Overview

This summary of the Microsoft Documentation Plan Microsoft Viva Connections for you Organization is intended as a quick start resource to inform a successful implementation of Viva Connections. 

Steps in the Planning Process

1. Gather Stakeholders and meet technical requirements
2. Analyze tasks and key scenarios to support
3. Align key scenarios to design plans for dashboard, feed a resources
4. Build the dashboard
5. Consider how to announce, launch and scale

Step 1: Gather Stakeholders and Meet Technical Requirements

Stakeholders to be included in planning

1. Internal Buisness Partners (e.x. Human Resources, Communications Specialist, technology advocates)
2. SharePoint and Teams administrators
3. SharePoint site owners and authors
4. Organizational leaders

Meet Technical Requirements

1. Set a SharePoint homesite to be the Viva Connections intranet landing page
2. Configure global Navigation
3. Modernize existing SPO sites that will be used

 

Step 2: Analyze Tasks and Scenarios

As you engage stakeholders to analyze the tasks and scenarios to design for, consider the Viva Connection Dashboard cards that are available:

1. Our of the Box Cards: Link , Shifts, Teams and Assigned Tasks¹
2. Adaptive Extension Cards: Cards that can be extended and customized using the SharePoint Framework²
3. Third-party cards: Cards available through third parties³

^{Conduct a Needs Assessment}

Considerations:

1. Places and location of the workforce
2. Workforce needs dependent on location, department, task
3. Impact of geography/culture/industry on workforce
4. How does the organization communicate best?
5. What needs to be gleaned from workflows?
6. What are the current pain points in workflows?
7. What is the organizations culture? How do coworkers connect?

Data sources to consult:

1. Anecdotal observations
2. Email communications
3. Employee survey results
4. Focus group interviews
5. IT support tickets
6. M365 analytics and usage data

For each task, answer these questions:

1. Who is the audience?
2. What do users need to accomplish or learn?
3. What tools or technology do they use today?
4. What information needs to be promoted?

Step 3: Align key scenarios to design plans for Dashboard, Feed and Resources

• Design with your audience in mind⁴
• Use insights from the needs assessment to select dashboard cards and resource links
• Personalize experiences for roles and/or regions
• Use audience targeting to create custom views
• Test with a pilot group before deploying Viva connections to the rest of the organization

Viva Connections Feed

The Feed aggregates SP news, video news links and Yammer conversations.

 

Sources of Feed Content⁶

1. News Published on organization news sites in SharePoint
2. Posts in Viva Engage communities
3. Videos in SharePoint hosted by Stream

Influence Feed Content

• Promote important communications with News Boost
• Highlight community discussions by featuring Yammer posts
• Mark official communication channels (SharePoint Sites) as organizational news sites and publish news from that site
• Use SharePoint video news links

Viva Connections Resources

Resources are navigational links configured in global navigation. They will appear in Teams when the intranet app is double clicked.

Resource Examples

• Training Resources
• Event Opportunities
• HR Portal

*links in resources can be audience targeted

 

Step 4: Build the Dashboard

• Choose and add cards to the dashboard in edit mode

  • Choose images and lables that encourage interaction with cards
  • Apply audience targeting strategies to ensure the correct audiences have acces to the right information
  • Create custom dashboard cards as needed

• Prepare Content for the feed

  • Ensure the feed has content to show via the 3 Feed sources
    • Organizational news posts
    • Yammer community posts
    • Videos posted in news or as news videos
  • Influence News Priority
    • News Boost
    • Highlight community discusstions
    • Publish from official news sources
    • Use video news links

• Setup Resources

  • Navigational links configured in the site's global navigation
  • Links can be targeted

• Use preview mode to view the audiences perspectives on different devices

  • Review audience targeting settings before launching. Audience targeting can be applied to
    • Dashboard Cards
    • SP News Posts
    • Links in Resources

• Add the Dasboard and Feed webparts to the home site

• Publish to make available to end users

 

Step 5: Plan to announce, launch & scale adoption

Test Viva Connections before launch

1. Test with early adopter group
2. Use the approved browser for organization (Edge recommended)
3. Test on desktop and mobile devices
4. Make sure all links are active and there are no dead ends
5. Review dashboard card and lables - do they make sense?
6. Evaluate quality and effectiveness of icons and images
7. Check performance, loading times, etc.
8. Utilize surveys to solicit tester feedback

Announce Connections to your Organization

1. Consider where and how audiences get news
2. Plan to engage users where they meet and share information
3. Use multiple methods/channels of communication
4. Share links to end user training

Manage Change

1. Get Microsoft certified: Service Adoption Specialist
2. Organize demost for useful features; such as Dashboard, Feed, and Resources
3. Share curated training content on how to use the platform
4. Set up training sessions for different roles / workflosw
5. Solicit feedback
6. Create open channel for questions in Teams / Yammer

Use Metrics to evaluate

• Site level and page level usage reports provide idea of usage

Reference

1.  Create a Viva Connections Dashboard
2.  Build your first SharePoint Adaptive Card Extension
3.  Viva Connections welcomes new partners and opens developer preview
4.  Design with your audience in mind
5.  Manage and expand your Viva Connection Feed to create a culture of connectivity
6.  Where does content in the Feed come from?
7. Microsoft Viva Connections Adoption Guide