversations in SharePoint by using the SharePoint Online admin center. You must be a global administrator to make this change.

Screenshot of the SharePoint admin center, Enterprise Social Collaboration options.

  1. Sign in to Microsoft 365 Global administrator.

  2. Select the app launcher icon in the upper-left and choose Admin to open the Microsoft 365 admin center. (If you don't see the Admin tile, you don't have global administrator permissions in your organization.)

  3. In the left pane, choose Admin centers > SharePoint.

  4. Choose Settings on the left nav.

  5. Choose Classic settings page.

  6. Under Enterprise Social Collaboration, select Use Viva Engage.com service to turn it on for conversations in SharePoint.

Use Newsfeed for SharePoint conversations

If you want to use Newsfeed for conversations in SharePoint groups, you can turn it on in the SharePoint Online admin center.

  1. Sign in to Microsoft 365 as a global admin.

  2. Select the app launcher icon in the upper-left and choose Admin to open the Microsoft 365 admin center. (If you don't see the Admin tile, you don't have global administrator permissions in your organization.)

  3. In the left pane, choose Admin centers > SharePoint.

  4. Choose Settings on the left nav.

  5. Under Enterprise Social Collaboration, select Use SharePoint Newsfeed to turn it on.

What happens for the following features when Newsfeed is on or off?

When Newsfeed is turned off, Viva Engage is the social experience where you can follow people and the information they share. To reduce confusion, the ability to follow people, documents, and tags in SharePoint Newsfeed is turned off. If you turn Newsfeed on, you get the ability to follow people, documents, and tags in SharePoint Newsfeed. Note that even if Newsfeed is off, basic operations continue to work. For example, you can still follow sites for bookmarking purposes and the Video: Follow a SharePoint site is still available.

Frequently-asked questions

A: Wait, will I lose following data if the Newsfeed is turned off?

A: No. All data is retained even though the links to follow people, documents, and tags are removed.