Understand Viva apps

4 minutes

To understand when and where to incorporate a certain Viva app, let’s first look at how each individual Microsoft Viva app empowers employees in its focused experience area. We'll introduce each Viva app in the following order of the four areas:

Connection (Viva Connections and Viva Engage)
Insight (Viva Insights)
Purpose (Viva Goals)
Growth (Viva Learning and Viva Topics)

Connection

Viva Connections

First, let’s look at Viva Connections. One of the most pressing needs of hybrid working is to keep people informed, connected, and engaged. Viva Connections and Viva Engage work together to connect and inform people with their own unique features. Let’s first look at how Viva Connections works:

Viva Connections is positioned as the "home" for Microsoft Viva. It's the gateway in Microsoft Teams for employees to catch up on news and conversations and access tools that they need to succeed. Viva Connections is also your hub for other Viva apps and Microsoft 365 integrations. It provides employees with personalized information by curating from SharePoint sites and pages, Viva Engage discussions, and Stream, based on the employee's Microsoft Entra group and their personal preferences.

You can access and pin Viva Connections from within Microsoft Teams. Once opened, the Viva Connections homepage shows three components: the Dashboard, Feed, and Resources:

The Dashboard allows you to use cards to streamline employees' daily work, such as clocking-in-out, assigning shifts and scheduling work, reporting time and absence, approving expense and reimbursement, and managing customer tickets. You can customize your Dashboard cards by directly adding out-of-box Dashboard cards, including cards to other Viva experiences, or you can develop your own cards using the Dashboard extensibility tool.
The Feed allows you to deliver personalized content, such as news and announcements directly to the employees within Microsoft Teams.
Use the Resources section to provide links to helpful forms, webpages, tools, and other destinations that are important to your organization.

The Viva Connections homepage also shows tabs where you can access other Viva apps on top of its homepage.

Visit the documentation pages for Viva Connections for technical details on how to plan, set up, and adopt Viva Connections. You can also take self-paced training to learn more about how to get started with Viva Connections, or to learn how to extend Viva Connections with SFPx and other tools.

Viva Engage

Viva Connections and Viva Engage both connect and inform people, but each has a different role. Viva Connections is the “home” for Microsoft Viva. It acts as the gateway to your employee experience. It brings curated personalized information and resources to each employee. Viva Engage powers the social layer of Microsoft Viva and Microsoft 365. Viva Engage connects you with leaders, colleagues, and communities. It encourages people to start conversations, share ideas, and build relationships.

The following screenshot shows Viva Engage in Microsoft Teams.

You can access Viva Engage directly from Teams apps, or from within Viva Connections. You can use Viva Engage to:

Foster social connections across the organization.
Improve and encourage employee participation in social and resource groups.
Enable your employees to find answers to specific questions from people outside of the teams in a more social setting.

Learn the technical steps on how to set up Viva Engage so that your organization can foster engagement and build communities.

Viva Connections and Viva Engage

Viva Connections and Viva Engage both empower employees by providing information, connection, and engagement but they each have their own strengths. Look at the table below for a quick summary of their shared features and unique strengths.

Viva Connections only	Shared	Viva Engage only
- Digital tool set - Personalized news feed - Easy access to resources	- Organizational news - Engagement - Connection	- Leadership profiles - Stories - Networking/social

You can maximize the results of connecting employees by combining Connections and Engage together. In unit 4, you'll see an example of how Lamna Healthcare combines the strengths of Viva Connections and Viva Engage to inform, include, and inspire employees in action.

Insight

Viva Insights

Viva Insights provides data-driven insights and targeted recommendations to foster productivity and wellbeing. With Viva Insights, your organization can gather and access information like:

Personal Insights that are visible only to each employee. Personal Insights includes things like briefing emails in Outlook or information on their personal Viva Insights app in Teams or on the web. This way, people across the organization can learn more about how they work personally, and get recommendations to protect their time, focus, and productivity.
Teamwork habits that provide a better understanding of how you work in teams, including your team meeting habits, impact on others' quiet hours, and whether you're getting enough one-on-one time with teammates.
Organizational trends enable leadership and senior managers to see how their working culture might be affecting the overall well-being and work productivity of their people.

The following screenshot shows organizational trends in Viva Insights.

You can access Viva Insights either from the homepage of Viva Connections or open it directly as an app in Teams. You can use Viva Insights to:

Understand the work patterns of your people on an individual level, at the team level, or the wider organization.
Discover measures to protect employee well-being and take action.
Enable your organization's decision-makers to handle issues concerning the company's work culture and resilience.

Visit the documentation for Viva Insights to learn technical details on how to set up Viva Insights. Take the self-paced training to learn how to analyze your Microsoft 365 workplace data using Microsoft Viva Insights.

Purpose

Viva Goals

Viva Goals creates a clear structure to align people's work to the team's or organization's goals. You can set, track, and manage goals for your organization, and align your teams and individuals to those goals at a scale. To enable this, Viva Goals introduces the concept of objectives and key results (OKR) framework:

Your organization can create objectives and key results at the organizational level. Specific teams will then create objectives and key results at the team level that are derived from and support the organizational objectives. As the team objectives progress, they contribute to the overall progression of their associated higher-level organizational objectives. You may also choose whether individuals may set up their OKRs.

The framework helps align and support a productive working culture that is focused on transparent business outcomes. This framework will enable your organization to shift its focus to the results of daily work.

You can access Viva Goals directly from Teams apps. You can use Viva Goals to:

Create a clear understanding and view of how everyone's work fits into the greater business.
Enable your teams to manage and keep track of the progress of their own goals and empower them to find their approach to support the organization-wide goals

Learn more about the technical steps on how to set up Viva Goals and empower your organization to align everyone's work through goals and objectives. You can also learn OKR essentials, how to write effective OKRs with Viva Goals, and how to create, track, and close your OKRs with Viva Goals.

Growth

Viva Learning

Both Viva Learning and Viva Topics support learning and growth for employees in your organization. Viva Learning aggregates and curates learning content, such as courses, videos, eBooks, and audio from various sources and platforms. You can discover, consume, share, and recommend learning content all in one place within Microsoft Teams.

You have access to a selected set of courses from LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn, and Microsoft 365 Training by default. In addition, your organization can add content from third-party content providers, your organization’s SharePoint folders, and supported Learning Management Systems.

The people in your organization can discover learning content that helps them onboard to a new job, learn new knowledge skills, or renew their existing knowledge and skills. They can build their learning community by either building a Learning tab in their Teams channel, or directly sharing learning in Teams chat.

Everyone can recommend content to others within Viva Learning and then see their updated learning progress under the “Manage” tab of Viva Learning. The recommendation feature is a great tool for managers to recommend learning to their team members and help them grow their technical and professional skills.

Refer to the Introduction to Microsoft Viva Learning to learn how to set up Viva Learning. You can also take the self-paced training to learn how to enable your organization to create and track learning across your organization from various learning content sources.

Viva Topics

Viva Learning and Viva Topics support learning and growth for employees in different ways. While Viva Learning serves as your gateway to aggregate formal learning content from multiple sources, Viva Topics curates information using AI on topics in your organization and provides it when you need it. The topics can be about the following types:

Project
Event
Organization
Location
Product
Creative work
Field of study

As you read content stored in Microsoft 365, topics will be highlighted inline. When you hover over the topic name, you’ll see more information shown in a topic card.

For instance, when new employees join the organization, it’s challenging to understand various terms and acronyms used by the organization. New employees often have trouble finding project files and people to contact for questions and information. Viva Topics can automatically collect and provide access to information in this way so that employees can engage with their work earlier and more efficiently.

You can access the Microsoft Viva Topic Center by opening the Viva Topics app directly from Teams. However, AI curated Topics are displayed to you in many places, including:

You can use Viva Topics to:

Provide transparent, complete, and up-to-date information to people when they need it
Break information silos
Maintain a centralized location for all information related to a topic

Use the documentation for Viva Topics, to learn the technical steps on how to set up Viva Topics. You can also take the self-paced training to learn how to enable your organization to transform how your employees access information.

Viva Learning and Viva Topics

Like Viva Connections and Viva Engage, Viva Learning and Viva Topics both support employees learning and growth, but each has its own strengths. Look at the table below for a quick summary of their shared features and unique strengths.

Viva Learning only	Shared	Viva Topics only
- External learning resources - Tracked progress - Content curated by knowledge admins - Social learning	- Organization’s internal content - On demand learning and information - Content managed by knowledge managers/admins	- Inline content in Microsoft 365 apps - Content curated and updated real-time by AI

In unit 5, you'll see an example of how Lamna Healthcare combines the strengths of Viva Learning and Viva Topics to support the learning and growth of their employees in action.