M365 Changelog: (Updated) Temporarily disable Viva Connections First Run Experience in the Desktop experience

MC358962 – Updated July 15, 2022: Microsoft has updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Currently, when users log into Viva Connections from the rich Teams desktop client or Teams web client, they are presented with a multi-panel first run experience informing them about Viva Connections and its features.  Microsoft has discovered instances where a user might see this experience repeatedly, even if they had seen it before.  

The team is hence disabling this experience from the Viva Connections app for desktop users only while Microsoft improves this experience.  It will re-enable it in the future and will communicate when it is ready again.

When this will happen:

This change is expected to take place starting mid-April and expected to complete by early August (previously late June).

How this will affect your organization:

The primary impact for users of Viva Connections is that first time users will not be shown the first run experience on Teams desktop or web until Microsoft re-enable the feature.

What you need to do to prepare:

No action is necessary.  This change will take effect automatically in your tenant.  If you are planning to roll out Viva Connections to new users in your tenant, you can consider informing them of the capabilities that Connections provides for them, including access to your organization’s intranet in Teams, ability to access relevant content and resources including global navigation, and simpler content sharing and collaboration.  If you would like to take advantage of content, Microsoft has made available to help communicate Viva rollouts, see relevant items here: https://adoption.microsoft.com/viva. 
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