Yammer is Engaged! Get to know Viva Engage in Microsoft 365
Today we announced that we will evolve Yammer's web, mobile and Outlook applications to unify our experiences under the Viva Engage brand
FAQ: What is Viva Engage, and what can I do with it in Microsoft 365 (at no extra cost)? What is the plan for rebranding Yammer to Viva Engage?
Viva Engage brings people together across the organization to connect with leaders and coworkers, find answers to questions, share their unique story, and find belonging at work. Today, we announced plans to unify our experiences under the Viva Engage banner by renaming our remaining Yammer applications and integrations.
This article will (re-)introduce Viva Engage and the capabilities and scenarios that are available to Microsoft 365 customers at no additional cost. You can learn more about new features for Microsoft Viva customers that we released today.
Viva Engage in Microsoft 365
Remote and hybrid work have made building and maintaining connections across working groups and business silos extremely challenging. In our Work Trends Index research, 43% of leaders identified building relationships at work as the number one challenge of hybrid work. Employees hired since the beginning of the pandemic are less likely to feel included (64%), and report weaker relationships with their team (51%)
Viva Engage is the application in Microsoft 365 designed to address these challenges by connecting people across the organization to enable community building, knowledge sharing, employee engagement and communications at scale.
For those unfamiliar with Viva Engage (and Yammer) in Microsoft 365, you can:
CONNECT WITH PEOPLE AND CONVERSATIONS: Viva Engage lets you tap into the heartbeat of your organization, with a Home feed personalized by AI to surface relevant conversations and connections from across your organization.
BUILD COMMUNITY: Communities connect people across working groups and business silos to foster inclusion and belonging, to support business initiatives that span the organization, and to enable communications and engagement at scale. Communities support myriad scenarios including:
diversity and allyship
employee interests and activities
onboarding and professional development
knowledge sharing and Q&A
shared services
business and cultural initiatives
HOST COMPANY-WIDE VIRTUAL EVENTS: Leaders, communicators, and employees can come together for company-wide live events featuring live and on-demand video, open discussion and Q&A. Share vision, align people and spark engagement.
SHARE FROM YOUR STORYLINE: Storyline enables leaders to share thoughts & vision with their own voice. And everyone has a place to share updates and knowledge, celebrate milestones and showcase work. Share with rich posts, videos and photos. Learn more about storyline in Viva Engage.
The core capabilities of these features—the feed, communities, events, and storylines—are available to most Microsoft 365 commercial customers at no additional cost. They’re available in Viva Engage and Yammer apps, and are integrated into Teams, Outlook, SharePoint and Microsoft Viva. And they’re built on the foundation of Microsoft 365, which delivers enterprise-grade security, privacy, compliance and manageability.
Rebranding Yammer to Viva Engage
Customers have made it clear that the scenarios Yammer delivers—community building, knowledge sharing, leadership engagement and employee communications—are critical to employee experience. We’re thrilled to bring Yammer’s superpowers to Microsoft Viva, our employee experience platform.
Last year, we introduced the Viva Engage app in Microsoft Teams—an evolution of the Yammer-powered Communities app. The Viva Engage app can be added to Teams by any user or deployed to the organization from the Teams admin center.
This year, we will rename and rebrand remaining Yammer experiences—our mobile and Outlook apps this spring (target: March) and our web application later this year. Learn more about our journey to rebrand Yammer to Viva Engage.
Hopefully this gives you enough to understand and explain Viva Engage to your organization and end users. I plan to share more perspectives on how to do so, in future articles. And to share learnings about how our customers are using these capabilities to improve communication, engagement, and connectedness.
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