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Viva Goals setup and administration deployment guide

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This guide enables IT administrators to configure Viva Goals and help initial users get started using the program via the Setup and Administration guide. Additionally, it enables organization and team owners to understand how to configure their teams and organization so users can manage Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) using Viva Goals.

Licensing requirements

To deploy Viva Goals, you must have one of the following licenses:

  • Viva Suite license (or)
  • Viva Goals license

Configure tenant

The following admin target role(s) are used throughout this deployment guide. Learn more about the different Microsoft 365 Admin roles.

  • Global Administrator
  • License Administrator
  • User Administrator
  • Viva Goals Administrator

This section covers the following steps:

  1. Assign Licenses

    1. Target role(s): Global or User Administrator

  2. Assign Viva Goals Administrator (optional)

    1. Target role(s): Global or User Administrator

  3. Configure Tenant settings

    1. Target role(s): Global or Viva Goals Administrator

Assign licenses

To enable users to start using Viva Goals, Global or User Admins must assign licenses to the members of the relevant organizations or departments. Only users with a license can sign in and use Viva Goals.

To assign licenses to user:

  1. In Microsoft 365 admin center select Users -> Active users.
  2. Select the users or user group that you want to assign licenses to and select Licenses and apps.
  3. Under Licenses, select Viva Goals

For more information on assigning licenses, check assigning Microsoft 365 licenses to users.

Tip

Other ways of assigning licenses:

  1. To assign licenses via group-based licensing, see Assign licenses to users by group in Microsoft Entra ID.
  2. Target admin roles can also assign Microsoft 365 licenses to user accounts with PowerShell.

Assign conditional access

Important

Prerequisite: Create custom security attributes

Follow the instructions in the article, Add or deactivate custom security attributes in Microsoft Entra ID (Preview), to add the following Attribute set and New attributes.

  • Create an Attribute set named VivaGoalsConditionalAccess
  • Create New attributes named vivagoalsca
  • Mark No for Allow multiple values to be assigned and Only allow predefined values to be assigned.

Screenshot of attribute settings for new attribute vivagoalsca.

Note

Conditional Access filters for devices only works with custom security attributes of type "string". Custom Security Attributes support creation of Boolean data type but Conditional Access Policy only supports "string".

Create a conditional access policy

  1. Sign in to the Azure portal as a Conditional Access Administrator or Security Administrator.

  2. Browse to Microsoft Entra ID > Security > Conditional Access.

  3. Select New policy.

  4. Give your policy a name. We recommend that organizations create a meaningful standard for the names of their policies.

  5. Under Assignments, select Users or workload identities.

    1. Under Include, select All users.

    2. Under Exclude, select Users and groups and choose your organization's emergency access or break-glass accounts.

      Screenshot of assignment settings with include and exclude information.

    3. Select Done.

  6. Under Target Resources or Cloud apps or actions, select the following options:

    1. Select what this policy applies to: Cloud apps.

    2. Include all apps. Exclude select apps and choose the Viva Goals app.

      Screenshot of target resource settings with included and excluded apps.

    3. Select Edit filter.

    4. Set Configure to Yes.

    5. Select the Attribute we created earlier called vivagoalsca.

    6. Set Operator to Equals.

    7. Set Value to Yes.

    8. Select Done.

  7. Update Access controls according to your requirement.

  8. Confirm your settings and set Enable policy to Report-only.

  9. Select Create to create to enable your policy.

After confirming your settings using report-only mode, an administrator can move the Enable policy toggle from Report-only to On.

Configure custom attributes

  1. Assign the custom security attribute to the applications below:

    1. MS Graph App - 00000003-0000-0000-c000-000000000000 (This is needed for provisioning users)
    2. Viva Goals Web App - 29eb068f-2f54-4fda-a8be-32f37312678a
    3. Microsoft Entra ID - 00000002-0000-0000-c000-000000000000

    Note

    When you don't have a service principal listed in your tenant, it can't be targeted. The Office 365 suite is an example of one such service principal.

  2. Sign in to the Azure portal as a Conditional Access Administrator or Security Administrator.

  3. Browse to Microsoft Entra ID > Enterprise applications.

  4. Select the service principal you want to apply a custom security attribute to.

  5. Under Manage > Custom security attributes (preview), select Add assignment.

  6. Under Attribute set, select VivaGoalsConditionalAccess.

  7. Under Attribute name, select vivagoalsca and select Done.

  8. Select Save.

Screenshot of adding new attributes to the custom security attributes page.

Assign Viva Goals administrator (optional)

Viva Goals Administrators are assigned by user admins from the Microsoft 365 Admin Center or Microsoft Entra ID. These are users typically from the IT team and manage the policy settings for Viva Goals for the entire company.

This role is optional. It provides the minimal permissions required to manage Viva Goals and can be assigned to the person tasked with deploying and administering Viva Goals. In the absence of a separate Viva Goals Administrator, the Global admin can manage the Viva Goals policy settings for the company.

For more information on various roles and their responsibilities on Viva Goals check Roles and Permissions in Viva Goals.

Note

Related content:

How to assign a Viva Goals administrator

  1. In the Microsoft 365 admin center, go to Role Assignments section.
  2. Search for “Viva Goals Administrator" on the role assignments page. Select Viva Goals Administrator from the search result.
  3. In the flyout (right pane) that opens, select on the Assigned tab to assign licenses.
  4. You can choose the Add users option to assign licenses to specific users. If you want to assign the license to a group choose the Add groups option. Users who haven't yet been assigned licenses can't be made administrators.

Configure tenant settings

Once the Viva Goals Administrators have been assigned, a Viva Goals Administrator can configure the tenant. To configure the tenant, complete the following steps:

  • Review or Manage Org Creation Permissions
  • Enable the Integrations applicable for the tenant
  • Pin VG in Teams App

Sign-in to Viva Goals

  1. Target role: Viva Goals Administrator.
  2. After assigning yourself a license, sign in to Viva Goals using https://goals.microsoft.com.

Review or manage organization creation permissions

  • Target role: Viva Goals Administrator.

  • An Organization in Viva Goals resembles the topmost entity in an enterprise at which the organizational OKRs are set up and every team in that org aligns their OKRs with those organizational OKRs. Learn more about Organizations in Viva Goals.

  • By default, a company-wide organization will be created for each new tenant. The Viva Goals admins are the owners for this default organization.

  • Optionally, Viva Goals admins can configure who can create organizations in the tenant in the event that more organizations need to be created from the Viva Goals Admin Portal:

    • Anyone in TENANT NAME: This would allow any valid Viva Goals user to create organizations.

    • Specific users: Sometimes, specific users may need org creation permissions. Choose this option and select the users who should have this capability.

    • Only global administrators: This option restricts org creation to global admins only.

  • How to restrict permissions in Viva Goals.

Review/enable integrations for the tenant

  • Target role: Viva Goals Administrator.

  • Viva Goals supports integrations with Microsoft and third-party apps and platforms so that the OKR implementation process is as simple, effective, and seamless as possible.

  • As a Global or Viva Goals admin, you can control which integrations are available for use across organizations in Viva Goals from the Viva Goals Admin Portal.

  • As a recommendation, enabling the integrations for all the tools being used in your company (or your company policy allows) can best empower the teams to run a super-efficient OKR program.

  • For detailed instructions on enabling integrations, see the following article - Viva Goals Integrations Administration Overview | Microsoft Learn.

Install Viva Goals in Teams app

  • Target role: Global Administrator

  • Let users discover Viva Goals app on Microsoft Teams. Viva Goals is available as an app that can be added to MS Teams for users to easily view and manage OKRs right from the Teams app. Refer to this guide to configure and setup Viva Goals app on MS Teams.

Create a Viva Goals organization

By default, a company-wide organization is created for each new tenant. Viva Goals admins are the owners for this default organization. All licensed users have access to this organization when they log in, and any of them can join. The organization can easily be used for the purposes of planning the tenant's goals.

As a Global or Viva Goals administrator, you can create Viva Goals Organizations. If you would like to delegate the creation of Organization to specific users, then you can intimate the user to execute this step (provided they have enough permission).

Note

The permission to create organization on Viva Goals depends on the setting/permission granted in the previous step (Manage Org creation permission)

  1. Create a new organization for the teams to create, manage and track their OKRs.

  2. Select Create Organization, provide a name for and description of the organization.

  3. The user who is creating the Organization is assigned the role of “Organization Owner” for the created organization. Learn more about roles in Viva Goals.

  4. Choose who can join the organization from the organization's admin page:

    1. Anyone in tenant: Choose this option if there are no restrictions who in the tenant can join the organization and view or manage OKRs and initiatives.
    2. Restricted: Choose this option if you want to require users to be manually added to organizations before they can start viewing or managing OKRs and initiatives.

  5. Invite relevant licensed users who will be required to set up this organization and their OKRs. Viva Goals support adding individual members and user groups to the Organization. Learn more about inviting users.

Assign more organization owners

  1. It's a best practice to assign at least two owners to an organization, which prevents dependency and bottlenecks to perform super user activities at the organization level.
  2. To create a new organization owner, Go to Admin > Users, select the user, and select Actions (...) > Make Owner.
  3. If the intended user isn't already invited to the organization, invite the user, then make them an owner.

Configure your Viva Goals organization

Target role(s): Organization administrator

Navigate to admin page

  • You can manage the properties of an organization on the Admin page. Select Admin on the left navigation bar to view and manage the organization-level settings.

  • Learn more about the admin dashboard.

Configure the type of org (Restricted/Public)

As an organization owner, you can configure your Viva Goals organization from the admin dashboard.

You can manage the properties of an organization from the Admin page. Select Admin on the left navigation bar to view and manage organization-level settings.

Configure integrations

  1. Navigate to Admin > Integrations
  2. View available integrations
  3. Select Enable to activate and set up a connection for a specific integration that you want. Follow the on-screen setup steps.
  4. Viva Goals integrations overview

Manage OKR time periods

To manage OKR time periods, visit: Manage OKR time periods

Configure usage of initiatives

  • Initiatives help you keep track the work your organization is executing to achieve your objectives and key results (OKRs). Like key results, initiatives can also be created under objectives and under other key results in Viva Goals, depending on which outcome they help to achieve.

  • Some organizations may not want to use initiatives and only stick with objectives and key results for simplicity and for other business reasons.

  • To enable or disable initiatives in your Viva Goals organization, go to Admin -> OKR Model Configuration, under initiatives – choose to enable or disable.

Configure OKR model

To configure your OKR model, visit: Configure your OKR model in Viva Goals

Manage OKR creation permissions

To manage your OKR creation permissions, visit: Configure OKR create permissions

Configure notification & Check-in rhythm

To configure your notifications and check-in rhythms, visit: Check-in reminders and notifications.

Team creation permission

A Team in Viva Goals is a group of users working towards a common set of team OKRs. The Team OKRs would directly or indirectly align to the organization OKRs. Learn more about Viva Goals Teams..

Administrators of the organization can control the team creation permission as follows:

  1. Select Owner from the left side panel.
  2. Under the Settings tab, scroll down to find Team Creation and choose one or more of the following:
    1. Any Regular user: Allow any regular member of the organization to create teams (This is the default selection).
    2. Team Owners: Team creation is allowed for team owners.
    3. Custom: Chosen users have permission to create teams.

Create or edit teams

Viva Goals supports multiple levels of hierarchy, from department level down to individual teams and functional units. To achieve this setup, you can use the teams and sub teams functionality.

Once the team is created, add team owners to the team who would be responsible to manage the team and its members.

Configure Viva Goals team(s)

Target role(s): Team Owner (primary).

Note

Organization owners have all the permissions of a team owner but usually do not configure the teams. The owner of a team is responsible for configuring and managing the team settings to help users manage team level OKRs and initiatives. More on team owners.

Manage team members

Adding team members to a team & promoting a member as an owner.

Team level OKR creation permission

Owners of a team can restrict the OKR and initiative creation permission by following steps:

  1. Navigate to the Team and select on the button with three dots (…) on the top right corner. Choose Team Settings
  2. Under the heading Who can create OKRs or Initiatives for this team? Choose one of the following:

    1. Anyone in <Organization_name>: This option is the default permission for a Viva Goals Team. This allows any valid user of the Viva Goals organization to create OKRs or initiatives within the team.

      Note

      Users need not be a member of the team to create OKRs or initiatives

    2. Only team owner: This option restricts the OKR or initiatives creation permission only to the owners of the team. Any other user of the organization or team can't create OKRs or initiatives if this option is selected.

    3. Specific people:

      1. All members of this team:

        1. Along with team owner, all members of the team can create OKRs or initiatives.

        Note

        Users should be part of the team to let them create OKR or initiative. Know more on how to add users to a team.

      2. Custom:

        1. Along with team owners, select individuals to assign permission to create OKRs or initiatives.
        2. Start typing the names of the users in the Add people text box and select the user from the list populated (the system would prompt if the user need to be invited to the organization if the entered user isn't found already).
        3. NOTE: The users need not be part of the team, but they need to be part of the organization.

Team level check-in rhythm

Check-in reminder schedule can be tweaked for individual teams and, by default, the schedule set at the Viva Goals organization is applied for the teams.

  1. Navigate to the Team.
  2. Select on the button with three dots (…) on the top right corner.
  3. Choose Team Settings.
  4. Under Check-in Rhythm section, select on Change schedule.
  5. Choose the interval (every week/two weeks/three weeks/month) and the corresponding day(s) and time on which the reminders should be sent.
  6. Just below the interval selection, you can find the updated details about the reminder.
  7. Select Change to update the next check-in reminder date if needed.
  8. You can also exempt certain OKRs and Initiatives created within specific number of days (From current date) from the next check-in reminder date to avoid sending the reminder too early. Select on the check box next to Don't include OKRs & Initiatives updated within the last... - Choose the number of days from the drop-down.
  9. Select Save