M365 Changelog: (Updated) Microsoft Viva – Auto-Categorization Coming to Meeting Category Insights in Viva Insights

MC546939 – Updated July 13, 2023: Microsoft has updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Meeting category insights in the Viva Insights app helps Viva Insights licensed users understand how they are allocating their time across meeting categories. Today, the feature uses the categories manually assigned by users in Outlook and Teams. In an upcoming update, meeting category insights will begin automatically categorizing meetings for users based on meeting size, cadence, and number of people in the meetings. Categories include:

• Long meetings – More than 1 hour long and 0-8 invitees
• Large meetings – At least 9 invitees and at most 1 hour long
• Large and long meetings – At least 9 invitees and more than 1 hour long
• Recurring meetings – Meeting series with multiple instances
• 1:1 meetings – Include 1 other participant

These categories can help users identify meetings that are expensive in terms of time spent, participants included, or both. Using these insights, users can assess whether meetings that fall under this category are a valuable use of time and resources as a step towards doing more with less.

Categorizations will show up in Viva Insights only and will not reflect in Outlook or Teams calendar.

With this update, users who are not currently categorizing in Outlook or Teams will be able to access meeting category insights and begin developing an understanding of how their meeting time is being spent. Users who are already categorizing will receive additional insights about their meeting time allocation according to well-known meeting attributes.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 117396

When this will happen:

Microsoft will begin rolling out in mid-August (previously early July) and complete rollout by mid-September (previously late July).

How this will affect your organization:

All users with a Viva Insights license, including those who have not categorized any meetings before, will be able to view meeting category insights in the Viva Insights app. Those who have not categorized between the last 3 months and next 4 weeks will see auto-categorizations from Viva Insights only. Those with categorizations in Outlook and Teams will see both their own personal categorizations and auto-categorizations from Viva Insights.

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Users without a Viva Insights license will not be able to view meeting category insights.

What you need to do to prepare:

Viva Insights documentation will be updated in sync with this release: Meeting category insights in Viva Insights. Review and assess impact for your organization. Consider updating documentation as appropriate. 

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