Session by Dan Holme at our monthly #M365UGZA session: Everything you need to know about Viva Engage Viva Engage gives leaders and communicators powerful new tools to reach and engage audiences. Send need-to-know announcements across channels. Humanize leadership with storyline. Listen to and learn from employees with ask-me-anything events. Spark participation with social campaigns. Measure and improve effectiveness with Copilot and analytics including audience sentiment. And bring it all together in leadership corner. Learn how to transform employee engagement, communications, and leadership effectiveness with Dan Holme, a product leader on the Viva Engage team.

1. Navigation

2. Transform leadership,
employee engagement & communications
with Viva Engage
Dan Holme
Product leader, Microsoft
LinkedIn  Substack
COMMUNICATOR SURVEY aka.ms/CommunicatorSurvey

3. Connect people across the organization
Viva Engage

4. Copyright
©
2021
43% of leaders say relationship-building is
greatest challenge with hybrid/remote work
and employees feel less included, have
weaker relationships with their team, and
at greater risk of attrition.
2022 Work Trend Index

5. Employee retention is higher for employees who use Engage in
their first 90 days on the job, especially for those contributing
77%
66%
55%
44%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700
Share
of
Employees
Retained
Days Since End of “Onboarding”
Employee Retention by Viva Engage usage in
First 90 Days
Wrote
Reacted
Viewed
No Activity
+33%
More Retained
When controlling for org size, country, and industry, we find that a small increase
in the share of an org using Engage (10 percentage point) corresponds to a
1.1 percentage point increase in overall employee retention

6. more likely to report
that their company
does a good job
communicating
more likely to report
they feel confident
in their senior
leadership team
more likely to report
that they feel a sense
of belonging at work
Engaged
employees
are…
Source: Work Trend Index Special Report

7. 2022 Portfolio Returns Comparison
Top 10% highest vs lowest scoring companies (of 2022) vs S&P 500
Portfolio return on engagement
22 Jan 22 Mar 22 May 22 Jul 22 Sep 22 Nov 23 Jan
$7K
$8K
$9K
$10K
S&P 500
-15%
-20%
-35%
Portfolio
Value
Most engaged
Least engaged

8. Engagement activates
the potential of your people
into performance
toward your purpose
Dan Holme, Microsoft

9. Connect people across the organization
Viva Engage
Community. Connection. Communications. Culture. Crowdsourcing.

10. Create communities that support
diversity initiatives, onboarding, job
roles, shared services and
employee resource groups
Give employees a place to
contribute their best selves, build
professional networks and find
belonging at work
Enable leaders and
communicators to reach and
engage employees at scale, share
vision, shape culture, manage
change and spark dialogue
Crowdsource knowledge, answers
and ideas across working groups
to harness expertise, amplify best
practices and accelerate innovation
Connect people across the organization
Viva Engage
Leadership & Communications
Meet users where they are across web, desktop & mobile
Outlook  Teams  Viva Engage  Viva Connections  SharePoint  Intranet  Custom Apps  Viva
Topics

11. Navigation

12. Ensure people receive important information in the flow of their work

14. All Company community
Renamed and rebranded
Delegates can create posts
on behalf of others
Easy to add images &
video to increase
engagement
Announcements reach
everyone in the
organization
Restricted so only
communicators can post

15. Teams users receive the
announcement in Activity
Outlook users receive the
announcement in Inbox
Content renders richly
including images & video
Audience engagement
does not generate more
emails
Audience can engage with
reactions & replies

17. Create an
announcement
Select notification
channels
Select audience

18. Teams users receive the
announcement in Activity
Outlook users receive the
announcement in Inbox
Content renders richly
including images & video
Audience engagement
does not generate more
emails
Audience can engage with
reactions & replies

19. More: Announcements

20. Share news with your audience across apps

21. Create channels and manage audiences
USING COMMUNITIES AND STORYLINES
All Company community
Configuration
Enabled by default
Rename & rebrand to org identity
Restrict posting
Audience (enforced)
Includes everyone in
organization
Targeted communities
Configuration
Create a community
Mark as official
Restrict if only for comms
Audience (opt-in or enforced)
Audience is members of the
community (an M365 group)
Leader storylines
Configuration
Add leaders
Add audiences
Assign delegates
Audience (opt-in or enforced)
Audiences defined using existing
groups: email-enabled or M365

22. More: Communities as communications channels

23. More: Storylines as communications channels
Storylines
Communicate & engage at scale
Leaders & audiences
Define leaders’ reach
Delegates
Empower communicators

24. Multichannel communications
Outlook
Posts, announcements & digests in your inbox
Microsoft Teams
Posts and announcements in your Activity feed
Viva Engage
Immersive hero experience on web and mobile
Integrated app in Outlook & Teams
Microsoft Viva
Viva Engage, Viva Connections, Viva Topics
SharePoint, intranet & custom apps
Integrate Engage with web parts and embed
Microsoft Feed
Outlook, microsoft365.com, Edge new tab page

25. Leverage announcements and posts
You can balance reach and urgency to reduce notification overload
Announcements URGENT: 1-4 HOURS
Sent from author to audience across apps:
Outlook, Teams and Viva Engage as selected by author
Sent to followers in their preferred apps
Prioritized in feeds to audience & followers
Prioritized in email digests to audience & followers
Posts NON-URGENT: 1-2 DAYS
Prioritized in feeds to audience & followers
Prioritized in email digests to audience & followers
Sent to followers in their preferred apps

26. Reach beyond your target audience
When you share through a storyline or public community,
you’ll reach people beyond your target audience through
Feeds
Viva Engage: home feed and leadership corner
Viva Connections feed
Microsoft feed: Outlook, microsoft365.com, Edge
Intranet: company feed or Viva Engage web parts
Digests
Relevant posts and announcements reach people
in daily and weekly digests
Recommendations
Advanced AI personalizes feeds & digests
Factors include post engagement & social distance

27. Share news with your audience across apps
When you communicate from Viva Engage, your
messages reach your target audience across
applications—Outlook, Teams, Viva and more.
Your audience does not have to adopt a new
destination—your comms come to them.
Only Viva Engage gives you a spectrum of
delivery options so you can balance reach and
urgency with reducing notification overload.
And only Viva Engage enables you to reach
beyond your audience. Through
recommendations in feeds and digests, your
messages can reach people who might find your
content valuable.

28. Drive impact with compelling content that inspires attention

29. Create effective, engaging communications

30. Anatomy of effective communications
KISS: Keep It Short and Sweet
Video and images
Highlight relevance
Explicitly encourage
engagement
Personal voice
Clear CTAs

31. Leverage advanced analytics and AI to scale your impact

32. Measure and improve
effectiveness
Actionable, privacy-protected metrics
give you insights into your personal
effectiveness, and your audience's
aggregated engagement, topics &
sentiment.
Empower leaders to know where they
can engage with greatest impact.
Leverage insights with Copilot to spark
ideas and craft more effective
communications.
Advanced analytics

33. Advanced analytics
Network Audience Personal Conversation

34. Conversation insights
MEASURE YOUR
EFFECTIVENESS
Report reach including number of views,
and the scope of the audience.
Measure engagement to understand how
many people engaged with your post
through comments and reactions.
Gauge sentiment and themes of
comments.
And see how people amplify conversations
by re-sharing, featuring or pinning the
conversation.
Conversation insights for community posts & announcements
Conversation insights for storyline and advanced
analytics
Understand how people are
engaging with your post
Gauge sentiment in
replies and reactions
View activity per channel

35. Personal analytics
MEASURE YOUR
EFFECTIVENESS
Understand the reach and engagement
you’re driving in Viva Engage including:
Reach, views, reactions and replies
Followers and audiences
Engagement rate across viewers,
followers and audiences
Number of people you’ve replied to
Personal analytics for storyline

36. Audience & sentiment analysis
LISTEN TO AND UNDERSTAND YOUR
AUDIENCE
Leverage Microsoft AI and machine
learning to better understand and
engage with your audience.
Leaders and their delegates can
identify top themes and conversations.
Identify opportunities to create clarity
and improve outcomes by engaging in
discussions that matter to employees.
Sentiment analysis surfaces privacy-
protected insights across public
conversations and can be enabled or
disabled by admins.
Audience analytics

37. Network analytics
Analytics from across your Viva
Engage network help you measure
adoption, understand how employees
are interacting with each other, and
gauge which platforms are driving
engagement.
Sentiment and theme analysis show
trends and spotlight conversations that
are most associated with particular
themes or sentiment.
You can also explore engagement
patterns to identify opportunities to
support or scale success.
Network analytics

38. Campaign Analytics
Measure and improve engagement
on social campaigns with insights
including
Reach, views and reactions
Active contribution (posts &
replies)
Success metrics and progress
Trends in campaign participation
Reach is the total number of ALL engagements
including views, reactions, replies and posts.
Campaign analytics

39. Community Insights
Measure community growth including new
member creation, active people, their
location and department.
Analyze and foster engagement with
insights into how people engaged with
conversations, comments, reactions,
questions, answers, live events and more.
Recognize catalysts and trends including
top conversations, questions, active
contributors, champions and trends to
measure event attendance, and
knowledge dissemination.
Export data for deeper analysis
Community insights

40. Cascade communications and foster connectedness

41. What should leaders share
on their storylines?
Share important updates as announcements
Amplify business messaging
Provide perspective on cultural themes
Celebrate accomplishments and promotions
Recap outcomes and learnings from a meeting or event
Discuss a topic you’re researching
Share external news about your company, customers or industry
Create an article or short video sharing your weekly ‘top of mind’

42. Share video, images or files
Record a weekly short video sharing your
‘top of mind’
Share a behind-the-scenes look at an
event or customer visit
Answer a commonly asked question
Share personal insights about your career
Post a presentation recording or slide deck
from a conference or milestone meeting
Record a how-to technical tip by recording
your screen
Share photos and tag team members
when you are together, in person or
virtually

43. Leadership corner
A hub for employees to connect and
engage with leaders
Personalized for each employee based
on audiences & following
Aggregated feed of announcements,
posts, images & videos, conversations
and events from leaders
Employees can stay up-to-date with
leadership top-of-mind
Leaders and employees can engage in
two-way dialogue
Activity in official
campaigns
Personalized
view of leaders
Announcements and
posts from leaders
Engage with
leaders: AMAs
Recommended
leaders
Leaders’
communities
Leadership corner

44. Effective leadership is as easy as 1-2-3
1 POST 2 REPLIES 3 REACTIONS

45. Leader engagement drives employee engagement
7.6
7.8
8
8.2
8.4
8.6
8.8
9
9.2
9.4
Week Month
Pre Post
Increase in Employees’ Daily Active Engagements
After Leader Interaction
+9%
+6%
Leader interactions have a positive impact on
downstream engagement. A week after receiving a
reply from a leader, daily active engagements were
up +6%.
A month after, their daily active engagements were
up an average of 9%.

46. Shape culture and
navigate change
Share vision and values, listen and respond at scale

47. Ask-me-anything
events (AMAs)
Create clarity & respond to
questions and concerns by
engaging people for a period of
time around one or more topics.
Asynchronous Q&A events
feature moderation, question
upvoting and optional
anonymous submission.
New: Multiple organizers and
hosts, AMA analytics,
community AMAs, and AMAs
across multiple tenants.
Q&A moderation
Question upvoting
Anonymous
submission
AMA event summary
Ask-me-anything events (AMAs)

48. Teams Q&A
Make your meetings
interactive with Teams Q&A.
Organizers can crowdsource
questions, drive meaningful
discussions, and elevate the
important ones for presenters
to answer live.
Moderate
Reply
Ask

49. Live events
Host real-time virtual
broadcasts with live and on-
demand video, open
discussion and Q&A.
Live event insights help you
measure events’ impact and
success.
And event conversations
become part of the community,
fostering ongoing dialogue and
engagement.

50. Live event insights
Monitor attendance
See how many people attended the
event, what portions were most
attended, average watch time and more
– to understand who’s watching and
tailor content more effectively.
Measure engagement
See how many conversations,
comments, questions, answers,
reactions were generated through the
event and recognize and amplify the
content that people are interested in
engaging with.
Recognize trends
Compare reach, attendance and
engagement across all your events to
help you understand which types of
content resonate with your audience the
most.

51. Spark participation and
contribution
Activate people to lean in toward shared objectives

52. Social
#campaigns
Rally people around themes and
initiatives with #tag campaigns
that encourage contribution from
across the organization.
New campaign pages
aggregates posts and
showcases campaign goals.
Leaders can sponsor campaigns
to inspire participation.
Campaign page
#tag
Executive sponsors
Resources
Campaign insights
Goal tracking
Campaign feed
Social #campaigns

54. Modernize communications
Reimagine reach
Create channels for leaders, organizational entities & personas
Audience management is flexible and dynamic
Multichannel communications reaches people across apps
Open communications extend reach beyond the target audience
Communicate more, interrupt less
Use announcements sparingly for the most urgent comms
Use posts to share more frequently, without notifications
Let feeds and digests help people “catch up”
Coming soon: Progressive notifications reduce noise
Create communications that engage people
Keep it short & simple
Tell your story with video and images: more casual, less “produced”
Explicitly encourage engagement
Amplify & engage: the new “cascade”
Top-level leaders & channels initiate business & cultural messaging
Leaders & managers amplify the message, add perspective &
relevance
Directly engage people with conversations & campaigns
Engage leaders
Engage with employees: share, react, reply
Humanize leaders: Share a mix of professional and personal content
Spark engagement and create clarity with AMAs & events
Measure and improve
Analyze individual communications and trends over time
Listen to your audience and understand what matters to them
Leverage analytics and AI to improve your effectiveness

56. Next steps
VIVA ENGAGE Deploy and pin the app in Microsoft Teams
COMMS CHANNELS Brand & configure All Company, public & private communities
COMMUNICATIONS Leverage multi-channel reach for announcements and engagement
STORYLINE Share updates, experiences, vision & perspectives with posts & stories
BUILD COMMUNITIES Diversity & interests, knowledge, onboarding & roles, shared services
LEADERS & AUDIENCES Identify leaders and their audiences, often their existing email DLs
CAMPAIGNS Activate participation in social campaigns around objectives & initiatives
AMAs & EVENTS Host events to spark engagement, create clarity & respond to employees
KNOWLEDGE Target opportunities for harnessing knowledge, answers & expertise

57. Sign up for a Viva Engage premium trial
⭐ Access to all premium features for 60
days
⭐ Assign leaders and audiences, run
AMAs, run campaigns, and measure
activity with new advanced analytics
📲Contact your Microsoft account team for
more information
https://aka.ms/VivaEngage/PremiumTrial

58. Resources
COMMUNICATOR SURVEY aka.ms/CommunicatorSurvey
PREMIUM TRIAL aka.ms/VivaEngage/PremiumTrial
RESOURCE HUB aka.ms/VivaEngage/Resources
ROADMAP aka.ms/VivaEngage/Roadmap
BLOG & EVENTS aka.ms/VivaEngage/Blog
COMMUNITY aka.ms/VivaEngage/Community
FEEDBACK aka.ms/VivaEngage/SubmitFeedback
CUSTOMERS aka.ms/VivaEngage/Blog/CustomerFestival2021
aka.ms/VivaEngage/Blog/CustomerFestival2022
FAST TRACK aka.ms/M365RFA
JOIN Customer Community snguyen@microsoft.com
SIGN UP aka.ms/VivaEngage/Research
FOLLOW @MicrosoftViva on X
Dan Holme on LinkedIn & Substack

59. Dan Holme
@danholme

61. Corporate
communicators role
Viva Engage admins can assign
corporate communicators.
Corporate communicators can
assign leaders, configure
audiences, and manage
campaigns.
Corporate communicators’ tasks

62. Leader storylines
Empower leaders with a place to
communicate, listen and engage
employees
Manage your communications team
(delegates) and audience
Share updates and amplify culture with posts
that appear in feeds and digests
Use video and images to create more
engaging communications
Ensure need-to-know announcements reach
your audience in Teams, Outlook and Viva
Listen and respond to questions, and create
clarity with ask-me-anything events (AMAs)
Measure and improve impact with analytics for
leaders including sentiment and themes.
Manage delegates &
audience
Ask me anything
(AMA) events
Analytics
Announcements to
audience
Posts
Storyline announcements, AMAs & analytics
Video & images

63. Identify leaders
and define
audiences
Enable leaders to reach and engage
their audience.
Audiences can include existing
groups, including distribution,
security and Microsoft 365 groups
including teams & communities.
Changes to groups automatically
keep audiences up-to-date.
Leaders require Viva license to unlock their superpowers
Designate leaders
in Viva Engage
Leverage existing M365
and email-enabled groups
Organization-wide
audience
Define leader’s
audiences
Viva Engage admins
Corp comms
Leaders & delegates

64. Assign delegates
An author can allow delegates to
post on their behalf in communities
or, by granting storyline access, on
the author’s storyline.
Delegates can post and reply.
Delegate managers can also
assign delegates, view analytics,
and perform other tasks.
Allow delegates to post to storyline
Assign delegates who can post to communities
Configure delegation &
storyline access

65. Assign the role
Grant the delegate
storyline access
Select the delegate
Delegee (leader) only
Delegee (leader) or
delegate manager

66. Post as a delegate
From the Home tab or the
author’s storyline, a delegate
can choose to post on behalf of
the author.

67. Define communications channels & audiences

69. Personalized conversation
starters
Draft and revise content
Feedback & suggestions
You are in control of what
you post

70. Copilot in Viva Engage
Get inspired with personalized
conversation starters—suggestions for
posts you can make to engage in
communities, campaigns, and trending
discussions.
Copilot can help you hone the content and
tone of your message, and can even
make your post more fun by adding
emojis.
And Copilot can provide feedback and
suggestions to make your post more
effective, including questions your
audience might have about your post.

72. Richer formatting
Heading styles
Inline images & video
Cover photo
Looks great in
Outlook and Teams
Articles on storyline enable
microblogging

73. Articles
Create and share long form,
richly formatted content with
inline images and video.
Articles can include a cover
image, heading styles, code
blocks, quotes and divider lines.
Articles appear in the feed as a
preview and open in an
immersive reading experience.
Articles will also look great in
Outlook and Teams.
Create articles
View articles

76. Insert or record media
Add backgrounds,
text, annotations and
more
Record webcam
or screen
Trim & rearrange clips
Images & video
showcased in feeds
Immersive viewer to
engage with media

77. Record or upload directly from mobile apps
Upload a video or photo
or capture using your camera
Video and images are
showcased in the feed
Preview your post
and media

78. Video and images for leaders and communicators
For many communications scenarios,
video and images are a more effective
and engaging way to deliver your
message.
Posts with video and images enjoy almost
double the engagement.
And much of the workforce prefers
creating and consuming video and
images over text-centric communications.
Video conveys tone and authenticity.
Encourage leaders and communicators to
modernize communications with video.

79. Examples of video in Microsoft Digital
Satya’s year in review Catherine’s weekly update Frank praises & thanks team
View in Viva Engage
View in Viva Engage
View in Viva Engage