Storyline and stories in Viva Engage + Yammer: Comparing to consumer social media platforms
Help me explain storyline & stories to people familiar with LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok
FAQ: Are storyline and stories like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok?
Today a customer asked, as many often do, how to understand storyline and stories (or should we say “storylines, posts and stories”?) in relationship to LinkedIn, Facebook, Insta, TikTok and other consumer media. If you’re not already familiar with the fundamentals of storylines, posts and stories, read my fundamentals article first.
Explaining storyline with social media comparisons
I often give customers a shorthand description of storyline as LinkedIn inside your organization”. What you share reaches your followers and coworkers across your company. You can share and discuss internal activity that would not be appropriate to share on public platforms, and you can build relationships that foster connectedness, professional development, and career advancement.
A more detailed explanation relies on one’s understanding and history with sharing and self-expression in consumer social media. Concepts of storyline, posts, and stories exist in various forms across a number of social platforms. Let me start with several snackable comparisons to social media constructs:
Same: Your storyline is conceptually equivalent to your LinkedIn activity feed or your Facebook timeline, your “Insta” or your “TikToks”. It’s a place where you share stuff.
Same: You share with stories and posts. Stories are media-centric posts—short videos or photos, very similar to stories, reels, and TikToks.
Different: Some social platforms limit you to one or two formats for sharing: you can’t share posts on Insta or TikTok, and you can’t share photos on TikTok. On Yammer and Viva Engage, a bit more like Facebook, you can share posts and stories, and stories can be a short video (up to 3 minutes in public preview) or a photo.
Different: This is a tool for sharing and self-expression in the workplace. Thus, the next section of this article…
Business and technical differences
The types of content and conversations shared on storylines in the workplace can be quite different.
There is no one “standard” for sharing posts and media across consumer social platforms, so I’ll leave you to compare to your platforms of choice, but these are relatively unique business and technical considerations for storylines, posts and stories in Viva Engage and Yammer:
Storyline is designed to provide a frictionless way to connect people, knowledge & expertise, experience and perspectives across an organization through serendipitous discovery of content & coworkers; to foster connectedness; and to build relationships that support productivity, innovation, professional development, and career advancement.
Your storyline is the expression of your persona at work. It’s where you can share updates, knowledge & perspectives, and express yourself in the context of your workplace.
The culture and policies of your organization should shape what you choose to share and showcase.
Therefor what people share on storyline tends toward professional and work-oriented updates—more than you would see on most consumer social platforms. However, we see a lot of sharing of people sharing interests, passions and activities.
Customers report they feel excited and fulfilled when they learn more about their coworkers. Storyline is proving it can be a powerful tool for helping people connect as human beings at work. Connectedness helps people find belonging, appreciate diversity, and increase empathy. We anticipate that, over time, we will be able to provide data that links these personal connections to increases in productivity, innovation, and retention—concepts that are already well supported by research into related solutions for engagement and wellbeing.
In a future article, I’ll share a list of specific ideas of what people can share on their storyline.
Anyone in the organization can visit your storyline and follow you. And when you follow someone, their posts and stories will be prioritized in your feeds and carousels. You can also receive notifications when they post.
Notifications tip: you can manage notifications you receive from one person from their storyline. You can manage notifications you receive from everyone you follow from your own storyline—click Following. And soon you’ll be able to manage notifications you receive from the notifications themselves.
Content you share is visible to everyone in your organization. Anyone can visit to learn more about you and will see your posts and stories.
While your followers will see your content higher in their feeds, your posts and stories can be suggested to anyone based on numerous signals including who follows you, who you follow, and who engages with your content.
There is not a way to “restrict” who can see your storyline or content.
Content does not disappear from your storyline. When you make the effort to share an update, experience, or perspective, it stays on your storyline until (if and when) you choose to delete it.
Our goal is not to drive people to consume content every day—it’s to capture and share knowledge and connect people. Of course, posts and stories will eventually disappear from feeds and carousels in “discovery” experiences like the Home feed as relevance decreases over time and with less engagement. Stories are removed from the discovery carousels after 30 days. But posts and stories do remain on your storyline.
Your organization can govern storyline with a number of controls for
Enablement: storyline can be turned on or off for the organization
Monitoring: the Storylines page has an “All” view that allows anyone to see all storyline activity, and Microsoft Purview Communications Compliance applies AI to identify potential harassment, bullying, or violation of policy.
Moderation and response: any user can report a conversation that appears to violate policies and standards, and Microsoft Purview Communications Compliance can automatically create incidents to orchestrate response.
Security, privacy and compliance: when you are in Native Mode, content can be governed with information policies and ediscovery.
Hopefully this comparison of storyline and stories in Viva Engage + Yammer to consumer social media platforms helps you understand the features and explain them to people familiar with LinkedIn, Facebook, Insta, TikTok and the like.
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