The real question is "why not?"
One of the newest employee focused cloud suites on the market, Microsoft Viva, is rapidly gaining the attention of teams and leaders who want to make a difference within their organization.
What is Microsoft Viva?
To put it simply, it's a suite of employee experience cloud apps designed to improve communications, increase employee engagement, improve productivity, and boost employee sentiment. All of those outcomes have the potential to reduce costs and improve margins. But it's much more than that when you open the hood and take a closer look.
Who is it for?
Microsoft Viva is so well designed that it has the potential to support and improve communication at every level of an organization of any size:
Employees
Executive leaders
Marketing
Communications
People teams
Project teams
Support teams
Frontline workers
Mobile workers
What are the apps in the Viva suite and what do they do?
Connections Viva Connections is the easiest of all the apps to introduce to your employees and allows you to take one of two approaches to serving an intranet:
Use the Viva Connections dashboard in combination with the news spotlight to create a lightweight resource portal and avoid setting up a SharePoint Online intranet portal
Serve your existing SharePoint Online intranet portal through Viva Connections in Teams to boost adoption and accessibility
The "secret" option would be to use them both and leverage their greatest strengths together
Engage Viva Engage is designed to improve engagement between employees and their leaders within communities and personal storylines. It can be added to Teams with ease. Many organizations will choose to use Viva Engage as their portal versus SharePoint Online because there is less design work involved. It's also perfect for improving new employee onboarding through live events and AMA sessions.
Add-on (paid) features include:
Answers - similar to a crowd-sourced Q&A site like Quora or Reddit but for employees and knowledge sharing
Leadership corner - a dedicated space for leaders to interact with employees and make announcements
Advanced Analytics - these analytics help leaders understand adoption rates and measure success
Amplify Viva Amplify allows marketing and communications teams to distribute news within the M365 ecosystem more quickly and consistently, all in one process through what’s called a “campaign”, versus sending an email, then posting in SharePoint, and then in Teams, one at a time. Posts can be scheduled and even go through an approval process, with a preview feature showing you what employees will see.
Learning Viva Learning is an LMS (learning management system) for Microsoft products and even includes LinkedIn learning courses, as long as you have the LinkedIn business license.
Note: The paid version of Viva Learning allows you to connect your existing LMS as a course provider inside of Microsoft Teams (limited selection)
Pulse Viva Pulse is an employee feedback survey tool. The benefit is that it ties into the analytics app in the suite called Viva Insights. This tool is especially valuable for post-project reviews.
Glint Viva Glint is an employee satisfaction tool, similar to Glassdoor. It also ties into Viva Insights, giving you a complete picture of employee sentiment and satisfaction.
Goals UPDATE: Since this article was published, Microsoft announced the retirement of Viva Goals on December 31, 2025.
Viva Goals is a goal setting tool that tracks and analyzes individual, team, project, and organization-wide goals.
Topics
UPDATE: Since this article was published, Microsoft announced the retirement of Viva Topics in January 2025.
Viva Topics is a topic organizer that spans the entire suite, including Viva Engage. It can be used to tag posts, leading to optimized understanding.
Insights Viva Insights is a workplace productivity analytics suite. If you want to know about your productivity statistics across teams or even as an individual, this tool would answer those questions. It continues to mature rapidly, especially with Copilot AI integration on the rise. And while the upfront cost may seem high, the return on the investment is quickly realized.
Does the Viva Suite integrate with other apps?
Yes, almost all of the Viva Suite apps integrate with Teams and can be pinned to the left-side dock and a few apps integrate seamlessly into Microsoft's productivity apps. For example, Viva Insights integrates itself into Outlook and Teams to track how much time is spent in each application. And as mentioned for Viva Learning, many other platforms can be integrated into specific areas of Viva, Teams and SharePoint Online. Third party apps like Workday, Confluence, Jira, and Salesforce all have options within M365.
Are the apps mobile-friendly?
Whenever any of the apps are pinned in Teams, they will be mobile friendly within the mobile Teams app (iOS and Android). Viva Engage has its own mobile app outside of Teams. It's highly likely that more apps will come but only time will tell. Teams mobile is a solid app for frontline workers because the Viva Suite is so integrative. And SharePoint Online has a good mobile app, as well.
How much does the Viva suite cost?
The pricing for the Viva suite varies depending on the tier you choose.
If you have an existing M365 enterprise plan, you likely already have access to the following apps in their "standard" version:
Connections
Engage
Learning
Insights (individual data only)
When you decide to upgrade to a paid bundle plan, here are your options:
Is my organization ready for a paid plan?
This is the perfect question to ask because sometimes the standard versions of the apps that come with your M365 enterprise subscription might be all you need to make the improvements you seek.
However, if you're tasked with maturing your organization to a more meaningful level of awareness, you'll need a more thorough understanding of:
What motivates your employees
Invisible pain points
Morale within and across teams
And productivity analytics
And for that to happen, you need heavy duty tools like Viva Glint and Viva Insights to give you that information.
What if I only want one or two of the apps from the suite?
These specific apps are available as individual plans:
Speaking from experience, I feel comfortable saying that Connections and Engage alone could make a huge difference at any organization. Even in their standard versions without the paid features, the value is noticeable if best practices are followed during planning and communication phases of implementation.
When you offer a bridge to your employees between each other and their leaders, or common resources for daily needs, they will use it. Employees want to be connected but also independent, and both Connections and Engage support those goals. And remote and frontline workers shouldn’t have to reach too far to find the resources they need when they have little time to spare.
Whether you're migrating away from Meta Workplace because they are retiring, consolidating into the Microsoft stack to save costs, or standing up a brand new M365 environment, the Viva Suite apps are worth exploring, especially if you want to create positive change within your organization.
If you're exploring the Viva Suite and have questions, I can help.
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