Microsoft have added another member to the Viva family – Microsoft Inspire 2022 saw the announcement of Viva Engage. It’s hard to hear that and not picture Captain Jean Luc Picard isn’t it?!
Built on the existing Yammer Communities app, it’s another way for employees to connect within an organisation and will include “stories” and “storylines” to enable sharing of thoughts, ideas etc. – very “social media-esque”.
Viva & Yammer
The Yammer Communities app in Teams will be re-branded “Viva Engage” and all content, networks, customer branding etc. will remain in place. Being licensed for Yammer is a requirement to use Viva Engage so current Yammer users shouldn’t lose anything in this change/rebrand.
Conclusion
This is another step on the journey of making Viva more important to the fabric and wellbeing of organisations – Microsoft clearly want Viva to be integral to the smooth operation of the business/employee relationship. Viva is going to be a core pillar of Microsoft’s business within a few years, bringing HR and employee satisfaction parts of a customer into Microsoft’s world too.
It also further the positioning of Teams as the central point for business communication and the focal point for each user’s day.
See the Microsoft announcement here.
Cloudy with a chance of Licensing 