M365 Changelog: (Updated) New home experience for Viva Connections desktop

MC447338 – Updated February 28, 2023: The New home experiences for Viva Connections desktop has begun rolling out to production tenants, starting with Targeted Release tenants and will continue until completion, expected by the end of Q1 of this calendar year.

As a reminder, customers that already have an existing home site can choose to keep their existing desktop experience using our new PowerShell command that is already available to all customers since mid-November. More information about the PowerShell command is captured in this doc Get more details in the customization guidance.

Customers with existing home sites can choose to keep their existing desktop experience using our new PowerShell command that is already available to all customers since mid-November. More information about the PowerShell command is captured in this doc: Customize and edit the Viva Connections home experience. 

 A new desktop experience is being released for Viva Connections that’s easier and faster to set up and optimizes content to deliver a modern employee experience. The new Viva Connections desktop design serves as a new home experience option that centers essential job tasks, personalized content, easy access to other Viva experiences, and better aligns with the mobile experience.

It uses existing assets from your organization’s home site and Viva Connection’s Dashboard, Feed, and Resources. If your organization already has Viva Connections set up, you’ll have the option to choose to keep the existing desktop experiences that features the home site or to use the new home experience. Learn more about the new Viva Connections home experience. 

Key points: 

• If you’ve already set up Viva Connections, existing content will pre-populate the new home experience. 
• If you haven’t set up Viva Connections yet, the default experience includes starter cards on the Dashboard but otherwise doesn’t impact the current mobile experience. 
• There will be an option to select the default landing experience if your organization already has a home site. This option will become available to all customer by mid-November in the form of a PowerShell command. More information about the PowerShell command will be in the customization guidance.  

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 99917

When this will happen:

The new home experience has begun rolling out and is expected to complete by late March. 

How this will affect your organization:

For customers who are currently using Viva Connections, the new home experience will automatically update in Microsoft Teams. Customers with existing home sites can choose to keep the existing desktop experience using a new PowerShell command that will become available to all customers by mid-November. Get more details in the customization guidance.  

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What you need to do to prepare:

With the new desktop experience, admins and editors will be able to edit content and manage permissions from Microsoft Teams. To prepare for this change, help admins and editors for Viva Connections learn more about how to customize the new home experience and how permissions work.

End users in your organization will use the same entry point in Teams as the previous desktop experience. When they view the new experience for the first time, visual prompts will walk them through the main functions of the design and how to interact with different elements. Share guidance with end users.

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