Viva Topics brings advanced content services solutions into your existing Microsoft 365 environment. If you are struggling with content or knowledge management, deploying Viva Topics could help your employee's experience for finding content and people. In this session we will go through what Viva Topics is, how it works, and how to effectively deploy it in your organization.

1. Deploying Viva Topics
Drew Madelung
drew.madelung@protiviti.com

3. Drew Madelung
Email : drew.madelung@protiviti.com
Twitter : @dmadelung
Website: drewmadelung.com
Associate Director – Cloud Applications

4. What is Viva?
Why do we want Topics?
How do Topics work?
How do I successfully deploy Topics?
Deploying Viva Topics
M365 Conference Winter 2022
Demos on Demos

5. People feel disconnected
Nearly 60% of people say they feel less connected to their
team after shifting to remote work.1
Burnout is a global problem
85% say wellbeing has declined and 56% say job demands
have increased.2
People spend about an hour per day
searching for or recreating information
Using multiple tools drives context switching, drains
productivity, and creates frustration.3
CEOs are concerned about talent and skills
79% of CEOs worldwide are concerned that a lack of essential skills in
their workforce is a barrier to future growth.4
1 Microsoft Work Trend Index: 2020 Annual Report
2 Jennifer Moss, Beyond Burned Out, Harvard Business Review, February 10, 2021
3 Spiceworks/Ziff Davis survey commissioned by Microsoft, 2021
4 PwC CEO Survey, 2019
Organizations have modern challenges

6. Viva

7. Microsoft Viva

8. Finding stuff is hard

9. What is your knowledge culture,
how do people share and
collaborate?
What and where does knowledge
currently sit in your organization and
where are the gaps and overlaps
across organizational departments,
geographies, applications and
repositories?
What solutions have you already
implemented around knowledge?

10. On average, employee productivity is reduced by 11%-14% due to time
spent searching for or recreating existing information
% Productivity lost searching for /
recreating existing information
11% 14%
We are very inconsistent on how we share and organize materials. Authors tend to just post
materials anywhere.
Our company is so large it's sometimes difficult to find the information I'm looking for. It's
usually faster to ask someone else than to wade through SharePoint to find the information.
Having the commitment to use time and resources to accomplish saving documents and files
in a searchable database.
Finding the right information quickly; there have been several groups
over time that have organized our knowledge systems all a little
differently without good integration with what was already there; it
reminds me of spaghetti code.
Q23. / Q24. On average, how much time do you spend / employee productivity is lost searching for or re-creating information that may already exist within your organization, but you / employees are
unable to locate it? (Select only one. Your best guess is fine.) Respondent: Exec + BDM + ITDM (n=450), I-Workers (n300)
Information is not systematically stored; it is rather fragment which
makes finding the right info quite difficult.
I-WORKER
ITDM
BDM
EXEC
Productivity losses

11. 52%
44% 43%
28% 27%
24%
20% 19% 18%
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Top 3 most appealing knowledge sharing tool benefits to i-Workers
Q25. Which three benefits are most appealing to you? (Select up to three.)
Respondent: I-Workers (n=300)
Productivity wants

13. Knowledge put to work
Viva Topics applies AI
to empower people with knowledge
and expertise in the apps they use
every day by automatically
organizing content and expertise
across your systems and teams into
related topics like projects, products,
processes, and customers.
With topic pages and the topic
center, experts can share knowledge
with wiki-like simplicity.
Viva Topics

14. Enable your organization’s experts to share and refine
knowledge through curated topic pages, automatically
generated and updated by AI.
People spend about an hour a day–or up to seven weeks a year–searching for or recreating information1
Turn content into usable knowledge
Use AI to reason over your organization’s content and
automatically identify, process, and organize it into easily
accessible knowledge.
Organize knowledge into topic pages
Make knowledge easy to discover and use
Deliver relevant topic cards in the apps people use every day.
Source: Spiceworks/ZD, Knowledge Sharing in a Changing World, commissioned by Microsoft, February 2021, aka.ms/Viva/Topics/Spiceworks.
Viva Topics – Knowledge & Expertise

15. Demo
Viva Topics end user

16. Microsoft Knowledge & Content Services
Microsoft Viva Topics SharePoint Syntex
Topic card
Microsoft 365 Apps
Topic page Topic page
Topic page
Topic center home page
Topic center
Content centers
content processing
Metadata and
content compliance
Knowledge & Content Services
Microsoft Graph and AI
Microsoft Graph content connectors

17. Microsoft Knowledge & Content Services
Microsoft Viva Topics SharePoint Syntex
Topic card
Microsoft 365 Apps
Topic page Topic page
Topic page
Topic center home page
Topic center
Content centers
content processing
Metadata and
content compliance
Knowledge & Content Services
Microsoft Graph and AI
Microsoft Graph content connectors
Curation
Where users explore topics and experts manage topics
Discovery
Where users connect to knowledge
(content and experts) about topics
Processing
Where process owners build models, ingest content and organize process-
related content, and users access content as part of business process
Identification
Automatically discover relationships
across content & conversations
Tagging
Extract information from and
about content
Governance
Manage security and
compliance of content
Topic | Skill | …
Extension
Ingest knowledge from external
services and data repositories

18. Statistical ML models using frequency and recency
Template-based discovery of patterns (used for acronyms,
alternate names, untyped topics)
Representation learning to create embeddings of
heterogeneous entities (used to extract phrases and topics)
Clustering of related topics; conflation of similar topics or
classification algorithms. Disambiguation of topics (used for
acronyms, alternate names, projects)
Cross-lingual language model pre-training + fine-tuning and universal
model for language expansion (used for acronyms, definitions)
Graph-based techniques to model relationships and importance
(used for connections between people and topics)
Alexandria in Microsoft Viva Topics: from big data to big knowledge - Microsoft Research
Topics AI Investments

19. End user feedback on relevancy
and context on topics
Encourages contribution
Simple yes/no mechanism
Controlled number of questions
Loops for general feedback and
disambiguation
Helping the AI with crowdsourcing

20. Administration

21. Topic discovery
Select the SharePoint sites for Topic discovery
Topics administration
Click get started under Files and
content in the M365 admin center
Search settings
observed
‒ NoIndex
‒ NoCrawl
• It may take up to two weeks for all suggested topics to appear
• Topic discovery continues as new content or updates to content are made
• Number of suggested Topics during discovery will fluctuate
• 20k+ files recommended

22. Topic visibility
Pick Topics to exclude
Topics administration
Assign licenses
It will take an hour+ to show up
Pick who can see Topics
• Topics in all stages of the topic lifecycle are visible
• Suggested topics are labeled
Can exclude by sensitivity label
Can exclude people from being
suggested for Topics by AI (executives)

23. Topic permissions
Topics administration
Pick who can create & edit Topics Pick who can manage Topics

24. Topic Center
Topics administration
• Where Topic pages are hosted and managed
• Multilingual
• You can’t change the URL after
• Topics web part on home page
• Move topics between stages
• Suggested
• Confirmed -> page created
• Published
• Removed
One per tenant

25. Everyone
(Topic Viewers)
Topic
Contributor SME
Discovers knowledge
through Topics
Contributes to topics,
curating pinned people
and resources
Knowledge
Manager
Owns quality of
knowledge and network
of curators
Performs topic
management tasks such
as create, edit, delete,
and reject topics
Knowledge
Administrator
Sets up topic experiences
Ensures that security and
compliance standards are
enforced
Understands licensing
agreement
Topics & knowledge roles

26. Demo
Topics admin

27. Deployment

28. Get your environment ready
• Indexing only SharePoint sites
• Prioritize knowledge locations
Content
• External Graph connector
• Migrate content
Connect
• Topic cards only on modern pages
• Use modernization scanner
Modernize
• Identify broad permissions
• Site owners review permissions
Secure
• Identify SMEs and roles
• Use existing taxonomies
Topics

29. Topics adoption approach

30. The people
Role Responsibility Department
Stakeholder(s) Sponsors the rollout of Viva Topics within their
business unit (BU) or department
BU, department
Knowledge Program manager Lead development of organization’s knowledge
strategy, deliver on objectives and champion
knowledge discovery across organization
Senior member of
BU or department
Communications lead Manage and deliver the communications strategy
for Viva Topics
Corp comms
Knowledge administrator Sets up Viva Topics experience IT
Knowledge manager(s) Owns quality of organization knowledge and
manages network of contributors
BU, department
Champions Members of extended team who help their
colleagues along the knowledge journey
BU, department
Topic contributors Contribute to knowledge base of organization by
using their subject matter expertise to create,
curate, publish and edit topics
BU, department
Assemble core team Gain stakeholder buy-in

31. Pick a rollout approach
Rollout approach

32. Define scenarios
Use a framework to define prioritized scenarios and outline assets needed
Example

33. Plan for knowledge curation

34. Utilize an Early Adopter Program (EAP) for pilot
• Test drive and get feedback
• Deliver quick wins
• Gather success stories
• Solve technical issues first
• Gather strong knowledge managers
• Bring in IT
• Get users who are not IT savvy

35. Priority topics first
• Prioritize topics relevant to selected scenarios
• Prioritize topics relevant to key stakeholders
and EAP
• Prioritize topics that align to existing
taxonomies
• Prioritize topics based on top query searches
• Utilize metrics for topics to improve topic
quality quickly
• Replace bookmarks and existing KBs with
topics

36. HR
New employee and role onboarding: Provide new employees
(and existing employees starting a new role) with the
knowledge they need to successfully onboard and accelerate
their time to productivity
In content learning: Enable employees to learn about topics
relevant to their jobs in the flow of their work
Merger & acquisitions: Provide employees of acquired
company with knowledge to integrate more quickly into
acquiring company
Employee experience: Enable IT and HR help desk to find
answers and experts
Operations
Asset knowledge base: Provide employees with one place
to go to find comprehensive and up-to-date information
related to organizational assets
Process and procedure knowledge base: Help employees
understand organization processes and procedures
Sales & Customer service
Sales enablement: Improve sales pursuit outcomes and reduce proposal production
time by helping salespeople identify SMEs and reuse existing content and knowledge
Product and service knowledge base: Help employees learn about company products
and services with easy access to product details, announcements, roadmaps, and a
place to ask questions
Customer knowledge base: Maintain knowledge base about customers and their
industry to help employees better serve customers
Customer support and expertise: Provide contact agents with knowledge and the
ability to find SMEs to improve customer issue resolution outcomes and efficiency
Product
Knowledge networks: Enable employees with a common interest in a topic to share
knowledge, connect, learn, solve and create together.
Service delivery: Improve project or engagement efficiency by democratizing access
to project IP and expertise
Functional scenarios

37. Sample Rollout Timeline

38. Pre launch
• Teaser campaign
• Raise awareness
• Highlight benefits
• Get staff buy-in
• Gather EAPs
Launch
• Exec sponsor comm
• Educate on roles
and expectation
• Office hours
• Run hackathon
Post-Launch
• Profile scenarios
• Reinforce behaviors
• Showcase success
• Recognize
champions
• Run another
hackathon
Topics Rollout Communications
Download Viva Topics comm asset samples at https://aka.ms/TopicsComms and customize for your implementation
Utilize assets for a Viva Topics Hackathon at https://aka.ms/Viva/Topics/Hackathon

39. Phase Goals
Start Determine business scenarios for pilot, success criteria, and timelines.
Assign roles; identify, and train knowledge managers.
Perform initial topic discovery, and first curation of topics.
Pilot Release topics end user experiences to a pilot group.
Expand the number of topic contributors with create/edit access.
Build operationalized approach to Topic management and governance.
Develop the communications required to launch topics at scale
Scale Expand the management of topics to business units
Expand the group of topic viewers to all licensed users and consider broader
crowd-sourcing
Develop methods for prioritization of curation activities: quality score and
impressions, etc.
Planning a Topics rollout

40. Questions?
Email: drew.madelung@protiviti.com
Twitter: @dmadelung
Website: drewmadelung.com
Slides: http://bit.ly/DrewSlides

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43. Deploying Viva
T
opics
M365 Conference Winter 2022